The Crucifixion of Philip StrongSheldon, Charles M.
General
The Crucifixion of Philip Strong
Sheldon, Charles M.
Christian fiction
He was not so destitute of support as he thought. There were many
mothers' hearts in Milton that had ached and prayed in agony long years
that the Almighty would come with his power and sweep the curse away.
But Philip had not been long enough in Milton to know the entire
sentiment of the people. He had so far touched only the Church, through
its representative pulpits, and a few of the leading business men, and
the result had been almost to convince him that very little help could be
expected from the public generally. He was appalled to find out what a
tremendous hold the whisky men had on the business and politics of the
place. It was a revelation to him of their power. The whole thing seemed
to him like a travesty of free government, and a terrible commentary on
the boasted Christianity of the century.
So when he walked into the pulpit the first Sunday of the month he felt
his message burning in his heart and on his lips as never before. It
seemed beyond all question that if Christ was pastor of Calvary Church
he would speak out in plain denunciation of the whisky power. And so,
after the opening part of the service, Philip rose to speak, facing an
immense audience that overflowed the galleries and invaded the choir and
even sat upon the pulpit platform. Such a crowd had never been seen in
Calvary Church before.
Philip had not announced his subject, but there was an expectation on
the part of many that he was going to denounce the saloon. In the two
months that he had been preaching in Milton he had attracted great
attention. His audience this morning represented a great many different
kinds of people. Some came out of curiosity. Others came because the
crowd was going that way. So it happened that Philip faced a truly
representative audience of Milton people. As his eye swept over the
house he saw four of the six members of his church who were up for
office at the coming election in two weeks.
For an hour Philip spoke as he had never spoken in all his life before.
His subject, the cause it represented, the immense audience, the entire
occasion caught him up in a genuine burst of eloquent fury, and his
sermon swept through the house like a prairie fire driven by a high
gale. At the close, he spoke of the power of the Church compared with
the saloon, and showed how easily it could win the victory against any
kind of evil if it were only united and determined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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