3. _Man, a Child of God._--The Christian faith, that man is a child of God, is a faithful expression of the insistence of the social consciousness upon the recognition of the full personality of man. It expresses both man's entire dependence upon God for his being and maintenance, and at the same time his infinite value and sacredness as a spirit made in the image of God, capable of indefinite progress, and capable of personal relation to God. It voices thus Christianity's characteristic "humbly-proud" conception of man--humble in view of the eternal and infinite plans of God; proud, as "called to an imperishable work in the world." It is, indeed, but a concrete statement of that faith in love at the heart of things, and in the all-embracing plan of a faithful God, which we found required, if the social consciousness itself was to have any justification.[95] II. THE RECOGNITION OF THE PERSONAL IN CHRIST In the second place, under this impulse of the sense of the value and sacredness of the person, theology is likely to insist on the recognition of the personal in the conception of Christ. 1. _Christ a Personal Revelation of God._--This recognition of the personal in Christ will mean, first, that we are to conceive Christ as a _personal_ revelation of God, rather than as containing in himself a divine substance.[96] It cannot forget, that if God is a person, and men are persons, the adequate self-revelation of God to men can be made only in a truly personal life; and that men need above all, in their relation to God, some manifestation of his ethical will, and this can be shown only in the character of a person. A merely metaphysical conception of the divinity of Christ in terms of substance or essence, as these are commonly thought, must, therefore, wholly fail to satisfy. We must be able to recognize and bow before the personal will of the personal God revealed in Christ, if we are really to find God through him. A strong sense of the personal, then, such as the social consciousness evinces, must see in Christ, above all, a personal revelation of a person.