“I tell you again mate, religion may be fine for some, but it won’t do for real men.”
So spoke Jon Winters, a miner, to one of the men who had recently decided to follow Christ.
“And as for you, Roger,” continued Jon, “you are already the softest, most chicken-hearted man I know. And if you really are going to be pious and a Bible reader as well, you’ll turn so soft that a shadow will frighten you. Give it up, mate; give it up! You’re only half a man as it is, but whatever will you become if you stick to religion, I should like to know?”
“Something better than I have been” was Roger’s quiet answer.
Roger and Jon, with about a hundred others, worked in the same mine. Roger was the only Christian among them, and many a joke he had to bear about his “Bible reading.”
Months passed, and one day Roger was let down in the bucket to the bottom of the mine shaft. When he reached the floor he began handing some tools and supplies out to Ben, a helper. The bucket was soon emptied, and Roger was stepping out.
But stop! What was that sound? Water—rushing water. Water in the mine! There was a break somewhere, and in a few minutes the mine would be flooded.
One foot was in the bucket. A jerk of the rope and it could be raised and he would be saved. Then he remembered his mates—their certain death—their willful ignorance of the love of Christ.
The thought of the Saviour nerved his heart. He would not save himself while they died without warning.
Jumping out, he shoved Ben into the bucket, saying as he jerked the rope: “Tell them that the water is coming in and we will make for the far end of the right gallery. Be quick!”
The next moment the bucket and Ben disappeared.
The mine was a series of long, narrow passages from which the coal had been dug. Rushing along these, Roger reached the crew in time to tell them of their danger. It was a terrible moment. Each one would have rushed wildly away in futile effort to save himself, but his firm purpose made the timid Roger calm, and he quietly took command. He told them of the message he had sent to the surface, and that they must follow him to the end of the right gallery carrying their picks. It was the highest point they could reach, and the trapped men succeeded in hollowing out a chamber still higher up. Hoping they would be above the level which the fast-rising water would reach, the men scrambled up as high as they could go, there to wait slow deliverance—or drowning or suffocation.
During the long, dismal hours which followed, Roger prayed and entreated, and after the first excitement had passed, the men listened as men listen when face-to-face with death.
Meanwhile, far above, relief operations had begun. Guided by Roger’s message, rescue teams toiled night and day sinking a new shaft above the right gallery. On the morning of the fifth day, faint sounds of hammering below greeted the weary rescuers above. With new energy they toiled, and soon the entombed miners were reached. Some had died, but more than half, and among them Roger, were still alive.
Among them was Jon Winters, who had been the first to sneer at Roger’s confession of Christ. When he learned how Roger might have saved himself and Ben, leaving others to their fate, he exclaimed: “I said that religion would make Roger more of a softy than he was before, but it seems to me that it has made him do more than most of us would have dared. The Bible reading that can make a timid fellow like him risk his life for the sake of telling us about a Saviour must be good for all. I cast in my lot with Roger.”
“ But God commendeth His love
toward us, in that,
while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us.”