The Crucifixion of Philip Strong Part 3

"Tell me all about it, Philip," she said. Sunday evening they had talked over the fact of Mr. Winter's walking out of the church during the service, and had antic.i.p.ated some trouble. Philip related the facts of Mr. Winter's visit, telling his wife some things the mill-owner had said.

"What did you say, Philip, to make him so angry? Did you give him a piece of your mind?"

"I gave him the whole of it," replied Philip, somewhat grimly--"at least all of it on that particular subject that he could stand."

"Oh, dear! It seems too bad to have this trouble come so soon! What will Mr. Winter do? He is very wealthy and influential. Do you think--are you sure that in this matter you have done just right, just for the best, Philip? It is going to be very unpleasant for you."

"Well, Sarah, I would not do differently from what I have done. What have I done? I have simply preached G.o.d's truth, as I plainly see it, to my church. And if I do not do that, what business have I in the ministry at all? I regret this personal encounter with Mr. Winter; but I don't see how I could avoid it."

"Did you lose your temper?"

"No."

"There was some very loud talking. I could hear it away out in the kitchen."

"Well, you know, Sarah, the more indignant I get the less inclined I feel to 'holler.' It was Mr. Winter you heard. He was very much excited when he came, and nothing that I could conscientiously say would have made any difference with him."

"Did you ask him to pray over the matter with you?"

"No. I do not think he was in a praying mood."

"Were you?"

Philip hesitated a moment, and then replied seriously: "Yes, I truly believe I was--that is, I should not have been ashamed at any part of the interview to put myself into loving communion with my Heavenly Father."

Mrs. Strong still looked disturbed and anxious. She was going over in her mind the probable result of Mr. Winter's antagonism to the minister.

It looked to her like a very serious thing. Philip was inclined to treat the affair with calm philosophy, based on the knowledge that his conscience was clear of all fault in the matter.

"What do you suppose Mr. Winter will do?" Mrs. Strong asked.

"He threatened to withdraw his financial support, and said other paying members would do the same."

"Do you think they will?"

"I don't know. I shouldn't wonder if they do."

"What will you do then? It will be dreadful to have a disturbance in the church of this kind, Philip; it will ruin your prospects here. You will not be able to work under all that friction."

And the minister's wife suddenly broke down and had a good cry; while Philip comforted her, first by saying two or three funny things, and secondly by a.s.serting, with a positive cheerfulness which was peculiar to him when he was hard pressed, that, even if the church withdrew all support, he (Philip) could probably get a job somewhere on a railroad, or in a hotel, where there was always a demand for porters who could walk up several flights of stairs with a good-sized trunk.

"Sometimes I almost think I missed my calling," said Philip, purposely talking about himself in order to make his wife come to the defense. "I ought to have been a locomotive fireman."

"The idea, Philip Strong! A man who has the gift of reaching people with preaching the way you do!"

"The way I reach Mr. Winter, for example!"

"Yes," said his wife, "the way you reach him. Why, the very fact that you made such a man angry is pretty good proof that you reached him.

Such men are not touched by any ordinary preaching."

"So you really think I have a little gift at preaching?" asked Philip, slyly.

"A little gift! It is a great deal more than a little, Philip."

"Aren't you a little prejudiced, Sarah?"

"No, sir. I am the severest critic you ever have in the congregation. If you only knew how nervous you sometimes make me!--when you get started on some exciting pa.s.sage and make a gesture that would throw a stone image into a fit, and then begin to speak of something in a different way, like another person, and the first I know I am caught up and hurled into the subject, and forget all about you."

"Thank you," said Philip.

"What for?" asked his wife, laughing. "For forgetting you?"

"I would rather be forgotten by you than remembered by any one else,"

replied Philip, gallantly. "And you are such a delightful little flatterer that I feel courage for anything that may happen."

"It's not flattery; it's truth, Philip. I do believe in you and your work; and I am only anxious that you should succeed here. I can't bear to think of trouble in the church. It would almost kill me to go through such times as we sometimes read about."

"We must leave results to G.o.d. I am sure we are not responsible for more than our utmost doing and living of necessary truth." Philip spoke courageously.

"Then you don't feel disheartened by this morning's work?"

"No, I don't know that I do. I'm very sensitive, and I feel hurt at Mr.

