Now St. Paul, by this word " unto " — live " unto " the Lord — embodies the relation between these three great elements; not consciously, but all the more instructively because the expression arose unconsciously out of his natural and habitual modes of thought. "Live," he says (and the context shows that he is speaking of the complicated life in a society), " live, and perform all your duties to society and to one another ; and the way to do so is to live unto the Lord." St. Paul might tell us to live with men, for men, by men ; but it is impossible that St. Paul should tell us to live unto men. Here comes in the third element. We are to live with men, for men, but with our thoughts reaching out unto God. These real personal relations between our individual soul and God are not to be sacrificed to our duties to one another ; nay, more ; we cannot live as St. Paul bids us live until we live unto God, with our eyes, and thoughts, and prayers turned to Him.
2. The " Lord " here spoken of is at once Christ and God. This is manifest from the ninth verse, where Christ is identified with the " Lord of both the dead and the living" ; from the tenth verse, where He is declared to be the supreme Judge of the world ; and from the eleventh, where the Apostle, to establish that title, directly applies to Christ the solemn declaration of the forty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, — " I am God, and there is none else. Unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear." The God, then, to whom we must make this utter and unreserved surrender of the heart, is the God who was revealed in Christ Jesus, and who, by the mystery of the Incarnation, has for ever united in Himself the Divine and human natures, and has consecrated the one by the other. Unto Him, as Christians, we are called upon to live ; He who is the principle of our spiritual hfe is also made the object of it; as the vapours of the ocean supply the rivers that return into the ocean itself.
^ I quite appreciate your difficulty in accepting the term " the
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Lordship of Christ," and I would not for a moment assert that " to know God as Spirit " may not be a more advanced perception or apprehension. But the Personality of the term " Lord " helps me ; the Lord Jesus is my Personal God, and for the awakening, sustaining, and developing of my affections I seem to need that " individualized " presentation of Deity. " Spirit " is too abstract at present for me. I find in the apprehension of God, which " the Lord " represents to me, the Comforter or Helper. I quite agree with you that " Lord " seems an individualized word, and gives the thought of limitations, while "Spirit" is free and diffused ; but do we not, through the knowledge of the individu- alized " Lord," get really to the knowledge of ** Spirit " universal and diffused ? ^
3. Let us consider, then, how a real, living obedience to the command to live " unto the Lord " would affect our lives here, in our present society.
(1) To live means with us all, to work. Work in one form or another occupies a large part of our lives. Would it not make a great difference to any man if he felt that all his work was done " unto the Lord," not unto men ? It would not so much increase his diligence, but it would make it uniform, trustworthy; he would not be influenced so much by lower and temporary motives ; vanity would have no place ; consciously superficial work would be impossible, the work being done for the eye of the Master in heaven.
(2) And what dignity it adds to labour. Much the greatest part of any man's work is a sort of drudgery, or what in some moments of weariness we are tempted to call so. Certainly much is monotonous, almost mechanical, attention to endless details. We are apt to grow impatient of this, to think that we have a soul above such petty details, to do our work, whatever it may be, badly and superficially, and to find some excuse for ourselves in the triviality of the things we neglect. But the thought that we are living " unto the Lord," with our eyes on Him, and His on us, dignifies all the most trivial details of duty, and removes impatience. We are working under our Master's eye; and no work that He gives us is petty or uninteresting.
f All true Work is sacred ; in all true Work, were it but true hand-labour, there is something of divineness. Labour, wide as ' R. W. Corbet, Letters from a Mystic of the Present Day, 208.
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the Earth, has its summits in Heaven. Sweat of the brow ; and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart ; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all Sciences, all spoken Epics, all acted Heroisms, Martyrdoms, — up to that " Agony of bloody sweat," which all men have called divine ! 0 brother, if this is not " worship," then I say, the more pity for worship ; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky. Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil ? Com- plain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy fellow- Workmen there, in God's Eternity; surviving there, they alone surviving ; sacred Band of the Immortals, celestial Bodyguard of the Empire of Mankind.^