It appears to me that there are four great tests of value.
I. The first test of value is rarity. A thing is valuable according to its scarceness. Apply this test to religion. It is holiness and happiness rare things in this world, look for them where you will. The most unique and precious thing under heaven is the religion which will make you holy and happy, which, as John Bunyan says, is only to be had at one storehouse, and if you apply there you can get it without either money or price.
II. Take another test of value the verdict of a competent authority. A picture has hung on a cottage wall for years, an unvalued heirloom, that hangs there simply because it is its accustomed place. There comes in one who knows, and he uses means to take away the canker and the rust of time, and unburies a patch of subtle colour that lies beneath, and he says in a moment, "Why, that is a Rembrandt," and in a moment the verdict of a competent authority gives it a value that it never possessed before. True religion can stand the test of the verdict of a competent authority.
III. Not only rarity, not only the verdict of a competent authority, but durability, is an important test of value. I need not tell you how long religion will last. Let the white-haired patriarch get up and preach; let the man who has tried it for half a century get up and tell us how he finds his Lord, and His faithfulness to cheer him as he passes along the lanes of life. Religion will stand the test, you may depend upon it, of durability.
IV. There is the test of adaptation. Does it perfectly meet my need? What do I want I who am a poor sinner, I who have grieved my God, I who know of an eternal doom to the transgressor, I who am overpowered and oppressed by the cares and trials and tribulations of my life and cannot dry a single tear that falls, I who have an eternity of destiny of some sort what do I want? Sin-stained, condemned as I am, God knows I want a Saviour most of all. Thank God, He is found, and He hangs upon the cross, and because He died I shall live. He is adapted to my highest and deepest and grandest emergency.
J. Jackson Wray, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 360.
References: Matthew 13:44-46. Christian World Pulpit,vol. v., p. 167; M. Dods, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 35; Parker, Inner Life of Christ,vol. ii., p. 256; J. R. Macduff, Parables of the Lake,p. 139.