original, probably means a stone which has been tested and stood the
trial. And because it is thus a tested stone, it therefore is a precious
stone. There are two kinds of testing--the testing from the assaults of
enemies, and the testing by the building upon it of friends. And both
these methods of proof have been applied, and it has stood the test.

Think of all the assaults that have been made from this side and the
other against Christ and His gospel, and what has become of them all?
Travellers tell us how they often see some wandering tribes of savage
Arabs trying to move the great stones, for instance, of Baalbec--those
wonders of unfinished architecture. But what can a crowd of such people,
with all their crowbars and levers, do to the great stone bedded there,
where it has been for centuries? They cannot stir it one hair's-breadth.
And so, against Jesus Christ and His gospel there has stormed for
eighteen hundred years an assaulting crowd, varying in its individuals
and in its methods of attack, but the same in its purpose, and the same
in the fruitlessness of its effort. Century after century they have
said, as they are saying to-day, '_Now_ the final assault is going to be
delivered; it can never stand _this_.' And when the smoke has cleared
away there may be a little blackening upon the edge, but there is not a
chip off its bulk, and it stands in its bed where it did; and of all the
grand preparations for a shattering explosion, nothing is left but a
sulphurous smell, and a wreath of smoke, and both are floating away down
into the distance. Generation after generation has attacked the gospel;
generation after generation has been foiled; and I do not need to be a
prophet, or the son of a prophet, to be quite sure of this, that all who
to-day are trying to destroy men's faith in the Incarnate Son of God,
who died for them and rose again, will meet the same fate. I can see the
ancient and discredited systems of unbelief, that have gone down into
oblivion, rising from their seats, as the prophet in his great vision