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.