It is time we had done with the unreal language about the Judge on the great white throne, whose justice must be satisfied before His mercy can operate. The figure contains a truth which everyone knows well enough, but it is not easy to recognise it under this form. +The Fall.+--The theological muddle is largely caused by the inability of many people to free themselves from archaic notions which have really nothing to do with Christianity, although they have been imported into it. The principal of these, in relation to the question of sin, is the doctrine of the Fall. This doctrine has played a mischievous part in Christian thought, more especially perhaps since the Reformation. In broad outline it is as follows: Man was created originally innocent and pure,--for what reason is not quite clear, but it is said to be for the glory of God,--but by an act of disobedience to a divine command he fell from his high estate and in his fall dragged down the whole creation and blighted posterity. Things have been wrong ever since, and God has been angry not only with the original transgressor but with all his descendants. God is a God of righteousness and therefore in a future world He will torture every human being who dies without availing himself of a certain "plan of salvation" designed to give him a chance of escape. This is a queer sort of righteousness! The plan of salvation consists in sending His own Son--a Son who has existed eternally, which the rest of us have not--to live a few years on earth and go through a certain programme ending with a violent death. In consideration of this death, God undertakes to forgive His erring children, who could not help being sinners, and yet are just as much to blame as if they could, but only on consideration that they "believe" in time to flee from the wrath to come. If they happen to die half a minute too late, repentance will be of no avail.