The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-02-11
THE LESSON OF THE FLOOD.

| IN nature, OF a force enCrely unKuOWn 10 etI-
lier periods of the worlds history, and which
in power and universally may be compared to
the greater telluric forces acting the
earth" The lower animals, as well as plant
life, have had much to do in shaping the geo.
graphical conditions of the earth's crust. The
coal beds are The remnants of the plants of
the carboniferous age, the limestones and
marbles are the crystallized debris of corals and
shell-fsh, the chalk cliffs of England and
the basin of Paris are part of q great geolog
ical formation which extends to the borders Of
Chinese Tartary, and which is almost entirely
composed of the limy skeletons of foramini-
fers.
The mummies of Egypt would be sufficient
to fertiize the wheat fields of south Europe, and
England has already mingled in her gardens
the dust of her soldiers collected from once
CORY battle-felds with the phosphates made
from the bones of whales, which are so
abundant as to form in some parts of the
British islands distinct geological
layer. But it is not simply as the
brutes that perish that man
has modified the surface of the earth. The in
fuence of human action as telluric agency
has been essentially different in kind and re-
suit
With the introduction of intelligence and
reason enthroned in man, we have a force
greater and more revolutionary than any be-
! fore known in organic nature and without as
signable limit in either its present or prospec-
tive voluntary and controlling power over the
earth. Man has not only modified or destroyed
from the earth numerous vegetable and ami
NAL species, but he has been prominent
agent in distribution of various kinds.
He not only brought the COW, the
sheep and horse to the new world, but also the
clover and timothy, and so created the very
sod on which they feed.
Man has also greatly modified the physical
aspect of great areas of the world; he has sew
cred isthmuses, parted continents from each
other and has even proposed to inundate the
Sahara, and, by admitting the Mediterranean
to the Dead sea basin, to add over three
thousand square miles to the present fluid
area of Syria, thus tempering the climate and
increasing the precipitation and fertility of
| these regions
Such efforts as these would be constructive
rather than destructive and, if pos
sible, might do something to make
up for the vast devastation of arabic
soils and unfavorable notifications of local
climate which man has undoubtedly produced.
The raw material of nature and the destruc
ton of her vital energies are beyond the pow
er of mans rapacity and greed, for matter and
force are indestructible, and nature, in the
long run, will care for and redeem herself. But
man has made too much Of. the Scripture that
the earth is for man; it is also the Lords and
the fullness thereof. It is within the power
of man to irTeparably derange the relations of
organic being and inorganic matter, which
through the long vistas of the past have been
preparing the earth for his habitation. Most
of his efforts have been destructive
to human interests, and after possibly 12,000,-
900 years of earth's existence, 10000 years of
mans possession, three or four thousand years
of civilization, less than two thousand of
| Christianity, less than three hundred that its
fairest half has been known and utilized and
its greatest river valley settled after less than
a century of steam, less than thirty years of
general steam and rail locomotion, less than a
decade of the best use and knowledge of the
electric force, what do we fndS
The earth is already reacting upon man,
and he is suffering for his rapacity and i'm
providence. About the Mediterranean, once
the fairest and noblest portion of the known
earth, there is unspeakable physical desc
lation. If to the fruitful areas ex-
hausted by the Roman empire, says
Mr. Marsh, we add the wasted and arid soils
of Persia and the renoter East that once fed
their millions with milk and honey, we shall
see a territory larger than all Europe, which
sustained in the past a population scarcely in
| ferior to that of the whole Christian world at
the present, but which is now thinly popu-
| lated and so little advanced in culture or the
social arts that it contributes scarcely any
| thing to the general moral or material inter
ests of the great commonwealth of man.
The Same destruction of once fertile regions
which took place in the Levant during those
ages when man was carrying on the doubt
struggle against his fellow-lnan and the de-
structive forces of inorganic nature has IL
ready been felt in the United States. The