Et Cætera [excerpt]

     Among hymns President McKinley’s greatest favourite came from—the London Oratory. It is one of Father Faber’s, that has found a wide acceptance among even those outside the limits of the Church. Very well known in Anglican rectories such as that which he himself sacrificed, in Presbyterian manses and Salvation Army quarters even, are the verses:

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy
     Like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in His justice
     Which is more than Liberty.

For the love of God is broader
     Than the measure of man’s mind,
And the heart of the Eternal
     Is most wonderfully kind.

The President, according to the testimony of one of his friends, “knew the hymn by heart, and was often heard humming it through when alone in his library.” A little link is thus furnished between the Oratory and Faber and Newman by the death of the President, over whose body the hymn, “Lead, kindly Light!” was sung.

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     When the band of a French man-of-war played the “Marseillaise,” out of respect to the passing of President McKinley’s coffin, few people, perhaps, knew or remembered that they were hearing Church music. Yet such was the case. Not so very long ago the manuscript of l’Esther, an oratorio composed by a choir-master of the Cathedral of St. Omer in the seventeenth century, was found to contain, note for note, the music of the national air.