ing able to help it, and which no
individual can escape although he is as much to blame as if he could.
But sin has never injured God except through man. It is the God within
who is injured by it rather than the God without. 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.

Dogmatic theologians must really excuse me for paraphrasing their words
in this way. I know they do not put the case with such irritating
clearness, but this is what they mean. Their forefathers used to put
it plainly enough. Turn up John Knox's "Confession of Faith," for
instance, and it will be found tha