CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



133 



show resentment, and malice was not in his nature. 

 He was congenially employed only in the exchange of 

 good offices and the doing of kindly deeds. 



" There was not an hour, from the beginning of the 

 trouble till the fatal shot entered his body, when the 

 President would not gladly, for the sake of restoring 

 harmony, have retraced any step he had taken if such 

 retracing had merely involved consequences personal 

 to himself. The pride of consistency, or any sup- 

 posed sense of humiliation that might result from 

 surrendering his position, had not a feather's weight 

 with him. No man was ever less subject to such in- 

 fluences from within or from without. But after most 

 anxious deliberation and the coolest survey of all the 

 circumstances, he solemnly believed that the true pre- 

 rogatives of the Executive were involved in the issue 

 which had been raised, and that he would be unfaith- 

 ful to his supreme obligation if he failed to maintain, 

 iu all their vigor, the constitutional rights and digni- 

 ties of his great office. He believed this in all the 

 convictions of conscience when in sound and vigorous 

 health, and he believed it in his suffering and prostra- 

 tion in the last conscious thought which his wearied 

 mind bestowed on the transitory struggles of life. 



" More than this need not be said. Less than this 

 could not be said. Justice to the dead, the highest 

 obligation that devolves upon the living, demands the 

 declaration that in all the bearings of the subject, 

 actual or possible, the President was content in his 

 mind, justified in his conscience, immovable in his 

 conclusions." 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



" The religious element in Garfield's character was 

 deep and earnest. In his early youth he espoused 

 the faith of the Disciples, a sect of that great Baptist 

 communion which in different ecclesiastical estab- 

 lishments is so numerous and so influential through- 

 out all parts of the United States. But the broaden- 

 ing tendency of his mind and his active spirit of 

 inquiry were early apparent and carried him beyond 

 the dogmas of sect and the restraints of association. 

 In selecting a college in which to continue his educa- 

 tion he rejected Bethany, though presided over by Al- 

 exander Campbell, the greatest preacher of his church. 

 His reasons were characteristic: first, that Bethany 

 leaned too heavily toward slavery ; and, second, that 

 being himself a Disciple and the son of Disciple par- 

 ents, he had little acquaintance with people of other 

 beliefs, and he thought it would make him more lib- 

 eral, quoting his own words, both in his religious and 

 general views, to go into a new circle and be under 

 new influences. 



" The liberal tendency which he anticipated as the 

 result of wider culture was fully realized. He was 

 emancipated from mere sectarian belief, and with 

 eager interest pushed his investigations in the direc- 

 tion of modern progressive thought. He followed 

 with quickening step in the paths of exploration and 

 speculation so fearlessly trodden by Darwin, by Hux- 

 ley, by Tyndall, and by other living scientists ot 

 the radical and advanced type. His own church, 

 binding its disciples by no formulated creed, but ac- 

 cepting the Old and New Testaments as the word of 

 God with unbiased liberality of private interpretation, 

 I, if it did not stimulate, the spirit of mvestiga- 



favored, 



tion. Its members profess with sincerity, and prol 

 only, to be of one mind and one faith with those who 

 immediately followed the Master, and who were first 

 called Christians at Antioch. 



" But however high Garfield reasoned of ' fixed fate, 

 free-will, foreknowledge absolute ; ' he was never sep- 

 arated from the Church of the Disciples in his affec- 

 tions and iu his associations. For him it held the ark 

 of the covenant. To him it was the gate of heaven. 

 The world of religious belief is full of solecisms and 

 contradictions. A philosophic observer declares that 

 men by the thousand will die in defense of a creed 

 whose doctrines they do not comprehend and whose 

 tenets they habitually violate. It is equally true that 

 men by the thousand will cling to church organiza- 



tions with instinctive and undying fidelity when their 

 belief in maturer years is radically different from that 

 which inspired them as neophytes. 



"But after this range of speculation, and this latitude 

 of doubt, Garfield came back always with freshness 

 and delight to the simpler instincts of religious faith, 

 which, earliest implanted, longest survive. Not many 

 weeks before his assassination, walking on the banks 

 of the Potomac with a friend, and conversing on those 

 topics of personal religion, concerning which noble 

 natures have an unconquerable reserve, he said that 

 he found the Lord's Prayer and the simple petitions 

 learned in infancy infinitely restful to him, not merely 

 in their stated repetition, but in their casual and fre- 

 quent recall as he went about the daily duties of life. 

 Certain texts of Scripture had a very strong hold on 

 his memory and his heart. He^heard, while in Edin- 

 burgh some years ago, an eminent Scotch preacher 

 who prefaced his sermon with reading the eighth 

 chapter of the Epistle to the Eomans, which book had 

 been the subject of careful study with Garfield during 

 all his religious life. He was greatly impressed by 

 the elocution of the preacher, and declared that it had 

 imparted a new and deeper meaning to the majestic 

 utterances of St. Paul. He referred often in after- 

 years to that memorable service, and dwelt with exal- 

 tation of feeling upon the radiant promise and the as- 

 sured hope with which the great apostle of the Gen- 

 tiles was ' persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor 

 angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things pres- 

 ent, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor 

 any other creature, shall be able to separate us from 

 the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.' 



" The crowning characteristic of General Garfield's 

 religious opinions, as, indeed, of all his opinions, was 

 his liberality. In all things he had chanty. Toler- 

 ance was of his nature. He respected in others the 

 qualities which he possessed himself sincerity of con- 

 viction and frankness of expression. With him the 

 inquiry was not so much what a man believes, but 

 does he believe it ? The lines of his friendship and 

 his confidence encircled men of every creed and men 

 of no creed, and to the end of his life, on his ever- 

 lengthening list of friends, were to be found the 

 names of a pious Catholic priest and of an honest- 

 minded and generous-hearted free-thinker." 



THE END. 



" On the morning of Saturday, July 2d, the President 

 was a contented and happy man not in an ordinary 

 degree, but joyfully, almost boyishly happy. On his 

 way to the railroad station to which he drove slowly, 

 in conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with 

 an unwonted sense of leisure and a keen anticipation 

 of pleasure, his talk was all in the grateful and gratu- 

 latory vein. He felt that after four months of trial 

 his administration was strong in its grasp of affairs, 

 strong in popular favor, and destined to grow strong- 

 er ; that grave difficulties confronting him at his in- 

 auguration had been safely passed ; that trouble lay 

 behind him and not before him ; that he was soon to 

 meet the wife whom he loved, now recovering from 

 an illness which had but lately disquieted and at times 

 almost unnerved him ; that he was going to his Alma 

 Mater to renew the most cherished associations of his 

 young manhood, and to exchange greetings with those 

 whose deepening interest had followed every step of 

 his upward progress from the day he entered upon his 

 college course until he had attained the loftiest eleva- 

 tion in the g^ft of his countrymen. 



" Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors 

 or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning 

 James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. 

 No foreboding of evil haunted him ; no slightest pre- 

 monition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible 

 fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he 

 stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching 

 peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, 

 bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, 

 to silence, and the grave. 



" Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. 



