NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 447 



specially cited the words, " A standing pillar of salt is a monu- 

 ment of an unbelieving soul." * 



Never was chain of belief more continuous. In the first cent- 

 ury of the Christian era Josephus refers to the miracle, and de- 

 clares regarding the statue, " I have seen it, and it remains at 

 this day " ; and Clement, Bishop of Rome, one of the most revered 

 fathers of the Church, noted for the moderation of his statements, 

 expresses a similar certainty, declaring that he knew the miracu- 

 lous statue to be still standing. 



In the second century that great father of the Church, bishop 

 and martyr, Irenseus, not only vouched for it, but gave his ap- 

 proval to the belief that the soul of Lot's wife still lingered in 

 the statue, giving it a sort of organic life ; thus virtually began 

 in the Church that amazing development of the legend which we 

 shall see taking various forms through the middle ages the 

 story that the salt statue exercised certain physical functions 

 which in these more delicate days can not be alluded to save 

 under cover of a learned language. 



This addition to the legend, which in these signs of life, as in 

 other things, is developed almost exactly on the same lines with 

 the legend of the Niobe statue in the rock of Mount Sipylos and 

 the legends of human beings transformed into bowlders in various 

 mythologies, was for centuries regarded as an additional confir- 

 mation of revealed truth. 



In the third century the myth burst into still richer bloom in 

 a poem long ascribed to Tertullian. In this poem more miracu- 

 lous characteristics of the statue are revealed. It could not be 

 washed away by rains; it could not be overthrown by winds; 

 any wound made upon it was miraculously healed; and the 

 earlier statements as to its physical functions were amplified in 

 sonorous Latin verse. 



With this appeared a new legend regarding the Dead Sea : it 

 became universally believed, and we find it repeated throughout 

 the whole mediseval period, that the bitumen could only be dis- 

 solved by such fluids as in the processes of animated nature came 

 from the statue. 



The legend thus amplified we shall find dwelt upon by pious 

 travelers and monkish chroniclers for hundreds of years : so it 

 came to be more and more treasured by the universal Church, and 

 held more and more firmly " always, everywhere, and by all." 



In the two following centuries we have an overwhelming mass 

 of additional authority for the belief that the very statue of salt 



* For the usual biblical citations, see Genesis xix, 26 ; St. Luke xvii, 32 ; Second Peter 

 ii, 6. For the citation from " Wisdom," see x, V. For the account of the transformation 

 of Lot's wife put into its proper relations with the Jchovistic and Elohistic documents, see 

 Lenormant's " La Genese," Paris, 1883, pp. 53, 199, and 317, 318. 



