24 Preliminary Considerations 



knowledge, growing union with God, does it become in 

 any degree imposed from within. It only becomes a 

 self-limitation of the same kind as God's self-limitation, 

 in self-surrendering, self-sacrificing Love. In this man 

 shows his Godhead even on earth. The only other form 

 of limitation willed by man is sin; and sin is the surren- 

 der of self to the bonds of external things. In sin I am 

 not the captain of my soul. As soon as we set up codes 

 which may not be transgressed because they represent 

 our growing sense of union with God, we begin to grow 

 more like Him in that we impose self-limitation, and 

 concurrently, free ourselves from the chains of circum- 

 stance. Doubtless when we enter into the perfect ex- 

 perience of reciprocal union with Him, we shall enter 

 into His everlasting self-abnegation of creative self- 

 limitation if it really be everlasting, as seems neces- 

 sarily the case. Then indeed shall we be like God; one 

 with Him in Perfect Love. As yet we can be united with 

 Him in so far as we are transcendent ; but our experience 

 of immanence is not the same as His. For us, immanent 

 experience starts as the only reality ; only gradually do 

 we discover that, though real within its 'own sphere, it 

 has nothing absolute about it, and cannot, hence, be 

 part of the Ultimate Reality of the transcendent sphere. 



7 = / is, then, the expression of the nature of trans- 

 cendent experience. It is finally true in the sphere of the 

 Absolute, and is a complete statement of the nature of 

 absolute Reality (for the ' / ' implies all the qualities of 

 personality, which in the long run can be summed up 

 in the one word Love 1 ). 



But the equation does not hold good when the limita- 

 tion of creation has come to pass. 7 C < 7 where 7 C 

 stands for the 7 limited by creation, 7 for the wholly 

 transcendent self, for limitation has come in. The 

 perfect reciprocity and perfect unity are done away for 

 1 Since personality is capacity for fellowship. 



