Newman uses the death and judgement of Gerontius as a prism through which the reader is drawn to contemplation of their own fear of death and sense of unworthiness before God. His depiction of the overwhelmed Gerontius in Phase Seven of the poem, who begs to be taken for purgatorial cleansing rather than diminish the perfection of God and his courts of Saints and Angels by his continued presence, has become a popular expression of humanity's desire for healing through redemptive suffering. This scene of the poem has done much for the rehabilitation of the doctrine of purgatory which had previously come to be seen as a fearful terror rather than a state of final purification essentially positive in nature.