The great design of Odd-Fellowship is to improve the morals and manners
of men, to promote their interest, well being and happiness. Great
prudence is demanded in our daily life and conversation. We should be
actuated by a realizing sense of our position, and by example, action
and generous thought, recommend our cause to the consideration of
others. We should persevere for the attainment of every commendable
virtue, to raise the mind from the degrading haunts of intemperance and
folly; we should be distinguished for usefulness to society and the
community at large. A good Odd-Fellow must necessarily be an upright
and useful member of the community. The precepts inculcated are
calculated to stimulate to the faithful performance of every moral and
relative duty; and an individual who holds a standing with us, and is
careless and negligent of these things, is a reproach to the
Order--they wear the livery, and bow before the same shrine, but in the
heart and practice they belie their profession. Profanity,
intemperance and every species of immorality are rigidly
discountenanced. We have pledged ourselves to aid in diffusing the
principles of brotherly love throughout the world. We have assumed the
office of guarding the holy flame which burns on the altar of
benevolence, and we are bound to cherish its principles. That brother
is recreant to every honorable feeling who can trifle with the solemn
pledge he has taken.
A duty we owe to the community is to cultivate the principle of virtue,
to lend holy serenity to the mind, and shed around a halo of light and
glory to direct the steps of others in virtue, to happiness and
greatness. The man who treads only in virtue's ways, when every act is
honest, acquires the confidence and friendship of others, thus
benefiting others, and thus benefiting the community, which, also, the
center of another circle, continues this influence to those that
surround it, purifying the thought, emboldening the idea and elevating
the man. How grand is the position Odd-Fellowship now occupies--a
world of honesty in a world of deceit, with a character strictly
virtuous and solely dependent upon its members for the perpetuity of
that character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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