The reduction of what is vital in Christianity to the so-called pure gospel of Christ, as recorded in the body of the presumably authentic sayings and parables, is to Royce profoundly unsatisfactory. "If He had so viewed the matter, the Messianic tragedy in which His life-work culminated would have been needless and unintelligible."[199] What is most vital in Christianity "is contained in whatever is essential and permanent about the doctrines of the incarnation and atonement."[200] 199: "William James and Other Essays," pp. 140 f. 200: _Ibid._, p. 155. In these respects Royce shows his sympathy with traditional Christianity as over against the standpoint of modern liberalism. He protests in effect, in the first place, against a "reduced" Christianity based upon the Synoptic teaching of Jesus alone, and upon this teaching only after alleged Johannine and Pauline elements have been cut out. Secondly, he finds that Christianity includes doctrine as well as ethics. And, third, he finds in Paul's teaching not a perversion of the gospel, but a developed statement of the central ideas of Christianity. Unlike many philosophers, Royce takes an austere view of the misery and tragedy of sin, as "grave with the gravity of life, and stern only as the call of life, to any awakened mind, ought to be stern."[201] The sinner cannot save himself. By his own deed he has banished himself to the hell of the irrevocable. If there is to be atonement which shall reconcile the traitor to his own deed and the community to the act of treachery against it, an atonement stated in purely human terms, it must be an "objective" atonement, not merely one of moral influence upon the traitor. It must be by some creative deed of loving ingenuity by which the world is made better than it would have been had the treason never been done. Thus the family of Jacob was reunited in peculiarly tender ties after the reconciliation. "Through Joseph's work all is made better than it would have been had there been no treason at all."[202] 201: "The Problem of Christianity," I, p. 120. 202: _Ibid._, I, p. 370. In his purely human and untheological treatment of sin and grace, Royce's thought has professedly moved within the limits of social relationships. Sin is an act of broken faith or disloyalty to the community. The sinner is restored from his estate of misery by the saving grace of the community.[203] "'Atonement' and 'Divine Grace' may be considered as if they were expressions of the purely human process whereby the community seeks and saves, through its suffering servants and its Spirit, that which is lost."[204] 203: "The Problem of Christianity," I, p. 390. 204: _Ibid._, I, p. xxxviii.