Who Should Hang, Guiteau or God?

Vol. I, No. 6
October 15, 1881

Garfield was so shot that the wound was fatal from the beginning.

Hence, the skill of surgeons was unavailing.

Hence, no earthly visible power could save him.

Christians all over the country pray to an invisible power asking for "divine mercy," that the course of nature may be stayed and a miracle be wrought.

Their prayer was no heeded.

Garfield died.

Then, they assemble in humiliation, and observe a day of "fasting"

They say: "It has pleased Almighty God to remove him from our midst."

Now, how does the case stand?

Garfield died because Guiteau shot him.

And Guiteau is to be hanged as a murder of Garfield.

If God "removed him," why hang Guiteau?

Was Guiteau an instrument in God's hands?

He says that he did the "will of God."

Christians confess as much: "Though, God, has humbled us for our sins, and taken him to thyself."

But it was Guiteau's bullet that sent him hither.

And Guiteau will be hanged.

And god will be praised, because, in his "inscrutable wisdom, he doeth all things rights."

Or, Christians resign themselves to the will of God, with "broken hearts."

And yet they know of no fate too harsh for the wretch whom their God employed.

Such is the muddle into which the world is ever getting because of its belief in the existence of personal gods, in whose hands are all the events of life.