ences. Those only will be excluded at the last who even now are
excluding themselves. For Christ is already here, and is judging the
world every day. By the common actions of their present life men are
being tried; and that which will determine their final relation to Christ
will not be their mere perception of His bodily presence, but their moral
and spiritual likeness to Him.

Amidst the imperfections of the present men have ever looked forward to
some glorious consummation, and have lived and worked in the faith of it.
'To the prophets of Israel it was the new age of righteousness; to the
Greek thinkers the world of pure intelligible forms; to Augustine and
Dante the holy theocratic state; to the practical thought of our own time
the renovated social order. Each successive age will frame its own
vision of the great fulfilment; but all the different ideals can find
their place in the message of the kingdom which was proclaimed by
Jesus.'[40]

There is thus opened to our vision a splendid conception of the future of
humanity. It stands for all that is highest in our expectations because
it is already expressive of all that is best in our present achievements
and endeavours. The final hope of mankind requires for its fulfilment a
progressive moral discipline. Only as Christ's twofold command--love to
God and love to man--is made the all-pervasive rule of men's lives will
the goal of a universally perfected humanity be attained.

{141}

III

The chief good may be regarded finally in its _divine_ aspect--as the
endeavour after God-likeness. In this third form of the ideal the two
others--the personal and the social--are harmonised and completed. To
realise the perfect life as it is revealed in the character and will of
God is the supreme aim of man, and it embraces all that is conceivably
highest for the individual and for humanity as a whole. This aspiration
finds its most explicit expression in the sublime word of Christ--'Be ye
perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.'[41] This commandment,
unlike so many generalisations of duty, is no cold abstraction. It is
pervaded with the warmth of personality and the inspiration of love. In
the idea of Fatherhood both a standard and motive are implied. Because
God is our Father it is at once natural and possible for us to be like
Him. He who would imitate another must have already within him something
of that other. As there is a community of nature w