After having been accused of racism because of his film "Birth of a Nation", Griffith wanted to demonstrate the dangers of intolerance. For this purpose he contrasted a film he had already finished, a feature entitled "The Mother and the Law", with three historic episodes. "The Mother and the Law" describes the injustice of a capitalistic legal system portraying the lives of a poor but happily married couple that suffers from the supression by a "social reform" group. A series of unfortunate circumstances leads to the husband's being sentenced to the gallows, a fate averted by a nick-of-time rescue engineered by his wife. The other three episodes describe the last days of Christ (The Nazarene), the dramatic events that led to the massacre of St. Bartholomew (The Medieval Story of France) and how King Belshazzar betrayed by a priest was defeated by the Persians (The Fall of Babylon). The four separate stories of Intolerance are symbolically linked a scene showing a woman rocking a cradle ("uniter of the here and hereafter").