to make it his own and
to work it out by his self-determinative activity. Nevertheless the
relation of the divine spirit to the human personality is a subject of
great perplexity, involving the psychological problem of the connection
of the divine and the human in life generally. If in the last resort
God is the ultimate source of all life, the absolute Being, who

'Can rejoice in naught
Save only in Himself and what Himself hath wrought';

that truth must be held in harmony with the facts of divine immanence
and human experience. The divine spirit holds within His grasp all
reality, and by His self-communicating activity makes the world of
nature and of life possible. But that being granted, how are we to
conceive the relation of that Spirit to man with his distinct
individuality, with {170} his sense of working out a future and a fate
in which the Absolute may indeed be fulfilling its purpose, but which
are none the less man's own achievement? That is the crux of the
problem. The outstanding fact which bears upon this problem is the
general character of our experience, the growth of which is not the
mere laying of additional material upon a passive subject by an
external power, but is a true development, a process in which the
subject is himself operative in the unfolding of his own
potentialities. Without dwelling further upon this question it may be
well to bear in mind two points: (1) The growth of experience is a
gradual entrance into conscious possession of what we implicitly are
and potentially have from the beginning. Duty, for example, is not
something alien from a man, something superimposed by a power not
himself. It lies implicit in his nature as his ideal and vocation.
The moral life is the life in which a man comes to 'know himself,' to
apprehend himself as he truly is. (2) In this development of
experience we ourselves are active and self-organising. We are really
making ourselves, and are conscious, that even while we are the
instruments of a higher power, we are working out our own
individuality, exercising our own freedom and determination.[7] The
teaching of the New Testament is in full accord with this position.
If, on the one hand, St. Paul states that every moral impulse is due to
the inspiration of God, no less emphatic is he in ascribing to man
himself full freedom of action. 'The ethical sense of responsibility,'
says Johannes Weiss,[8] 'the energy for struggle, and the disci