Warfare of Science/Theology
by Andrew Dickson White
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Return to Part 3 of 4

But even this dissent produced little immediate effect, and at
the beginning of the eighteenth century this sacred doctrine,
based upon explicit statements of Scripture, seemed forever
settled. As we have seen, strong fortresses had been built for
it in every Christian land: nothing seemed more unlikely than
that the little groups of scholars scattered through these
various countries could ever prevail against them. These
strongholds were built so firmly, and had behind them so vast an
army of religionists of every creed, that to conquer them seemed
impossible. And yet at that very moment their doom was decreed.
Within a few years from this period of their greatest triumph,
the garrisons of all these sacred fortresses were in hopeless
confusion, and the armies behind them in full retreat; a little
later, all the important orthodox fortresses and forces were in
the hands of the scientific philologists.

How this came about will be shown in the third part of this
chapter.

III. BREAKING DOWN OF THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW.

We have now seen the steps by which the sacred theory of human
language had been developed: how it had been strengthened in
every land until it seemed to bid defiance forever to advancing
thought; how it rested firmly upon the letter of Scripture, upon
the explicit declarations of leading fathers of the Church, of
the great doctors of the Middle Ages, of the most eminent
theological scholars down to the beginning of the eighteenth
century, and was guarded by the decrees of popes, kings, bishops,
Catholic and Protestant, and the whole hierarchy of authorities
in church and state.

And yet, as we now look back, it is easy to see that even in that
hour of its triumph it was doomed.

The reason why the Church has so fully accepted the conclusions
of science which have destroyed the sacred theory is instructive.
The study of languages has been, since the Revival of Learning
and the Reformation, a favourite study with the whole Western
Church, Catholic and Protestant. The importance of understanding
the ancient tongues in which our sacred books are preserved first
stimulated the study, and Church missionary efforts have
contributed nobly to supply the material for extending it, and
for the application of that comparative method which, in
philology as in other sciences, has been so fruitful. Hence it
is that so many leading theologians have come to know at first
hand the truths given by this science, and to recognise its
fundamental principles. What the conclusions which they, as
well as all other scholars in this field, have been absolutely
forced to accept, I shall now endeavour to show.

The beginnings of a scientific theory seemed weak indeed, but
they were none the less effective. As far back as 1661,
Hottinger, professor at Heidelberg, came into the chorus of
theologians like a great bell in a chime; but like a bell whose
opening tone is harmonious and whose closing tone is discordant.
For while, at the beginning, Hottinger cites a formidable list of
great scholars who had held the sacred theory of the origin of
language, he goes on to note a closer resemblance to the Hebrew
in some languages than in others, and explains this by declaring
that the confusion of tongues was of two sorts, total and
partial: the Arabic and Chaldaic he thinks underwent only a
partial confusion; the Egyptian, Persian, and all the European
languages a total one. Here comes in the discord; here gently
sounds forth from the great chorus a new note--that idea of
grouping and classifying languages which at a later day was to
destroy utterly the whole sacred theory.

But the great chorus resounded on, as we have seen, from shore to
shore, until the closing years of the seventeenth century; then
arose men who silenced it forever. The first leader who threw
the weight of his knowledge, thought, and authority against it
was Leibnitz. He declared, "There is as much reason for
supposing Hebrew to have been the primitive language of mankind
as there is for adopting the view of Goropius, who published a
work at Antwerp in 1580 to prove that Dutch was the language
spoken in paradise."

In a letter to Tenzel, Leibnitz wrote, "To call Hebrew the
primitive language is like calling the branches of a tree
primitive branches, or like imagining that in some country hewn
trunks could grow instead of trees."  He also asked, "If the
primeval language existed even up to the time of Moses, whence
came the Egyptian language?"

But the efficiency of Leibnitz did not end with mere suggestions.
He applied the inductive method to linguistic study, made great
efforts to have vocabularies collected and grammars drawn up
wherever missionaries and travellers came in contact with new
races, and thus succeeded in giving the initial impulse to at
least three notable collections--that of Catharine the Great, of
Russia; that of the Spanish Jesuit, Lorenzo Hervas; and, at a
later period, the Mithridates of Adelung. The interest of the
Empress Catharine in her collection of linguistic materials was
very strong, and her influence is seen in the fact that
Washington, to please her, requested governors and generals to
send in materials from various parts of the United States and the
Territories. The work of Hervas extended over the period from
1735 to 1809: a missionary in America, he enlarged his catalogue
of languages to six volumes, which were published in Spanish in
1800, and contained specimens of more than three hundred
languages, with the grammars of more than forty. It should be
said to his credit that Hervas dared point out with especial care
the limits of the Semitic family of languages, and declared, as a
result of his enormous studies, that the various languages of
mankind could not have been derived from the Hebrew.

While such work was done in Catholic Spain, Protestant Germany
was honoured by the work of Adelung. It contained the Lord's
Prayer in nearly five hundred languages and dialects, and the
comparison of these, early in the nineteenth century, helped to
end the sway of theological philology.

