The Christian principle appears in its simple and naked form, in the form of feeling and of inspiration, in the soul of Jesus. It is described, explained, expanded, in His Gospel. The Gospel in fact is merely the popular translation and the immediate application of the principle of the piety of Jesus in the social _milieu_ in which He lived. Everything springs from His filial consciousness as a natural and wonderful efflorescence: His messianic vocation, His twofold ministry of preaching and healing, His deeds and His discourses, His ethics and His doctrine, the absolute gift of Himself in life and death. We must place ourselves at this luminous centre if we would see the rest dart forth like rays. In it is found the inner, living unity of His teaching and His destination. He promulgates no law or dogma; He founds no official institution. His intention is quite different: He wishes, before everything else, to awaken the moral life, to rouse the soul from its inertia, to break its chains, to lighten its burden, to make it active, free, and fruitful. He regards His work as finished when He has communicated His life, His piety, to a few poor consciousnesses that He found asleep and dead. Never man spake like this man, because never had man less concern about what we call "orthodoxy"--that is, about abstract and accurate formulas. He prefers the language of the people to the language of the schools; He makes use of images, parables, paradoxes, of current and traditional ideas, of every form of expression which, taken literally, is the most inadequate in the world, but which, on the other hand, is the most living and stimulating. Each of His sentences or parables is enclosed in a hard shell that has to be broken before you can get at the kernel. Jesus wished to force His hearers to interpret His words, because He called them to an inward, personal, autonomous activity, because He wished to put an end to the religion of the letter and of rites, and to found the religion of the spirit. Even now, he that does not give himself to this labour of interpretation and assimilation in reading the Gospel,--he who does not penetrate through the letter and the form to the inspiration and the inmost consciousness of the Master,--cannot understand or profit by His teaching. He who does not collaborate with Him while listening to Him, who does not pierce through His words to His soul, will come away empty. He only gives to those who have, or at least desire to have. He only leads the seeker to the truth. He only pardons those who repent, or comforts those who mourn, or fills the hungerers and the thirsters after righteousness. Such is the character of His Gospel. We cannot here set forth its contents; we can only note the religious attitude of Jesus with regard to things and men, to Nature and Society.