THAT DAY WITH GOD

The editor offers here an anthology of sermons, prayers, poems, addresses, and journalistic commentary occasioned by the assassination of President Kennedy. The volume opens with sermons preached in Dllas by a Methodist Minister, a Roman Catholic Monsignor, and a Jewish Rabbi at services following the assassination and proceeds to contributions by a wide assembly of religious and secular leaders and officials. Among the more notable contributors are Pope Paul, Sen. Mansfield, President Kirk of Columbia University, Chief Justice Warren, and John Masefield, poet-laureate of England. The major themes are eulogistic, or treat the sufferings of the President's family; or offer a kind of news commentary on events attending the assassination; or deal with questions of death and eternal life. A reader may be struck, however, with the impression that much of what is said moves on an intellectualistic plane, while there is little evocation of grief or of genuine contrition for those traits in American life which the assassination symbolized so powerfully.