ngregation
that, according to his announcement of a week before, he would give the
first of his series of monthly talks on Christ and Modern Society. His
subject this morning, he said, was "The Right and Wrong Uses of
Property."

He started out with the statement, which he claimed was verified
everywhere in the word of God, that all property that men acquire is
really only in the nature of trust funds, which the property holder is
in duty bound to use as a steward. The gold is God's. The silver is
God's. The cattle on a thousand hills. All land and water privileges and
wealth of the earth and of the seas belong primarily to the Lord of all
the earth. When any of this property comes within the control of a man,
he is not at liberty to use it as if it were his own, and his alone, but
as God would have him use it, to better the condition of life, and make
men and communities happier and more useful.

From this statement Philip went on to speak of the common idea which men
had, that wealth and houses and lands were their own, to do with as they
pleased; and he showed what misery and trouble had always flowed out of
this great falsehood, and how nations and individuals were to-day in the
greatest distress, because of the wrong uses to which God's property was
put by men who had control of it. It was easy then to narrow the
argument to the condition of affairs in Milton. As he stepped from the
general to the particular, and began to speak of the rental of saloons
and houses of gambling from property owners in Milton, and then
characterized such a use of God's property as wrong and unchristian, it
was curious to note the effect on the congregation. Men who had been
listening complacently to Philip's eloquent but quiet statements, as
long as he confined himself to distant historical facts, suddenly became
aware that the tall, palefaced, resolute and loving young preacher up
there was talking right at them; and more than one mill-owner, merchant,
real estate dealer, and even professional man, writhed inwardlly[sic],
and nervously shifted in his cushioned pew, as Philip spoke in the
plainest terms of the terrible example set the world by the use of
property for purposes which were destructive to all true society, and a
shame to civilization and Christianity. Philip controlled his voice and
his manner admirably, but he drove the truth home and spared not. His
voice at no time rose above a quiet conversational tone, but it was
cl