With a little terminological laxity Jesus might be called a "free spirit"--he cares not a jot for anything that is established: the word _killeth,_ everything fixed _killeth._ The idea, _experience, "life"_ as he alone knows it, is, according to him, opposed to every kind of word, formula, law, faith and dogma. He speaks only of the innermost things: "life" or "truth" or "light," is his expression for the innermost things,--everything else the whole of reality, the whole of nature, language even, has only the value of a sign, of a simile for him. 169-170 The whole psychology of the "gospels" lacks the concept of guilt and punishment, as also that of reward. "Sin," any sort of aloofness between God and man, is done away with,--_this is precisely what constitutes the "glad tidings."_ Eternal bliss is not promised, it is not bound up with certain conditions; it is the only reality--the rest consists only of signs wherewith to speak about it.... The results of such a state project themselves into a new practice of life, the actual evangelical practice. It is not a "faith" which distinguishes himself by means of a _different_ mode of action.... 171 The life of the Saviour was naught else than this practice,--neither was his death. He no longer required any formulæ, any rites for his relations with God--not even prayer. He has done with all the Jewish teaching of repentance and of atonement; he alone knows the _mode_ of life which makes one feel "divine," "saved," "evangelical," and at all times a "child of God." Not "repentance," not "prayer and forgiveness" are the roads to God: the _evangelical mode of life alone_ leads to God, it _is_ "God."--That which the gospels abolished was the Judaism of the concepts "sin," "forgiveness of sin," "faith," "salvation through faith,"--the whole doctrine of the Jewish church was denied by the "glad tidings." The profound instinct of how one must live in order to feel "in Heaven," in order to feel "eternal," while in every other respect one feels by _no_ means "in Heaven": this alone is the psychological reality of "Salvation."--A new life and _not_ a new faith.... 171-172 This "messenger of glad tidings" died as he lived and as he taught--_not_ in order "to save mankind," but in order to show how one ought to live. It was a mode of life that he bequeathed to mankind: his behaviour before his judges, his attitude towards his executioners, his accusers, and all kinds of calumny and scorn,--his demeanour on the _cross._ 174 The history of Christianity--from the death on the cross onwards--is the history of a gradual and ever coarser misunderstanding of an original symbolism. 175