d endeavors
is inimical to the actions of the others. Each rests on its own
peculiar foundation, but all dovetail together, and all make a
harmonious whole. The man who is a good Christian is better by being a
good Odd-Fellow. If both a good Christian and a good Odd-Fellow, he
comes nearer being the typical citizen. If man reveres the law of this
order, he will have more devotion to his church, his home, his flag and
his country. I have no fault to find with those who do not believe in
uniting with a secret organization, but I do object to any man
inveighing against the objects and purposes, the ends and aims, of our
order when he knows nothing about it. I do not expect every man to
belong to my church, for men in their constitution and mental make-up
can not see alike theologically. But I do accord to every member of
every church the hope of getting to heaven if he lives up to the
teachings of this particular sect. I believe in justification by faith
and good works, but I have no use for a man who decries this doctrine
when he never exercised a particle of faith nor did a good deed in his
life. And so I would say to any one who thinks he stands on some lofty
pinnacle and scents danger to the family tie, or church, or state, or
society, because of the existence of secret orders, that he thinks and
talks of something he knows nothing about. If I should desire to draw
comparisons, I could say truthfully that during the last year this
order gave more in charity and benefits to its members in Illinois than
any religious denomination in the state. Look around your own
community and see if it be not so. Think of the widow with
tear-stained cheek, from whose door the wolf has been kept, because the
charitable hand of our order was upon her. Count the orphan children
of members of our order who have had shoes put on their feet, clothes
put on their backs and food in their mouths. Enumerate the sufferers
on beds of anguish, racked with pain and scorched with fever, who have
had the nightly vigil of Odd-Fellows to smooth their pillows, dampen
their parched lips and moisten their feverish brows. Watch the funeral
pageant with its long train of mourners, brothers, dropping the
evergreen in the grave, and doing the last sad offices, and then croak
no more that secret societies are baneful to our civilization. He who
thus sustains and soothes and encourages will be reckoned as twice
blessed in that day when the secrets