“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.