Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/614

596 severe on poor Monsieur De Saulcy for thinking that Lot's wife was killed by the falling of a piece of salt rock, and actually boasts that it was he who caused De Saulcy, a member of the French Institute, to suppress the obnoxious passage in a later edition.

Nor did such rationalizing efforts fare much better among Protestant theologians. In his excellent work on "The Land of Israel," Canon Tristram makes an energetic protest against scientific explanations of biblical statements.

Between 1870 and 1880 came two killing blows at the older theories, and they were dealt by two American scholars of the highest character. First of these may be mentioned Dr. Philip Schaff, a professor in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at New York; who published his travels in 1877. In a high degree he united the scientific with the religious spirit, but the trait which made him especially fit for dealing with this subject was his straightforward German honesty. He tells the simple truth regarding the pillar of salt, so far as its physical origin and characteristics are concerned, and leaves his reader to draw the natural inference as to its relation to the myth. With the fate of Dr. Robertson Smith in Scotland and Dr. Woodrow in South Carolina before him—both recently driven from their professorships for truth-telling—Dr. Schaff deserves honor for telling as much as he does.

Similar in effect, and even more bold in statement, were the "Travels" of the Rev. Henry Osborne, published in 1878. In a truly scientific spirit he calls attention to the similarity between the Dead Sea, with, the river Jordan, to sundry other lake and river systems; he points out the endless variations between writers describing the salt formations at Usdum; accounts rationally for these variations, and quotes from Dr. Anderson's report, saying, "From the soluble nature of the salt and the crumbling looseness of the marl, it might be well imagined that, while some of these needles are in process of formation, others are being washed away."

Thus came out, little by little, the truth regarding the Dead Sea myths, and especially the salt pillar at Usdum; but the final truth remained to be told, and now one of the purest men and truest divines of this century told it. Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster, visiting the country and thoroughly exploring it, allowed that the physical features of the Dead Sea and its shores suggested the myths and legends, and he sums up the whole as follows: "A great mass of legends and exaggerations, partly the cause and partly the result of the old belief that the cities were buried under the Dead Sea, has been gradually removed in recent years."

So, too, about the same time, Dr. Conrad Furrer, pastor of the