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Anniversary Address.

I. O. O. F.

I Have Called You Friends.-John 15:15.

ROTHERS, Sisters and Friends-On this, the anniversary of your noble Fraternity, you

have invited me to the pleasant and honorable duty of speaking in your behalf. I thank you for the courtesy, regard and honor. It seems eminently proper that you should thus meet in a Christian temple to examine the foundations, the principles and the work of your Order. After years of investigation, experience and observation, I fail to see why Odd Fellowship should be denounced by any church or by any Christian believer. You do not claim for it the province of religion; you do not assume that it does or can in any sense take the place of the church. We sometimes, it is true, hear the off-hand expression in reference to this and kindred fraternities, "It is good enough religion for me," but such statements, are of the most superficial character. It is not the doctrine or teaching of this or any other of our honored fraternities so far as I know. On the other hand, the flippant expression to which we sometimes listen: "We have nothing to do with religion," is equally absurd. The foundation principles of our Order are the "Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man," while the Christian Bible is an indispensable requi

site on the altar of your fraternal retreat. The dragon seed of atheism finds no fruitful soil for its growth in your principles. You do not assume to question the moral character or good citizenship of some who deny faith in God. You simply require, what, as a voluntary association, you have a right to require for membership. You have insisted and you continue to insist that "belief in a Supreme Being is necessary to attain or to retain a place in our ranks. No one should offer himself for membership in our Order who has not this belief; no one should be accepted without it; and no member who loses his faith in a Supreme Being can honestly and consistently remain in it."*

You are free, it is true, from anything of a sectarian character, and refuse to battle with disputed questions in theology, religious creeds or political tenets; these properly belong outside the broad platform on which you meet to do your special work of a beneficent and moral kind. These questions are left to be considered and settled in their proper fields and by their proper advocates. As individuals you do not ignore these questions, or forget your personal duties and your relations to them; but as a fraternal and social organization you have been instituted for another purpose-a purpose which, exemplified, has exerted a healthy influence wherever its virtues are practiced in the lives and conduct of its members. Here you forget your differences and come together where you can stand side by side to battle against vice and social wrongs, and alleviate the sufferings of the worthy poor and distressed. I am frank and free to express my convictions that

*S. G. L., 14,107.

God's favor is upon your work; and that in this field where you have chosen to do special work for the moral advance and temporal welfare of your fellow man you are so far co-workers with God.

Again it will be well to remember that different societies and sects should not be ruthlessly confounded with each other. The great secular and fraternal organizations which have made themselves felt in the world are not in conflict the one with the other. They have each their peculiar work and special mission and their special methods for reaching their several ends. They recognize each other as eminently honorable and useful institutions and claim a just measure of respect at each other's hand; and they often press upon each other a fraternal challenge for superiority in good works, and in the warfare which they severally wage against wickedness and crime. They bear the stamp of a common origin. They rest upon the same great natural truths in man, and turn to the same divine Revelation for authority. Their interests, and landmarks, and principles, and ceremonies and characteristics often blend in beauteous harmony;-so much so as at times almost to provoke the thought of possible offspring and parentage. They greet each other with the kindly recognition "We be Sisters" and then, with renewed vigor, go about their special work, enlisted together in the interests of a common humanity with special ends in view and with their special means and methods to meet them, and often with an earnest, kindly rivalry as to which shall achieve the greatest results in their separate but related missions. It is no disparagement to Christianity and to

the church that the great secret, benevolent and secular societies owe their origin to religion. It is no disgrace to you, or to your society, that your work is in recognition of the blessings of a Divine Providence who cares for man and inspires every noble and unselfish work; and that in recognition of God as the source of all good, and real success, you work in harmony with those who seek to develop that which is divine in man in their outreach of love for humanity. The great thing of importance here to us is the existence of principle and its abundant exercise. This principle appears in the fact that within the seventy-six years since its organized appearance in the birth of the Order, it has found congenial soil in fifteen different nations;-a million men and women, largely in our own country, give evidence of its health and vigor, while three and a half millions of money, distributed during the last year among the poor, distressed and needy, manifest something of its exercise. A secret society! So it is called; you do not deny it, and I do not know that you care to take issue with the charge, or to enter any formal defence of your position. Respect for the honest opinions of others is one of the cardinal principles of your Order. It sometimes happens, however, that those most bitter against others are least free themselves in the line of their complaints. One seeks sometimes to puli a mote out of a brother's eye when a beam is in his own. This seems illustrated by the action taken of late by the authorities of one of the great churches of the worid against certain benevolent societies, in which Odd Fellowship is included. Some of you are communicants of that

church, perhaps, but I cannot believe that you are any the worse for being Odd Fellows. There is no institution in the world to-day, I think, secular or religious, which has such a corner and monopoly on secrets and with stronger or more iron-clad oaths, than this self-same church. You do not object to this, however, so long as they do not interfere with the civil, religious and personal rights of others; but you claim in justice the same rights and privileges. for yourselves. Secret societies have always existed and always will. The principle of secrecy has largely shaped the faith and practice of the world. Its history and its need are co-extensive with the history of man. It affects all nations, countries, races, science and religions. It will continue to go forth unfrightened and undaunted, for it is a part of the spiritual heritage of the race, and supports the entire frame work of society. The region of mystery is enchanted ground. The passion to know unlocks the door and leads the race through the archives of time, and raps at the very gates of eternity. The Christian church and the heart of the Christian believer are the inner sanctuary where the climax of this principle of secrecy in man is reached. "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him, but God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit." Secrets, however, are nothing except as they embody something tangible. The rites and types and ceremonies of Christianity give place to reality and experience. The mystic formula is absorbed by the substance. So it is with our Order: Enough of the mystic, the poetic, the dress, is re