We have assumed that there is no obligation to an inanimate thing, as we consider the earth to be: but man should respect the conditions in which he is placed; the earth yields the living creature; man is a living creature; science constantly narrows the gulf between the animate and the inanimate, between the organized and the inorganized; evolution derives the creatures from the earth; the creation is one creation. I must accept all or reject all.
It
is good to live. We talk of death and of lifelessness, but we know only of
life. Even our prophecies of death are prophecies of more life. We know no
better world: whatever else there may be is of things hoped for, not of things
seen. The objects are here, not hidden nor far to seek: And God saw everything
that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
These good things are the present
things and the living things. The account is silent on the things that were not
created, the chaos, the darkness, the abyss. Plato, in the "Republic,"
reasoned that the works of the creator must be good because the creator is
good. This goodness is in the essence of things; and we sadly need to make it a
part in our philosophy of life. The earth is the scene of our life, and
probably the very source of it. The heaven, so far as human beings know, is the
source only of death; in fact, we have peopled it with the dead. We have built
our philosophy on the dead.
We seem to have overlooked the goodness
of the earth in the establishing of our affairs, and even in our philosophies.
It is reserved as a theme for preachers and for poets. And yet, the goodness of
the planet is the basic fact in our existence. -L.H. Bailey, The Holy Earth
