Abraham Kuyper on the human race as God's workmanship and absolute possession

If everything that is, exists for the sake of God, then it follows that the whole creation must give glory to God. The sun, moon, and stars in the firmament, the birds of the air, the whole of nature around us, but, above all, man himself, who, priestlike, must concentrate to God the whole of creation, and all life thriving in it...[thoughts of God] confined to feeling or will is therefore unthinkable...[thoughts of God] confined to the closet, the cell or the church [are wrong]...God is present in all life, with the influence of His omnipresent and almighty power...wherever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand, in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science, he is employed in the service of his God, he has strictly to obey his God, and above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God...[this] concerns the whole of our human race. This race is the product of God’s creation. It is His wonderful workmanship, His absolute possession...One supreme calling must impress the stamp of one-ness upon all human life, because one God upholds and preserves it, just as He created it all.
— Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 52-54