The Tree of Life

"Whoever contemplates our Mother Nature in her full majesty and luster is alone able to value things in their true estimate." Written in 1943, The Tree of Life, by H. J. Massingham, is a passionate and theologically based plea for preservation of the English countryside. With a deep concern for increasing environmental degradation, this work calls on the Christian church to unite in countering the destruction of natural, domestic, and sacred landscapes. Massingham also analyses the historical relationship between Christianity and social progress, and highlights how the unchecked pursuit of wealth has largely destroyed the onetime beauty of the English countryside. It is now over 80 years since its original publication, and with the topic of environmental preservation as pertinent as ever, Massingham's scathing and prescient critique of globalism and materialism and their effects on the natural world has certainly been vindicated. As he wrote: "The way to the restoration of the West is not, therefore, a yet more elaborate mechanism to kill it. It is an alternative to it and the dual one of the Christian and organic life is the only one there is."