Part 8 (1/2)

”Come from your long, long roving, On life's sea so bleak and rough; Come to me tender and loving, And I shall be blest enough.”

That hath been her long song, always on her lips or in her heart.

Children had been born to them. She had reared them almost alone--they were gone! Her hand had led them to the uttermost edge of the morning that has no noon. Then she had comforted him, and sent him out strong and whole-hearted while she stayed at home and--cried. What can a woman do but cry and trust? Well, she is at rest now. But she could not die until he had promised to ”bear up,” not fret, but to remember how happy they had been. They? Yes, it was even so.

It was an equal partners.h.i.+p, after all.

”She--was--a--good--wife--to--me.” Oh, man! man! Why not have told her so when her ears were not dulled by death? Why wait to say these words over a coffin wherein lies a wasted, weary, gray-haired woman, whose eyes have so long held that pathetic story of loss and suffering and patient yearning, which so many women's eyes reveal to those who weep? Why not have made the wilderness in her heart blossom like the rose with the prodigality of your love? Now you would give worlds, were they yours to give, to see the tears of joy your words would have once caused, bejeweling the closed windows of her soul. It is too late.

”We have careful thoughts for the stranger, And smiles for the sometime guest, But oft for own, The bitter tone, Though we love our own the best.”

ODD-FELLOWs.h.i.+P AND THE FUTURE

There is infinite and perennial fascination in the contemplation of the future. The past is a fixed province, the finished result of an ever-moving present. The future is the province of the poet, the prophet and the seer. The past is adamant, the future is plastic clay.

The past is with G.o.d alone; the future is with G.o.d and man. We toil for it; dream of it; look to it; and all seek so to

* * * ”Forecast the years, As find in loss a gain to match, Or reach a hand through time to catch The far-off interest of tears.”

Let us consider the future as a field and Odd-Fellows.h.i.+p as a force.

The future is a field, billowing with the ripening harvest of golden possibilities. It is as wide as the world, for the world is the field.

It comprises every zone and clime; every nation and tribe; every island of the seas. Wherever we find one of our fellow-men in darkness and in chains, there is our field. It is as long as from now to the coming of Christ. A moment's survey of the field will convince us that the greatest conquests are yet to be made. There is battle ahead, great interests to be gained, great incentives to heroic effort. The times call for men--broad-browed, clear-eyed, strong-hearted, swift-footed men. Odd-Fellows, not behind you but before you, not in the past but in the future, lies the widest and richest field of Odd-Fellows.h.i.+p's possibility. Turn your faces, not toward the waning light of yesterday, but toward the growing radiance of a better morning. The force is commensurate with the field. The cry of every true Odd-Fellow ought to be the cry that leaped from the heart of Isaiah when his lips were touched with the coal from off the altar: ”Here am I, Lord, send me.” Our order is no longer a puny and helpless infant, but a l.u.s.ty giant, panoplied in the armor of truth and clad in the strength of perpetual youth. We have riches untold. We have inst.i.tutions for the care of the old, and the orphan, the equal of any of which the world can boast. We have a grasp on the sympathy and confidence of the ma.s.ses which is immeasurable. We stand for principles that are the incarnation of G.o.d's infinite thought and throbbing love. We are equipped for conquest. What answer shall the force make to the cry from the field? As loyal Odd-Fellows, let us take our answer from the Great Commander. What answer did He make to a dying world? What did he come to do? He came to lift fallen humanity. He came to bind up the wounds of those who were bruised and bleeding. He came to speak words of cheer and sympathy to hearts bowed in sorrow. He came to break the chains of bondage and restore mankind to its former beauty and greatness. Our mission is identical with His. Our work is identical with His work. We are His representatives. Our highest destiny is the working out of His purposes. The world with all its boasted progress has not advanced beyond the need of a Savior. It is the same at heart now as it was when the blessed feet of Christ trod its hills and valleys. Men change, but man changes not. The same problems are confronting us as confronted them. It may be trite, but it is tremendously true, that our primary and ever-present duty is to seek and save the lost. We are to win them to faith in high and n.o.ble ends, and having won them to faith in our mission is not enough. They are to be instructed, cultured, enlarged, inspired, enn.o.bled, until man looking in the face of man shall see the face of Christ s.h.i.+ning through. He is to be the accepted Lord and law-giver in every realm of human thought and activity. He is to rule in the family. He is to rule in business. He is to rule until the demon of hate, malice and injustice has been throttled. He must rule in the affairs of state.

