Odd-Fellowship seeks to lessen sorrow and suffering.  It supplies temporal wants; gives encouragement; aids and comforts those who are in distress.  In sickness we watch by their bedside and administer to their wants.  If death calls, Odd-Fellowship forsakes not its follower, but hovers near, listening attentively to the last words and parting instruction of the dying one.  Brothers and friends, let me admonish you to do all the good you can while in health and strength, for at most life is short and we know not how soon the Angel of Death will unfold his broad, shadowy wings over our path and call us to give an account of our stewardship; then all that will remain of us on earth will be the good or evil we have done.

Odd-Fellowship is full of sacred teachings and sublime warnings.  It teaches us that we are in a world full of temptations, sin and sorrow.  We see the emblems of decay all around us.  The strong man of today may stand forth, nerved for toil, with all the bloom of health mantling cheek and brow, seemingly as strong and vigorous as the mighty oak, and yet tomorrow he will fade as the autumn leaf.  Then he realizes how foolish it is to be vain; thinks of the instability of wealth and power, and the certain decay of all earthly greatness.  Odd-Fellowship teaches us that charity springs from the heart, is not puffed up, seeks not its own.  It makes us strong, and encourages us to push on through life, even though we are beset on every side with toil, danger and strife.  Brothers, let nothing cause you to turn back or away from the principles of our noble order.  Cling closer and closer each day to honesty and truth, and bear in mind that be the road ever so rough and untraveled, narrow and dark, if you follow truth you will find light at the end of the journey.

THE SECRESY OBJECTION.

More common, perhaps, than any other filed against it has been the objection that Odd-Fellowship does its work secretly, this objection being not unfrequently urged by persons of candor and honest impulses.  “If,” it is demanded, “the aims and purposes of the order be legitimate and praiseworthy, why shroud them in mystery rather than give them the broad sunlight of publicity.”

The objection is not new, nor is it urged with any increase of its original force, whatever may be the fact in the matter of vehemence.  Answer might be made:  The order does not choose to ascend to the house tops for the purpose of heralding its affairs to the world.  But that answer would not be satisfactory, nor is any likely to be that may be presented, now or hereafter.  It is nevertheless true that there are certain matters pertaining to the order and its works with which the outside world has no sort of concern, even as with those very peculiar secret societies, the individual, the family, the church and the state.  If other organizations prefer to resort to the newspapers, the pulpit, the rostrum and other information conduits for the purpose of advertising their wares, their greatness and their goodness, and the vast amount of humanitarian work they are doing and purposing, such is their unquestioned privilege.