"Five hundred yards below the surface and three miles from the pit's mouth, it was that the Lord spoke to me, sir.”
Thus said the young miner in answer to my question as to how he was converted.
In a few words he told the story of the grace of God which had plucked him as a brand from the burning and given him a place of nearness and dearness in the Son of His love.
With all the vigor of his manhood, he had been working early and late in order to make money sufficient to enable him to get married. Stinting himself even in his food and clothing, only taking the barest necessities, he was adding sovereign to sovereign right rapidly.
Long hours and short rations were telling, however, upon his strong frame, when a letter from a dear friend reached him one morning. In it this solemn verse was quoted: "WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN IF HE SHALL GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD AND LOSE HIS OWN SOUL?”
Pick in hand, in the darkness of those coal "facings," the all-important question pressed its way into his very soul. "'What shall it profit,' indeed?" he thought. Resuming his work, he endeavored to shake from his mind the newly awakened 'convictions.
Days and weeks and months passed. Still the words remained with him, and his anxiety increased. His agony of soul almost deepened into despair.
Then, attending one place of religious service after another, he sought rest, but found none. But at last he heard the wondrous message of the grace of God: "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." John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16).
The light streamed in. He had already learned that he was a sinner deep in trespasses. Now, convicted before God, he found his powerlessness to redeem himself, or to work out his own salvation. But now he also discovered that God —the God whom he feared, and from whom he fain would have hidden, had loved, "so loved the world," that He had given His only Son, in order that "WHOSOEVER believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
In all simplicity the word was preached, and in all simplicity it was received. The anxious miner learned, on the stable authority of the unalterable Word of God, that he, as a believer on the Son of God, should not perish. Not only so! He knew, too, that eternal life was his.
Reader, what will it profit YOU, if YOU gain the whole world and lose your own soul? A very improbable gain indeed, which, if possible, would not satisfy your aching, longing heart, and a certain loss of your precious, priceless soul.
You may heap together riches, and lay field to field, and house to house, but remember, "shrouds have no pockets"; and those who barter their precious souls for sordid gain, or passing pleasures, will find indeed they have made a BAD BARGAIN.
We brought nothing into the world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The folly of frittering away eternal joys for the "pleasures of sin for a season" will be discovered when too late, before the great white throne.
Pause then NOW. Go not one step further into the fool's path to shame and sorrow and woe. Salvation is offered! The Son of God has died, and risen again, and is now glorified at the right hand of God.
The glorious gospel is still sounding out. Will you receive it?