vii] The Awakening of Personality 205 



When once the organism has become a self, no long 

 time elapses before it becomes conscious of moral claims, 

 as we saw in our earlier studies 1 . Though the expression 

 of morality may change, its root-principle does not. 

 There is an absolute Ethic. The distinction between 

 right and wrong is absolute, though views as to the right- 

 ness and wrongness of particular acts are to a large 

 extent reflections of social conditions. 



The fact of importance for our present inquiry is, that 

 the self-conscious organism does in fact become early 

 conscious of right and wrong, and has to make decisions 

 between conflicting impulses. 



Christ's life constituted the full entry of God into all 

 the conditions of immanent, limited, human personality. 

 It was the second kenosis ; the issue and completion of 

 the kenosis of the Godhead in creation. We find Christ's 

 ministry beginning and ending with decisions between 

 conflicting impulses. In the Desert He had to choose 

 between a short and easy road to acceptance and king- 

 ship, and the via dolorosa of rejection and apparent 



thinkable and meaningless. Actually the emphatic insistence on 

 the Eternal Begetting of the Son is the sheet anchor of the Chris- 

 tian belief that God is Personal. The phrase defends the perpetual 

 nature of the Processes of Divine activity. Though it may only 

 have been formulated as a safeguard against heresies that threat- 

 ened authoritative belief in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; 

 though its full significance may have been little understood; it 

 remains one of the chief bulwarks against hopeless scepticism 

 a categorical affirmation of the fact that divine and human per- 

 sonality are alike, both being based on a triunity of active 

 functioning; and so, by implication, of the eternal nature of all 

 personality. For in emphasising this aspect of the Godhead it 

 emphasises the Godhead's Personal Being; and implicitly in all 

 Christian thought personality is held to mean one thing for God 

 and man alike that thing we call personality in man. 



1 Evolution and the Need of Atonement and EvottUion mnd 

 Spiritual Life. 



