“I tell you again, mate, ‘religion’ may be fine for women and children, but it will not do for men.”
So spoke Jonathan Winters, an old miner, to one of the miners who had recently decided to follow Christ.
“And as for you, Roger,” continued Jonathan, “you are already the softest, most chicken-hearted chap I know. And if you really are going to be pious and Bible-reading in the bargain, 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 be if you stick to religion, I should like to know?”
“Something better than I have been,” replied Roger softly, and with laughter and jokes the men went on to work.
Roger and Jonathan, with about a hundred others, were employed in the operation of a coal mine. Roger was the only Christian among them, and as time went on Roger was laughed at and annoyed, but he never gave up “religion.”
It was a sunny day at noon when Roger was let down in the bucket to the bottom of the shaft. When he reached the floor, he began handing some tools and supplies to “Little Ben,” a sort of errand boy below. The basket was soon emptied, and Roger was stepping out.
But wait! What was that sound? It was the rushing of water! He knew at once that the water from a nearby river had found its way into the mine. In a few minutes his fellow-workmen would be overwhelmed and lost.
One foot was still in the bucket. A jerk of the rope, and it would be raised and he would be safe. It was the supreme challenge to his timid nature. Then he remembered the other miners-their unfitness for death and their ignorance of the love of Christ.
The thought of the Savior nerved his heart. He would not save himself while they were unwarned. Jumping out, he seized “Little Ben” and shoved him in the bucket, saying as he jerked the rope: “Tell all the town that the water is coming in and that we are probably lost. We will try to get to the far end of the right gallery. Be quick!”
The next moment the bucket and the boy disappeared above him.
The mine was a series of long, narrow passages from which the coal had been dug. Hurrying along these, Roger soon reached the working crew and told them of the danger.
It was a terrible moment! Each man would have rushed away in a vain effort to save himself, but his purpose made the timid Roger firm and calm.
He told them of the message he had sent to the surface, and they followed him with their picks to the end of the right gallery. It was the highest point at that level, and the trapped men succeeded in making an opening into a higher chamber with their picks. Here they hoped they would be above the level which the fast-rising water would reach. Into this opening the men hurried, to await slow deliverance or to perish by hunger, drowning or suffocation.
During the long, dreary hours which followed, Roger prayed and entreated, and after the first excitement had passed, the men listened as men will listen when face to face with death.
Meanwhile, far above, relief operations had begun. Guided by Roger’s message, rescue teams worked 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 men above. With new vigor they toiled, and soon the entombed miners were reached. Several were dead, but more than half, including Roger, were alive.
Eventually all of the rescued men recovered from their ordeal. With many, the impressions made on their souls led to their accepting the same Christ who had so inspired Roger, and they lived afterward as converted men.
And Jonathan Winters, who had been the first to sneer at Roger’s confession of Christ? When he learned how Roger might have saved himself and left the 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, mates, that it has made him what many of us would scarce have dared. The ‘Bible-reading’ that can make a timid chap like him risk his life for the sake of telling us about a Savior must be good for us all. I cast in my lot with Roger.”