The Fargo forum and daily republican. [volume] (Fargo, N.D.) 1894-1957, 1912-01-01


people the infant life was transferred
at death to a world inhabited by dis
solute and characteristic people. Time
was when men believed that each act
on this stage, however minute, was
weighed in scales exactly balanced,
and rewards melted out In the exact
amount necessary to preserve that bal
ance; that if the acts were bad,
punishments were inflicted regardless
Of quantity, care only being observed
to insure a sufficiency.
During such days any life but the
most austere and and organization
having any purpose except to add to
that austerity and increase its gloom,
was frowned upon and condemned. Be
the old teaching true or false, we live
in a more hopeful age and / believe on
a higher plane Of existence. The world
recognizes that the final transition is
not a migration but an assimilation.
That the teaching Of virtue must and
does promote virtue; that the teaching
Of charity incites charity; that the ap-
plication of justice impells others to do
justice; that the exhibition of brotherly
love promotes brotherly love; that any
example of fidelity leads to renewed
friendship between friends, and softens
asperities between enemies.
There was a time when the great
effort of life vas to believe. Today the
teaching of benevolence is to live.
Faith is important because it is the
result Of living and the door to the
future.
$50 he died for his faith. That is fine;
More than most Of us do.
But say, can you add to that line
That he lived for it too?
1t is easy to die. Men have died
For a wish or a whim;
From bravado or passion or pride.
Was it hard for him?
But to live; every day to live out
All the truth that he dreamt,
While his friends met his conduct with
doubt,
And the world with contempt.
1t was thus that he plodded ahead,
Never turning aside.
Then well talk of the life that he led;
Never mind how he died.
The Benevolent and Protective Order
of Elks cares for the living. It's chief
endeavor is to make life more ivable
and to bring sunshine into dark spots;
to lift up lowly lives and to add to the
charity and goodwill of communities.
When these principles are found in
the daily life of the community the
problems now so prevalent and press
ing, involving the conflict between in
dividualism and paternalism, between
the rights of citizenship and the peace
and prosperity OF the state, viii be
solved.
May charity and brotherly love for
the living more abount. May justice
ever prevail and may fidelity to the
memory of our dead impelI us to write
their faults on the sand and their vir-
tues upon tablets of love and memory.
May the practice of these virtues not
be limited TO the walls of our own
number merely, but me 1t extend
wherever poverty, oppression, want or
sorrow are found.
These are some of the teachings, as I
understand them, of that fra~ternalism
to which we subscribe; and which pre-
vailing, as they eventually must, will
make any reversion to the obnoxious,
degrading and unnatural ~paternalism
of past centuries impossible; and which
will build UP communities of which IL
can be said as Is written of a little
people In the days of old, that Then
none was for a party; then all we're
for the state; then the great man help-
ed the poor, and the poor man loved
the great And all can sing with the
poet:
II know the house wherein my soul
shall dwell,
MY soul hath built II, q in heaven
or he'll,
Needs not the Judgment Book my fate
to tell,
No fiat doth await the free-born mind,