The Crucifixion of Philip Strong

"'It is just as true now as when Paul said it nearly twenty centuries ago: "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil;" it is the curse of our civilization, the greatest god of the human race to-day.

"'Our civilization is only partly Christian. For Christian civilization means more comforts; ours means more wants.

"'If a man's pocket-book is not converted with his soul the man will not get into heaven with it.

"'There are certain things that money alone can secure; but among those things it cannot buy is character.

"'All wealth, from the Christian standpoint, is in the nature of trust funds, to be so used as the administrator, God, shall direct. No man owns the money for himself. The gold is God's, the silver is God's! That is the plain and repeated teaching of the Bible.

"'It is not wrong for a man to make money. It is wrong for him to use it selfishly or foolishly.

"'The consecrated wealth of the men of Milton could provide work for every idle man in town. The Christian use of the wealth of the world would make impossible the cry for bread.

"'Most of the evils of our present condition flow out of the love of money. The almighty dollar is the God of Protestant America.

"'If men loved men as eagerly as they love money the millennium would be just around the corner.

"'Wealth is a curse unless the owner of it blesses the world with it.

"'If any man hath the world's goods, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

"'Christian Socialism teaches a man to bear other people's burdens. The very first principle of Christian Socialism is unselfishness.

"'We shall never see a better condition of affairs in this country until the men of wealth realize their responsibility and privilege.

"'Christ never said anything against the poor. He did speak some tremendous warnings in the face of the selfish rich.

"'The only safe thing for a man of wealth to do is to ask himself, What would Christ do with my money if he had it?

"'Everything a man has is God's. On that profound principle the whole of human life should rest. We are not our own; we have been bought with a price.'

"It would be impossible to describe the effect of the Rev. Mr. Strong's talk upon the audience. Once the applause was so long continued that it was a full minute before he could go on. When he finally closed with a tremendous appeal to the wealth of Milton to use its power for the good of the place, for the tearing down and remodeling of the tenements, for the solution of the problem of no work for thousands of desperate men, the audience rose to its feet and cheered again and again.

"At the close of the meeting the minister was surrounded by a crowd of men, and an after meeting was held, at which steps were taken to form a committee composed of prominent church people and labor leaders to work, if possible, together toward a common end.

"It was rumored yesterday that several of the leading-members of Calvary Church are very much dissatisfied with the way things have been going during these Sunday-evening meetings, and are likely to withdraw if they continue. They say that Mr. Strong's utterances are socialistic and tend to inflame the minds of the people to acts of violence. Since the attack on Mr. Winter nearly every mill-owner in town goes armed and takes extra precautions. Mr. Strong was much pleased with the result of the Sunday-night meetings and said they had done much to bridge the gulf between the church and the people. He refused to credit the talk about disaffection in Calvary Church."

In another column of this same paper were five separate accounts of the desperate condition of affairs in the town. The midnight hold-up attacks were growing in frequency and in boldness. Along with all the rest, the sickness in the tenement district had assumed the nature of an epidemic of fever, clearly caused by the lack of sanitary regulations, imperfect drainage, and crowding of families. Clearly the condition of matters was growing serious.

At this time the minsters[sic] of different churches in Milton held a meeting to determine on a course of action that would relieve some of the distress. Various plans were submitted. Some proposed districting the town to ascertain the number of needly[sic] families. Others proposed a union of benevolent offerings to be given the poor. Another group suggested something else. To Philip's mind not one of the plans submitted went to the root of the matter. He was not popular with the other ministers. Most of them thought he was sensational. However, he made a plea for his own plan, which was radical and as he believed went to the real heart of the subject. He proposed that every church in town, regardless of its denomination, give itself in its pastor and members to the practical solution of the social troubles by personal contact with the suffering and sickness in the district; that the churches all throw open their doors every day in the week, weekdays as well as Sundays, for the discussion and agitation of the whole matter; that the country and the State be petitioned to take speedy action toward providing necessary labor for the unemployed; and that the churches cut down all unnecessary expenses of paid choirs, do away with pew rents, urge wealthy members to consecrate their riches to the solving of the problem, and in every way, by personal sacrifice and common union, let the churches of Milton as a unit work and pray and sacrifice to make themselves felt as a real power on the side of the people in their present great need. It was Christian America, but Philip's plan was not adopted. It was discussed with some warmth, but declared to be visionary, impracticable, unnecessary, not for the church to undertake, beyond its function, etc. Philip was disappointed, but he kept his temper.

