52 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



fessor Lc Conte has expounded some of them im- 

 pressively.^ It is doubtless with a view to such 

 conceptions that ministers of religion nowadays so 

 often say, "The evolution of man is well enough, 

 if biologists will only leave us a Personal God at 

 the beginning of the process." But that if, when 

 conjoined with that consequent, is an if of tragic 

 meaning : the Power behind evolution, were the 

 whole of man evolved, could never be a personal God 

 — in short, would not be a God at all. For it is 

 the essence of a person to stand in a relation with 

 beings having an autonomy, in whom he recognises 

 rights, toward whom he acknowledges duties. No 

 conception of a professed God that fails to give 

 this moral quality, can by providing continuance of 

 existence, however lasting, compensate for the loss ; 

 since it should never be forgotten, that, when moral 

 freedom is cancelled, immortality can have no moral 

 worth, no genuinely human dignity, and consequently 

 cannot answer to what we mean by the hope of 

 Eternal Life. But hope of immortality as Life 

 Eternal and faith toward Duty — fealty to our hu- 

 man dignity as moral free-agents, quickened by 

 fealty to God as the grounding Type of that free- 

 dom — are the very soul of Christian Faith. The 

 impartial philosophical observer cannot but be filled 



^ See, especially, the statement in his contribution to The Concep- 

 tion of God, pp. 75-78. 



