sonality. This is, so to speak, the real presence of God in us, to wit, just as much of our own nature as is holy. Our holiness, if we have any rag of holiness about us, much more if we are filled with heroism and with reasonable service, is, in its own inner quality, divine. As for God, his life is just this eternal sacrifice of his infinity by entering into the rational lives of a world of limited, but moral beings. For in this sacrifice he wins himself. He enjoys his peace, not apart from the world,
- “Where never creeps a cloud nor moves a wind,
- Nor ever falls the least white star of snow
- Nor ever lowest moan of thunder rolls,
- Nor sound of human sorrow mounts.”
No, his peace is the peace of triumphing in the midst of our world of agony and of passion, as the tragic poet triumphs even while losing himself in the sufferings of his own creations. God’s life is simply all life, and it is not concealed, but revealed by our own lives. God lives in every kindly friendship, in every noble deed, in every well-ordered society, in every united people, in every sound law, in every wise thought. He has no life beyond such rationality. His personality is just this, the communion, the intercourse, the organization of all finite persons. Here, you see, is in one sense indeed a new notion of personality. A person beyond our whole world, even of morality, was what we had hoped for. The new doctrine declares that the infinite one pervades the whole finite world of spirits, and simply lives by constituting, by unifying, and by enjoying, this very life of ours and of all our brethren, the rational beings, wherever and whatever they may be. Thus indeed we are limited, and may be even transient embodiments of God’s life; but we ourselves, in so far as we make for unity and for righteousness, are in nature one with him. New is the doctrine, I say, namely, as a reflective speculation in modem thought. But in one sense, as these idealists are never weary of
