“The services for the dead are fitly and almost of necessity services of religion and of immortal hope. In the presence of the shroud and the coffin and the narrow home, questions concerning intellectual quality, concerning public station, concerning great achievements, sink into comparative insignificance; and questions concerning character and man’s relation to the Lord and giver of life, even the life eternal, emerge to our view and impress themselves upon us.
“Character abides. We bring nothing into this world; we can carry nothing out. We ourselves depart with all the accumulations of tendency and habit and quality which the years have given to us. We ask, therefore, even at the grave of the illustrious, not altogether what great achievement they had performed and how they had commended themselves to the memory and affection or respect of the world, but chiefly of what sort they were; what the interior nature of the man was; what were his affinities? Were they with the good, the true, the noble? What his relation to the infinite Lord of the universe and to the compassionate Savior of mankind; what his fitness for that great hereafter to which he had passed?
“And such great questions come to us with moment, even in the hour when we gather around the bier of those whom we profoundly respect and eulogize and whom we tenderly love. In the years to come the days and the months that lie immediately before us will give full utterance as to the high statesmanship and great achievements of the illustrious man whom we mourn to-day. We shall not touch them to-day. The nation already has broken out in its grief and poured its tears, and is still pouring them, over the loss of a loved man. It is well. But we ask this morning of what sort this man is, so that we may perhaps, knowing the moral and spiritual life that is past, be able to shape the far-withdrawing future.
“I think we must all concede that nature and training are—reverently be it said—the inspiration of the Almighty, conspired to conform a man, a man admirable in his moral temper and aims. We none of us can doubt. I think that even by nature he was eminently gifted. The kindly, calm, and equitable temperament, the kindly and generous heart, the love of justice and right, and the tendency toward faith and loyalty to unseen powers and authorities—these things must have been with him from his childhood, from his infancy; but upon them supervened the training for which he was always tenderly thankful and of which even this great nation from sea to sea continually has taken note.
“It was a humble home in which he was born. Narrow conditions were around him, but faith in God had lifted that lowly roof, according to the statement of some great writer, ‘up to the very heavens and permitted its inmates to behold the things eternal, immortal, and divine;’ and he came under that training.
“It is a beautiful thing that to the end of his life he bent reverently before that mother whose example and teaching and prayer had so fashioned his mind and all his aims. The school came but briefly, and then came to him the church with its ministration of power. He accepted the truth which it taught. He believed in God and in Jesus Christ, through whom God was revealed. He accepted the divine law of the scripture; he based his hope on Jesus Christ, the appointed and only Redeemer of men; and the church, beginning its operation upon his character at an early period of his life, continued even to its close to mold him. He waited attentively upon its administration. He gladly partook with his brethren of the symbols of mysterious passion and redeeming love of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was helpful in all of those beneficences and activities; and from the church, to the close of his life, he received inspiration that lifted him above much of the trouble and weakness incident to our human nature; and, blessings be to God, may we say, in the last final hour they enabled him confidently, tenderly, to say: ‘It is his will, not ours, that will be done.’
“Such influences gave to us William McKinley. And what was he? A man of incorruptible personal and political integrity. I suppose no one ever attempted to approach him in the way of a bribe; and we remember with great felicitation at this time for such an example to ourselves that when great financial difficulties and perils encompassed him he determined to deliver all he possessed to his creditors, that there should be no challenge of his perfect honesty in the matter. A man of immaculate purity, shall we say? No stain was upon his escutcheon, no syllable of suspicion was ever heard whispered against his character. He walked in perfect and noble self-control.
“Beyond that this man had somehow wrought in him—I suppose upon the foundation of a very happily constructed nature—a great and generous love of his fellow-men. He believed in men. He had himself been brought up among the common people. He knew their labors, struggles, necessities. He loved them; but I think that beyond that it was to the church and its teachings concerning the fatherhood of God and universal brotherhood of man that he was indebted for that habit of kindness, for that generosity of spirit, that was wrought into his very substance and became him so, though he was of all men most courteous, no one ever supposed but his courtesy was from the heart. It was spontaneous, unaffected, kindly in a most eminent degree.
“What he was in the narrow field of those to whom he was personally attached, I think he was also in the greatness of his comprehensive love toward the race of which he was part.
“Shall I speak a word next of that which I will hardly advert to? The tenderness of that domestic love which has so often been commented upon? I pass it with only that word. I take it that no words can set forth fully the unfaltering kindness and carefulness and upbearing love which belonged to this great man.