It is hardly necessary to the purpose of this work, to say anything at all on these subjects. If man was never lost, kidnapped or stolen from God, he needed no _redeemer_, to _buy him back_ with a price. If man never "fell" from the favor of God by disobedience, and thereby incurred his anger, illwill and wrath that sought vengeance on his life, he needed no one to mediate, propitiate or atone for him by shedding his own blood as a substitute. The whole doctrine of redemption and atonement falls flat when the doctrine of the fall of man is removed from under it. But as this is the very crux of the whole orthodox Christian system, the reader may be interested to know what conclusions I reached concerning it, after some years of study, as to both its origin and meaning. These conclusions I reached, not only from the study of the Bible, but from the study of history generally; and especially the history of religion, in other races as well as the Jews. It must be remembered that this doctrine of atonement by the shedding of blood, is--or rather was,--in one form or another, common to many ancient religions and nations. It was by no means exclusively Jewish or Christian. It probably had a common origin and purpose in all. I have already intimated that all religious doctrine and practice had their origin in man's attempt to solve the problem of evil, sin, suffering and death; and to remedy it. I will treat this more fully when I come to consider the subject of religion specifically. The general solution of this problem, if not the almost universal one, was, that men had offended the gods and incurred their anger and illwill; and for this reason the gods continually afflicted them thru life and ultimately destroyed them. Thus death was the final penalty for sin. The gods could be finally satisfied only with the life,--the blood,--of the transgressor. "For the blood is the life." This doctrine is not confined to Genesis and the Jews. In fact, the best Biblical scholars of today are of the opinion that this story of Eden and the fall were not originally Jewish at all; but that the tradition was learned during the exile in Babylonia and Persia, where, it has been learned from recent excavations, the tradition existed centuries before the time of the captivity. It is believed that this tradition so fitted into the Jewish history and gave them such a satisfactory solution of their own sufferings and misery that it was brought back by them, and, with some adaptations, incorporated into their own sacred literature as a part of their own history. Thus, Genesis is now believed by the best scholars and most competent critics, not to be the first book of the Bible written, but in its present form, one of the last written of the Old Testament. But this is a digression.