He must rule in society, until the watchers at the gate shall announce to Him who sitteth upon the throne: ”Thy kingdom has come and thy will is done in earth as it is in heaven.” Christ is the solution of man's most difficult problems. He came to save men. How did He go about the task? He gave himself. We can accomplish our task only as in burning earnestness we give ourselves. What depth of humiliation, what self-devotion, what unmeasured sacrifices, what unspeakable suffering, what unfathomable anguish, what toil and anxiety, what love and pity, what loneliness and sorrow, are crowded into those three words, ”He gave himself.”

If we as an order would give ourselves to the principles taught by our inst.i.tution, we could win the world in the next half century. If we are to be truest to the future, we must stand by the side of the Great Teacher and proclaim a complete and perfect truth. Our platform should be neither broader nor narrower than His. If there is one truth in revelation that we can not give its proper setting and due emphasis, then we are not the keepers of G.o.d's truth. To my thinking, there are no organizations formed by man that can appeal more confidently to the Word of G.o.d for confirmation than the Odd-Fellows. We appeal to sane reason and common sense. No organization can hold up a higher ideal of individual freedom and worth. But there is a danger that we become narrow, that we violate the maxims of sane reason and common sense, that we lose the balance between individual prerogative and the claims of a united brotherhood. We can not accomplish the aims of our order by onesidedness. We are to become ”all things to all men.” We are not to be prisms breaking up the rays of light and declaring that this or that color is the most important. We as Odd-Fellows are to be lenses, converging the rays and bringing them to a focus upon the hearts of men as the white light of G.o.d's eternal truth.

This is a practical age, and if we are to win we must demonstrate the superiority of our faith and practice over that of other claimants, not only in terms of the Written Word, but also in terms of manhood.

Odd-Fellows.h.i.+p is standing upon the golden dawn of a new morning. It is to be a day of battle and conquest. It is truth blazoned upon the page of history, that if we as Odd-Fellows are true to our standard, to our possibilities and to our Maker, he will lay the suffering of a throbbing world in our arms that we may lay it at the feet of Him who died to redeem it. Let us cherish high hopes, n.o.ble aims, and lofty ideals. Never since the world was peopled has mankind stood in such anxious expectancy, awaiting the outcome of the immediate future, as in these closing years of the nineteenth century. Men are wistfully trying to peer through the portals of the year nineteen hundred--marveling, as the effects and forces of applied science is unfolded to our comprehension, and discovery moves on, each invention leading in another, in stately procession; we, all the while rapt in wonder, are straining in hope and fear to catch the coming word, and to comprehend its import. Never was speculation so rife, never was the field of human observation so un.o.bstructed and expanded, nor the ascertainment and sifting of facts so facile. Never were opinions more diverse, nor was it ever so obviously important to detect and a.s.sert the philosophical principle, in recognition and obedience to which the laws of human government may be preserved and kept in view, and the retrocession of mankind prevented. At no stage of history was it more important to call to mind the great principle that government is a means, and not an end, and is inst.i.tuted to maintain those general liberties which are essential for human happiness and progress. At this time, Odd-Fellows.h.i.+p looks toward the future with longing eyes, and its followers lift high their banner, on which is inscribed that beautiful motto, ”Friends.h.i.+p, Love and Truth.”

After all, what lives in this world? Is it thought pulsations alone or deeds done? If thought alone, then the lowest thought coordinated in the brain of man would live. Something must be combined with thought in order to have a lasting effect. There must be thought and deeds and sentiment. Sentiment must go to the very existence of the race. On these forces may be built up structures that live and breathe a benediction on all mankind. I ask you to cast your eye over the world and note the permanency of such inst.i.tutions as have come down to us, and are alive, and such as we say will live. I venture your first question will be: ”What is the foundation on which they rest? Why, through the slow, revolving years have these inst.i.tutions lived and thrived and grown? Have they lived on greed, or a desire for pelf or power, or out of human desire for adulation and praise? Or have they lived because of man's needs, and out of human wants?” If we probe to the bottom we will find this the corner-stone of all laudable ambitions, because man needs man, and needs help into a higher plane of usefulness and activities.

We find inst.i.tutions coming down to us from a date which the memory of man runs not to the contrary; indeed, some so old that the musty volumes of the long ago reveal not their origin. But simply the need of man for man would not entirely account for the duration of society in its ancient form. There must be still other underlying principles.

