The Crucifixion of Philip Strong Part 19

It came as he kneeled down; and it did not seem to him at all strange or absurd that as he kneeled, there came to his thought a picture of the Brother Man. And he could almost hear the Brother Man say: "Your work is in Milton, in Calvary Church yet. Except a man shall renounce all that he hath he cannot be His disciple." It mattered not to Philip that the answer to his prayer came in this particular way. He was not superst.i.tious or morbid, or given to yielding to impulse or fancy. He lay down upon the couch again and knew in his heart that he was at peace with G.o.d and his own conscience in deciding to stay with Calvary Church and refuse the call to Fairview.

CHAPTER XVIII.

When, a few minutes later, Mrs. Strong came up, Philip told her exactly how he had decided.

"I cannot leave these poor fellows in the tenements yet; my work is just beginning to count with them. And the church, oh, Sarah, I love it, for it has such possibilities and it must yield in time; and then the whiskey men--I cannot bear to have them think me beaten, driven out, defeated. And in addition to all the rest, I have a feeling that G.o.d has a wonderful blessing in store for me and the church very soon; and I cannot banish the feeling that if I should accept the call to Fairview, I should always be haunted by that ghost of Duty murdered and run away from which would make me unhappy in all my future work. Dear little woman," Philip went on, as he drew his wife's head down and kissed her tenderly, while tears of disappointment fell from her--"little woman, you know you are the dearest of all earthly beings to me. And my soul tells me the reason you loved me enough to share earth's troubles with me was that you knew I could not be a coward in the face of my duty, my conscience, and my G.o.d. Is it not so?"

The answer came in a sob of mingled anguish and happiness:

"Yes, Philip, but it was only for your sake I wanted you to leave this work. It is killing you. Yet,"--and she lifted her head with a smile through all the tears--"yet, Philip, 'whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy G.o.d my G.o.d. Where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me and more also if aught but death part thee and me.'"

There were people in Milton who could not undersatnd[sic] how a person of such refined and even naturally expensive and luxurious habits as the minister's wife possessed could endure the life he had planned for himself, and his idea of Christian living in general. Philip could have told them if he had been so minded. And this scene could have revealed it to any one who knew the minister and his wife as they really were.

That was a sacred scene to husband and wife, something that belonged to them, one of those things which the world did not know and had no business to know.

When the first Sunday of another month had come, Mr. Strong felt quite well again. A rumor of his call to Fairview had gone out, and to the few intimate friends who asked him about it he did not deny, but he said little. The time was precious to him. He plunged into the work with an enthusiasm and a purpose which sprang from his knowledge that he was at last really gaining some influence in the tenement district.

The condition of affairs in that neighborhood was growing worse instead of better. The amount of vice, drunkenness, crime and brutality made his sensitive heart quiver a hundred times a day as he went his way through it all. His study of the whole question led him to the conviction that one of the great needs of the place was a new home life for the people.

The tenements were owned and rented by men of wealth and influence. Many of these men were in the church. Discouraged as he had so often been in his endeavor to get the moneyed men of the congregation to consecrate their property to Christian uses, Philip came up to that first Sunday with a new phase of the same great subject which pressed so hard for utterance that he could not keep it back.

As he faced the church this morning he faced an audience composed of very conflicting elements. Representatives of labor were conspicuous in the galleries. People whom he had a.s.sisted at one time and another were scattered through the house, mostly in the back seats under the choir gallery. His own members.h.i.+p was represented by men who, while opposed to his idea of the Christian life and his interpretation of Christ, nevertheless continued to go and hear him preach. The incident of the s.e.xton's application for members.h.i.+p and his rejection by vote had also told somewhat in favor of the minister. Many preachers would have resigned after such a scene. He had said his say about it, and then refused to speak or be interviewed by the papers on the subject. What it cost him in suffering was his own secret. But this morning, as he rose to give his message in the person of Christ, the thought of the continued suffering and shame and degradation in the tenement district, the thought of the great wealth in the possession of the church which might be used almost to transform the lives of thousands of people, if the men of riches in Calvary Church would only see the kingdom of G.o.d in its demands on them--this voiced his cry to the people, and gave his sermon the significance and solemnity of a prophet's inspiration.

"See!" he exclaimed, as he went on after drawing a vivid picture of the miserable condition of life in the buildings which could not be called homes, "see what a change could be wrought by the use of a few thousand dollars down there. And here this morning, in this house, men are sitting who own very many of those tenements, who are getting the rent from them every month, who could, without suffering one single sorrow, without depriving themselves of one necessity or even luxury of life, so change the surroundings of these people that they would enjoy the physical life G.o.d gave them, and be able to see His love in the lives of His Disciples. O, my brethren, is not this your opportunity? What is money compared with humanity? What is the meaning of our disciples.h.i.+p unless we are using what G.o.d has given us to build up His kingdom? The money represented by this church could rebuild the entire tenement district. The men who own these buildings," He paused as if he had suddenly become aware that he might be saying an unwise thing; then, after a brief hesitation, as if he had satisfied his own doubt, he repeated, "The men who own these tenements--and members of other churches besides Calvary are among the owners--are guilty in the sight of G.o.d for allowing human beings made in His image to grow up in such horrible surroundings when it is in the power of money to stop it.

