This morality would easily become ascetic and appear impossible if it were not blended with an opposite element which renders it human and fruitful without either lowering or destroying it. That element is mercy and forgiveness; it is pure, unconditional grace which in misery makes room for hope, and in repentance opens the door to faith and to the work of faith. These two elements, inexorable law and unconditional grace, are so intimately blended in the Gospel of Christ that the Gospel only subsists in its originality and with its power by their perfect fusion and reciprocal and constant action. Without the inflexible rigours of the moral ideal, repentance would not be possible--at least it would never be profound enough to produce the renovation of the heart; but, without faith in the divine mercy, repentance itself, changing into despair, would be barren and ineffectual. These two elements of the Christian life are as fruitful by their union as they are impotent and liable to degeneration when isolated or opposed. What does Christian law become without the sentiment of love, without the impulse of mercy, but a sort of moral Stoicism, rigid and severe? And what would be the doctrine of grace apart from the sacred obligation of the law but the theory of a mischievous indulgence or a Pagan mysticism? To decompose the Gospel salt is to destroy its savour.
At the close of this long meditation, one thing seems to me very clear, the necessity, or rather the obligation under which I stand henceforth of distinguishing between the purely moral essence of Christianity and all its historical expressions or realisations, even the highest and most faithful of them. If religion is an inward life, a real and felt relation between God and man, and if Christianity is that life carried to a higher degree, it is certain that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, must have the two characteristics of all living things. Life is a force, ideal in its essence, real in its manifestations. It can only manifest itself in the organisms that it creates and animates. But, while incarnating itself in its works, it does not exhaust itself or remain imprisoned in any of them. Jesus was well aware of this when He compared His gospel to the leaven which raises the dough and to the seed which germinates in the soil into which it falls.