Excerpt from Property, Its Duties and Rights: Historically, Philosophically and Religiously Regarded; Essays by Various Writers; With an Introduction I think that I shall best justify my appearance as introducing this volume of Essays if I explain the circumstances of their origin. Dr. Bartlet, of Mans field College, Oxford, had written a letter to the British Weekly strongly urging upon Christians the duty of reconsidering their ideas about property in the light of the Bible doctrine of stewardship - the doctrine that God the Creator is the only absolute owner of all things or persons - that all things come of Him and are His own, and that we men hold what we hold as stewards for the purposes of His Kingdom, with only a relative and dependent ownership limited at every point by the purpose for which it was entrusted to us. He was good enough to send me his letter and to suggest that we might combine to issue some literature of a popular kind about the duties and rights of property based on this Biblical doctrine. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.