Mr. Duncan, a traveling preacher, was passing a quarry where the stones are cracked by machinery. Hearing the noise of the machine, he walked in and stood watching the process of breaking. Some stones were ground very small, and others were broken in large pieces.
The workers noticed and began to make remarks about "the idler in the black coat" and complained of the hardness of their own toil. Mr. Duncan heard their comments and called out, "What is that you say about hard work? I say that from your appearance you know very little what real hard work is.
"Look," he continued, "at your great strong limbs! 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 laugh at my black coat, and you say that 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," said the preacher; "I do that much walking in addition to my daily work of visiting and preaching. Frequently after evening gospel service I start back on a nine or ten miles' journey when you are at rest in bed, and sometimes I reach 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 break. Hard stones they are too, and sometimes it will take many months to crack one of them. Once I remember it took eighteen months of pounding one, for the stones my Master expects me to crack are stony hearts. That work is so hard that the greater part must be done upon my knees, and only by using the hammer of God's Word and the powerful lever of His Spirit can I crack such hard stones." The preacher walked away from the quarry, leaving the men silent and ashamed of their ridicule.
With thankfulness to God he meditated on the hard, stony heart which he had mentioned as taking eighteen months to crack.
It was that of Ned Lane, the son of a godly mother, but a wicked father. Ned's salvation had been much upon Mr. Duncan's heart, and for that full eighteen months he had made it his practice to knock at Ned's door every time he went to the village. Each time the man of God knocked, Ned would shout: "Go away! I don't want you nor your preaching neither." Still Mr. Duncan knocked again and again, saying as he knocked on Tuesday evenings: "We are having preaching in the hall tonight. We'd be glad to see you over, friend.”
The preacher knew that Ned's mother was praying, too, and he believed in the efficacy of such prayers.
One day as Ned was at work, one of his buddies said to him: "I say, Ned! How about going to the meeting at the hall tonight? Would you care to go with me?”
"Why, Jim, I was thinking the same thing, but I did not like to tell you for fear you would laugh at me.”
Thus the Holy Spirit drew them both to the meeting, and as the preacher walked to the front of the crowded room he heard Ned joining in the singing:
"There is a stream of precious blood
Which flowed from Jesus' veins;
And sinners washed in that blest flood
Lose all their guilty stains.”
"Why, friend," inquired the preacher; "can you sing 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 this room your old father is down upon his knees crying to God for mercy; and He who hears will answer his need too.”
Ned was brought to Christ that night, as was his father. His was truly a broken and contrite heart, a living stone for God's spiritual house.