Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/361

324 man’s own experience, and is God’s only in so far as it is this man’s experience. This attainment of the ideal of one’s life is a concrete, a conscious attainment. It does not occur in our earthly experience.

Yet here one meets with a paradox. Perfection after my own kind, oneness with the ideal of my life, — this, we say, I must attain. I cannot attain it in this life. I must then have some other life. But what life? An endless one? An endless series of strivings toward the goal must be ahead of me? So the matter seems, if I observe merely the before-mentioned fact, that, from my present point of view, I cannot conceive of any series of deeds that would end in making me finally and utterly one with my individual goal. For, as a being who lives in time, it is of the essence of me to set my ideal beyond any once-reached point in time. I cannot conceive myself as conscious of my last moral act, as my last, any more than I can conceive the end of time. On the other hand, my goal is, from God’s point of view, attained. Viewed in my wholeness, as God eternally views my life, my experience appears, not merely as a temporal series, but as perfected. It is eternally done. As temporal being I may then, as it seems, say: “I shall attain my goal.” But, again, in time? Ah then, to be sure, there will come somewhere my last temporal moment. Thus I am in a strait between two. If I am to be perfected in my own kind, — as I must be, so surely as God is, — then there seemingly lies ahead of me the temporal fulfilment of my life, the last moment of my process towards my perfection. On the other hand, if there is ahead of me