accept as a cardinal virtue, and require its practice on the
part of all the votaries of Odd-Fellowship while traveling the rugged
journey of life in search of reward and rest." Truth is above all
things else, and every Odd-Fellow knows full well that his obligation
binds him to speak the truth. Remember a lie is never justifiable. It
does the person more harm than that he seeks to avoid by telling a
falsehood would do. "What is truth?" This question of Pilate is in
the air today. It is repeated on every side and in every department of
intellectual pursuit. It always pays to tell the truth under all
circumstances. Abraham came near bringing a whole nation into trouble
in lying about his wife. Be it said to the honor of President Grant,
that once a visitor called at the White House wishing to see him. The
door-keeper told the servant to tell the visitor the president was not
in. General Grant, who was very busy, heard what was said. He called
out, "Say no such thing. I don't lie myself, and won't allow anyone to
lie for me." Tell the truth always. "I said in my haste all men are
liars." Psalms, cxvi, 2.

It was a very sweeping assertion that the Psalmist made, and one that
incriminates us all. He probably did not mean that all men were liars
in the sense that everybody always spoke untruthfully, but that the
great majority of people would, under certain stress of circumstances,
equivocate to suit the conditions of the occasion. If that was what he
meant, he uttered a sage truth when he said very hastily one day: "All
men are liars." Though a hasty utterance, facts seem to prove its
truthfulness. The greatest mischief-maker in the world today is the
liar. I honestly believe that lying causes more real anguish and
suffering than any other evil. It would be effort wasted to spend much
time in proof of this assertion of David's, so we will attempt to
classify briefly, that each of us may know where he belongs. First,
there is the deliberate lie. This species needs no particular
definition. All are acquainted with it, all have met it, some have
uttered it. You all know it when you see it; it is barefaced and
shameless; it reeks with the mire of falsity and is foul with the slime
of the pit infernal. This lie contains not an atom of truth, is
tinctured not with a grain of fact, but is a full-blooded,
thoroughbred, out and out lie. Then we have the campaign lie. A
large, open-faced fellow, loud-voic