p. 9 | Does It Pay? by R. A. UNDERWOOD

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 7, 1908

Does It Pay?

By R. A. UNDERWOOD

R. A. UNDERWOOD

SOME people say you can’t afford to be a Seventh-day Adventist; a Seventh-day Adventist is supposed to pay a tithe of his income for the support of the gospel ministry; he is asked to give ten cents a week for the support of foreign missions; and besides this, he is called upon to make donations for church expenses, the needy poor, and other benevolent enterprises. Can he afford to do all this?

The Saviour has promised the life that now is, as well as the one to come, to all who sincerely love and obey the gospel of Christ. Are the requirements of the gospel an unbearable burden, a yoke of bondage the Christian is unable to carry?

Let us compare the price of sin with the requirements of the gospel. In doing this, let us glance at a few items of expense the world-loving, pleasure-seeking man and woman has to meet. And remember that those who indulge in these expenses receive disappointment, and as a reward, pain, disease, and premature death; and in the end, they suffer the loss of eternal life.

Look for a moment at some of these expenses. The annual average expense for each person in the United States, for alcoholic drinks, including wine and beer, is the enormous sum of $21.80. If we estimate that only one half of the population indulge in such beverages, then the average cost to all who do, is $43.60.

Again, the annual average cost for each man and woman and child in this country for tobacco is twelve dollars; or, on the above basis, estimating that only one half the population indulge in the use of these articles, it costs all who do, $24 annually.

So for these two articles alone, on the estimate that but one half the population use them, for each person who does, there is paid out no less than $67.60,—consumed upon the altar of perverted appetite.

To this list we might add the expense of gambling, and grosser indulgences, represented by a large sum, annually sacrificed to the god of lust and worldly pleasure, which only end in everlasting shame,—and at what a price! Time, honor, position, virtue, manhood, and womanhood, health, wealth, even life itself, with the loss of heaven at last,—are all sacrificed for the indulgence of sin.

Those who willingly sacrifice all this upon such an altar, actually say, “You can not afford to be a Seventh-day Adventist; it costs too much.”

Now look at another list of possible lesser evils. We will make no estimate, but simply call attention to such articles as are unnecessary and harmful in their tendencies, as the use of tea and coffee, the large expense of ornamental jewelry, drugs, chewing-gum, the abnormal use of confectionery, a large outlay in attendance at shows and theaters, which all have a demoralizing effect, the expenditure of large sums of money for trashy reading, exciting novels, or other demoralizing literature.

Then we might speak of the large class of individuals who are connected with some form of lodges. We do not wish to enter into the question of criticizing these various lodges; but, to say the least, it is no uncommon thing for men and women to belong to from two to six lodges. It would not be an unreasonable estimate to say that the average man who has membership in one or more of these societies, pays out at least ten dollars and upward, annually, to support these organizations.

But in the list which I have given, a Seventh-day Adventist’s expenses find no place. Of course, I have not mentioned the ordinary necessaries of life, in the use of which all must alike have a share.

Every one will admit that the items in the foregoing lists of expenses are unnecessary for either comfort or happiness; indeed, in most cases they are positively injurious, rendering the present life wretched, and finally taking away forever the life to come. But the true and faithful Adventist is the gainer, in happiness, in health, in the ability to enable his family to enjoy life, and to be a blessing to the world, even in this present life; while at the same time he has assurance of an unending life where every trace of the curse is removed. He lives on and on, through a never-ending eternity, as a son of God, a joint-heir to the treasures and wealth of Jesus Christ. Does it pay?

Minneapolis, Minn.