NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 445 



diseval 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 in- 

 structive to note the conscientious efforts to prolong their life by 

 making futile compromises between science and theology regard- 

 ing 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 pil- 

 lars of Usdum. 



I select this mainly because it involves only elementary prin- 

 ciples, 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 influ- 

 ence 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. 



A clergyman who visited this spot about ten years since 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 changing ; . . . and 

 each traveler might have a new pillar of salt to wonder over at 

 intervals of a few years." * 



Few things could be more certain than that, in the indolent 



* As to the substance of the " pillars " or "statues" or "needles " of salt at Usdum, 

 many travelers speak of it as "marl and salt." Irby and Mangles, in their " Travels in 

 Egypt, Nubia, Syria, and the Holy Land," chapter vii, call it " salt and hardened sand." 

 The citation as to frequent carving out of new " pillars " is from the " Travels in Palestine" 

 of the Rev. H. F. Osborn, D. D. See also Palmer, " Desert of the Exodus," ii, pp. 478, 479. 

 For engravings of the salt pillar at different times compare that given by Lynch in 1 848, 

 when it appeared as a column forty feet high, with that given by Palmer as the frontis- 

 piece to his " Desert of the Exodus," Cambridge, England, 1871, when it was small and 

 " does really bear a curious resemblance to an Arab woman with a child upon her shoulders " ; 

 and this again with the picture of the salt formation at Usdum given by Canon Tristram, 

 at whose visit there was neither " pillar " nor " statue." See " The Land of Israel," by H. 

 B. Tristram, D. D., F. R. S., London, 1882, p. 324. 



