CONSTANCE L. MAYNARD, ON THE 



her religion. Most ancient religions consisted of mere cere- 

 monial, as we know from the full records of ancient Greece and 

 Bome, and had no connection with moral conduct — if you cared to 

 learn about that you must leave ReHgion and go to Philosophy 

 — but Phenicia alone of all nations appealed to the worst lusts 

 of human nature and organised them into a system and spread 

 them wherever her ships touched shore. The degradation was 

 unspeakable. The Hittites, Jebusites, Hivites and others 

 were all tribes from Phenicia, and through the whole course of 

 the Old Testament we have hints and horrible allusions to the 

 wickedness of their groves and idols. Baal and Ashtaroth, 

 Moloch and Dagon reigned supreme, but we did not reahse how 

 utterly immoral was their life until about thirty years ago, 

 when their carvings and pictures were discovered at Gnossos. 

 For the first time in the history of the world women figure 

 largely in their art, and their whole story, rows and rows of them, 

 is licentiousness. There is one single figure in the Ashmolean 

 Museum at Oxford, doubtless not the worst, and yet one cannot 

 look at it. Here in Phenicia is real vice, such as the Creator 

 of all nations will not endure. The rotten apple must be cut 

 out, lest it should infect all the rest. 



This was effected in many stages, but it was done perfectly. 

 First, we have the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. God 

 had no servants through whom to work, so he worked direct 

 by sending a terrible volcanic cataclysm, and the Cities of the 

 Plain lie buried for ever under the bitter waters of the Dead 

 Sea. Too bad to be looked at, the only monument is the glare 

 of burning Sodom, which gleams through our Bible from the 

 first book to the last. 



Next, our God brought against them the hardy, desert-trained 

 bands of Israel under Joshua's leadership, and on the very hills 

 where the worst religion in the world was practised. He estab- 

 lished the purest and best : He, the only Deity who cared for 

 goodness and purity in His worshippers, took the land of sin 

 and made it " The Holy Land." 



But the capital. Tyre, still flourished and (585 B.C.) the heathen 

 king, Nebuchadnezzar, came against it and then blow after 

 blow came on it, like a hammer, from Persia and from others, 

 until (about 332 B.C.) Alexander the Great burned all the shipping, 

 massacred all the male inhabitants, and Tyre and Sidon were 

 " scraped like the top of a rock." Read Ezekiel xxvii and xxviii, 

 one of the finest historical documents ever penned, and see 



