In preparing places for planting new trees, the diggers found it needful in certain spots to lay aside the spade and use the pick-axe. In those positions there had been a well travelled carriage road, and hence it was hard to deal with it. How often, when we are under sanctifying influences, do we find certain hard points of our character which are not couched by ordinary influences; these are most probably sins in which we have become hardened, tracks worn by habitual transgression. We must not wonder if the severest processes of affliction should be tried upon us, if the pick-axe is used instead of the spade, that our stony places may yet yield soil for the plants of grace and holiness.