the stones under our feet. I do not mean, of course, that stones
can think as our life makes us do, or feel as the beasts' life makes
them do, or even grow as the trees' life makes them do; but I mean
that their life keeps them as they are, without changing or
decaying. You hear miners and quarrymen talk very truly of the live
rock. That stone, they say, was cut out of the live rock, meaning
the rock as it is under ground, sound and hard--as it would be, for
aught we know, to the end of time, unless it was taken out of the
ground, out of the place where God's Spirit meant it to be, and
brought up to the open air and the rain, in which it is not its
nature to be. And then you will see that the life of the stone
begins to pass from it bit by bit, that it crumbles and peels away,
and, in short, decays and is turned again to its dust. Its
organisation, as it is called, or life, ends, and then--what? does
the stone lie for ever useless? No! And there is the great blessed
mystery of how God's Spirit is always bringing life out of death.
When the stone is decayed and crumbled down to dust and clay, it
makes SOIL--this very soil here, which you plough, is the decayed
ruins of ancient hills; the clay which you dig up in the fields was
once part of some slate or granite mountains, which were worn away
by weather and water, that they might become fruitful earth.
Wonderful! but any one who has studied these things can tell you
they are true. Any one who has ever lived in mountainous countries
ought to have seen the thing happen, ought to know that the land in
the mountain valleys is made at first, and kept rich year by year,
by the washings from the hills above; and this is the reason why
land left dry by rivers and by the sea is generally so rich. Then
what becomes of the soil? It begins a new life. The roots of the
plants take it up; the salts which they find in it--the staple, as
we call them--go to make leaves and seed; the very sand has its use,