Philip stepped up nearer the front of the platform and spoke with an added earnestness and power which thrilled every hearer.  A part of the great conflict through which he had gone that past month shone out in his pale face and found partial utterance in his impassioned speech, especially as he drew near the end.  The very abruptness of his proposition smote the people into breathless attention.

“The parsonage in which I am living is a large, even a luxurious dwelling.  It has nine large rooms.  You are familiar with its furnishings.  The salary this church pays me is $2,000 a year, a sum which more than provides for my necessary wants.  What I have decided to do is this:  I wish this church to reduce this salary one-half and take the other thousand dollars to the fitting up the parsonage for a refuge for homeless children, or for some such purpose which will commend itself to your best judgment.  There is money enough in this church alone to maintain such an institution handsomely, and not a single member of Calvary suffer any hardship whatever.  I will move into a house nearer the lower part of the town, where I can more easily reach after the people and live more among them.  That is what I propose for myself.  It is not because I believe the rich and the educated do not need the gospel or the church.  The rich and the poor both need the life more abundantly.  But I am firmly convinced that as matters now are, the church membership through pulpit and pew must give itself more than in the later ages of the world it has done for the sake of winning men.  The form of self-denial must take a definite, physical, genuinely sacrificing shape.  The Church must get back to the apostolic times in some particulars and an adaptation of community of goods and a sharing of certain aspects of civilization must mark the church membership of the coming twentieth century.  An object lesson in self-denial large enough for men to see, a self-denial that actually gives up luxuries, money, and even pleasures—­this is the only kind that will make much impression on the people.  I believe if Christ was on earth he would again call for this expression of loyalty to him.  He would again say, ’So likewise whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple?’

“All this is what I call on the members of this church to do.  Do I say that you ought to abandon your own houses and live somewhere else?  No.  I can decide only for myself in a matter of that kind.  But this much I do.  Give yourselves in some genuine way to save this town from its evil wretchedness.  It is not so much your money as your own soul that the sickness of the world needs.  This plan has occurred to me.  Why could not every family in this church become a savior to some other family, interest itself in the other, know the extent of its wants as far as possible, go to it in person, let the Christian home come into actual touch with the unchristian, in short, become a natural savior to one