God is the ultimate or absolute reality, and He
is a person. The word " person " when ap-

Identity of x * i

twlel Man plied to the Deity means exactly the same
and God. ag w j len a ppij e( j to humanity.
He is revealed in humanity. He is spirit, and
spirit of necessity unites in one self-consciousness
the power to know, the power to feel, and the power
to choose. What man is within limitations God
is without limitations. Man is spirit and, there-
fore, a person. Personality signifies the same in
man as in God. The difference between man and
God is one of " distance," not of nature. A stone
can hold no communication with a man because
between them there is a difference of nature. A
child, however, may have intercourse with a phi-
losopher or a king, for while the distance between
them is great, there is a kinship of nature. But
identity of nature does not mean destruction of in-
dividuality. If man is as truly personal as God,
and God is the infinite Person, communion is not
only possible but inevitable. It is necessary, how-
ever, to repeat that in communion individuality is
not lost. A sunbeam cannot hold intercourse with
the splendor of which it is a part, nor a leaf have



PRAYER 217

conscious fellowship with the stuff of the universe.
An emanation is one thing ; an individual person
is another thing. The former may be re-absorbed
into that from which it came, but the latter can-
not be.
Since God is a person who is imaged in human-
ity, and since man is a person who reflects God,
intercourse between them, as I have said, is both
natural and inevitable.
