There is much in Christianity which can be subjected to exact analysis. But the ultimate things are shrouded in the silent mysteries of God.

Not longer loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face which threaten to become incomprehensible to man.

A truth that is merely handed on, without being thought anew from its very foundations, has lost its vital power.

Hell is to be contemplated strictly as a matter which concerns me alone. As part of the spiritual life it belongs behind the 'closed door' of my own room. From the standpoint of living faith, I cannot fundamentally believe in anyone's damnation but my own; as far as my neighbor is concerned, the light of resurrection can never be so obscured that I would be allowed or obliged to stop hoping for him.

Thus it is necessary to commence from an inescapable duality: the finite is not the infinite.

To be sure, the response of faith to revelation, which God grants to the creature he chooses and moves with his love, occurs in such a way that it is truly the creature that provides the response, with its own nature and its natural powers of love.

We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it.