"Love God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself." "Be ye perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect."
Such is the teaching of Jesus.
The test of the fulfillment of external religious teachings is the conformity of conduct to precept; and such conformity is possible.
The test of the fulfillment of Christ's teaching is the consciousness of our failure to approach the ideal perfection. (The degree of approach is not perceptible; only the deviation from perfection is seen.)
The man who professes to obey they external law is like a man standing in the light of a lantern fixed to a post. He stands in the light of this lantern; it is light around him, but he has no place towards which to advance. The man who professes Christ's teaching is like a man carrying a lantern before him; the light is ever ahead, and ever impels him to follow it; continually revealing new illuminated prospects attracting him onward.
The Pharisee thanks God that he fulfills the whole law. The rich young man had also fulfilled all from his childhood, and cannot understand what yet he lacks. Nor could they think otherwise; nothing was before them inwards which they might aspire. Tithes were paid Sabbaths observed, parents honored; adultery, theft and murder avoided. What more?
For him who professes the Christian teaching, the attainment of each step towards perfection imposes the necessity of stepping to the next, whence a still higher is revealed, -and so on without end.
He who professes the law of Jesus is always in the position of the publican. Unceasingly conscious of imperfection, not looking back
