When Sunday morning came, he went into his pulpit with the one thought in mind, that he would simply and frankly, in his presentation of the subject, use the language and the spirit of his Master.  He had seen other property owners during the week, and his interviews were nearly all similar to the one with Mr. Bentley.  He had not been able to see Mr. William Winter, the chairman of the trustees, as he had not returned home until very late Saturday night.  Philip saw him come into the church that morning, just as the choir rose to sing the anthem.  He was a large, fine-looking man.  Philip admired his physical appearance as he marched down the aisle to his pew, which was the third from the front, directly before the pulpit.

When the hymn had been sung, the offering taken, the prayer made, Philip stepped out at one side of the pulpit and reminded the congregation 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