

ANCIENT SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT LIGHTNING. 563 



by sheer force of circumstances, would have proved the fact 

 at about the same period. When an invention is claimed 

 to have leaped full-armed from the mind, when it has no 

 discernible ancestry or evolution, this argument may find 

 some application. But can any one read the preliminary 

 experiments which have now been detailed, or note 

 Franklin's reflections on the drawing power of points or 

 the tremendous force of the battery discharge, without 

 recognizing that, guided as by some controlling power, he 

 was unerringly moving toward the goal, even if he knew 

 it not himself? 



Jets of blinding flame leaping across black and angry 

 skies, deafening peals of thunder reverberating from the 

 mountain-sides and echoing amid the clouds, the swift 

 obliteration of life, buildings bursting into flame, great 

 rocks and trees shattered all this to the old world meant 

 the warfare of gods upon gods, or the fearful retribution 

 visited by offended Deity upon rebellious man. The 

 thunderstorm became the symbol of divine wrath. Its 

 tremendous effects offered the only realization of the 

 majesty of the divine presence. The law is given amid 

 the thunders and lightnings of Sinai. The voice of God 

 is the thunder and he " directeth his lightnings to the ends 

 of the earth."* 



As the ages passed the superstitions clustered thicker 

 and thicker about the thunderbolt, and the dread of it 

 deepened. u From lightning and tempest, from plague, 

 pestilence and famine" so the prayer for delivery comes 

 down to us, with the lightning first on the lips. It was 

 for naught that the philosophers sought to explain it by 

 natural causes. Zeus launched his fiery missiles long 

 after Aristotle described them as moist exhalations burst- 

 ing out of moist clouds. What protection could there be 

 against so fearful a visitation save invocation of the 

 divine mercy for what shield could the puny arm of 

 man interpose against the might of the Almighty ? 