There must be love and the acknowledgment of the brotherhood of man all along the way of life, or the family would go to ruin, society would dissolve, citizens.h.i.+p would not exist, states and princ.i.p.alities, kingdoms and powers would exist only as an idea in the brain. There would be no command to be our brother's keeper, no plighted vow that ”The Lord be between thee and me, and between my seed and thy seed forever.” Man would, as an individual, stand absolutely alone, like an atom dropped from the abyssmal depths onto this earth of ours. The little wild flower struggles through leafy mold, endures the tempestuous blast of winter, that when spring comes it may bloom to gladden the earth and scatter sweet incense all around. But without the cementing influence that runs like a thread all through society, man would not, could not, cast a sweet odor even on his own life, and dying would leave no benediction on the lives of others. And here the command comes, ”Gather into thy quiver the lives and aspirations of others, that fitted to thy bow they may go forth scattering blessings by your help and by your kindly influence.” So all great achievements have been based on great fundamental principles, and each principle has for its object the betterment of the conditions of mankind.

Truth is said to be eternal. It was just as true at the dawn of creation that the square described on the hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle is equal to the square described on the other two sides, as it was when Pythagoras enunciated the theorem. ”Thou shall not kill,” is a law written by the Divine hand amid tempest and fire, but it stands.

”Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” rings from the portals of heaven through the gates of humanity and its command will not go unheeded. They are all great fundamental truths. Do you observe that they live? Give heed also to the fact that they stand for a better condition among men, for more helpfulness and higher elevations.

Truths enunciated, whether old or new, that live, only have one tendency, viz., to raise man to better conditions. Since the dawn of creation there has been a constant tendency to arise from a lower to a higher estate. Self-preservation, self-helps, self-culture have been the trend of thought and action. And this has not been altogether an effort in the individual for his own personal advancement, but for the advancement of the race. Men have undergone sacrifices, humbled and almost debased themselves, that the succeeding generation might live on a higher plane, physically, morally and spiritually, than they themselves enjoyed. I do not know of any act of humanity that calls forth louder praise than to so act and speak and do as that humanity shall not only catch the inspiration, but shall make material progress on a better understanding of surrounding conditions. Odd-Fellows.h.i.+p, in its essence, is no new inst.i.tution. Its principles, practices and precepts have existed from the beginning of the race.

When Abraham stood with the churlish Lot on the line dividing the plains and highlands and said, ”I pray thee let there be no contention between thee and me, if thou goest to the right hand I will go to the left, or, if thou goest to the left hand I will go to the right,” he breathed the pure essence of unselfish devotion to the founder of a race. The acts of kindness shown by the traveler as the caravan plods its tortuous way across the sands of the desert; the mission of the wise men from the east in search of a Redeemer, all show forth that trait that you and I, my brother, try to emphasize while vowing devotion to the triple links. I said a moment ago that Odd-Fellows.h.i.+p, in its essence, was no new inst.i.tution, and so it is not. As we know it in reality we have simply crystalized its workings. Instead of humanity, by its individual exertion, seeking to perform the task, we, as an organized band, have taken up the subject. What was paramount with individuals has become a living force with the mult.i.tude. What was before an invitation to duty has now become a command.

In seeking after friends.h.i.+p we do not court the beasts of the fields and the fowls of the air as the hermit does, but we seek man; not man, but men; not this little society or faction, but embrace all mankind in the issue. If we seek for love it is not love for pelf or power, but love for man and G.o.d. In truth we do not depend on the right conduct of individuals, but accept truth as it is written in nature's open book, emblazoned on the sky of hope that bends over us, and speaks in all the higher attributes of life. Time was when the inclination of men was to withdraw into clans. Ishmael stood in the desert by himself with his hand against every man. His true descendant, the Arabian sheik, draws his mantle about him, and surrounded by his little band withdraws within his own circle, and woe betide him who attempts to break through. But in this came no advancement, no progress. The Ishmaelite of old is the same today. Wherever progress and advancement has shown itself it is found that true regard for all mankind has been the cardinal doctrine. ”Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Soon a broad catholicity of ideas seizes the mult.i.tude and man no more lives for himself than he lives for others. He who lives closest to the true heart of humanity lives nearest to G.o.d. Show me a man who lives for himself alone, and you will present almost a social outcast.

Society tolerates him no more. In all the plans and calculations of life he is not numbered.