On the other hand, there is an infinite range to the possibilities of personality clear to the mind of Jesus, but hai'dly fathomable to ourselves, as where He says that to receive a disciple is to receive One who is greater than he (lO'*'^), and the service even of the helpless and forlorn is done to Himself (25*', cf. 26"). (Is it on this account that ' the least in the kingdom of heaven ' is greater than John the great individualist ?) Anotlier great saying which suggests that we are more than our- selves through Christ, is, ' Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them' (18*^'); and yet one more, 'Lo, I am with you all the days' (28^^). In such utter- ances, which give ample support to Pauline and Johannine mysticism, Christ at least suggests that personality, when once released, is not bounded hy tlie limits of the individual, but is only fulfilled when lost in union with Himself, as the Spirit of all Love. In the words of Dr. ^loberly (Atonement and Pcrsonalitii, p. 254), ' Personalitj' is the pos- sibility of mirroring God, the faculty of being a living reflexion of the very attributes and character of the Most High.' But for the final expression of this profound truth we turn to the words of our Saviour in His intercessory prayer : ' I in them, and thou in me, that they may "be perfected into one (et's 'ev) . . . that the love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them, and I in them ' ( Jn
1723. .-6).
3. New factors introduced by Christ. — The way in which He directly met the needs of person- ality was twofold — by a revelation and a reinforce- ment. (1) To man's self-consriousne\s He revealed God as our Father, with the full illumination of man's worth, hope, and destiny which this truth brings. (2) To man's self-determination He brought the gift of the Holy Spirit, as a power in aid {irapdK\r]Tos) of the fettered personality. The essen- tial conjunction, in the view of the early Church, of these two elements of redemption, which are ours through Glirist, is well illustrated in tlie variant of St. Luke's recension of the Lord's Prayer. After the acknowledginent of tlie Fatherhood stands the petition, 'Thy Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us.'
(1) Jesus made the soul aware of its high origin and destiny, for the acceptance of the Fatherhood of God clears a path through Time and through Eternity. The issues of life become of supreme account to those who believe in One who lives and loves, watches and listens, provides and controls,
and will at length either welcome or reject. There is a jdace for the least, the last and tlie lost. The angfcls of the little ones, who have achieved nothing and possess nothing, are before the face of the Fatiier (Mt 18'"). Though uncounted in a nation (Lk 1^), though unvalued by society (7"*'), though classed with publicans and sinners (15'), a man is counted among the Fathers children, and valued in the Father's heart (Mt 12^'-, Lk 15"^'f-). 'It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.' But the greatest hindrance to the full emergence of person- ality is not so much the lack of outward respect as the loss of self-respect through sin. Self-conscious- ness becomes thereby a conscience of slavery, of impotence (Ro 7, esp. vv.'^"). When St. Paul speaks of having been once ' alive apart from the law ' (v.^), he means a non-moral existence, before true self-consciousness was bom. In the words of Schleiermacher, ' The sinner prior to conversion is overlooked, and is not in this respect a person at all in the eyes of God. He is a particle of the mass, out of which the continued operation of the same creative act of God which gave us the Re- deemer does, through Him, call him into person- ality ' (A. Vaughan, l]'jrk:<i, vol. i. p. 87 ; cf. Aug. de Pccc. Or. 36). The process in the experience of many is a painful one. And although for others it is gradual and apparently natural, there does not .seem to be much footing in the NT for those whom F. W. >»ewman designated as the ' once- born ' (cf. James, Varieties of Eeligious Experience, p. SO and Lect. 3 and 4).
' Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.'
The tjnng to a dead past cramps the soul's acti\nties. ' Xow was I sorry' (savs Bunyan in Grace Abounding, 87, 88) 'that God had made rue a man, for I feared I was a reprobate. . . . Yea, I thought it impossible that ever I should attain to such goodness of heart, as to thank God that He had made me a man,' Yet, as St. Paul implies in the above reference, this humiliation is the way to the heights of self-consciousness, for 'guilt is the awful gviardian of our personal identity ' (Illingworth). Simon Peter onlj- half knew himself when he cried to Christ, ' Depart from me : for I am a sinful man, O Lord ' (Lk 5*). The lost son did not 'come to himself fully until he was at home with his father, reconciled. Here we come upon the great doctrine of Justification (wh. see), which is St, Paul's interpretation of the Father's forgiveness in forensic terms. In the experience of the justified man, the 'conscience of sins' is transmuted into a con- sciousness of 'peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ' (Ro 51 )• ' Actually and in fact Justification is only accomplished by an act of human freedom, an act of the deepest self-con- sciousness in man, appropriating the redeeming love of the Son of God by the power of awakenii^j and life-giving grace ' (Martensen, Dogmatics, p, 391).