“Now it is true that it is only a step from the philanthropy and the heroic patriotism here described to a genuine sense of Christian stewardship but it is a most vital step and one that is generally taken with great difficulty, for Christian stewardship is based not upon a kindly and half Christian purpose to be generous with what belongs to me, but on a purpose to administer for God the things that belong to God and entrusted for the present into my keeping as his steward. In other words, there can be no Christian stewardship that does not recognize God as the sovereign owner of the shop, the mill and the farm and the money in the bank–for “the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof (Psalm 24:1).”
We have not linked the stewardship of property with the consecration of the stewardship of life. A widespread revival of the teachings of Christian stewardship will not only insure an adequate support of the cause of Christ, but will bring about a deepening of the spiritual life of the church as its principal result. This is what Horace Bushnell meant in his oft repeated but never trite prophecy, “One more revival, only one more is needed; the revival of Christian stewardship, the consecration of the money power to God. When that revival comes, the kingdom of God will come in a day.”
Ralph Cushman in The New Christian: Studies in Christian Stewardship (New York: Centenary Conservation Committee – Methodist Episcopal Church, 1919) 39, 132.