These are questions of profound significance; they are also questions of extreme difficulty. Our reason staggers under their weight. We tremble in the presence of the mystery of evil. It is obvious that these questions involve the deeper question as to the causal connection of God with his creation, which all men confess is an insoluble and impenetrable mystery. The feeling of dependence on the one hand, as well as the sense of personal power and freedom on the other, are primitive facts of consciousness. That we live and move and have our being in God, and that we have a real determinate selfhood, a finite personality, a responsible spirit-life, are both affirmed in Scripture. That a holy God made the world, and still actually upholds it; and that sin, as lawlessness (ἀνομία), as a real antagonism to the will and nature of God, exists in his world, can not be denied by Christian men. These are equally truths. To our conception, they may appear antithetical, if not contradictory. But truth is often of a dual character; like the magnet, it may have opposite poles. And many of the differences which agitate the world are often to be traced to the exclusiveness with which different parties affirm one half of the duality in forgetfulness of the other half. We must accept both aspects of the truth, even though we can not at present effect their real conciliation in thought, and wait for further light. A profound faith in the unity of all truth will inspire the hope that reason may yet attain to ultimate principles in which shall be found the harmony of facts and subordinate principles that to-day seem irreconcilable. Underlying the above apparently antithetical truths we can even now dimly discern still more fundamental principles which prophesy a solution. If Divine Love will that there shall be other existences who shall resemble God, and be capable of fellowship with Him in knowledge and in love--in other words, shall be _perfect_ so far as is consistent with the notion of dependent existence--these beings must have a real selfhood, a conscious personality, a conditioned freedom. For impersonal being, even though it may by its absolute dependence reveal the eternal power, and in some degree reflect the thought of God, can not in any sense be the _image_ of God, who is absolute Personality. Above all, that which can not know itself, can not know God, and can not love God. That which can not freely determine itself, can not obey God or resemble God. The highest form of spirit-life "is the conscious return, by a free identification, of every delegated power into harmony with its source." Real being and real life in God must therefore involve, not only a consciousness of dependence and obligation, but also self-consciousness and self-determination. Resemblance to God and fellowship with God are possible only through these fundamental elements of personality. Moral union requires dynamical separation. And because