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."

No man has come to true greatness who has not felt in some degree that
his life belongs to his race, and that what God gives him he gives him
for mankind. The different degrees of consciousness are really what
make the different degrees of greatness in men.

While Odd-Fellowship does not claim to be a religious institution, yet
so closely is it allied to Christianity that we deem it proper to
discuss these questions. I quote from Dr. Lyman Abbott's lecture on
"Christianity and Orientalism," as follows: "Religion as a thought has
four questions to answer: First, What is God? Second, What is man?
Third, What is the relation between God and man? Fourth, What is the
life which man is to live when he understands and enters into that