Such a science makes the sacred books of the world. more and more precious; in that it shows how they have been the necessary envelopes of our highest spiritual sustenance; how even myths and legends apparently the most puerile have been the natural husks and rinds and shells of our best ideas; and how the atmosphere is created in which these husks and rinds and shells in due time wither, shrivel, and fall away, so that the fruit itself may be gathered to sustain a nobler religion and a purer morality.

The coming in of Christianity contributed elements of inestimable value in this evolution, and, at the centre of all, the thoughts, words, and life of the Master. But when, in the darkness that followed the downfall of the Roman Empire, there was developed a theology and a vast ecclesiastical power to enforce it, the most interesting chapters in this evolution of religion and morality were removed from the domain of science.

So it came that for over eighteen hundred years it has been thought natural and right to study and compare the myths and legends arising east and west and south and north of Palestine with each other, but never with those of Palestine itself; so it came that one of the regions most fruitful in materials for reverent thought and healthful comparison was held exempt from the unbiased search for truth; so it came that, in the name of truth, truth was crippled for ages. While observation, and thought upon observation, and the organized knowledge or science which results from these, progressed as regarded the myths and legends of other countries, and an atmosphere was thus produced giving purer conceptions of the world and its government, myths of that little geographical region at the eastern end of the Mediterranean retained possession of the civilized world in their original crude form, and have at times done much to thwart the noblest efforts of religion, morality, and civilization.

II. MEDIEVAL GROWTH OF THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS.

The history of myths, of their growth under the earlier phases of human thought and of their decline under modern thinking, is one of the most interesting and suggestive of human studies; but, since to treat it as a whole would require volumes, I shall select only one small group, and out of this mainly a single myth-one about which there can no longer be any dispute-the group of myths and legends which grew upon the shore of the Dead Sea, and especially that one which grew up to account for the successive salt columns washed out by the rains at its southwestern extremity.

The Dead Sea is about fifty miles in length and ten miles in width; it lies in a very deep fissure extending north and south, and its surface is about thirteen hundred feet below that of the Mediterranean. It has, therefore, no outlet, and is the receptacle for the waters of the whole system to which it belongs, including those collected by the Sea of Galilee and brought down thence by the river Jordan.

It certainly or at least the larger part of it-ranks geologically among the oldest lakes on earth. In a broad sense the region is volcanic: on its shore are evidences of volcanic action, which must from the earliest period have aroused wonder and fear, and stimulated the myth-making tendency to account for them. On the eastern side are impressive mountain masses which have been thrown up from old volcanic vents; mineral and hot springs abound, some of them spreading sulphurous odours; earthquakes have been frequent, and from time to time these have cast up masses of bitumen; concretions of sulphur and large formations of salt constantly appear.

The water which comes from the springs or oozes through the salt layers upon its shores constantly brings in various salts in solution, and, being rapidly evaporated under the hot sun and dry wind, there has been left, in the bed of the lake, a strong brine heavily charged with the usual chlorides and bromides-a sort of bitter "mother liquor." This fluid has become so dense as to have a remarkable power of supporting the human body; it is of an

acrid and nauseating bitterness; and by ordinary eyes no evidence of life is seen in it.

Thus it was that in the lake itself, and in its surrounding shores, there was enough to make the generation of explanatory myths on a large scale inevitable.

The main northern part of the lake is very deep, the plummet having shown an abyss of thirteen hundred feet; but the southern end is shallow and in places marshy.

The system of which it forms a part shows a likeness to that in South America of which the mountain lake Titicaca is the main feature; as a receptacle for surplus waters, only rendering them by evaporation, it resembles the Caspian and many other seas; as a sort of evaporating dish for the leachings of salt rock, and consequently holding a body of water unfit to support the higher forms of animal life, it resembles, among others, the Median lake of Urumiah; as a deposit of bitumen, it resembles the pitch lakes of Trinidad.*

* For modern views of the Dead Sea, see the Rev. Edward Robinson, D. D., Biblical Researches, various editions; Lynch's Exploring Expedition; De Saulcy, Voyage autour de la Mer Morte; Stanley's Palestine and Syria; Schaff's Through Bible Lands; and other travellers hereafter quoted. For good photogravures, showing the character of the whole region, see the atlas forming part of De Luynes's monumental Voyage d'Exploration. For geographical summaries, see Reclus, La Terre, Paris, 1870, pp. 832-843; Ritter, Erdkunde, volumes devoted to Palestine and especially as supplemented in Gage's translation with additions; Reclus, Nouvelle Géographie Universelle, vol. ix, p. 736, where a small map is given presenting the difference in depth between the two ends of the lake, of which so much was made theologically before Lartet. For still better maps, see De Saulcy, and especially De Luynes, Voyage d'Exploration (atlas). For very interesting panoramic views, see last edition of Canon Tristram's Land of Israel, p. 635. For the geology, see Lartet, in his reports to the French Geographical Society, and especially in vol. iii of De Luynes's work, where there is an admirable geological map with sections, etc.; also Ritter; also Sir J. W. Dawson's Egypt and Syria, published by the Religious Tract Society: also Rev. Cunningham Geikie, D. D., Geology of Palestine; and for pictures showing salt formation, Tristram, as above. For the meteorology, see Vignes, report to De Luynes, pp. 65 et seq. For chemistry of the Dead Sea, see as above, and Terreil's report, given in Gage's Ritter, vol. iii, appendix 2, and tables in De Luynes's third volume. For zoology of the Dead Sea, as to entire absence of life in it, see all earlier travellers; as to presence of lower forms of life, see Ehrenberg's microscopic examinations in Gage's Ritter. See also reports in third volume of De Luynes. For botany of the Dead Sea, and especially regarding "apples of Sodom," see Dr. Lortet's La Syrie, p. 412; also Reclus, Nouvelle Géographie, vol. ix, p. 737; also for photographic representations of them, see port

