62 The Triunity of Man [CH. 



attributes of God. We can argue from man's person- 

 ality to God's, since we have seen that God is a Person. 

 But we can do more. Attributes reveal, if only partially, 

 the real being. Man loves God and feels the need of 

 union with Him because his real transcendent being is 

 similar to God's Being, otherwise there could be no 

 attraction ; for attributes, after all, are derivative, not 

 primary. Because man is in some degree absolute he is 

 not utterly debarred from absolute or immediate know- 

 ledge of God ; his absolute being resembles God's, on the 

 principle we have enunciated; we can argue from the 

 one to the other. From the attributes and being of the 

 human personality, then, we shall attempt to obtain a 

 partial presentation of the attributes and Being of God. 

 If it be objected that in doing this we are assuming 

 that God is completely mirrored in the microcosm of 

 man's soul, we simply answer that we do assume it and 

 are prepared to justify the assumption. For if the idea 

 of the external activity of Love which demands that 

 other beings should share the Perfect Experience means 

 anything at all, it means what it says, that Love wishes 

 to share with others Perfect Experience the whole and 

 not a part ; and that therefore man must be eventually 

 at any rate the microcosm of the whole of God. As 

 Athanasius expresses it "He was made man, that we 

 might be made God 1 " Thus then, to hark back to our 

 original statement of the object of our present exami- 

 nation, it is clear that to turn our back on revelation for 

 the purpose of argument is not to deny its existence. 

 The self-revelation of God is implicit in the fact that 

 men exist. That their attributes resemble His, that 

 their being mirrors His, is due to the very fact that He 

 is Love, and Love is, on one side of its nature, centri- 

 fugal and therefore creative. Creation is Love's self- 

 revelation to itself, but it is also Love's revelation to the 

 1 Quoted by Mackintosh, op. cit. p. 184. 



