The Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield Twentieth President of the United States.

Excerpt

More eloquent voices for Christ and the gospel have never come from the grave of a dead President than those which we hear from the tomb of our lamented chief magistrate.

Twenty six years ago this summer a company of college students had gone to the top of Greylock Mountain, in Western Massachusetts, to spend the night. A very wide outlook can be gained from that summit. But if you will stand there with that little company to-day, you can see farther than the bounds of Massachusetts or the bounds of New England, or the bounds of the Union. James A. Garfield is one of that band of students, and as the evening shades gather, he rises up among the group and says, "Classmates, it is my habit to read a portion of God's Word before retiring to rest. Will you permit me to read aloud?" And then taking in his hand a pocket Testament, he reads in that clear, strong voice a chapter of Holy Writ, and calls upon a brother student to offer prayer. "How far the little candle throws its beams!" It required real principle to take that stand even in such a company. Was that candle of the Lord afterward put out amid the dampening and unfriendly influences of a long political life? It would not be strange. Many a Christian man has had his religious testimony smothered amid the stifling and vitiated air of party politics, till instead of a clear light, it has given out only the flicker and foulness of a "smoking wick."

But pass on for a quarter of a century. The young student has become a man. He has been in contact for years with the corrupting influences of political life. Let us see where he stands now. In the great Republican Convention at Chicago he is a leading figure. The meetings have been attended with unprecedented excitement through the week. Sunday has come, and such is the strain of rivalry between contending factions that most of the politicians spend the entire day in pushing the interests of their favorite candidates. But on that Lord's day morning Mr. Garfield is seen quietly wending his way to the house of God. His absence being remarked upon to him next day, he said, in reply, "I have more confidence in the prayers to God which ascended in the churches yesterday, than in all the caucusing which went on in the hotels."

He had great interests at stake as the promoter of the nomination of a favorite candidate When so much was pending, might he not be allowed to use the Sunday for defending his interest? So many would have reasoned But no! amid the clash of contending factions and the tumult of conflicting interests, there is one politician that heard the Word of God sounding in his ear "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shall not do any work." And, at the bidding of the Divine command, his conscience marches him away to the house of God. Not, indeed, to enjoy the luxury of hearing some famous preacher, or of listening to some superb singing, but he goes to one of the obscurest and humblest churches in the city, because there is where he belongs, and that is the church which he has covenanted to walk with, as a disciple of Jesus Christ. "How far" again "that little candle threw its beams!" It was a little thing, but it was the index of a principle, an index that pointed the whole American people upward when they heard of it....