God Saves a Future
President
James A. Garfield
"God, keep Your hand on little Jim," the Widow Garfield prayed. The three older children by the fireplace murmured their amens. Little Jim, going on three, grinned his approval. He was too young to fully understand, yet the nightly prayers gave him a warm feeling of security.
His father had died the year before, leaving his mother to feed the family and take care of the frontier farm near Orange, Ohio. But with God's help and the help of the children, she managed. Before Jim was twelve he was doing a man's work — chopping wood, planting crops, hoeing corn, and cradling wheat.
When he reached sixteen, Jim went to Cleveland to seek a job. Fresh in his hearing was the prayer of his mother, "Keep Your hand on Jim."
Jim's cousin, captain on an Erie Canal boat, gave him a deckhand's job. On Jim's first trip to Pittsburg, he fell into the canal fourteen times. On the second trip he accidentally flipped a setting pole into a burly deckhand. The big man, twice Jim's age, rushed toward him with a curse. Jim neatly stepped aside and floored the attacker with a strong blow behind the ear. The bully was tamed, but Jim's troubles were far from over.
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A few weeks later, the boat, named the Evening Star, was coming out of a stretch of slack water. The bowline had caught in a crevice on the deck's edge. Jim was trying to jerk it out of the crevice, when suddenly the rope came loose. The boy's momentum threw him over the side and into the water.
His heavy oilcloth coat and pants pulled him toward the bottom. He felt the boat gliding over him. The whole crew was asleep and Jim could not swim. Then his thrashing hands touched the dangling rope. He grasped it tightly and moments later had pulled himself back on the deck. Standing there dripping wet, Jim saw that the rope had again caught in a crevice, thus providing him the lifeline. Amazed and awed, he threw the rope six hundred times at the crevice without success. Finally he said, "Only God could have put that rope there. He must have saved me for something better than canaling."
But when Jim returned home, malaria struck him down. He battled with the disease for six months while his widowed mother prayed, "God keep your hand on Jim."
When Jim recovered from malaria, he enrolled at Geauga Academy with plans of becoming a teacher. He worked as a carpenter's helper to pay school expenses and provide money for his mother at home.
After two terms, Jim took a temporary teaching job near his log home. Beside his skill at taming bullies, the young teacher was known for his regular church attendance. When the local Disciples church held a revival meeting, Jim Garfield was on hand. On March 4, 1850,
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he answered the preacher's invitation to accept Christ as his Saviour. Six days later he wrote, "The cause of God is prospering. In this place seventeen have made the good confession and are rejoicing in the hope of eternal life. Thanks be to God for His goodness. By the help of God I'll praise my Maker while I have breath."
A few months later, the man who would one day be president, wrote: "When I consider the sequel of my history thus far, I can see the providence of God in a striking manner. Two years ago I had become ripe for ruin. On the canal . . . ready to drink in every species of vice . . . I was taken sick; unable to labor, went to school two terms . . . took a school in the winter; and greatest of all, obeyed the gospel. Thus by the providence of God I am what I am . . . I thank Him."
After his conversion, James A. Garfield moved ahead fast. He went to Williams College in Massachusetts and studied under the famous Mark Hopkins. After graduation he was given a professor's post at Hiram College, then a year later at twenty-six, he became president of the school. On weekends he served as a lay preacher in nearby churches.
At twenty-eight, he became the youngest member of the Ohio Senate. He served in the Civil War so illustriously that President Lincoln made him a major general. Next came Congress and in 1879, a seat in the U.S. Senate. But before he could begin his term, he was nominated to the nation's highest office.
Shortly before his nomination, Garfield left the political convention to attend church. He told a friend, "Yes, this is a day of suspense, but it is also a day of
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prayer; and I have more faith in the prayers that will go up from Christian hearts today than in all the tactics which will prevail at this convention."
Garfield defeated Winfield Hancock in a close election. Then leaders of his own party turned against him because he refused to give office jobs to politicians whom he considered unqualified. Garfield favored a system of governmental promotions based on merit, later adopted and known today as civil service.
After only six months in office he was shot by a mentally deranged job seeker. Near death, he whispered, "God's will be done, doctor. I am ready to go if my time has come." [webmaster's note: President Garfield died eleven weeks after being shot]
