Mr. Duncan, a traveling preacher, was passing a quarry where the stones were being cracked. Hearing the noise of the machinery, 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 soon noticed him and began to make remarks about “the loafer in the coat and tie” and to compare his work with their own. Duncan heard their comments and asked, “What is that you say about hard work? I say that from your appearance you know very little about 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 coat and 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.
“But more than that, and far harder than all the rest 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 on 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 silenced.
With thankfulness to God he thought of the hard, stony heart which he had mentioned as taking eighteen months to crack. The salvation of Ned Lane had been on Duncan’s heart for that full eighteen months, and he had made it a practice to knock at Ned’s door every time he passed his house. Each time he knocked Ned would shout; “Go away! I don’t want you nor your preaching neither.”
Still Duncan knocked again and again, saying as he knocked on Tuesday evenings, “We’re having preaching in the hall tonight. We’d be glad to see you over, friend.”
One day as Ned was at work, one of his friends said to him, “I say, Ned! How about going to the meeting at the hall tonight? Would you like to go with me?”
“Why Jim, I was thinking the same thing, but I thought you would laugh at me.”
So they both went 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,” asked the preacher, “can you sing that?”
“Yes, and I mean it,” was Ned’s reply as the tears ran down his cheeks.
Ned was brought to God that night. His was truly a broken and contrite heart. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise. (Psalm 51:1717The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. (Psalm 51:17).)
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