The Expositor's Bible: The Book of JoshuaBlaikie, William Garden
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua
Blaikie, William Garden
Bible. Joshua -- Commentaries
We in this country, after reaching the extreme on the opposite side,
are now trying to get back in the direction of this ancient system.
All parties seem now agreed that something of the nature of peasant
proprietorship is necessary to solve the agrarian problem in Ireland
and in Great Britain too. It is only the fact that in Britain
commercial enterprise and emigration afford so many outlets for the
energies of our landless countrymen that has tolerated the abuses of
property so long among us, the laws of entail and primogeniture, the
accumulation of property far beyond the power of the proprietor to
oversee or to manage, the employment of land agents acting solely for
the proprietor, and without that sense of responsibility or that
interest in the welfare of the people which is natural to the
proprietor himself. It is little wonder that theories of
land-possession have risen up which are as impracticable in fact as
they are wild and lawless in principle. Such desperate imaginations
are the fruit of despair--absolute hopelessness of getting back in any
other way to a true land law,--to a state of things in which the land
would yield the greatest benefit to the whole nation. Not only ought
it to supply food and promote health, but also a familiarity with
nature, and a sense of freedom, and thus produce contentment and
happiness, and a more kindly feeling among all classes. It seems to us
one of the most interesting features of the land law recently brought
in for Ireland that it tends towards an arrangement of the land in the
direction of God's early designs regarding it. If it be feasible for
Ireland, why not have it for England and Scotland? Some may scout such
matters as purely secular, and not only unworthy of the interference
of religious men, but when advocated by them as fitted to prejudice
spiritual religion. It is a narrow view. All that is right is
religious; all that is according to the will of God is spiritual.
Whatever tends to realize the prayer of Agur is good for rich and poor
alike: "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food
convenient for me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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