In seeking for the ideal of individual perfection, we must take account of all the capacities, powers, and relations of man. We must have in view, not simply his physical and intellectual, but also his moral and religious nature. We must think of the relation in which he stands to his fellow-beings and to his God, as well as the relation in which he stands to himself--that is, to the liberty and intelligence which are in him, and which he must develop. Now no man can be said to be complete, to be _perfect_, no man can be said to have reached his τέλος, or end, until he has developed in his thought and realized in his life the idea of the useful, the true, the just, the good, the pure, the Divine. Loyalty to God and the truth, justice and charity toward men, self-control and purity of mind, intellectual discipline and cultivated taste--these are the characteristics of the perfect man. Judged from the Christian stand-point, he is the perfect man who has attained to that ideal of moral and spiritual excellence which was exhibited in the human life of Christ, that grand embodiment of all that is "pure and true and just and lovely and of good report." The realization of this ideal in the collective life of humanity must be the goal of history. 2. Further light is shed upon this problem by the consideration of the Christian idea of God. The gravitating point of Christian theology is found in the Divine declaration, "_God is Love_" (1 John iv. 8, 16). This is the most fundamental revelation of the Divine nature, so that nothing can pertain to his perfections or his works which is not ultimately resolvable into love. "If ever the idea of Divine justice shall obtain consistency [in our systems of theology], it must be in general through the relation of infinite holy love to the spontaneous and self-determining capacity of the personal being, or the relation of Divine perfection to the existence of the economy in the universe."[362] The fact that God creates worlds and gives birth to personal existences is not grounded in his omnipotence, but in his love. Divine love is the determinative principle of Divine efficiency--the final cause or ultimate reason of all existence. Creation must therefore be conceived as the free self-communication of God, who is Himself eternally self-complete and self-sufficient, but who, from love alone, wills that other intelligences shall have existence who can "know God," and in fellowship with Him attain that fullness and fruition of being which is called "Eternal Life."[363] If, then, the Divine mind has always had this end in view--the perfection and blessedness of personal being in fellowship with Himself--it must be regarded by us as the consummation toward which his providence is leading humanity.