A WONDERFUL MINE—A SERMON-STORY ON THE RIGHT USE OF
MONEY

[It will make this talk more vivid if the speaker has some actual specimens of various ores to show as he talks.]

Once, far away in a part of the world you never heard of, there lived a great king who was the possessor of a wonderful mine. This mine held all the riches that could be imagined. There were great veins of valuable ore running in all directions through the earth, and the king had made shafts reaching down to them, so that any one could work the veins.

Now this king was one of the most generous of monarchs, and he permitted any one who wished, to enter his wonderful mine with pick and shovel and wheelbarrow, and take from it just as much riches as he could.

“As much riches as he could,” I said, for it was not always as much as he wished, as you will see, for this mine was very different from other mines. The people went into it in droves, and they all had shovels just alike, and picks just alike, and their wheelbarrows were no different one from the other. More than that, the veins of ore upon which they worked were all the same, and yet no two men took from that mine the same kind of material. Men who worked next to each other, only a few feet apart, would get from it substances strangely unlike.

One man, for instance, would work all day throwing the ore into his wheelbarrow, and would find, when he trundled it out at night, that the wheelbarrow was entirely empty, and that all the ore had disappeared.

Another man would work in the same way, but at the end of the day would find his wheelbarrow filled with an ugly load of thorns and poisonous weeds, that polluted the very air around them.

Some would wheel from the mine a barrowful of gold, solid and valuable. Others, though they seemed to be throwing into their wheelbarrows nothing but the same dull ore found all over the mine, would come from the shaft at night wheeling before them a barrowful of glittering diamonds, that flashed and sparkled, and made the place seem like daylight though the sun had gone down.

And there were others—and these were the happiest of all—who, as soon as they wheeled their load from the mine, would see the heavy metal suddenly fly upward and disappear in the sky. These people would go away with an empty wheelbarrow and with the men around laughing at them, but yet their faces were bright and merry as if they thought themselves the richest folks in the world.

I presume you are wondering by this time, children, what this wonderful mine is. It is nothing but the world,—the marvellous world, which is so full of riches of all kinds. God lets all of us dig away at it, and he gives us all about the same tools to dig with,—about the same bodies, and the same minds. More than that, he sets before all of us the same great mine of wealth; and yet how different are the results of our digging!

One man finds all the wealth that he thinks he has accumulated turn to empty air. This is because he has been unwise and careless in his work, and has not worked for anything that is permanent and growing.

In the hands of another man all his wealth turns to poison. This is the man who uses for evil purposes the money he gets.

In the hands of a third man, his money remains gold. He is able to use it in worldly ways, but nothing more comes of it. Some men, though, know how to make wonderful things out of their money even for this world, using their money to build beautiful houses, and establish great schools, and found libraries, and buy beautiful pictures, and do other things of the sort.

These same men may belong, if they are wise, to the last class ofy all. They may spend the money that they make in such a way as to lay up treasure in heaven. They may feed the hungry and clothe the naked; they may give work to the poor; they may build better houses for those who are living in wretched hovels; they may improve the prisons and asylums, and the workhouses and the schools. In a thousand ways they may let light into the dark places of the world, and happiness into sorrowful hearts. This is the best way of all to use money, and this is the Bible way.