The more I study Odd-Fellowship, the more I become convinced that I have just crossed the threshold, and that new truths and sublime lessons await me, of which I never dreamed.  Brothers, there is hidden treasure in our order for which we must dig.  It must be brought to the surface.  We must know more of the beauties of this great organization of ours.  “The greatest thing,” says some one, “a man can do for his Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of His other children.”  “I wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are?  How much the world needs it.  How easily it is done.  How instantaneously it acts.  How infallibly it is remembered.  How super-abundantly it pays itself back—­for there is no debtor in the world so honorable, so superbly honorable, as love.  Love is success.  Love is happiness.  Love is life.”  “Where love is, God is.  He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.  God is love.  Therefore love.”  “Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love.  Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all.  There is a difference between trying to please and giving pleasure.  Give pleasure.  Lose no chance of giving pleasure.  For that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly loving spirit.  I shall pass through this world but once.  Any good things that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now.  Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.  We can be Odd-Fellows only while we act like honest men.”

Every Odd-Fellow ought to be a “gentleman.”  Do you know the meaning of the word “gentleman”?  “It means a gentleman—­a man who does things gently, with love.  And that is the whole art and mystery of it.  The gentleman can not in the nature of things do an ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing.”  “Love doth not behave itself unseemly.”  Life is full of opportunities for learning love.  Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them.  There is an eternal lesson for us all, “how better we can love.”  What makes a good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician?  Practice.  What makes a man a good man, a man of love?  Practice.  Nothing else.  If a man does not exercise his arm he develops no biceps muscle; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he acquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigor of moral fibre, nor beauty of spiritual growth.  Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion.  It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression of the whole round Christian character—­the Christ-like nature in its fullest development.  And the constituents of this great character are only to be built up by ceaseless practice.  To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever.  We want to live forever for the same reason that we want to live tomorrow.