PHYSICAL IMPROVEMENT. 43 



able by man, uor can tliey become again fitted for human use, • 

 except tlirougli great geological changes, or other mysterious in- 

 fluences or agencies of which we have no present knowledge and { 

 •over which we have no prospective control. The earth is fast , 

 becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant, and another 

 era of equal human crime and hmnan improvidence, and of hke 

 duration with that through which traces of that crime and that 

 improvidence extend, would reduce it to such a condition of im- 

 poverished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic ex- 

 cess, as to threaten the depravation, barbarism and perhaps even 

 extinction of the species.* 



Physical Improvement. 



True, there is a partial reverse to this picture. On narrow 

 theatres, new forests have been planted ; inundations of flowing 

 streams restrained by heavy walls of masonry and other construc- 

 tions; torrents compelled to aid, by depositing the slime with 

 which they are charged, in filling up lowlands, and raising the 

 level of inorasses which their own overflows had created ; ground 

 submerged by the encroachments of the ocean, or exposed to be 

 <iovered by its tides, has been rescued from its dominion by 

 ■diking ; swamps and even lakes have been drained, and their 

 beds brought within the domain of agricultural industry ; drift- 

 ing coast dunes have been checked and made productive by 

 plantation; seas and inland waters have been repeopled with 



* " And it maybe remarked that, as the world has passed through these 



several stages of strife to produce a Christendom, so by relaxing in the enter- 

 prises it has learnt, does it tend downwards, through inverted steps, to wildness 

 and the waste again. Let a people give up their contest with moral evil ; dis- 

 regard the injustice, the ignorance, the greediness, that may prevail among 

 them, and part more and more with the Christian element of their civilization ; 

 and in declining this battle with sin, they will inevitably get embroiled with 

 men. Threats of war and revolution punish their unfaithfulness ; and if then, 

 instead of retracing their steps, they jield again, and are driven before the 

 storm, the very arts they had created, the structures they had raised, the 

 usages they had established, are swept away ; ' in that very day their thoughts 

 perish.' The portion they had reclaimed from the young earth's ruggedness 

 is lost ; and failing to stand fast against man, they finally get embroiled with 

 nature, and are thrust down beneath her ever-living hand." — MABTiNEAu'a 

 Sermon, " The Good Soldier of Jesus Christ." 



