The Jericho Road | Page 3

to teach a universal fraternity in the family of man. To meet
and satisfy and better keep alive the nobler elements of man's nature.
Many orders have been instituted, but none can challenge greater
admiration from men, or deserve more blessings from heaven, than the
Independent Order of Odd-Fellows. Looking back along the pathway of
the century behind us we behold the wrecks of many orders. The
morning of their life was beautiful and full of glorious promise, but the
evening came and they had perished. Rich costumes, impressive
ceremonies, beautiful degrees and magnificent effects, all lie buried and
forgotten. It was not because their founders lacked energy or
enthusiasm, not because their members were less susceptible to the
beauty and poetry of tradition and ceremony, but because success and
perpetuity come not from human effort, but are the outgrowth of a
life-giving principle. The sculptor fashions from the marble a form of
surpassing loveliness, its lines are those of grace and beauty. We stand
before it charmed, whispering our admiration, but the impression on the
heart is only passing. The poet sings of home, of mother and of love;
the meter may be faulty and the words may charm not, but the
sentiment is true and touches our hearts. The experience it recites is
common to humanity, and wherever its sweet tones are heard it softens
men's natures and makes them better, truer and nobler. Who among us
would be willing to exchange the influence of the immortal song
"Home Sweet Home," or be willing to forget the Christian's "Nearer
My God to Thee," for all the inanimate beauty of art? One charms the
eye, the other touches and calls to life the best and sweetest emotions of
the human heart. So it is with fraternal societies. Flashing swords,
glittering helmets, jeweled regalias and beautiful degrees may touch the
vanity and excite the admiration, but to win the heart we must satisfy
its longings, feed its hopes and lift it above the narrowness and
selfishness of its daily experience. Odd-Fellowship strives to touch the
heart and better feelings, rather than feed the vanity of man or arouse
his admiration for gorgeous displays. Its work is an exemplification of
the living, practical Christianity of today. In almost every state in this
fair land of ours can be found Odd-Fellows' homes, within whose walls

the orphan is no longer motherless. For each and every little one within
these homes, one million Odd-Fellows feel a father's love and pledge a
parent's care.
Add to all this great work the little deeds of love, the little acts of
kindness that make life beautiful; add kind words of cheer and friendly
help and tender consolation, and add again the benefit of union, the
strength that comes from hearts united in God's work among mankind,
and you have caught a glimpse of the life-giving principle that has
made Odd-Fellowship one of the grandest fraternal and beneficiary
institutions the world has ever known. The work it has done can not be
fully estimated until the record is read in the bright light of eternity. In
that glad day the tears that have been wiped away will become jewels
in somebody's crown, and the sobs that have been hushed will be heard
again in hosannas of welcome.
Onward! is the ringing, pregnant watchword of the world. The vast,
complicated, ponderous machinery of life is kept in motion by tireless
and irresistible forces. The multiform and magnificent affairs of men
and of nations are all impelled forward with an energy and a velocity as
wonderful as glorious to behold.
Not retrogressive, but progressive--not enervating, but energizing--not
ephemeral, but substantial--not from bad to worse, but from the
imperfect to the consummate, are the characteristics by which are so
prominently distinguished the tidal waves of the world's progress today.
Activity and achievement came with creation, and constitute an
inflexible, irrepealable law of the universe. In stir and push we have
light and life, but in idleness, and superstitious clinging to fossilized
ideas and bygones, we have demoralization, decay and death.
Fortunately for the world, and agreeably with infinite design, man
plods his way in harmony with the law alluded to. Not all men, but the
great masses of them, wherever "The true light shineth," especially
when accompanied by rays and helps from one of the noblest and
grandest of confraternities our world has known, "The Independent
Order of Odd-Fellows." When the huge planet which we call our world
had been tossed into being from the furnace fires of Omnipotence, and
the maternal lullaby began to gather force on hill top and in valley, the
discovery was naturally enough made that association and co-operation
were preferable to isolation and unrelieved dependence; and from that

hour forward, this principle has been interwoven into the