The Crucifixion of Philip Strong Part 22

"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 G.o.d. 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 a.s.suring 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 att.i.tude 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 dest.i.tute 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 s.p.a.cious 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 pa.s.sed 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.

He was roused out of this to answer the question concerning the real condition of affairs in the lower part of the town. Instantly his mind sprang back to that which absorbed it in reality more than anything else. Before he knew it he had not only answered the particular question, but had gone on to describe the picture of desperate life in the tenement district. The buzz of conversation in the other rooms gradually ceased. The group about the minister grew, as others became aware that something unusual was going on in that particular room. He unconsciously grew eloquent and his handsome face lighted up with the fires that raged deep in him at the thought of diseased and depraved humanity. He did not know how long he talked. He knew there was a great hush when he had ended. Then before any one could change the stream of thought some young woman in the music-room who had not known what was going on began to sing to a new instrumental variation "Home, Sweet Home." Coming as it did after Philip's vivid description of the tenements, it seemed like a sob of despair or a mocking hypocrisy. He drew back into one of the smaller rooms and began to look over some art prints on a table. As he stood there, again blaming himself for his impetuous breach of society etiquette in almost preaching on such an occasion, Mr. Winter came in and said:

"It does not seem possible that such a state of affairs exists as you describe, Mr. Strong. Are you sure you do not exaggerate?"

"Exaggerate! Mr. Winter, you have pardoned my little sermon here to-night, I know. It was forced on me. But----" He choked, and then with an energy that was all the stronger for being repressed, he said, turning full toward the mill-owner, "Mr. Winter, will you go with me and look at things for yourself? In the name of Christ will you see what humanity is sinning and suffering not more than a mile from this home of yours?"

Mr. Winter hesitated and then said: "Yes, I'll go. When?"

"Say to-morrow night. Come down to my house early and we will start from there."

Mr. Winter agreed, and when Philip went home he glowed with hope. If once he could get people to know for themselves it seemed to him the rest of his desire for needed co-operation would follow.

When Mr. Winter came down the next evening, Philip asked him to come in and wait a few minutes, as he was detained in his study-room by a caller. The mill-owner sat down and visited with Mrs. Strong a little while. Finally she was called into the other room and Mr. Winter was left alone. The door into the sick man's room was partly open, and he could not help hearing the conversation between the Brother Man and his son. Something that was said made him curious, and when Philip came down he asked him a question concerning his strange boarder.

"Come in and see him," said Philip.

He brought Mr. Winter into the little room and introduced him to the patient. He was able to sit up now. At mention of Mr. Winter's name he flushed and trembled. It then occurred to Philip for the first time that it was the mill-owner that his a.s.sailant that night had intended to waylay and rob. For a second he was very much embarra.s.sed. Then he recovered himself, and after a few quiet words with Brother Man he and Mr. Winter went out of the room to start on their night visit through the tenements.

CHAPTER XXII.

As they were going out of the house the patient called Philip back. He went in again and the man said, "Mr. Strong, I wish you would tell Mr.

Winter all about it."

"Would you feel easier?" Philip asked gently.

"Yes."

"All right; I'll tell him--don't worry. Brother Man, take good care of him. I shall not be back until late." He kissed his wife and joined Mr.

Winter, and together they made the round of the district.

As they were going through the court near by the place where Philip had been attacked, he told the mill-owner the story. It affected him greatly; but as they went on through the tenements the sights that met him there wiped out the recollection of everything else.

It was all familiar to Philip; but it always looked to him just as terrible. The heartache for humanity was just as deep in him at sight of suffering and injustice as if it was the first instead of the hundredth time he had ever seen them. But to the mill-owner the whole thing came like a revelation. He had not dreamed of such a condition possible.

"How many people are there in our church that know anything about this plague spot from personal knowledge, Mr. Winter?" Philip asked after they had been out about two hours.

"I don't know. Very few, I presume."

"And yet they ought to know about it. How else shall all this sin and misery be done away?"

"I suppose the law could do something," replied Mr. Winter, feebly.

"The law!" Philip said the two words and then stopped. They stumbled over a heap of refuse thrown out into the doorway of a miserable structure. "Oh, what this place needs is not law and ordinances and statutes so much as live, loving Christian men and women who will give themselves and a large part of their means to cleanse the souls and bodies and houses of this wretched district. We have reached a crisis in Milton when Christians must give themselves to humanity! Mr. Winter, I am going to tell Calvary Church so next Sunday."

Mr. Winter was silent. They had come out of the district and were walking along together toward the upper part of the city. The houses kept growing larger and better. Finally they came up to the avenue where the churches were situated--a broad, clean, well-paved street with magnificent elms and elegant houses on either side and the seven large, beautiful church-buildings with their spires pointing upward, almost all of them visible from where the two men stood. They paused there a moment. The contrast, the physical contrast was overwhelming to Philip, and to Mr. Winter, coming from the unusual sights of the lower town, it must have come with a new meaning.

A door in one of the houses near opened. A group of people pa.s.sed in.

The glimpse caught by the two men was a glimpse of bright, flower-decorated rooms, beautiful dresses, glittering jewels, and a table heaped with luxuries of food. It was the Paradise of Society, the display of its ease, its soft enjoyment of pretty things, its careless indifference to humanity's pain in the lower town. The group of new-comers went in, a strain of music and the echo of a dancing laugh floated out into the street, and then the door closed.

The two men went on. Philip had his own reason for accompanying the other home, and Mr. Winter was secretly glad of his presence, for he was timid at night alone in Milton. He broke a long silence by saying:

"Mr. Strong, if you preach to the people to leave such pleasure as that we have just glanced at to view or suffer such things as are found in the tenements, you must expect opposition. I doubt if they will understand your meaning. I know they will not do any such thing. It is asking too much."

"And yet the Lord Jesus Christ 'although He was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we, through His poverty, might be rich.' Mr. Winter, what this town needs is that kind of Christianity--the kind that will give up the physical pleasures of life to show the love of Christ to perishing men. I believe it is just as true now as when Christ lived, that unless they are willing to renounce all that they have they cannot be his disciples."

"Do you mean literally, Mr. Strong?" asked the rich man after a little.

"Yes, literally, sometimes. I believe the awful condition of things and souls we have witnessed to-night will not be any better until many, many of the professing Christians in this town and in Calvary Church are willing to leave, actually to leave their beautiful homes and spend the money they now spend in luxuries for the good of the weak and poor and sinful."

"Do you think Christ would preach that if he was in Milton?"

"I do. It has been burned into me that He would. I believe He would say to the members of Calvary Church, 'If any man love houses and money and society and power and position more than Me, he cannot be My disciple.

If any man renounceth not all that he hath he cannot be My disciple.'

And then he would test the entire church by its willingness to renounce all these physical things. And if He found the members willing, if He found that they loved Him more than the money or the power, He might not demand a literal giving up. But he would say to them, 'Take My money and My power, for it is all Mine, and use them for the building up of my kingdom.' He would not then perhaps command them to leave literally their beautiful surroundings. But, then, in some cases, I believe He would. Oh, yes!--sacrifice! sacrifice! What does the Church in America in this age of the world know about it? How much do church-members give of themselves nowadays to the Master? That is what we need--self, the souls of men and women, the living sacrifices for these lost children down yonder! Oh, G.o.d!--to think of what Christ gave up! And then to think of how little His Church is doing to obey His last command to go and disciple the nations!"