It is the nature of a man to be communistic.  It is only the anchorite that withdraws himself from the societies of man and communes with himself and his God.  All right-thinking men desire and enjoy the society of their kind and kindred spirits.  You had as well lock the sane man in the felon’s cell as to doom him to live without the society of his fellows.  The family is the first and best society.  Perhaps the church is next, which is only the human family on a larger scale, fitting and preparing the members for a community in that house not made by hands.  Next to my church I prize the secret organization to which I belong, where the cardinal principles of our holy Christianity are taught.  The deathless friendship of David and Jonathan teaches me that though I may live in the king’s palace, be clothed in purple and fine linen every day, be in the line of regal succession, yet I do not live to myself.

I would herald broadcast that tenet of our order, “that we do for others as we would have others do for us, and that if I find my brother in distress, I must bind up his wounds, lift him from the quagmire of despond and set him on his feet.”  If any lesson stands out boldly before the mind of the Odd-Fellow it is truth.  He finds it on his banner wherever he goes.  Friendship is ephemeral.  It lasts only through life.  It may die, it will die.  The grave ends it all.  The silent messenger that comes to king and peasant alike, and causes the scepter of the monarch to be laid by the crook of the shepherd, ends our friendship.  Love comes from God.  God is love.  It touches us at every point of our lives.  From the cradle to the grave, every moment of our lives we are the objects of love to some one, and we love in turn.  But human love must end.  After life’s fitful dream, the cares and vanities, the vexations and pleasures of life have no terror or concern for us, the love that thrilled our whole being will return to the source from whence it came.  But truth will never die.  It is the “imperial virtue.”  The heart may fail; it will fail, and the hand fall listless by the side.  The arrow will fall after being shot into the air and never return, and the bow will be broken; the altar will be thrown down; the sand, grain by grain, run through the hour-glass, and the glass be shattered; the eye grow dim; the world roll up as a scroll and pass away; the hills may crumble and the pyramids melt with fervent heat; all the friendships will die and the love return to the Father that begat it, but truth will stand.  It is indeed the imperial and the imperishable virtue.  There, above the chaos and the confusion of time, it will stand to warn men from the wrong, and beckon them to do right.