The First Collegiate

President C. Cuthbert Hall, who preached morning and evening, read a cable message from the pastor, Dr. Donald Sage Mackay, expressing his grief over the death of the President. Dr. Hall’s prayer most beautifully and fitly expressed the common sorrow, the common aspiration and the common need, and his sermon was wonderfully adapted to meet the essential demands of the occasion. He preached from two texts, One sinner destroyeth much good, and Ye are the salt of the earth: Two principles, the septic, ever tending to destroy organized life, and the antiseptic, whose agency it is to neutralize and render ineffectual the septic principle. Sin is the essential septic influence, Godliness, Christianity, is literally and by no mere figure of speech the saving principle. The contrast between the ruthless destruction wrought by the assassin’s hand, and the abiding influence of the pure and Christian life of his victim was forcibly drawn. Here as in nearly every church the country over, the hymn was sung which was on the President’s dying lips, Nearer my God to thee.