44 
PHYSICAL IMPROVEMENT. 
of time which we call u the historical period,” they are known 
to have been covered with luxuriant woods, verdant pastures, 
and fertile meadows, they are now too far deteriorated to be 
reclaimable by man, nor can they become again fitted tor 
human use, except through great geological changes, or other 
mysterious influences 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 inhab¬ 
itant, and another era of equal human crime and human 
improvidence, and of like duration with that through which 
traces of that crime and that improvidence extend, would 
reduce it to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, 
of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the 
depravation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the 
species.* 
j 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 con¬ 
structions ; torrents compelled to aid, by depositing the slime 
with which they are charged, in filling up lowlands, and 
*-“And it may be remarked that, as the world has passed through 
these several stages of strife to produce a Christendom, so by relaxing in 
the enterprises 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; disregard the injustice, the ignorance, the greediness, that 
may prevail among them, and part more and more with the Christian ele¬ 
ment 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 
yield again, and are driven before the storm, the very arts they had cre¬ 
ated, 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.”— Martineau’s Sermon , “The 
Good Soldier of Jesus Christ J 
