MINERALS AND CRYSTALS 187 



large river and ocean, these drops come to a crack 

 or a little empty hole, and each drop lays down not 

 only its load of atoms but itself too, and together 

 they grow into these beautiful crystals. The first 

 few drops will grow into a tiny crystal hardly the 

 size of a needle point; but as more drops come the 

 crystals grow larger and larger, — some crystals, 

 like beryl, becoming very large, as much as three 

 feet in diameter. However small they are when we 

 find them, or however large they become if they are 

 left to grow by themselves, they always have their 

 own shape. A crystal of quartz would never take 

 the form of a crystal of garnet, nor would a crystal 

 of sulphur ever become like a crystal of topaz. 

 Isn't it wonderful that each crystal seems to know 

 just what form to take? 



Every mineral has a law which God has given to 

 it, and when it has an opportunity to crystallize, it 

 always forms with just as many faces (as we call its 

 sides) as had been given to it by that law. Does it 

 seem strange to you to think of the crystals as doing 

 anything? Rocks have always seemed just cold, 

 dead rocks to you, have they not? Did you think 

 that there was any part of the rock that could change 

 and grow? 



Yet change and growth is everywhere in God's 

 universe, and God means that the rocks shall change 

 and grow, as trees and plants and we ourselves do, 

 only much more slowly. Does He not change the 

 surface of the earth that we can see? Then why not 

 the deep places which we cannot see? 



Look at the cube of iron pyrites in the slate. Who 



