Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/175

150 at once real and still either no longer or else not yet. From the eternal point of view, however, just this my life is at once present, in its Individuality and its wholeness. And because of this fact, just in so far as I am the eternal or true Individual, I stand in the presence of God, with all my life open before Him, and its meaning revealed to Him and to me. Yet this my whole meaning, while one with His meaning, remains, in the eternal world, still this unique and individual meaning, which the life of no other individual Self possesses. So that in my eternal expression I lose not my individuality, but rather win my only genuine individual expression, even while I find my oneness with God.

Now, in time, I seek, as if it were far beyond me, that goal of my Selfhood, that complete expression of my will, which in God, and for God, my whole life at once possesses. I seek this goal as a far-off divine event, — as my future fortune and success. I do well to seek. Seek and ye shall find. Yet the finding, — it does not occur merely as an event in time. It occurs as an eternal experience of this my whole striving. Every struggle, every tear, every misery, every failure, and repentance, and every rising again, every strenuous pursuit, every glimpse of God’s truth, — all these are not mere incidents of the search for that which is beyond. They are all events in the life; they too are part of the fulfilment. In eternity all this is seen, and hereby, — even in and through these temporal failures, I win, in God’s presence and by virtue of His fulfilment, the goal of life, which is the whole of life. What no temporal instant ever brings, — what all temporal efforts fail to