Strictly One Price by A. E. Place

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 12, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 18.

"Strictly One Price"

By A. E. Place

No "Special Bargains" in God's Dealings with Men

By A. E. PLACE

WE sometimes see the sign, "Strictly One Price," hanging in clothing stores, grocery stores, etc. Wherever this motto is the "Medo-Persian law" of the establishment, we pay the price, if we take the goods.

"This suit of clothes will cost you thirty dollars." "This sack of potatoes is two dollars." "This bread is ten cents a loaf." If we are satisfied with the price, and can pay it, and really desire the goods, we buy; but if not, we pass on.

Everything has a price. Some stores have at least two prices,—the "asking price" and the "selling price"; but God's store is "strictly one price, and everything is plainly marked."

Honesty, purity, justice, patience, holiness, each has a price, and there is nothing fictitious about it. God never advertises, "Was $100, to-day only $75." No! Yesterday these virtues cost a life of self-denial, sacrifice, and tears. They cost the same to-day. The price and the cost are ever the same. They cost us what they cost the Son of the living God two thousand years ago.

A good education costs years of hard study, close application, tedious examinations; but if properly applied, it is worth all it costs. Everything that is truly good is worth what it costs.

We hear a talented pianist or violinist, and are inspired with a longing to possess such ability as his; and without careful consideration, we exclaim, "O, I would give anything if I could play like that!" Yet if we have a reasonable amount of musical talent, and we mean what we say, we might gratify our desire. But it would mean, Pay the price; and that price is years of drilling on scales, five-finger exercises, harmony, technique, etc.

Some one once asked a noted Italian violinist how much time he had spent in practise. He replied, "From six to twelve hours every day for twenty years." But with his violin he could sway audiences at will. Why? — He had paid the price.

If our hearts, our voices, our tempers, our desires, our bodies, were "kept in subjection" to the will of the divine Teacher, with anything like the devotion of that Italian, we may be assured that ere twenty years had passed, God would cause us to sway the hearts and souls of men, and our own souls would be thrilled with a joy unknown to the musician who works for the applause of man.

If a minister reads this, let us consider carefully the following statement: "Many of our ministers are dwarfs to-day who might, by a wise use of their time and talents, have become intellectual giants."

Reader, do you want good goods? Then pay the price. Do not think you can deceive God on examination day. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." Gal. 6:7, 8.

Our penal institutions, and many of the graves in our cemeteries, are filled with men, women, and children, who tried to get the goods without paying the price. Taking without leave, "buying on margins," selling by "light weight"—in a word, trying to "climb up some other way" (John 10:1)—are snares of the devil, and he who is snared will in the end pay the devil's price for the folly. "The wages of sin is death."

Is there a boy or a girl, a young man or a young woman, reading these lines? Then stop right here long enough to lift your eyes and heart to Him who rules on high and knows our very thoughts, and sincerely pray, "My Father, for Christ's sake, for the sake of my mother, my loved ones, for my own soul's sake, I will from this day deal at Your store only, and by Your grace I will pay the price."