CHAPTER VI.


In spite of his determination to get out and occupy his pulpit the first
Sunday of the next month, Philip was reluctantly obliged to let five
Sundays go by before he was able to preach. During those six weeks his
attention was called to a subject which he felt ought to be made the
theme of one of his talks on Christ and Modern Society. The leisure
which he had for reading opened his eyes to the fact that Sunday in
Milton was terribly desecrated. Shops of all kinds stood wide open.
Excursion trains ran into the large city forty miles away, two theatres
were always running with some variety show, and the saloons, in
violation of an ordinance forbidding it, unblushingly flung their doors
open and did more business on that day than any other. As Philip read
the papers, he noticed that every Monday morning the police court was
more crowded with "drunks" and "disorderlies" than on any other day in
the week, and the plain cause of it was the abuse of the day before. In
the summer time baseball games were played in Milton on Sunday. In the
fall and winter very many people spent their evenings in card-playing or
aimlessly strolling up and down the main street. These facts came to
Philip's knowledge gradually, and he was not long in making up his mind
that Christ would not keep silent before the facts. So he carefully
prepared a plain statement of his belief in Christ's standing on the
modern use of Sunday, and as on the other occasions when he had spoken
the first Sunday in the month, he cast out of his reckoning all thought
of the consequences. His one purpose was to do just as, in his thought
of Christ, He would do with that subject.