Tributes to President M’Kinley

     Dr. George B. Spalding, pastor of the First Church, Syracuse, preached a timely and powerful sermon on Sabbath, 8th instant, in view of the shooting of the President, taking for his text 2 Sam. XX. 9, 10—the assassination of Amasa by the treacherous Joab. The death of the President may be said to have added emphasis to the discourse. The following are among the well chosen points:
     “Were these Presidents of ours like the Old World’s despots, we could perhaps join hands against oppressors. But our rulers have been, one and all, heads of ‘a government by the people and for the people,’ and men themselves of noblest patriotism and true lovers of freedom. Had our government been one of class distinctions and in the interest of one against the many, I could understand how one, infuriated by legal injustices, should strike even for rebellion. But the government shields all her citizens alike and affords remedies for every one in any wrongs he may suffer.
     “Had our social order erected barriers against which birth and poverty in vain cast themselves, I could understand how a man aspiring to a better position for himself, and more, his children after him, should in his hour of frenzy lift his hand in destroying wrath against the environments of the social order about him. But look at it. Look at these Presidents who have fallen under the blows of these madmen; each one mounting up from misfortunes of birth and poverties of home and oppression of social caste, to professional and social positions and material competency and to the chief place of civil power, more exalted that any throne of kingdoms and empires. The gates of schools and libraries and of churches and every needed institution for individual advancement stand wide open, and yet there are men—what shall I call them?—haters of humanity, assassins of society, plotters against church and state and society, who would undermine the structure of everything, hoping that in the universal chaos something may turn up which they may clutch and so better themselves.”