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Crucifixion of Philip Strong

<h2 id="id00988" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXI.</h2> 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. 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 assailant that night had intended to waylay and rob. For a second he was very much embarrassed. 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. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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