2. _God's Sharing in Our Life._--But if the social consciousness is only a true reflection of God's own desire and purpose, then in a sense far deeper than the merely metaphysical, our life is the very life of God. He shares in it. And no man can really see what that means, and not find a new light falling on all the world, and himself carried on to take up a new confession of faith in the solemn words of another: "For the agony of the world's struggle is the very life of God. Were he mere spectator, perhaps, he too would call life cruel. But in the unity of our lives with his, our joy is his joy, our pain is his." And from the vision of this self-giving life of God we turn back to our own place of service, saying with Matheson: "If Thou art love then Thy best gift must be sacrifice; in that light let me search Thy world."[26] We probably cannot better express this unity of our highest ethical life with the life of God than by renewing our old faith that we are children of a common Father, who have come, under God's own leading--so far as a social consciousness is ours--voluntarily to share in God's loving purpose in the creation and redemption of men. We do not work alone; nay, we are co-workers with God. 3. _The Consequent Transfiguration of the Social Consciousness._--And as soon as we have thus really and deeply come into the meaning of Christ's thought of God as Father, and into his revelation in his life and death as to what the spirit of that Fatherhood is, we turn back to the elements of our social consciousness to find them all transfigured. Our _likeness_ is the likeness of common children of God reflecting the image of the one Father, capable of character and of indefinite progress into the highest. Our _mutual influence_ roots in a real Fatherhood, both in source of being and in the one purpose of love, alike creating and redemptively working for all.