The Crucifixion of Philip Strong

by Charles M. Sheldon

She had overcome her nervousness and dread now that Philip's courageous presence strengthened her, and she began to tell him that he had better hunt for the man who had appeared so mysteriously in the study.

"I haven't convinced myself yet that there is any man. Confess, Sarah, that you dreamed all that."

"I did not," replied his wife, a little indignantly. "Do you think I wrote those letters and stuck that knife into the desk myself?"

"Of course not. But how could a man get into the study and neither you nor the girl know it."

"I did hear a noise, and that is what started me upstairs. And he may be in the house yet. I shall not rest easy until you look into all the closets and down cellar and everywhere."

So Philip, to quiet his wife, searched the house thoroughly, but found nothing. The servant and the minister's wife followed along at a respectful distance behind Philip, one armed with the poker and the other with a fire-shovel, while he pulled open closet doors with reckless disregard of any possible man hiding within, and pretended to look into the most unlikely places for him, joking all the while to reassure his trembling followers.

They found one of the windows in Philip's study partly open. But that did not prove anything, although a man might have crawled in and out again through that window from an ell of the parsonage, the roof of which ran near enough to the window so that an active person could gain entrance that way. The whole affair remained more or less a mystery to Philip. However, the letters and the knife were real. He took them down town next day to the office of the evening paper, and asked the editor to publish the letters and describe the knife. It was too good a piece of news to omit, and Milton people were treated to a genuine sensation when the article came out. Philip's object in giving the incident publicity was to show the community what a murderous element it was fostering in the saloon power. Those threats and the knife preached a sermon to the thoughtful people of Milton, and citizens who had never asked the question before began to ask now: "Are we to endure this saloon monster much longer?"

As for Philip, he went his way the same as ever. Some of his friends and church members even advised him to carry a revolver and be careful about going out alone at night. Philip laughed at the idea of a revolver and said: "If the saloon men want to get rid of me without the trouble of shooting me themselves they had better make me a present of a silver-mounted pistol; then I would manage the shooting myself. And as for being careful about going out evenings, what is this town thinking of, that it will continue to license and legalize an institution that makes its honest citizens advise new-comers to stay at home for fear of assassination? No. I shall go about my work just as if I lived in the most law-abiding community in America. And if I am murdered by the whiskey men, I want the people of Milton to understand that the citizens are as much to blame for the murder as the saloon men. For a community that will license such a curse ought to bear the shame of the legitimate fruits of it."

The trial of the man with the hare-lip had been postponed for some legal reason, and Philip felt relieved somewhat. He dreaded the ordeal of the court scene. And one or two visits made at the jail had not been helpful to him. The man had refused each time to see the minister, and he had gone away feeling hungry in his soul for the man's redemption, and realizing something of the spirit of Christ when he was compelled to cry out: "They will not come unto me that they might have eternal life." That always seemed to Philip the most awful feature of the history of Christ—that the very people he loved and yearned after spit upon him and finally broke his heart with their hatred.

He continued his study of the problem of the town, believing that every place has certain peculiar local characteristics which every church and preacher ought to study. He was struck by the aspect of the lower part of the town, where nearly all the poorer people lived. He went down there and studied the situation thoroughly. It did not take a very great amount of thinking to convince him that the church power in Milton was not properly distributed. The seven largest churches in the place were all on one street, well up in the wealthy residence portion, and not more than two or three blocks apart. Down in the tenement district there was not a single church building, and only one or two weak mission schools which did not touch the problem of the district at all. The distance from this poor part of the town to the churches was fully a mile, a distance that certainly stood as a geographical obstacle to the church attendance of the neighborhood, even supposing the people were eager to go to the large churches, which was not at all the fact. Indeed, Philip soon discovered that the people were indifferent in the matter. The churches on the fashionable street in town meant less than nothing to them. They never would go to them, and there was little hope that anything the pastor or members could do would draw the people that distance to come within church influence. The fact of the matter was, the seven churches of different denominations in Milton had no living connection whatever with nearly one-half the population, and that the most needy half, of the place.