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Updated: May 3, 2025
I do not desire to convey the impression that all our civilization is the outgrowth of Odd-Fellowship. We are too much inclined on such occasions as these to become mutual admiration societies and think that all the good things that we enjoy could not have been possible if our particular order had not existed. I do not wish to convey that impression.
The object of Odd-Fellowship is to improve and elevate the character of man, to enlighten his mind and enlarge the sphere of his affections, and of course woman, as being mentally weak and naturally inferior to man, was excluded from its sacred precincts.
The Bible is an emblem of Odd-Fellowship, because it is the Odd-Fellows' text-book. Here we get our doctrines for faith and our rules for practice in all the relations of life. As Odd-Fellows, we believe the Bible is the word of God, because in their enmity humanity has never been able to destroy it or rob it of its power; nor have any who reject it given us a book to take its place.
The special mission of Odd-Fellowship is to incite and stimulate the dormant moral energies to action, to rouse the lethargic, encourage the timid, and to strengthen the aspirations for a nobler and a better life.
The candidate for initiation into Odd-fellowship must "give himself passively to his guides." Such demands indicate the spirit which secret associations require of their members. They must surrender the exercise of their own judgment, and permit themselves to be blindly led by others. No man has a right thus to surrender himself passively to the guidance of others.
It enforces no religious or political tests; in these every member is free; but it does teach and urge its members to be grateful to their Creator and loyal to their country. In conclusion, let me urge upon the living, fidelity to the teachings of Odd-Fellowship. If these are respected it will make you better citizens, better husbands, better fathers, better men.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love." 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.
He who is a member of this fraternity may go where his father's counsel and his mother's care can not reach him, but he can not go beyond the reach of that larger family to which he belongs! Silently and invisibly, yet with unslumbering assiduity, Odd-Fellowship watches over him, and by its wise counsels, its tender sympathies and rational restraints, saves him from the ways of vice.
Its bond of cohesion, so frail and yet so potent, is seemingly inexplicable. It is the recognition of the principles of brotherhood and fraternity, and the practice of their resultant virtues. To appreciate and practice is to attain strength. We are weak and frail. Odd-Fellowship is strong, and its principles are as eternal as the stars.
"Grand as has been the record of Odd-Fellowship from 1819 to the present, it is but the sunbeams from the birth of the day that will develop grandly into a magnificence that shall combine all the charms of the morning, the glare of the noontide, and the blaze of a sunset splendor in an endless panorama of glory and grandeur.
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