An irregular rhythm of alternating guilt and salvation is traced in the history of Jewish and Christian religions. Guilt is concentrated in the periods of orthodoxy, while in periods of religious reformation the enthusiastic experience of the saving and loving mercy of God prevails. In the latter periods the belief in God's forgiveness overcomes the anxiety of guilt, opens up channels of activity to the repressed instincts. But these channels are opened only to sublimated instinctual activities, moral barriers existing against the breaking through of immediate instinctual needs. These barriers increase anxieties and compulsions and lead to the severe and cruel forms of orthodoxy. The author compares the liberation process of a reformation period with an incomplete psychoanalysis.