d-servant and the duty of a son. The duty of a slave is
to do what is demanded of him. He accomplishes his stint of work, his
round of necessities, his grudging service, and for doing that duty he
gets his hire and his day's work is done. Sometimes we see workmen for
the city in the roadway, doing their duty on these terms, and we wonder
that men can move so slowly and accomplish so little. They have done
their duty, but they are unprofitable servants. Now against this,
Jesus sets the Christian thought of duty, which {53} grows out of the
Christian thought of sonship. A son who loves his father does not
measure his duty by what is demanded of him. No credit is his for
obeying orders. He passes from obligation to affection, from demand to
privilege. And only as he passes thus into uncalled-for and
spontaneous service does any credit come. There is no credit in a
man's paying his debts, earning his hire, meeting his demands. The
business man does not thank his clerk for doing what he is paid for.
What the employer likes to see is that service beyond obligation which
means fidelity and loyalty. Do you do your work for wages, for marks,
from compulsion? Then, when you lie down at night, you should say: "I
have done that which it was my duty to do, and I am ashamed." Do you
do your work for love's sake, for the life of service to which it
leads, for generous ambition and hope? Then with all your sense of
ineffectiveness and incapacity you may still have that inward peace and
joy which permits you to say: "I have done but little of what I dreamed
of doing, but I have tried, at any rate, to do it unselfishly and
gladly,--not as a bond-servant, but as a son."

{54}

XX

DYING TO LIVE

2 _Corinthians_ iv. 13.

Paul repeatedly described his spiritual experiences under physical
figures of speech; and most of all he writes of himself as living over
in his spiritual life the incidents of the physical life and death of
Jesus. He is crucified with Christ; he is risen with Christ; he bears
about in his body the dying of Christ. "Death worketh in us, but life
in you." This sounds like exaggerated and rhetorical language. It
seems a strange use of words to say that the death of self is the life
of the world. But consider how it was with this man Paul. He had been
ambitious, sanguine, impetuous, and it had all come to nothing, and
worse than nothing. He had been led to persecute the very faith which
he h