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The Church Universal and the Attempted Assassination
In Boston
Scarcely a church or pulpit in Boston
and vicinity omitted reference to the tragedy. Rev. Dr. E. L. Clark,
preaching at the Central Congregational Church, held that such enemies
of the race as President McKinley’s assassin must be restrained
like wild beasts or the pestilence. Rev. Dr. S. E. Herrick at Mt.
Vernon insisted that, despite the inexplicability of the event,
we must believe still that God reigns. He referred with admiration
to the stricken President’s Christian spirit, revealed in his prayer
for the forgiveness of his assassin, and he expressed his confidence
that the nation today has a higher type of citizenship on which
to rely in time of danger or peril than it had in the days when
Lincoln and Garfield were smitten. At Shawmut Rev. Dr. W. T. McElveen
preached on The Essence of Anarchy and Its Eradication, and declared
that while socialism was not always abominable, that while communism
is not always contemptible, anarchy always is contemptible and abominable,
“and that the time is ripe for the American people to grind their
heel relentlessly and unpityingly upon the head of this viper. It
must be throttled.”
Rev. Dr. Gregg of Brooklyn, occupying
his former pulpit at Park Street, held that the present crisis brings
the nation face to face with a national and present duty, viz: “Anarchy
must go. A known anarchist must be treated as a dangerous criminal.”
Rev. Dr. Reuen Thomas at the Harvard Church, Brookline, said that
“we cannot say that there is security against professional anarchists
except by banishment from the country.”
Rev. Dr. George C. Lorimer, speaking
to a crowded and tensely listening congregation in Tremont Temple
of probably 3,500, Sunday evening, took practically the same position.
He pointed out the futility of the anarchist policy as well as its
essential wickedness, and held that the immediate duty of the hour
was its extirpation by society. “Kindly, firmly, systematically,
we must dispel the illusion.” He deprecated all talk of lynching
of the assassin. “We don’t want America to turn anarchist for the
sake of curing anarchy.” Rev. Stephen H. Roblin, at the Second Universalist
Church, urged international action for the extirpation of the avowed
anarchists, whether philosophical or practical in their type, and
he said a much needed word on the part the “yellow” journalism has
to play in breeding disrespect for rulers by its gross cartoons
and its “suggestive” reports of attempts against rulers of state.
At the service of Armenians held in
St. Paul’s Church a prayer for the recovery of the President was
offered, the national hymn for those in peril and ill health was
sung, and a fervid eulogy of the President by Mr. P. A. Adamian
was given.
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In New York
Wherever services were
held in New York last Sunday the sad event at Buffalo was mentioned.
At the Broadway Tabernacle Mr. Gordon prayed for the President,
for Mrs. McKinley and for the people. At Trinity Mr. Makepeace,
at the Forest Avenue Mr. Reoch, and at Lewis Avenue, Brooklyn, Mr.
King referred in prayers or in sermons to the sufferer in the Milburn
home. Mr. Black, who again crowded the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian
Church, made a short address prefatory to his opening prayer, in
which he mentioned the close tie, and therefore the kindred sorrow,
of English-speaking people, and begged to extend to Americans the
sympathies which he said he knew all Scotland, and all the world,
for that matter, felt. Archbishop Corrigan at the Cathedral of St.
Patrick and Bishop Potter at the Cathedral of St. John had
prayers made for the President and for those under affliction, and
in the case of the Roman Catholics the prayers were used in all
the churches. The archbishop’s special prayer ran thus:
We pray thee, O God of might
and justice, through whom authority is rightly administered,
laws enacted and judgments decreed, restore to health and strength
the President of these United States, that he may be able to
continue his Administration founded in righteousness and be
again eminently useful to the people over whom he presides by
encouraging our respect for virtue and religion, by the faithful
execution of the laws in justice and mercy, and by restraining
vice and immorality, etc.
Mr. Abner McKinley, the President’s
brother, belongs, with his family, to Heavenly Rest Episcopal Church.
It is closed for the installation of an organ, but in the chapel
the prayer for those under affliction was offered. In old St. Paul’s,
attended by President Washington, the Litany has been said every
morning since last Saturday and will continue until the occasion
for it has passed. In the Jewish temples on Saturday prayers were
offered, and in several of them addresses were made concerning the
heinous crime.
