A TRAVELLING preacher was passing a quarry at Torquay, where the stones are cracked by machinery. Hearing the noise of a machine, he walked in and stood looking at the process of breaking. He observed that some stones were ground very small, and others were broken in larger pieces.
The men soon began to make remarks about the black coat and the hardness of their toil.
Mr. D. turned round upon them, asking, “What is that I heard you say about hard work?" He then told them it was evident from their appearance that they knew very little about real hard work.
“Look," said he,” at your great strong limbs I You could wheel up three times as much as you do, could you not? "
“Dare say we could," replied the men.
“Very well, then, you are not overworked; but you joke about my black coat, and you suppose I know nothing about hard work. Tell me—would twenty miles be a day's walk for you? "
“Shouldn’t like to do more," was the reply.
" Well," continued the preacher; "I do that walking in addition to my work of visiting and preaching ; and frequently after evening service I start back on a nine or twelve miles' journey when you are at rest in bed, and sometimes reaching home covered with snow and wet. But more than all that, and far harder than all else of my work put together, I have stones to crack. Hard stones they are too, for sometimes it will take many months to crack one of them. Once I remember it took eighteen months to do so, for the stones my Master employs me to crack are stony hearts. The work is so hard that it can only be accomplished by the greater part being done upon the knees, and only the hammer of God's Word and the powerful lever of His Spirit can crack such hard stones."
As the preacher walked on his way the men looked after him, but one of them followed him, and gave him a little of his history.
He said he was at one time a professing Christian, but, that going to London, he had fallen into bad company, which had led him away from the Lord Jesus. He now expressed his pleasure at finding a servant of God bold enough to come and speak plainly to the quarrymen.
The hard, stony heart which the preacher had mentioned as taking eighteen months to crack was that of Ned L. He was the son of a godly mother, but a wicked father.
The salvation of Ned was much upon the mind of the preacher, Mr. D., and for about eighteen months he had made it a habit to knock at Ned's door every time he went into the village. But as the man of God knocked Ned would reply: "Go on, I don't want you nor your preaching neither." But still Mr. D. continued to knock, again and again, saying as he knocked every Tuesday evening: “We are going to have preaching in the hop-house tonight. We shall be glad to see you over, friend."
The preacher knew that Ned had a praying mother, and he believed in the efficacy of a mother's prayers.
One day as Ned was at work, one of his companions said to him: “I say, Ned! I would like to go to the meeting at the hop-house tonight, if you would care to go with me."
“Why, Jim, I was thinking the same, but did not like to tell you, lest you should laugh at me."
So the Holy Spirit drew them both to the meeting, and as the preacher walked to the bottom of the crowded room he heard Ned joining in the singing.
“Why, mate!” enquired the preacher; “are you singing that?”
“Yes, and I mean it," was Ned's reply as the tears ran down his swarthy cheeks.
The preacher answered Ned by saying: “At the other end of the room your old father is down upon his knees crying for mercy; and God, who hears prayer, will answer his cry. Ned was brought to Christ, as was his father; and his after-life proved that his was truly a broken and contrite heart, and thus was the stone in the preacher's quarry cracked.
RHODA.