taught by our order.  Unless the principles that are laid down are fully carried out, we can never be Odd-Fellows in spirit and in truth.  Today is our opportunity; act now.  Have you ever seen those marble statues fashioned into a fountain, with the clear water flowing out from the marble lips or the hand, on and on forever?  The marble stands there, passive, cold, making no effort to arrest the gliding water.  So it is that time flows through the hands of men, swift, never pausing until it has run itself out, and the man seems petrified into a marble sleep, not feeling what it is that is passing away forever.  And the destiny of nine men out of ten accomplishes itself before they realize it slipping away from them, aimless, useless, until it is too late.  “Be such a man, live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God’s Paradise.”

Remember that no good the humblest of us has wrought ever dies.  There is one long, unerring memory in the universe, out of which nothing dies.  A chill autumn wind, blowing over a sterile plain, bore within its arms a little seed, torn with ruthless force from its matrix on a lofty tree, and dropped the seed upon the sand to perish.  A bright winged beetle, weary with flight and languid with the chilly air, rested for a moment on the arid plain.  The little seed dropped Aeolus served to satisfy the hunger of the beetle, which presently winged its flight to the margin of a swift running stream that had sprung from the mountain side, and cleaving a bed through rocks of granite, went gaily laughing upon its cheery way down to the ever rolling sea.  Sipping a drop of the crystal flood, the beetle crawled within a protecting ledge, and, folding its wings, lay down to pleasant dreams.  The Ice King passed along and touched the insect in its sleep.  Its mission was fulfilled; but the conflict of the seasons continued until the white destroyer melted in the breath of balmy spring.  And then a sunbeam sped to the chink wherein the body of the insect lay, and searching for the little seed entombed, but not destroyed, invited it to “join the Jubilee of returning life and hope.”  Under the soft wooing of the peopled ray, the little seed began to swell with joy, tiny rootlets were developed within the body of the protecting beetle, a minute stem shot out of its gaping mouth, and lo! a mighty tree had been carried from the desert, saved from the frosts of winter, nurtured and started upon its mission of life and usefulness by an humble insect that had perished with the flowers.  The agent had passed away, but, building better than he knew, the wide-spreading tree remained by the margin of the life-giving stream, a shelter and a rest to the weary traveler upon life’s great highway through many fretful centuries.

A child abandoned by its mother to perish in an Egyptian marsh may become the instrument to deliver a nation from bondage, and an unostentatious man, unknown to fortune and to fame, may become the agent of a mighty work destined to benefit the human race as long as it may last upon the earth.  George Eliot says, “Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will.  Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never; they have an indestructible life, both in and out of our consciousness.”