The path of literal, and therefore of mechanical, obedience is the only path of safety; and the more punctiliously the letter is obeyed, the more perfect will be the machinery of salvation, and the nearer will legalism get to the appointed goal of its labours,--the extinction of spiritual life.
As is the life that legalism expects us to lead, so is the scheme of rewards and punishments by which (as we have already seen) it constrains us to lead it.

The materialisation of life that takes place under the sway of the Law is accurately matched and measured by the materialisation of the doctrine of moral retribution.

The general idea that virtue is rewarded and vice punished is profoundly true.
But the idea is easily misinterpreted; and it necessarily shares in the degradation of one's general conception of life.

Virtue rewards the virtuous by making them more virtuous.

Vice punishes the vicious by making them more vicious.