vi] Immortality 1 99 



thought about personality becomes impossible; the 

 whole structure of religion falls about our ears, and with 

 it goes all possibility of seeing the universe as rational. 

 We are left with an ultimate confusion that gives 

 the lie to our experience that the world is rationally 

 ordered. 



We are then left on the horns of this dilemma. 

 Either the personality of man is the same as the person- 

 ality of God, in which case man must be immortal, or 

 else the apparent rationality of the cosmos is illusory, 

 and ordered thought impossible. Can we hesitate be- 

 tween the two? 



The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, looked at from the 

 manward end, becomes thus the most cogent of 

 arguments for human immortality. Because human 

 personality is already in part transcendent, it must be 

 immortal, since personality means the same thing for 

 God and man, and God is eternal. 



We have still some minor difficulties, and two especi- 

 ally, to face. Of these the chief may be formulated in the 

 question we have already asked, and partly answered. 

 "How can it be maintained that the personality of 

 man is the same as the personality of God, since God 

 is uncaused, man caused? " Admitted, that there was 

 a time 1 when man was not, and therefore when human 

 personality was not. Admitted that God is the cause of 

 man's existence, and man in no sense the cause only 

 the result of God's existence. I cannot see that this 

 really affects the question of the qualitative identity 

 between the personalities of men and God, even apart 

 from the fact that we cannot conceive of God's person- 

 ality as being other than creative, and that thus we see 

 the created cosmos as part of a whole which is founded 

 in God's nature a cosmos which is a consequence, not 

 But see note on the necessary qualifications of this statement, 

 p. 12. 



