The spirit of Christianity is not literal, not pedantic, not regulatory; it is renewing and liberating. The acquisition of this spirit is not gained through a legalistic interpretation of words and texts but in the acquisition of love and faith, conscience and freedom… To be renewed according to the Gospel – wholly and to the end – is not granted to everyone. But to enter upon this path, or at least to try to enter upon it, is possible for everybody, at least for everyone who thinks seriously about Christian culture. This renewal is accomplished when the reader of Scripture does not merely register in his mind what has been said but endeavours to seek out and strengthen within himself and, if necessary for the first time, create within himself that which is described in the text: to evoke within oneself a feeling of mercy and commit oneself to it; to evoke within oneself repentance and to experience it creatively, to contemplate with one’s heart the perfection of God and abide within it until the heart and will have been filled with it (an act of conscience); to discover within oneself the power of love and turn it (albeit for a moment) towards God and then towards people and all that lives… At first the Christian begins to ‘put off the old man’ (Colossians 3: 9 – 10; Ephesians 4: 22) and then asserts the new within him. The true divine nature of Christ is revealed to this new man. And all of this is to be accomplished in the heart and feeling, but not only in them – it is to be accomplished by the intellect, but not only by the intellect; by the will, but also through deeds; through faith, but also through deeds; and first and foremost through vital love’

- Ivan Ilyin, The Foundations of Christian Culture