s
friends exert upon us, the truths our reading puts into our minds, the
impressions life leaves upon us, the inspirations we receive from the
divine Spirit--ever the builders are at work on these characters of
ours, but they work silently, without noise of hammer or axe.

There is another suggestion. Down in the dark quarries, under the
city, the men wrought, cutting, hewing, polishing, the stones. They
hung their little lamps on the walls, and with their hammers and
chisels they hewed away at the great blocks. Months and years passed;
then one day there was a grand dedication, and there in the glorious
sunshine all the secret, obscure work of those years was seen in its
final beauty, amid the joy of a nation. If the men who had wrought in
the quarries were present that day, what a joy it must have been to
them to think of their work in preparing the great stones for their
place in the magnificent building!

Here is a parable. This world is the quarry. We are toiling away in
the darkness. We cannot see what good is ever to come out of our
lonely, painful, obscure toil. Yet some day our quarry-work will be
manifested in the glory of heaven. We are preparing materials now and
here for the temple of the great King, which in heaven is slowly rising
through the ages. No noise of hammer or axe is heard in all that
wondrous building, because the stones are all shaped and polished and
made entirely ready in this world.

We are the stones, and the world is God's quarry. The stones for the
temple were cut out of the great rock in the dark underground cavern.
They were rough and shapeless. Then they were dressed into form, and
this required a great deal of cutting, hammering, and chiselling.
Without this stern, sore work on the stones, not one of them could ever
have filled a place in the temple. At last when they were ready they
were lifted out of the dark quarry and carried up to the mountain-top,
where the temple was rising, and were laid in their place.

We are stones in the quarry as yet. When we accepted Christ we were
cut from the great mass of rock. But we were yet rough and unshapely;
not fit for heaven. Before we can be ready for our place in the
heavenly temple we must be hewn and shaped. The hammer must do its
work, breaking off the roughnesses. The chisel must be used, carving
and polishing our lives into beauty. This work is done in the many
processes of life. Every sinful thing, every fault