A LAY SERMON FOR ODDFELLOWS.

Evening Star, Issue 9467, 11 August 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

A LAY SERMON FOR ODDFELLOWS.

The following concludes G. S. Bro. William Reid’s address on ‘ The Teachings of Our Emblems.’ THE RROTHERIIOOD OF MAN.

The ‘ Globe ’ tells us of the world-wide range of our mission. It appeals to no one ‘type of humanity—no particular creed, no special tongue. We teach the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Of the 1,300,000,000 or so of people on the earth there are only about 300,000,000 Christians, there are 5,000,000 Jews, 160,000,000 Mahomedans, 600,000,000 Buddhists, and some 200,000,000 unclassified, so that were we to limit our mission to our own creed our scheme of a universal brotherhood would be an unattainable aspiration. The cosmopolitan nature of our Order will be-shown when I tell you that its ritual has been translated into six languages, and that we have found a footing upon three continents as well as Australia and the islands of the South Seas. The world is our mission field, and every Oddfellow a missionary. While, however, we wage an aggressive warfare, we do not seek to proselytise. If a man is an M.U. Oddfellow, we tell him he cannot much improve himself ; if he is a Forester, we allow him to remain one; but if lie belongs to no friendly society, or to one established on an unsound basis, we seek by every legitimate means to enlist him in our ranks. The serpent (the emblem of wisdom) Js associated in our ritual with the lawgiver of Israel, who had the extraordinary combination of qualities of being ihc meekest of men and the greatest of leaders. This emblem impresses on our minds the wisdom of preserving our Order from imposition by requiring from every stranger claiming to belong to us proof of his good faith by means of our secret signs and passwords. Itshould also teach us the wisdom of building up our Order on the solid basis of financial soundness. This we can claim for the 1.0.0. F. of New Zealand. Every member who joins us can do so with the full assuredness that, barring reckless management or certain contingencies that no human foresight can guard against, he is joining a society that will not only meet every legal claim he can make against it, but, should he so require it, will throw the warm glow of its benevolence around him and those dear to him. Tins emblem also teaches us the lesson that a wise discrimination must bo exercised in the introduction of members into our lodges. While we claim that a proper observance of the lessons we teach can make a good man more useful to humanity, and can improve a bad man into a better man and better citizen, it is not the part of wisdom to admit those who arc likely to bring us into contempt. We may reclaim them, but they may, on the other hand, do great injury to our cause. The scales and sword of justice, emblems of justice, are lessons to us that we must do justice as well as love mercy, and can be exemplified in many ways. To be just to the many we must favor none. As I have had frequent occasion to say in my reports to our lodges, the funds of a lodge must be protected as much against the designing and malingering member as from the thief that walks by night. If cases of charity arise let them be administered from their own proper channel, but our sick funds should be as rigidly guarded against the unprincipled member as our doors arc protected against the intrusion of the uninformed. The next emblem is the Book of Holy Writ, “the Bible.” Its teachings, I may say, without any revelation of our secrets, are the foundation upon which much of our ritual is built up. Wc have illustrated to us the supreme lesson of friendship in the story of Jonathan and David. The example of charity, pure and undefiled, uninfluenced by bigotry or prejudice of race, is beautifully portrayed to us in the Good Samaritan. In the Kebeceah and Encampment degrees our founders have also freely drawn from the Book of Holy Writ. No lodge should be opened without the Bible being in its proper place in the room. The hour glass, emblem of swiftly-passing time, is a stern reminder to every Oddfellow of the winged hours which are so rapidly sweeping him into eternity, and tells him to so employ his time that when embosomed on that great ocean he may find infinite peace and rest. A man is no sooner born than he begins to die; each moment brings him nearer to that dread hour when he shall be cut down as a cumberer of the ground, or garnered a ripe sheaf into the granary of T.G.A.O.T. U. As the sand swiftly runs from the glass they show us that there is no turning back; nothing we here do can be undone. Those who believe in what is called the “ larger hope ” (and I think there is great foundation for that belief) assume that there is progress and condonation for the sins of this life in the hereafter. No act of our lives can, however, be recalled ; there is for us no turning of the glass ; and we must assume also that remorse for the deeds done in the flesh must precede and accompany such progress and condonation. Every Oddfellow should therefore so live that when the last sand of his life shall have run out he may hear the words of the Grand Sire ringing in his ears : “ Well done, good and faithful servant!” The coffin, emblem of certain truth, represents to us “ the end of this servitude.” It speaks to us with no uncertain sound, and tells us that no matter what rank or wealth or power a man may have enjoyed, no matter how stately the mansion or lowly the cot which may have sheltered him, there is nothing more certain than that this narrow house must receive him at last. The oak polished casket with its silver mounting may minister to the vanity of the living, but the “poor inhabitant ” within would sleep as soundly, and mayhap wake as happily, if coffined within four deal boards. It falls to the lot of those of us who are called upon to attend the last sad rites of our departed brethren to hear perhaps more frequently than others the hollow knell of the clods falling upon the coffin. What a solemn sound it is, and one to which the sensitive ear never becomes dulled. What a lesson of humility it teaches us ! How many of us projit by it I “Man gocth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.” We attend the last rites of a departed brother in the afternoon, and in the evening, at our lodge social, amid song and dance, the lesson is obliterated. “ Hope springs eternal in the humanbreast. ” Thedark passage to the grave is illumined by the belief that the parting is but brief, and that there is a land beyond the tomb, where there is no sorrow nor sighing, where we shall again be united. These are the teachings of the emblem of the initiatory and subordinate lodge degrees. The Encampment, a higher branch of the Order, has also its lessons; but they are taught more by allegory and mottoes than by symbolical ’emblems. The first degree teaches us to avoid prejudice and intolerance —the prejudice which, because a brother has a skin not colored like our own, causes us to regard him as an alien and an outcast; intolerance, which, because we have been born under the shadow of the cross, would have us ban and proscribe those who have been bom to a belief in Mahomet and Buddha, or the Christ-like teachings of Confucius. With us there is no distinction— African and Caucausian, Jew and Mahomedan, are alike welcome within our portals. The three pillars, Faith, Hope, and Charity,