In all this there is nothing presenting any special difficulty to the modern geologist or geographer; but with the early dweller in Palestine the case was very different. The rocky, barren desolation of the Dead Sea region impressed him deeply; he naturally reasoned upon it; and this impression and reasoning we find stamped into the pages of his sacred literature, rendering them all the more precious as a revelation of the earlier thought of mankind. The long circumstantial account given in Genesis, its application in Deuteronomy, its use by Amos, by Isaiah, by Jeremiah, by Zephaniah, and by Ezekiel, the references to it in the writings attributed to St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. Jude, in the Apocalypse, and, above all, in more than one utterance of the Master himself— all show how deeply these geographical features impressed the Jewish mind.

At a very early period, myths and legends, many and circumstantial, grew up to explain features then so incomprehensible.

As the myth and legend grew up among the Greeks of a refusal of hospitality to Zeus and Hermes by the village in Phrygia, and the consequent sinking of that beautiful region. with its inhabitants beneath a lake and morass, so there came belief in a similar offence by the people of the beautiful valley of Siddim, and the consequent sinking of that valley with its inhabitants beneath the waters of the Dead Sea. Very

folio forming part of De Luynes's work, plate 27. For Strabo's very perfect description, see his Geog., lib. xvi, cap. ii; also Fallmerayer, Werke, pp. 177, 178. For names and positions of a large number of salt lakes in various parts of the world more or less resembling the Dead Sea, see De Luynes, vol. iii, pp. 242 et seq. For Trinidad "pitch lakes," found by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595, see Langegg, El Dorado, part i, p. 103, and part ii, p. 101; also Reclus, Ritter, et al. For the general subject, see Schenkel, Bibel-Lexikon, s. v. Todtes Meer, an excellent summary. The description of the Dead Sea in Lenormant's great history is utterly unworthy of him, and must have been thrown together from old notes after his death. It is amazing to see in such a work the old superstition that birds attempting to fly over the sea are suffocated. See Lenormant, Histoire ancienne de l'Orient, edition of 1888, vol. vi, p. 112. For the absorption and adoption of foreign myths and legends by the Jews, see Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, p. 390. For the views of Greeks and Romans, see especially Tacitus, Historia, book v, Pliny, and Strabo, in whose remarks are the germs of many of the mediæval myths. For very curious examples of these, see Baierus, De Excidio Sodoma, Halle, 1690, passim.

similar to the accounts of the saving of Philemon and Baucis are those of the saving of Lot and his family.

But the myth-making and miracle-mongering by no means ceased in ancient times; they continued to grow through the medieval and modern period until they have quietly withered away in the light of modern scientific investigation, leaving to us the religious and moral truths they inclose.

It would be interesting to trace this whole group of myths: their origin in times prehistoric, their development in Greece and Rome, their culmination during the ages of faith, and their disappearance in the age of science. It would be especially instructive to note the conscientious efforts to prolong their life by making futile compromises between science and theology regarding them; but I shall mention this main group only incidentally, confining myself almost entirely to the one above named-the most remarkable of all-the myth which grew about the salt pillars of Usdum.

I select this mainly because it involves only elementary principles, requires no abstruse reasoning, and because all controversy regarding it is ended. There is certainly now no theologian with a reputation to lose who will venture to revive the idea regarding it which was sanctioned for hundreds, nay, thousands, of years by theology, was based on Scripture, and was held by the universal Church until our own century.

The main feature of the salt region of Usdum is a low range of hills near the southwest corner of the Dead Sea, extending in a southeasterly direction for about five miles, and made up mainly of salt rock. This rock is soft and friable, and, under the influence of the heavy winter rains, it has been, without doubt, from a period long before human history, as it is now, cut ever into new shapes, and especially into pillars or columns, which sometimes bear a resemblance to the human form.

An eminent clergyman who visited this spot recently speaks of the appearance of this salt range as follows:

"Fretted by fitful showers and storms, its ridge is exceedingly uneven, its sides carved out and constantly chang