"Well, brethren," he said, "what can we do to help the solution of these questions? Is the church of America to have no share in the greatest problem of human life that agitates the world to-day? Is it not true that the people in this town regard the Church as an insignificant organization, unable to help at the very point of human crisis, and the preachers as a lot weak, impractical men, with no knowledge of the real state of affairs? Are we not divided over our denominational differences when we ought to be united in one common work for the saving of the whole man? I do not have any faith in the plan proposed to give our benevolence or to district the town and visit the poor. All those things are well enough in their place. But matters are in such shape here now and all over the country that we must do something larger than that. We must do as Christ would do if He were here. What would He do? Would He give anything less than His whole life to it? Would He not give Himself? The Church as an institution is facing the greatest opportunity it ever saw. If we do not seize it on the largest possible scale we shall miserably fail of doing our duty."

When the meeting adjourned Philip was aware he had simply put himself out of touch with the majority present. They did not, they could not, look upon the Church as he did. A committee was appointed to investigate the matter and propose a plan of action at the next meeting in two weeks. And Philip went home almost bitterly smiling at the little bulwark which Milton churches proposed to rear against the tide of poverty and crime and drunkenness and political demagogy and wealthy selfishness. To his mind it was a house of paper cards in the face of a tornado.

Saturday night he was out calling a little while, but he came home early. It was the first Sunday of the month on the morrow, and he had not fully prepared his sermon. He was behind with it. As he came in, his wife met him with a look of news on her face.

"Guess who is here?" she said in a whisper.

"The Brother Man," replied Philip, quickly.

"Yes, but you never can guess what has happened. He is in there with William. And the Brother Man—Philip, it seems like a chapter out of a novel—the Brother Man has discovered that William is his only son, who cursed his father and deserted him when he gave away his property. They are in there together. I could not keep the Brother Man out."

Philip and Sarah stepped to the door of the little room, which was open, and looked in.

The Brother Man was kneeling at the side of the bed praying, and his son was listening, with one hand tight-clasped in his father's, and the tears rolling over his pale face.

CHAPTER XXI

When the Brother Man had finished his prayer he rose, and stooping over his son he kissed him. Then he turned about and faced Philip and Sarah, who almost felt guilty of intrusion in looking at such a scene. But the Brother Man wore a radiant look. To Philip's surprise he was not excited. The same ineffable peace breathed from his entire person. To that peace was now added a fathomless joy.

"Yes," he said very simply, "I have found my son which was lost. God is good to me. He is good to all His children. He is the All-Father. He is Love."

"Did you know your son was here?" Philip asked.

"No, I found him here. You have saved his life. That was doing as He would."

"It was very little we could do," said Philip, with a sigh. He had seen so much trouble and suffering that day that his soul was sick within him. Yet he welcomed this event in his home. It seemed like a little brightness of heaven on earth.

The sick man was too feeble to talk much. The tears and the hand-clasp with his father told the story of his reconciliation, of the bursting out of the old love, which had not been extinguished, only smothered for a time. Philip thought best that he should not become excited with the meeting, and in a little while drew the Brother Man out into the other room.

By this time it was nearly ten o'clock. The old man stood hesitating in a curious fashion when Philip asked him to be seated. And again, as before, he asked if he could find a place to stay over night.

"You haven't room to take me in," he said when Philip urged his welcome upon him.

"Oh, yes, we have. We'll fix a place for you somewhere. Sit right down, Brother Man."

The old man at once accepted the invitation and sat down. Not a trace of anxiety or hesitation remained. The peacefulness of his demeanor was restful to the weary Philip.

"How long has your son," Philip was going to say, "been away from home?" Then he thought it might offend the old man, or that possibly he might not wish to talk about it. But he quietly replied:

"I have not seen him for years. He was my youngest son. We quarreled. All that is past. He did not know that to give up all that one has was the will of God. Now he knows. When he is well we will go away together—yes, together." He spread out his palms in his favorite gesture, with plentiful content in his face and voice.

Philip was on the point of asking his strange guest to tell something of his history, but his great weariness and the knowledge of the strength needed for his Sunday work checked the questions that rose for answer. Mrs. Strong also came in and insisted that he should get the rest he so much needed. She arranged a sleeping-place on the lounge for the Brother Man, who, after once more looking in upon his son and assuring himself that he was resting, finally lay down with a look of great content upon his beautiful face.

