ecord of the domination of physical force. The law of might was the
law of right. Violence and strife, outrages and wrong, have been for
ages the common heritage of the race. Man has been the sport and
victim of human passions, and notwithstanding the culture and the
progress of the race, the earth yet resounds with the tread of armed
combatants. Weary, sad-eyed toilers groan under the burden of war,
countless millions are squandered upon the maintenance of
non-producing, destructive hosts.

Widows and orphans, nay, the very angels in heaven, if they are
permitted to look down upon us from their bright abodes in bliss, must
mourn over the sad result of man's semi-barbarism, and his worship of
the world's materialism. Long ere this mind should have been the
controlling force in all nations claiming to be civilized. Pure
intellect and its struggles, its aspirations for light and truth,
should have relegated to the regions of barbarism and darkness mere
animal contests. Not only so, but intellectual supremacy should have
been in its turn subordinated, or crowned by true spiritual life. "God
is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and
in truth." Man would occupy a higher and happier position than he at
present fills if he had earnestly co-operated with good agencies for
the unfolding and development of his better nature.

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. Reaching out its helpful hand to the needy and distressed upon
the one hand, and with the other battling with selfishness, intolerance
and vice--with all that dwarfs man's moral nature--it appeals to
something within us, to be earnest advocates of its principles, by
making them a living faith and illustrating its beneficent purposes.
If we make one man purer and better, and that man one's own self, we
have done something toward the betterment of the world. The voices of
the past and of the present all speak to us today. Men and brethren,
let us hearken unto them, and putting our trust in God, let us march
onward, side by side together, until the standards of our order are
planted upon the highest summit of achievement, and as their glorious
folds are illuminated by the Sun of Righteousness, may the simple yet
the sublime legend emblazoned thereon be seen and