140 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 
Arabian origin. You may find in one of the pamphlets of the 
late Sir W. Dawson (a copy of which probably the writer sent 
to some friend in Ireland), an attempted explanation of the 
conversion of Lot’s wife into a pillar of sodium. My old corre- 
spondent and friend, knowing the utter impossibility of this 
miraculous change (now universally discredited), endeavored 
to prove a descent of volcanic ashes may have covered her and 
given her the appearance of a pillar of salt. 
The writer was not aware that what Dr. Langtry calls 
“ broad church liberal Christianity ’ had any representatives in 
Ontario until recently. The doctor indignantly protests 
against the appointment of Dr. Symmonds (a brother Angli- 
can) to the headmastership of Port Hope Church School, on 
the grounds that he endorsed the position of nigher criticism, 
unbelief, viz., that the Bible ought to begin with Amos or 
Hosea, not with Genesis; that the Pentateuch was not written 
by Moses, but by an unknown compiler nine, or perhaps eleven 
hundred years later; that it is made up of myths, legends and 
fiction, and has no authority ; that the real Old Testament his- 
tory begins with Solomon; that Daniel is a recent forgery; that 
only five of the prophets is authentic, etc. In an extract now 
before me I find the Rey. H. W. Garth, rector of the Episcopal 
Church at Narragansett Pier, preached a sermon at a summer 
resort near Montreal August 28th, in which he stated the Bible 
is full of mistakes; that God gave infallibility to no person or 
book; that it was the literature simply of the Jewish people; 
that the stories of Adam and Eve, Jonah and the whale were 
myths and legends. 
When was the use of reason in the interpretation of the 
Scriptures interdicted, interrupted or limited, asks Archdeacon 
Wilson? Is the spirit of God not now enlightening the church? 
What have the Rabbis to say regarding their sacred writings? 
Dr. Aaron, in Hamilton, declared the separate scrolls must 
lave been at the mercy of scribe and commentator, its greatest 
enemies are those who believed it was all inspired. 
Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, Chicago, declared his absolute dis- 
belief in the first chapter of Genesis, and bade his congregation 
discard it as an article of faith... It simply is, he said, a rela- 
