The Lesson of the Assassination

THE world has been wrestling with the mystery involved in the “why” of the assassination of the President.
     No finite mind can say absolutely that it has fathomed this mystery and is ready with the reason why it took place, or was permitted to take place.
     But this much appears on the face of the event that is susceptible of a very plain interpretation:
     If the Ruler of the Universe is omniscient and omnipotent, He knew the deed was about to be done and he permitted it to be done. If He permitted it to be done there was a wise end in view—an important lesson to be enforced that justified the sacrifice.
     The Nation had been running madly into disregard for law; lynchings, burning at the stake, and mob violence were superseding the courts; men in high places, charged with the enforcement of law, were winking at these things; public sentiment was commending them; combinations to supersede the majesty of the law were gradually spreading and permeating the quieter fields of business competition and political organization, while the canker worm of anarchy and contempt for law was eating away the foundations of government and threatening the perpetuity of our Republic.
     What sharper, more pointed object lesson could have been given the nation, or more effective means of arresting its attention to this evil, than the crack of the anarchist’s pistol directed against its Chief Executive himself and his untimely taking off as a logical result of the prevalence of such a spirit?
     If President McKinley’s assassination results in bringing the Nation to a sense of its impending danger (and we believe it has) he will not have died in vain.