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.