President Stryker of Hamilton College,
preaching at the Brick Church on Sunday morning, took for his text
James 2:12. He defined liberty and its enemy, lawlessness, and declared
the crime to be treason. Should Mr. McKinley recover, said he, this
man should be treated, not as one who attempted to take life and
failed, and therefore to escape with ten years in prison, but as
a traitor that he is. Summoning all of the power of righteous indignation
at his command, he said, solemnly: “In God’s name, hang the man
as he deserves!”
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In Washington
Service in the Metropolitan Episcopal
Church, which President McKinley attends, was largely one of expressions
of sympathy for the stricken President and his family, prayer for
restoration and praise of the virtues of the man alternating. The
officiating clergyman, Rev. Dr. H. R. Naylor, presiding elder of
the district, in his address, went near to the point of justifying
lynching of the assassin. Resolutions of sympathy for Mrs. McKinley
were passed by a formal vote of the congregation.
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In London
British sympathy found expression
in manifold ways in the churches of the realm last Sunday, prayers
for the recovery of the patient being offered up and tributes of
respect being paid, the services at St. Paul’s, Westminster Abbey
and Canterbury Cathedral being especially impressive. At Christ
Church Rev. F. B. Meyer, the well-known English Congregationalist
preacher whose ties with America are unusually strong, led his congregation
in passing resolutions of sympathy. At Stratford-on-Avon the clergy
invited the congregation to join in the prayer for the President
taken from the Book of Prayer of the American Protestant Episcopal
Church.
The Ecumenical Methodist Conference,
in session of the 7th, bishops of the Afro-American Methodist Episcopal
Church presiding, passed the following resolution, introduced and
moved by the president of the English Conference, Prof. W. T. Davidson:
“That this conference express its intense indignation at the dastardly
attempt made upon the President of the United States, and its profound
sympathy with the nation in its deep anxiety over the deed, and
directs that a message of respectful sympathy be sent immediately
to Mrs. McKinley.” Rev. F. T. Bristol, pastor of the church in Washington
of which the President is a member, and Rev. A. Stuart of Canada
followed with eulogies of the President.
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The Roman Catholic Churches
Pope Leo XIII. is reported as saying:
“O, how earnestly I pray that he may escape with his life! These
violent crimes are the curse of our day. I can only offer the afflicted
victim and his poor wife my humble prayers.”
One of the first men of prominence
in this country to be interviewed and to express his horror was
Cardinal Gibbons, who immediately ordered prayers for the President
in the Catholic churches over which he has immediate supervision,
an example since followed by many of the archbishops and bishops.
The Italian Catholics showed their
sorrow by giving up an outdoor demonstration of affection for Bishop
Scalabrini, the prelate from Italy sent to this country to study
the situation of Italian Catholics, who as soon as he heard of the
national sorrow voiced his own sympathy and requested that all festivities
arranged in his honor should be stopped.
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Here and There
Prayers were offered in the churches
of Manila.
The prisoners in the Baltimore city
jail heartily said “Amen” as the chaplain of the day prayed for
the President.
The congregation of a Presbyterian
church at Fairmount [sic], Neb., postponed its service last
Sunday morning until the young men and vigorous middle-aged men
of the congregation had taken a male member of the community, who
had expressed his pleasure at the tragedy in Buffalo, and had ducked
him in a pond and ridden him on a rail out of the community. Then
the congregation reassembled and the service began an hour late.
Of course at such a time men of various
types of mind will make curious generalizations. Thus Sheriff Pearson
of Portland, Me., in a talk last Sunday, is reported as attributing
the assassination to the corruption of the Republican and Democratic
parties; and a Baptist clergyman in Manchester, N. H., by name J.
Bunyan Lemon, is reported as arguing that the attack on the President
is God’s way of impressing the American people that the liquor traffic
is an abhorrent thing in his eyes.
At the Phillips Congregational Church,
Watertown, Mass., after a sermon by the pastor, Rev. E. C. Porter,
denouncing the lax policy of the Government in tolerating anarchists
in the community, the following resolution was passed:
To the Hon. Samuel L. Powers,
Representative to Congress from the Twelfth Massachusetts District:
We, the undersigned citizens of
Watertown, respectfully and earnestly request you, as our representative,
to indorse [sic], advocate and urge in Congress a bill to declare
as treason, and to prohibit under extreme penalties, the holding
of meetings by persons known or proved to be anarchists, or
the teaching of the doctrines of anarchy, or the circulation
of its literature, the aim of this bill being the better protection
of society and state against a form of lawlessness of surpassing
recklessness and fraught with peril to the public weal and civil
service.
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