Therefore, they shall receive greater condemnation at the last, when Christ sits on the throne of the universe to judge the world. For will He not say, as He said long years ago, 'I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat, naked and ye clothed me not, sick and in miserable dwellings reeking with filth and disease, and ye drew the hire of these places and visited me not?' For are these men and women and children not our brethren? Verily, G.o.d will require it at our hands, O men of Milton, if, having the power to use G.o.d's property so as to make the world happier and better, we refused to do so and go our ways careless of our reponsibility[sic] and selfish in our use of G.o.d's money."

Philip closed his sermon with an account of facts concerning the condition of some of the people he himself had visited. When the service closed, more than one property owner went away secretly enraged at the minister's bold, and, as most of them said and thought, "impertinent meddling in their business." Was he wise? And yet he had been to more than one of these men in private with the same message. Did he not have the right to speak in public? Did not Christ do so? Would he not do so if he were here on earth again? And Philip, seeing the great need, seeing the mighty power of money, seeing the indifference of these men to the whole matter, seeing their determination to conduct their business for the gain of it without regard to the condition of life, with his heart sore and his soul indignant at the suffering he had witnessed came into the church and flung his sword of wrath out of its scabbard, smiting at the very thing dearest of all things to thousands of church-members to-day--the money, the property, the gain of acquisition; and he smote, perhaps, with a somewhat unwise energy of denunciation, yet with his heart crying out for wisdom with every blow he struck, "Would Christ say it? Would He say it?" And his sensitive, keenly suffering spirit heard the answer, "Yes, I believe He would."

Back of that answer he did not go in those days so rapidly drawing to their tremendous close. He bowed the soul of him to his Master and said, "Thy will be done!"

The week following this Sunday was one of the busiest Philip had known.

With the approach of warmer weather, a great deal of sickness came on.

He was going early and late on errands of mercy to the poor souls all about his own house. The people knew him now and loved him. He comforted his spirit with that knowledge as he prayed and worked.

He was going through one of the narrow courts one night on his way home, with his head bent down and his thoughts on some scene of suffering, when he was suddenly confronted by a young man who stepped quickly out from a shadowed corner, threw one arm about Philip's neck and placed his other hand over his mouth and attempted to throw him over backward.

It was very late, and there was no one in sight. Philip said to himself: "This is the attack of which I was warned." He was taken altogether by surprise, but being active and self-possessed, he sharply threw himself forward, repelling his a.s.sailant's attack, and succeeded in pulling the man's hand away from his mouth. His first second's instinct was to cry out for help; his next was to keep still. He suddenly felt the other giving way. The strength seemed to be leaving him. Philip, calling up some of his knowledge of wrestling gained while in college, threw his entire weight upon him, and to his surprise the man offered no resistance. They both fell heavily upon the ground, the man underneath.

He had not spoken and no one had yet appeared. As the man lay there motionless, Philip rose and stood over him. By the dim light that partly illuminated the court from a street lamp farther on, he saw that his a.s.sailant was stunned. There was a pump not far away. Philip went over and brought some water. After a few moments the man recovered consciousness. He sat up and looked about in a confused manner. Philip stood near by, looking at him thoughtfully.

CHAPTER XIX.

As the man looked up at Philip in a dazed and uncertain manner, Philip said slowly:

"You're not hurt badly, I hope. Why did you attack me?"

The man seemed too bewildered to answer. Philip leaned over and put one arm about him to help him rise. He struggled to his feet, and almost instantly sat down on the curb at the side of the road, holding his head between his hands. For a moment Philip hesitated. Then he sat down beside him, and after finding out that he was not seriously hurt, succeeded in drawing him into a conversation which grew more and more remarkable as it went on. As he thought back upon it afterward, Philip was unable to account exactly for the way in which the confidence between him and his a.s.sailant had been brought about. The incident and all that flowed out of it had such a bearing on the crucifixion that it belongs to the whole story.

"Then you say," went on Philip after they had been talking brief in question and answer for a few minutes, "you say that you meant to rob me, taking me for another man?"

"Yes, I thought you was the mill-man--what is his name?--Winter."

"Why did you want to rob him?"

The man looked up and said hoa.r.s.ely, almost savagely, "Because he has money and I was hungry."

"How long have you been hungry?"

"I have not had anything to eat for almost three days."

"There is food to be had at the Poor Commissioners. Did you know that fact?"

The man did not answer, and Philip asked him again. The reply came in a tone of bitter emphasis that made the minister start:

"Yes, I knew it! I would strave[sic] before I would go to the Poor Commissioners for food."

"Or steal?" asked Philip, gently.

"Yes, or steal. Wouldn't you?"

Philip stared out into the darkness of the court and answered honestly: "I don't know."

There was a short pause. Then he asked:

"Can't you get work?"

It was a hopeless question to put to a man in a town of over two thousand idle men. The answer was what he knew it would be:

"Work! Can I pick up a bushel of gold in the street out there? Can a man get work where there ain't any?"

"What have you been doing?"

"I was fireman in the Lake Mills. Good job. Lost it when they closed down last winter."

"What have you been doing since?"

"Anything I could get."

"Are you a married man?"

The question affected the other strangely. He trembled all over, put his head between his knees, and out of his heart's anguish flowed the words, "I had a wife. She's dead--of consumption. I had a little girl. She's dead, too. Thank G.o.d!" exclaimed the man, with a change from a sob to a curse. "Thank G.o.d!--and curses on all rich men who had it in their power to prevent the h.e.l.l on earth for other people, and which they will feel for themselves in the other world!"

Philip did not say anything for some time. What could any man say to another at once under such circ.u.mstances? Finally he said:

"What will you do with money if I give you some?"