graceful tribute: "When I was in the hurry of preparing for a debate with Mr. Denton, in 1858, she read not less than eight or ten volumes, and made admirable notes for me on those points which related to the topics of discussion." On January 10, following the debate, Garfield wrote to a friend as follows: "The Sunday after the debate I spoke in Solon on 'Geology and Religion,' and had an immense audience. Many Spiritualists were out. The reports I hear from the debate are much more decisive than I expected to hear. I received a letter from Bro. Collins, of Chagrin, in which he says: Since the smoke of the battle has partially cleared away, we begin to see more clearly the victory we have gained." I have yet to see the first man who claims that Denton explains his position; but they are jubilant over his attack on the Bible. What you suggest ought to be done I am about to undertake. I go there next Friday or Saturday evening and remain over Sunday. I am bound to carry the war into Carthage and pursue that miserable atheism to its hole. "Bro. Collins says that a few Christians are quite unsettled because Denton said, and I admitted, that the world had existed millions of years. I am astonished at the ignorance of the masses on these subjects. Hugh Miller has it right when he says that "the battle of the evidences must now be fought on the field of the natural sciences." Here we close the record of his religious life. It is clearly seen from the foregoing that his religious character had a solid foundation, and received its polish amidst the activities of a busy life. His heart, which was great by nature, was enlarged by the nurture and discipline which only a strong faith bear. If we were to search for the key to his nobility and greatness, we would find it in the fact that he was a Christian. Since the day he was nominated for the presidency the religious and the secular press have dwelt more or less on his religious belief and life. Much that has been said has been correct, generous, and fair. Some, however, have been disposed to treat the question as of no particular significance, one correspondent of a great journal stating that "General Garfield was not much of a religionist," that he was "too broad a man to be bound down by any religious tenets." Precisely the opposite is true. It is because he was a religionist, and "bound down," or rather, lifted up, by religious tenets, that he was so broad, so grand a man. The belief in one true God, one divine Christ, the inspiration of the Scriptures, and a Christ-like life were the basis of all his religious thought and life. These certainly are enough to make a broad man, and a good man, and it is no discredit to him that he remained in hearty sympathy, in faith and life to the end, with those who in the bonds of religious fellowship he was wont to call brethren for more than thirty years. Perhaps this chapter could not be more fittingly closed than with these words by Dr. Noah Porter, President of Yale College: "That President Garfield was more than a man of strong moral and religious convictions-that he was also a man of conscientious and fervid spiritual life, would scarcely be questioned. His whole history, from boyhood to the last, shows that duty to man and to God, and devotion to Christ.in a life of faith and spiritual communion, were the controlling springs of his being, and to a more than usual degree. In my judgment, there is no more interesting feature of his character than his loyal allegiance to the body of Christians in which he was trained, and the fervent sympathy with which he shared in their Christian communion. Not many of the few wise and mighty and noble who are called' show a similar loyalty to the less stately and cultured Christian communions in which they have been reared. Too often it is true that, as they step upward in social and political significance, they step up Home, go watch the faithful dove, Home is where there's one to love us! Home's not merely roof and room, It needs something to endear it; Where there's some kind lip to cheer it! What is home with none to meet, None to welcome, none to greet us? Home is sweet,-and only sweet When there's one we love to meet us." It has been wisely remarked that, "whenever we step out of domestic life in search of felicity, we come back again, tired, disappointed, and chagrined. One day passed under our own roof, with our friends and our family, is worth a thousand in another place." Perhaps no American writer has written more appreciatively about home and family life, than the late Dr. J. G. Holland. He says: "There is probably not an unperverted man or woman living, who does not feel that the sweetest consolations and best rewards of life are found in the loves and delights of home. There are very few who do not feel themselves indebted to the influences that clustered around their cradles, for whatever good there may be in their characters and conditions. Home, based upon Christian marriage, is so evident an institution of God, that a man must become profane before he can deny it. Wherever it is pure and true to the Christian idea, there lives an institution conservative of all the nobler instincts of society. Of this realm woman is the queen. It takes the cue and the hue from her. If she is in the best sense womanly; if she is true and tender, loving and heroic, patient and self-devoted, she consciously and unconsciously organizes and puts in operation a set of influences that do more to mould the destiny of the nation than any man, uncrowned by power of eloquence can possibly effect. The men of a nation are what mothers make them, as a rule; and the voice that those men speak in the expression of power is the voice of the woman who bore and bred them. There can be no substitute for this. There is no other possible way in which the women of the nation can organize their influence and power that will tell so beneficially upon society and the state." General Garfield's home was in many respects a type of the best American homes; and there is no holier or purer portion of his career than that which bears upon his home and family life. Ordinarily we may not lift the veil which surrounds the home and let the outside world gaze upon it, but in his case we may do so; for here is a plain Christian household, suddenly and most unexpectedly lifted from private life to the highest position, and made the focus on which are turned the converging thoughts and regards of the world, and whose every word and action has been audible and evident to the circles of mankind, and there has not been one to be criticised or lamented. "Living in the blaze of such publicity, as almost no other household has known, mother and children have been. those that we would fain have chosen to represent our families to the world." But that family could not have been a representative family when elevated to the public gaze, if it had not, before its elevation, been in all essential respects a representative of the very best American domestic life. Many questions have been asked in reference to the home and family life of the late President, and among them is this one, which the distinguished editor of the Methodist attempts to answer: "Why has the family of President Garfield become so conspicuous a feature of his life in the presidency? The fact is unquestioned and very striking. And it had become such before the assassin fired that terrible shot. So far as we can see, nothing had led up to it. General Garfield had been in public life for twenty or more years, and it was scarcely known to the public that he had a family. President Hayes had a noble wife and interesting children; but as a family they did not concentrate the public gaze. Mrs. Hayes stood upon her personal merits in a remarkable degree, and was not so conspicuously present to the mind as a wife and a mother. Suddenly, as though an invisible scene-shifter had moved the curtains of a public stage, and readjusted its lights, a family in the White House becomes the center of interest and sympathy. "Look at a series of events. On Inauguration Day, after taking the oath of office in the presence of a great multitude, the President reverently kissed the Bible; then turning about he kissed first his mother and then his wife. We believe there was no precedent for this recognition of his family: it was apparently a spontaneous act of General Garfield, but events have given it the aspect of an inspired action. Then came the illness of his wife, and we were permitted to know the grief of the husband, and almost to hear him say to his bosom friend: 'I would give up all my honors, cheerfully, to save her life.' Then the fatal shot is fired, and for a whole weary day the nation knows the doctors only hope to keep the illustrious sufferer alive until his wife can reach his bedside. Since that day the daily reports from the sick-chamber have kept the courageous wife in full view. The public wants to know how she bears the bad days, how she endures the long strain, and that she keeps a firm grasp on her mighty hope. "If we turn to the aged mother of the President, there is the same remarkable thrusting of her into the focus of general attention. We are compelled to hear her cry out, when at last they have gathered the courage to tell her of the murderous shooting of her son, Who could be so wicked and cruel as to kill my baby? And we are compelled to take this into our hearts and keep it there-the great President figuring in thought and affection as his mother's baby," the emotion enriched by the happy vernacular of a plain woman's language. Nor are we permitted to forget her. There comes a day when a little strength permits the illustrious patient to write with his own hand, |