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TOO CHEAP

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 11, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 10.

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TOO CHEAP.

A PREACHER of the Gospel had gone down in a coal mine during the noon hour to tell the miners of that grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ. After telling them the simple story of God’s love to lost sinners, man’s state and God’s remedy, the time came for the men to resume work, and the preacher came back to the shaft to ascend to the world again. Meeting the foreman, he asked him what he thought of God’s way of salvation. The man replied:—
“O, it’s too cheap. I can not believe in such a religion as that.”
Without any immediate answer to this remark, the preacher asked:—
“How do you get out of this place?”
“Simply by getting into the cage,” was the reply.
“And does it take long to get to the top?”
“O, no; only a few seconds.”
“Well, that is very easy and simple. But do you not need to help raise yourself?” said the preacher.
“Of course not,” replied the miner. “As I have said, you have nothing to do but to get in the cage.”
“But how about the people who sunk the shaft and perfected all this arrangement? Was there much labor or expense about it?”
“Indeed, yes; that was a laborious and expensive work. The shaft is 1,800 feet deep, and it was sunk at a great cost to the proprietor; but it is our only way out, and without it we should never be able to get to the surface.”
“Just so. And when God’s Word tells you that whosoever believeth in the Son of God has life everlasting, you at once say, ‘Too cheap, too cheap,’ forgetting that God’s work to bring you and others out of the pit of destruction and death was accomplished at a vast cost, the price being the death of his own Son.”
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
—Baptist Teacher.