boast.  We have a grasp on the sympathy and confidence of the masses which is immeasurable.  We stand for principles that are the incarnation of God’s infinite thought and throbbing love.  We are equipped for conquest.  What answer shall the force make to the cry from the field?  As loyal Odd-Fellows, let us take our answer from the Great Commander.  What answer did He make to a dying world?  What did he come to do?  He came to lift fallen humanity.  He came to bind up the wounds of those who were bruised and bleeding.  He came to speak words of cheer and sympathy to hearts bowed in sorrow.  He came to break the chains of bondage and restore mankind to its former beauty and greatness.  Our mission is identical with His.  Our work is identical with His work.  We are His representatives.  Our highest destiny is the working out of His purposes.  The world with all its boasted progress has not advanced beyond the need of a Savior.  It is the same at heart now as it was when the blessed feet of Christ trod its hills and valleys.  Men change, but man changes not.  The same problems are confronting us as confronted them.  It may be trite, but it is tremendously true, that our primary and ever-present duty is to seek and save the lost.  We are to win them to faith in high and noble ends, and having won them to faith in our mission is not enough.  They are to be instructed, cultured, enlarged, inspired, ennobled, until man looking in the face of man shall see the face of Christ shining through.  He is to be the accepted Lord and law-giver in every realm of human thought and activity.  He is to rule in the family.  He is to rule in business.  He is to rule until the demon of hate, malice and injustice has been throttled.  He must rule in the affairs of state.  He must rule in society, until the watchers at the gate shall announce to Him who sitteth upon the throne:  “Thy kingdom has come and thy will is done in earth as it is in heaven.”  Christ is the solution of man’s most difficult problems.  He came to save men.  How did He go about the task?  He gave himself.  We can accomplish our task only as in burning earnestness we give ourselves.  What depth of humiliation, what self-devotion, what unmeasured sacrifices, what unspeakable suffering, what unfathomable anguish, what toil and anxiety, what love and pity, what loneliness and sorrow, are crowded into those three words, “He gave himself.”

If we as an order would give ourselves to the principles taught by our institution, we could win the world in the next half century.  If we are to be truest to the future, we must stand by the side of the Great Teacher and proclaim a complete and perfect truth.  Our platform should be neither broader nor narrower than His.  If there is one truth in revelation that we can not give its proper setting and due emphasis, then we are not the keepers of God’s truth.  To my thinking, there are no organizations formed by man that can appeal more confidently to the Word