' are beacons that warn us to be tree only to our better nature—to have faith in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. They tell us to cultivate true charity —not alone the charity which giveth to the needy, but the charity that thinketb no evil, the charity that is not puffed up with pride of self, the charity that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things. The royal purple degree is the crowning test of an Oddfellow's firmness in the cause of friendship, love, and truth. By allegorical representation he is led through perils and temptations. Amid dangers and terrors he wanders exposed to the biting elements; temptations assail him. Narrow is the path and formidable the obstacles; but, guided by Faith am! strengthened by Hope, he struggles on to the goal. Faith and Hope at last lead him to the desired end. A scene of beauty, of peace, and contentment breaks upon his view—a scene of idyllic rest and repose. Here on earth for ever reigns the Fatherhood of God; here is exemplified in its fullest fruition the Brotherhood of Man. WOMEN AS ODDFELLOWS.

The degree of Rebeccah (a side degree for the female members of Oddfellows’ families) has also its emblems. This degree can be made an appendage to our Order of the highest usefulness. To visit the sick, to relieve the distressed, to dry the widows’ tears, and comfort the orphau are commands of our laws as imperative on our wives, sisters, and daughters as on ourselves. With how much more of healing on its wings does the ministrations of a woman bring to a sick room than those of a man. Her gentler footfall, her milder voice, her soft, cool hands—how much more soothing to the senses of a fever-tossed patient than the rougher, if equally heartfelt, services of her ruder and inferior half. The emblems of the degree are the beehive, the dove, and the moon and seven stars. The beehive, Emblem of industry, represents order, unity in working, and good government. What lessons of industry this little monitor teaches us. Every moment of its busy life is occupied in laying up store for the rainy day. Order and unity of purpose characterise its every action. If the promptings of our humanity would allow us to treat the drones in our social hive as they do their non-workers, it might prove a solution to one of the problems that puzzle our social reformers. It is rather a staggerer also to our masculine sensibilities that a community can not only exist without our sex, but that they should be ruthlessly exterminated as soon as they are of no further use in a slate of society in which all must work. The beehive teaches us that we should spend the summer of our life in laying up for its winter, and as, according to a French proverb, the meaning of which is selfevident, “A man to get rich must ask leave of his wife,” it teaches the partners of our cares that they must necessarily have a big share in this work. The dove with the olive branch emblem of constancy and of innocence ami peace reminds our sisters that constancy should be pre-emiuently a feminine virtue. 1 do notsay that it should beconfined to the one sex, but it is the attribute par excellence that commends her to the lords of creation. It also reminds her that, as the dove returned to the Ark, while the raven wandered to and fro, so she should as early as possible find a protector, and, like the clinging vine to the sturdy oak, find her little kingdom in his sheltering aims. Here she can reign a queen, more useful to the cause of humanity than in the arena of politics and amid the clash of party strife. With the wisdom of the serpent she should combine the harmlessuess and innocence of the dove, The moon and seven stars are emblems of natural truth. This emblem rather puzzles me. I know its signification as applied to another institution, but it cannot have the same application to us. It must be intended, 1 tliiuu, to represent to our sisters Unit as the sun is the centre of our planetary system so should the husband be the head and centre of the household, giving light and warmth and color to all its surroundings. As the moon shines by the reflected light of the greater luminary, so should the wife be content with the reflected glory of her husband, and should not seek to outshine him. I know in these revolutionary days of woman’s enfranchisement that such a rendering of the meaning of this emblem may not be acceptable. The tendency of the day is to remove woman from her proper sphere and, to my mind, reduce her to a lower plane—instead of elevating to degrade her. The influence of a true womanly woman can be better exercised in the bosom of her family, training up her boys to be good citizens and her daughters to be good wives and mothers, than by leaving them to, perhaps, malign influences, while she is exercising her privileges at a political meeting, or amid the sometimes unsavory surroundings of the polling booth. Women with missions have not very happy homes, and the production of an indefinite number of Mrs Jellabys in any community would not, I think, tend to its"advantage. I had intended to say a few words in regard to WOMEN’S IiESEFIT SOCIETIES,

