other words, rests
upon, and is the self-evolution of the religious principle in man.

A similar line of proof would show that religion implies morality. An
absolute good is not conceivable, except in relation to the process
whereby it manifests itself. In the language of theology, we may say
that God must create and redeem the world in order to be God; or that
creation and redemption,--the outflow of the universe from God as its
source, and its return to Him through the salvation of mankind,--reveal
to us the nature of God. Apart from this outgoing of the infinite to the
finite and its return to itself through it, the name God would be an
empty word, signifying a something unintelligible dwelling in the void
beyond the realm of being. But religion, as we have seen, is the
recognition not of an unknown but of the absolute good as real; the
joyous consciousness of the presence of God in all things. And morality,
in that it is the realization of an ideal which is perfect, is the
process whereby the absolute good actualizes itself in man. It is true
that the ideal cannot be identified with the process; for it is the
principle of the process, and therefore more than it. Man does not reach
"the last term of development," for there is no last term to a being
whose essence is progressive activity. He does not therefore take the
place of God, and his self-consciousness is never the absolute
self-consciousness. But still, in so far as his life is a progress
towards the true and good, it is the process of truth and goodness
within him. It is the activity of the ideal. It is God lifting man up to
Himself, or, in the language of philosophy, "returning to Himself in
history." And yet it is at the same time man's effort after goodness.
Man is not a mere "vessel of divine grace," or a passive recipient of
the highest bounty. All man's goodness is necessarily man's achievement.
And the realization by the ideal of itself is man's achievement of it.
For it is his ideal. The law without is also the law within. It is the
law within because it is recognized as the law without. Thus, the moral
consciousness passes into the religious consciousness. The performance
of duty is the willing service of the absolute good; and, as such, it
involves also the recognition of a purpose that cannot fail. It is both
activity and faith, both a struggle and a consciousness of victory, both
morality and religion. We cannot, therefore, treat these as alternat