ntrinsic and inherent. It lies in
our necessary relationship and in the duty imposed upon us to have
dominion, and to exercise ourselves even against our own interests. We
may not waste that which is not ours. To live in sincere relations with
the company of created things and with conscious regard for the support
of all men now and yet to come, must be of the essence of righteousness.

This is a larger and more original relation than the modern attitude of
appreciation and admiration of nature. In the days of the patriarchs and
prophets, nature and man shared in the condemnation and likewise in the
redemption. The ground was cursed for Adam's sin. Paul wrote that the
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain, and that it waiteth for
the revealing. Isaiah proclaimed the redemption of the wilderness and
the solitary place with the redemption of man, when they shall rejoice
and blossom as the rose, and when the glowing sand shall become a pool
and the thirsty ground springs of water.

The usual objects have their moral significance. An oak-tree is to us a
moral object because it lives its life regularly and fulfils its
destiny. In the wind and in the stars, in forest and by the shore, there
is spiritual refreshment: And the spirit of God moved upon the face of
the waters.

I do not mean all this, for our modern world, in any vague or abstract
way. If the earth is holy, then the things that grow out of the earth
are also holy. They do not belong to man to do with them as he will.
Dominion does not carry personal ownership. There are many generations
of folk yet to come after us, who will have equal right with us to the
products of the globe. It would seem that a divine obligation rests on
every soul. Are we to make righteous use of the vast accumulation of
knowledge of the planet? If so, we must have a new formulation. The
partition of the earth among the millions who live on it is necessarily
a question of morals; and a society that is founded on an unmoral
partition and use cannot itself be righteous and whole.

Second, the Consequences

I have now stated my purpose; and the remainder of the little book will
make some simple applications of it and draw some inferences therefrom.
There is nothing here that need alarm the timid, albeit we enter a
disputed field, a field of opinion rather than of demonstration; and if
the reader goes with me, I trust that we may have a pleasant journey.

It is to be a jou