but this rambling discourse has prolonged itself to rather undue length. I will merely say, however, that to my mind they are a doubtful. experiment. Most young women have one aim in life, and, that attained, her interest is, or should be, centred in a lodge of her own, where she can wield the distaff on its more modem prototype, the sewing machine, to greater advantage than the gavel of the Noble Grand. I am, however, now’ treading on debatable ground, and I wish to avoid giving oftenca to anyone. It may also appear paradoxical that I should sound the praises of Rebeccah lodges while uttering words of condemnation against female benefit lodges. There is neither time nor is this an occasion to enter into the discussion, but I may take the opportunity of bringing up this matter on a future occasion. CONCLUSION.

Those are the emblems of our Order, and I am sure that those who are not with us cannot, after hearing them illustrated, be against us. To the heart of every Oddfellow they should come home with strivings after better things. We are all but men, and to the best of us that name spells “ Frailty.” Some by reason of education, or the advantages of environment, may have had better opportunities than others of us; let the mantle of their charity be thrown around those who have fallen by the way. Actuated by friendship, inspired by love, and with truth enshrined in our hearts, to what height may we not aspire. Let those who are on the mountain tops come down and lend a helping hand to those who are still struggling upward and onward, whose motto is still “ Excelsior ! ” Let the lesson of the emblems of mortality and the scythe and the coffin sink deep into our hearts ami teach us humility. When in the arrogant pride of life wc almost come to think that we are immortal, lei those emblems of our frail humanity teach us to be mindful of the time, fast approaching, when we, too, shall be cut down, housed within that narrow home, and again mingled with the dust. May the sand run from the hour glass of our lives that we may have no regrets over the past, and feel none of the remorse which follows a misspent life. Let the bundle of sticks remind us of the strength of unity, and bind us closer with the tie of fraternity. With the Book of Holy Writ as our compass, Hope as our anchor, and the divine rays of brotherly love as our beacon, we may hope to ride in safety the fiercest storms of life. Let faith in humanity keep prompting ua to do good work among men, and when a brother has fallen by the way let us not pass by on the other side; let us throw the mantle of our charity around him, pour the oil of friendship into his wounds, and with all paternal love seek to guide his faltering footsteps into paths of virtue and of peace. May our hands be ever open to a brother in friendship or distress, and may our hearts blossom with the white flower of a good life, and glow with the promptings of benevolence and charity. Let the globe remind us to be missionaries in our great cause, and to seek by every legitimate means to increase its usefulness and extend the field of its operations. Let us be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, and like the busy bee improve the shining hours of life so that its end may not be shrouded in the darkness of poverty and despair. Above all let the great aim of our institution, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, be ever before us, animating us to greater efforts in the cause of suffering humanity, to higher aspirations, to worthier thoughts, and nobler actions.