with those
that rejoice, and weep with those that weep. It sustains the living
with friendship; causes man to stand firm in his integrity by the truth
it teaches, and embrace the whole world with charity. The three links
of friendship, love and truth mark the fuller and better development of
this life, reaches beyond the grave, reaches beyond the vision, extends
into the portals of the other and the better life. We may profess
friendship, but that is an empty profession; our membership in a lodge
is fruitless and our meetings produce no good results unless we have
charity. It is but a small part that we should perform our mystic
rights, typifying friendship, love and truth, but that we should so
live them and act them that the touch of a member is the touch of a
brother whose words sweeten the asperities of life and whose last
offering is a tribute at the grave. We may be rudely brought back to
the world with its pomp and show, its pageantry and vanity, by an
emblem of mortality presented to us, but should we not ever have the
spectre of mortality before our eyes? In the mad rush through life we
forget the kinship of man to man. We are too often forgetful that the
hand of a brother is reaching upward for succor. We forget that we are
mortal, and the heart grows cold; our sympathies extend only to those
around and nearest to us, forgetful that all mankind is our brother,
and that he is especially our brother and friend who has mercy. But in
this mad rush in life we are suddenly and almost rudely brought back to
a full realization of our mortality, our helplessness, our emptiness,
our nothingness, when we stand at the grave of our departed brother and
reflect that here lies one who was born and had ambitions and died as
we must die. His ambitions and hopes all went in the grave with him.
The little grassy mound and the little marble slab is all that remains
visible to tell us that he was our brother. Life would hardly be worth
living; its struggles would be disastrous, its triumphs vain, empty
bubbles, if the clods that fall upon the coffin and the sprig of
evergreen tell the whole story of an Odd-Fellow. No, the very fact
that we bury our departed brother teaches us that the grave is not the
end of all. Though our brother dies he shall live in our hearts, in
the flowers that we cast, in the precious memories that forever cluster
around the links, the heart and the hand, the altar and the hour glass.
When the