MINERAL SUBSTANCES. 11 



was brought to a proper state for the agencies of li^e, 

 then, and not till then, was life introduced by the Crea- 

 tor upon the stage of action. Then the mineral matter 

 in earth, water, and air began to be acted upon by the 

 new agencies, and there were evolved living forms, veg- 

 etable and animal. And these forms were capable of 

 producing substances which no mere chemical action of 

 the mineral atoms was able to produce during all the 

 long lifeless ages of the world, or during the long ages 

 since. The elements of which starch, sugar, fat, etc., are 

 composed, have been in existence ever since the matter 

 of our world was first created, and they exist now abun- 

 dantly in the air and water ; and yet, though they have 

 always been acting upon each other, never have they 

 been able so to combine as to produce these substances, 

 unless life come in to direct their action. Life is contin- 

 ually evolving new forms and substances from dead min- 

 eral matter, which in the change it endows with proper- 

 ties that it did not before possess. 



6. Decay. In what is termed the decay of animal and 

 vegetable substances, we have the opposite of the proc- 

 esses alluded to in 5. Here we have a return of living 

 substances to the state of dead mineral matter. There 

 is no actual decay that is, no real loss of matter, but 

 merely change in the relations of the atoms which com- 

 pose the substances. Life has let go its control, and the 

 atoms obey the common laws of chemistry. For exam- 

 ple : an egg has life in it, and that life, with the aid of 

 a proper degree of heat, evolves within that prison of 

 chalk a complicated living form a bird ; but let that 

 life in some way be destroyed, and chemical action at 

 once begins its work, returning the matter to the min- 

 eral world by combinations of ks atoms in new forms. 

 One of these combinations, for example, is a gas, which 

 is the cause of the peculiarly disagreeable odor of a de- 

 caying egg sulphureted hydrogen, resulting from the 

 union of sulphur with hydrogen gas. 



