The verification of the execution of Christ's teaching is the consciousness of the degree of its non-correspondence with the ideal perfection. (The degree of approximation is not visible; what is visible is the deflection from perfection.)
A man who professes an external law is a man who is standing in the light of a lamp which is attached to a post. He is standing in the light of this lamp, he sees the light, and he has no other place to go to. A man who professes the teaching of Christ is like a man carrying a lamp before him on a more or less long pole: the light is always before him; it always incites him to follow it, and continually opens up in front of him a new illuminated space which draws him on.
The Pharisee thanks God for executing everything.
The rich youth also executes everything from his childhood, and he cannot understand what may be wanting to him. Nor can they think otherwise: there is not in front of them that toward which they may continue to strive. The tithe has been delivered, the Sabbath has been kept, the parents are respected, there is no adultery, no theft, no murder. What else shall it be? But in him who professes the Christian teaching the attainment of any new round of perfection incites the necessity of stepping on the next round, from which a still higher round is perceived, and so on without end. He who professes Christ's Law is always in the position of the publican. He always feels himself imperfect, not seeing the road behind him, which he has passed, but only the road in front of him, which he has not yet travelled upon and which he must pass over.
In this consists the difference between the teaching of Christ and all other religious teachings,—a difference consisting not in the difference of demands, but in the difference of the way of guiding men. Christ gave no definitions of life. He never established any institutions,