In the morning Philip almost expected to find that his visitor had mysteriously disappeared, as on the other occasions. And he would not have been so very much surprised if he had vanished, taking with him in some strange fashion his newly discovered son. But it was that son who now kept him there; and in the simplest fashion he stayed on, nursing the sick man, who recovered very slowly. A month passed by after the Brother Man had first found the lost at Philip's house, and he was still a guest there. Within that month great events crowded in upon the experience of Mr. Strong. To tell them all would be to write another story. Sometimes into men's lives, under certain conditions of society, or of men's own mental and spiritual relation to certain causes of action, time, as reckoned by days or weeks, cuts no figure. A man can live an eternity in a month. He feels it. It was so with Philip Strong. We have spoken of the rapidity of his habit in deciding questions of right or expediency. The same habit of mind caused a possibility in him of condensed experience. In a few days he reached the conclusion of a year's thought. That month, while the Brother Man was peacefully watching by the side of the patient, and relieving Mrs. Strong and a neighbor who had helped before he came, Philip fought some tremendous battles with himself, with his thought of the church, and with the world about. It is necessary to understand something of this in order to understand something of the meaning of his last Sunday in Milton—a Sunday that marked an era in the place, from which the people almost reckoned time itself.

As spring had blossomed into summer and summer ripened into autumn, every one had predicted better times. But the predictions did not bring them. The suffering and sickness and helplessness of the tenement district grew every day more desperate. To Philip it seemed like the ulcer of Milton. All the surface remedies proposed and adopted by the city council and the churches and the benevolent societies had not touched the problem. The mills were going on part time. Thousands of men yet lingered in the place hoping to get work. Even if the mills had been running as usual that would not have diminished one particle of the sin and vice and drunkenness that saturated the place. And as Philip studied the matter with brain and soul he came to a conclusion regarding the duty of the church. He did not pretend to go beyond that, but as the weeks went by and fall came on and another winter stared the people coldly in the face, he knew that he must speak out what burned in him.

He had been a year in Milton now. Every month of that year had impressed him with the deep and apparently hopeless chasm that yawned between the working world and the church. There was no point of contact. One was suspicious, the other was indifferent. Something was radically wrong, and something radically positive and Christian must be done to right the condition that faced the churches of Milton. That was in his soul as he went his way like one of the old prophets, imbued with the love of God as he saw it in the heart of Christ. With infinite longing he yearned to bring the church to a sense of her great power and opportunity. So matters had finally drawn to a point in the month of November. The Brother Man had come in October. The sick man recovered slowly. Philip and his wife found room for the father and son, and shared with them what comforts they had. It should be said that after moving out of the parsonage into his house in the tenement district, Philip had more than given the extra thousand dollars the church insisted on paying him. The demands on him were so urgent, the perfect impossibility of providing men with work and so relieving them had been such a bar to giving help in that direction, that out of sheer necessity, as it seemed to him, Philip had given fully half of the thousand dollars reserved for his own salary. His entire expenses were reduced to the smallest possible amount. Everything above that went where it was absolutely needed. He was literally sharing what he had with the people who did not have anything. It seemed to him that he could not consistently do anything less in view of what he had preached and intended to preach.

One evening in the middle of the month he was invited to a social gathering at the house of Mr. Winter. The mill-owner had of late been experiencing a revolution of thought. His attitude toward Philip had grown more and more friendly. Philip welcomed the rich man's change of feeling toward him with an honest joy at the thought that the time might come when he would see his privilege and power, and use both to the glory of Christ's kingdom. He had more than once helped Philip lately with sums of money for the relief of destitute cases, and a feeling of mutual confidence was growing up between the men.

Philip went to the gathering with the feeling that a change of surroundings would do him good. Mrs. Strong, who for some reason was detained at home, urged him to go, thinking the social evening spent in bright and luxurious surroundings would be a rest to him from his incessant labors in the depressing atmosphere of poverty and disease.

It was a gathering of personal friends of Mr. Winter, including some of the church people. The moment that Philip stepped into the spacious hall and caught a glimpse of the furnishings of the rooms beyond, the contrast between all the comfort and brightness of this house and the last place he had visited in the tenement district smote him with a sense of pain. He drove it back and blamed himself with an inward reproach that he was growing narrow and could think of only one idea.

He could not remember just what brought up the subject, but some one during the evening, which was passed in conversation and music, mentioned the rumor going about of increased disturbance in the lower part of the town, and carelessly wanted to know if the paper did not exaggerate the facts. Some one turned to Philip and asked him about it as the one best informed. He had been talking with an intelligent lawyer who had been reading a popular book which Philip had also reviewed for a magazine. He was thoroughly enjoying the talk, and for the time being the human problem which had so long wearied his heart and mind was forgotten.