ie, 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 assisted at one time and another were
scattered through the house, mostly in the back seats under the choir
gallery. His own membership 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
sexton's application for membership and his rejection by vote had also
told somewhat in favor of the minis