aces and
visited me not?' For are these men and women and children not our
brethren? Verily, God will require it at our hands, O men of Milton, if,
having the power to use God'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 God'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