The Sermon on the Forest
A Seattle pastor warns that the unchecked destruction of Washington's timber is a moral failure and a theft from future generations.
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Rev. M. A. Matthews, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Seattle, recently delivered a sermon on 'The Master's Conservation Duty.' He argued that man, as a steward of the earth, has a moral and material responsibility to preserve natural resources. 'The man who carelessly sets a forest ablaze destroying valuable timber; the man who ruins the soil and abandons it without restoring its strength is a thief,' Matthews declared. He noted that Washington originally held 100 billion feet of lumber, but prodigal waste—including single forest fires destroying $10,000,000 worth of timber—threatened the state's future. Matthews warned that at the current rate of consumption, forests would disappear within fifty years, causing a massive increase in the cost of living and endangering the livelihoods of future citizens. He called for development of the Columbia River valley to support hundreds of thousands of people, asserting that conservation is a divine decree intended to ensure posterity receives an undiminished world.
“The man who maliciously and wilfully destroys the soil is as much of a robber as he who destroys your specific property.”
Rev. Matthews’ 1909 plea for 'stewardship' over raw extraction echoes the modern-day struggle to balance Washington's timber-reliant economy with the urgent reality of climate change and wildfire management. The tension between exploiting the land and preserving it for posterity remains a central, unresolved argument in the Pacific Northwest.
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