Lead, Kindly Light

John Henry Newman, 1833

Hymn of the Week: Lead, Kindly Light
John Henry Newman,
    
     How great a part of ordinary human life were the old beloved hymns!  Let me draw for you a couple of scenes to show it.
     It is the evening of September 13, 1901.  The President of the United States is lying in bed, dying.  A week before, he had been at a rally in Buffalo, when an immigrant from Poland, a young anarchist who said he wanted to kill a great leader, shot two bullets into his belly.  The president’s first words were purely Christian in character.  He urged the people around him not to harm the man who shot him, and he begged his aide to be gentle in breaking the news to his wife.  For William McKinley loved his wife Ida very dearly, more dearly because she was frail, an invalid; and he used to wave to her from his office window at a special time every day.
     But now she is at his side, and he says he is going to die.  “We are all going,” he says.  “It is God’s way.”  The doctors move aside.  I am looking…