e ideal of
man, can mean nothing else than life at its highest, the fulfilment of
all that personality has within it the potency of becoming. In one sense
there is no finality in life. 'It seethes with the morrow for us more
and more.' But in another sense, to say that the moral life is never
attained is only a half truth. It is always being attained because it is
always present as an active reality evolving its own content. In Christ
we have 'eternal life' now. It is not a thing of quantity but of
quality, and is therefore timeless.

'We live in deeds not years, in thoughts not breaths,
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.'[14]

He who has entered into fellowship with God has within him now the
essence of 'life eternal.'

But the conception of life derived from, and sustained by, God involves
the idea of immortality. 'No work begun shall ever pause for death.'[15]
To live in God is to live as long as God. The spiritual man pursues his
way through conflict and achievement towards a higher and yet a higher
goal, ever manifesting, yet ever seeking, the infinite that dwells in
him. All knowledge and quest and endeavour, nay existence itself, would
be a mockery if man had 'no forever.' Scripture corroborates the
yearnings of the heart and represents life as a growing good which is to
attain to ever higher reaches and fuller realisations in the world to
{132} come. It is the unextinguishable faith of man that the future must
crown the present. No human effort goes to waste, no gift is delusive;
but every gift and every effort has its proper place as a stage in the
endless process.[16]

'There shall never be lost one good! What was shall live as
before.'[17]

II

The foregoing discussion leads naturally to the second aspect of the
highest Good, the Ideal in its social or corporate form--_the kingdom of
God_. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as an individual. As
biologically man is only a member of a larger organism, so ethically he
can only realise himself in a life of brotherhood and service. It is
only within the kingdom of God and by recognition of its social relations
that the individual can attain to his own blessedness. Viewed in the
light of the mutual relation of its members the kingdom is a brotherhood
in which none is ignored and all have common privileges and
responsibilities; viewed in the light of its highest good it is the
entire perfection of the whole--a hierarc