Winter's threat of withdrawing his support; but I don't feel disheartened for the work. Why should I? Am I not doing my best?"

"I believe you are. Only, dear Philip, be wise. Do not try to reform everything in a week, or expect people to grow their wings before they have started even pin-feathers. It isn't natural."

"Well, I won't," replied Philip, with a laugh. "Better trim your wings, Sarah; they're dragging on the floor."

He hunted up his hat, which was one of the things Philip could never find twice in the same place, kissed his wife, and went out to make the visit at the mill which he was getting ready to make when Mr. Winter called.

To his surprise, when he went down through the business part of the town, he discovered that his sermon of Sunday had roused almost every one. People were talking about it on the street--an almost unheard-of thing in Milton. When the evening paper came out it described in sensational paragraphs the Reverend Mr. Strong's attack on the wealthy sinners of his own church, and went on to say that the church "was very much wrought up over the sermon, and would probably make it uncomfortable for the reverend gentleman." Philip wondered, as he read, at the unusual stir made because a preacher of Christ had denounced an undoubted evil.

"Is it, then," he asked himself, "such a remarkable piece of news that a minister of the gospel has preached from his own pulpit against what is without question an unchristian use of property? What is the meaning of the church in society unless it is just that? Is it possible that the public is so little accustomed to hear anything on this subject that when they do hear it it is in the nature of sensational news?"

He pondered over these questions as he quietly but rapidly went along with his work. He was conscious as the days went on that trouble was brewing for him. This hurt him in a way hard to explain; but his sensitive spirit felt the cut like a lash on a sore place.

When Sunday came he went into his pulpit and faced the largest audience he had yet seen in Calvary Church. As is often the case, people who had heard of his previous sermon on Sunday thought he would preach another like it again. Instead of that he preached a sermon on the love of G.o.d for the world. In one way the large audience was disappointed. It had come to have its love of sensation fed, and Philip had not given it anything of the kind. In another way it was profoundly moved by the power and sweetness of Philip's unfolding of the great subject. Men who had not been inside of a church for years went away thoughtfully impressed with the old truth of G.o.d's love, and asked themselves what they had done to deserve it--the very thing that Philip wanted them to ask. The property owners in the church who had felt offended by Philip's sermon of the Sunday before went away from the service acknowledging that the new pastor was an eloquent preacher and a man of large gifts.

In the evening Philip preached again from the same theme, using it in an entirely different way. His audience nearly filled the church, and was evidently deeply impressed.

In spite of all this, Philip felt that a certain element in the church had arrayed itself against him. Mr. Winter did not appear at either service. There were certain other absences on the part of men who had been constant attendants on the Sunday services. He felt, without hearing it, that a great deal was being said in opposition to him; but, with the burden of it beginning to wear a little on him, he saw nothing better to do than to go on with his work as if nothing unusual had taken place.

CHAPTER IV.

Pursuing the plan he had originally mapped out when he came to Milton, he spent much of his time in the afternoons studying the social and civic life of the town. As the first Sunday of the next month drew near, when he was to speak again on the att.i.tude of Christ to some aspect of modern society, he determined to select the saloon as one of the prominent features of modern life that would naturally be noticed by Christ, and doubtless be denounced by him as a great evil.

In his study of the saloon question he did a thing which he had never done before, and then only after very much deliberation and prayer. He went into the saloons themselves on different occasions. He had never done such a thing before. He wanted to know from actual knowledge what sort of places the saloons were. What he saw after a dozen visits to as many different groggeries added fuel to the flame of indignation that burned already hot in him. The sight of the vast army of men turning into beasts in these dens created in him a loathing and a hatred of the whole iniquitous inst.i.tution that language failed to express. He wondered with unspeakable astonishment in his soul that a civilized community in the nineteenth century would tolerate for one moment the public sale of an article that led, on the confession of society itself, to countless crimes against the law of the land and of G.o.d. His indignant astonishment deepened yet more, if that were possible, when he found that the license of five hundred dollars a year for each saloon was used by the town to support the public school system. That, to Philip's mind, was an awful sarcasm on Christian civilization. It seemed to him like selling a man poison according to law, and then taking the money from the sale to help the widow to purchase mourning. It was full as ghastly as that would be.