“Haven’t you had dinner?”

“No; haven’t had time.”

“Where have you been?”

“Among the tenements.”

“How are the people getting on there?”

“I cannot tell.  It almost chokes me to eat when I think of it.”

“Now, Philip, what makes you take it so seriously?  How can you help all that suffering?  You are not to blame for it?”

“Maybe I am for a part of it.  But whether I am or not, there the suffering is.  And I don’t know as we ought to ask who is to blame in such cases.  At any rate, supposing the fathers and mothers in the tenements are to blame themselves by their own sinfulness, does that make innocent children and helpless babes any warmer or better clothed and fed?  Sarah, I have seen things in these four hours’ time that make me want to join the bomb-throwers of Europe almost.”

Mrs. Strong came up behind his chair as he sat at the table eating, and placed her hand on his brow.  She grew more anxious every day over his growing personal feeling for others.  It seemed to her it was becoming a passion with him, wearing him out, and she feared its results as winter deepened and the strike in the mills remained unbroken.

“You cannot do more than one man, Philip.” she said with a sigh.

“No, but if I can only make the church see its duty at this time and act the Christlike way a great many persons will be saved.”  He dropped his knife and fork, wheeled around abruptly in his chair, and faced her with the question, “Would you give up this home and be content to live in a simpler fashion than we have been used to since we came here?”

“Yes,” replied his wife, quietly, “I will go anywhere and suffer anything with you.  What is it you are thinking of now?”

“I need a little more time.  There is a crisis near at hand in my thought of what Christ would require of me.  My dear, I am sure we shall be led by the spirit of Truth to do what is necessary and for the better saving of men.”

He kissed his wife tenderly and went upstairs again to his work.  All through the rest of the afternoon and in the evening, as he shaped his church and pulpit work, the words of the “Brother Man” rang in his ears, and the situation at the tenements rose in the successive panoramas before his eyes.  As the storm increased in fury with the coming darkness, he felt that it was typical in a certain sense of his own condition.  He abandoned the work he had been doing at his desk, and, kneeling down at his couch, he prayed.  Mrs. Strong, coming up to the study to see how his work was getting on, found him kneeling there and went and kneeled beside him, while together they sought the light through the storm.

So the weeks went by and the first Sunday of the next month found Philip’s Christ message even more direct and personal than any he had brought to his people before.  He had spent much of the time going into the working-men’s houses.  The tenement district was becoming familiar territory to him now.  He had settled finally what his own action ought to be.  In that action his wife fully concurred.  And the members of Calvary Church, coming in that Sunday morning, were astonished at the message of their pastor as he spoke to them from the standpoint of modern Christ.