Article October 3, 1901 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from CHARLES G. AMES, W. C. GANNETT

The Standard thus editorially eulogizes the late President:—

"The grief of the people knows no distinction of party or section. The loyal heart of the new South feels the blow as keenly as the North. The West mourns with the East. The world sympathizes with the American nation in its loss. President McKinley has unquestionably won the heart of the people more than any president since Lincoln, and the recognition came in his lifetime, as Lincoln's did not. The startling and unprecedented events of his first administration and his popular policy throughout had much to do with this general admiration of Mr. McKinley. But his personal qualities, his apt and stirring public addresses, most of all his hearty and courteous reception of all with whom he came in contact, won for him a kind of affection among multitudes of his supporters seldom accorded to a political leader. He had the confidence of his entire party, and belief in his sincerity and conscientious devotion to duty extended far beyond partisan boundaries. As a man, particularly as a chivalrous and devoted husband, he stood as a high type of Christian statesmanship. His piety was not of a sanctimonious sort, but his frequent public and private utterances touching upon religious subjects showed plainly his warm sympathy with religious and missionary enterprises."

A writer in The Christian Advocate says regarding the content of spiritual poverty: "Those who have attained most in the kingdom of grace are the ones that are least content to stand still in their present spiritual state. They are ever pressing forward with zeal and earnestness to attain something higher and better in the spiritual life. Not as though I had already attained, but I follow after—I press forward,' is the language of one who had made large attainments in the spiritual life, but who was far from being contented with what he had attained. But the morally and spiritually poor are very well contented to remain as they are, and their content is always proportioned to their spiritual poverty. It is only because they have not much religion or spirituality that they are content to remain as they are. . . . Their content is due to their spiritual poverty. It was a saying of Sir James Mackintosh that 'it is right to be contented with what we have, but never with what we are.' The man who has attained a spiritual state where he is content to remain statuquo, has evidently been caught in a snare of the devil. And here again the best indication of increasing spirituality is a spirit of discontent with present attainments. Men who are perfectly contented with the states in which they are will never aim at or strive after any state that is higher."

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