But the period which intervened between Leibnitz and this modern
development was a period of philological chaos. It began mainly
with the doubts which Leibnitz had forced upon Europe, and ended
only with the beginning of the study of Sanskrit in the latter
half of the eighteenth century, and with the comparisons made by
means of the collections of Catharine, Hervas, and Adelung at the
beginning of the nineteenth. The old theory that Hebrew was the
original language had gone to pieces; but nothing had taken its
place as a finality. Great authorities, like Buddeus, were
still cited in behalf of the narrower belief; but everywhere
researches, unorganized though they were, tended to destroy it.
The story of Babel continued indeed throughout the whole
eighteenth century to hinder or warp scientific investigation,
and a very curious illustration of this fact is seen in the book
of Lord Nelme on The Origin and Elements of Language. He
declares that connected with the confusion was the cleaving of
America from Europe, and he regards the most terrible chapters in
the book of Job as intended for a description of the Flood, which
in all probability Job had from Noah himself. Again, Rowland
Jones tried to prove that Celtic was the primitive tongue, and
that it passed through Babel unharmed. Still another effect was
made by a Breton to prove that all languages took their rise in
the language of Brittany. All was chaos. There was much
wrangling, but little earnest controversy. Here and there
theologians were calling out frantically, beseeching the Church
to save the old doctrine as "essential to the truth of
Scripture"; here and there other divines began to foreshadow the
inevitable compromise which has always been thus vainly attempted
in the history of every science. But it was soon seen by
thinking men that no concessions as yet spoken of by theologians
were sufficient. In the latter half of the century came the
bloom period of the French philosophers and encyclopedists, of
the English deists, of such German thinkers as Herder, Kant, and
Lessing; and while here and there some writer on the theological
side, like Perrin, amused thinking men by his flounderings in
this great chaos, all remained without form and void.[417]

[417] For Hottinger, see the preface to his Etymologicum
Orientale, Frankfort, 1661. For Leibnitz, Catharine the Great,
Hervas, and Adelung, see Max Muller, as above, from whom I have
quoted very fully; see also Benfey, Geschichte der
Sprachwissenschaft, etc., p. 269. Benfey declares that the
Catalogue of Hervas is even now a mine for the philologist. For
the first two citations from Leibnitz, as well as for a statement
of his importance in the history of languages, see Max Muller, as
above, pp. 135, 136. For the third quotation, Leibnitz, Opera,
Geneva, 1768, vi, part ii, p. 232. For Nelme, see his Origin and
Elements of Language, London, 1772, pp. 85-100. For Rowland
Jones, see The Origin of Language and Nations, London, 1764, and
preface. For the origin of languages in Brittany, see Le
Brigant, Paris, 1787. For Herder and Lessing, see Canon Farrar's
treatise; on Lessing, see Sayce, as above. As to Perrin, see his
essay Sur l'Origine et l'Antiquite des Langues, London, 1767.

Nothing better reveals to us the darkness and duration of this
chaos in England than a comparison of the articles on Philology
given in the successive editions of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica. The first edition of that great mirror of British
thought was printed in 1771: chaos reigns through the whole of
its article on this subject. The writer divides languages into
two classes, seems to indicate a mixture of divine inspiration
with human invention, and finally escapes under a cloud. In the
second edition, published in 1780, some progress has been made.
The author states the sacred theory, and declares: "There are
some divines who pretend that Hebrew was the language in which
God talked with Adam in paradise, and that the saints will make
use of it in heaven in those praises which they will eternally
offer to the Almighty. These doctors seem to be as certain in
regard to what is past as to what is to come."

This was evidently considered dangerous. It clearly outran the
belief of the average British Philistine; and accordingly we
find in the third edition, published seventeen years later, a new
article, in which, while the author gives, as he says, "the best
arguments on both sides," he takes pains to adhere to a fairly
orthodox theory.

This soothing dose was repeated in the fourth and fifth editions.
In 1824 appeared a supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth
editions, which dealt with the facts so far as they were known;
but there was scarcely a reference to the biblical theory
throughout the article. Three years later came another
supplement. While this chaos was fast becoming cosmos in
Germany, such a change had evidently not gone far in England, for
from this edition of the Encyclopaedia the subject of philology
was omitted. In fact, Babel and Philology made nearly as much
trouble to encyclopedists as Noah's Deluge and Geology. Just as
in the latter case they had been obliged to stave off a
presentation of scientific truth, by the words "For Deluge, see
Flood" and "For Flood, see Noah," so in the former they were
obliged to take various provisional measures, some of them
comical. In 1842 came the seventh edition. In this the first
part of the old article on Philology which had appeared in the
third, fourth, and fifth editions was printed, but the
supernatural part was mainly cut out. Yet we find a curious
evidence of the continued reign of chaos in a foot-note inserted
by the publishers, disavowing any departure from orthodox views.
In 1859 appeared the eighth edition. This abandoned the old
article completely, and in its place gave a history of philology
free from admixture of scriptural doctrines.

Finally, in the year 1885, appeared the ninth edition, in which
Professors Whitney of Yale and Sievers of Tubingen give admirably
and in fair compass what is known of philology, making short work
of the sacred theory--in fact, throwing it overboard entirely.

IV. TRIUMPH OF THE NEW SCIENCE.

Such was that chaos of thought into which the discovery of
Sanskrit suddenly threw its great light. Well does one of the
foremost modern philologists say that this "was the electric
spark which caused the floating elements to crystallize into
regular forms."  Among the first to bring the knowledge of
Sanskrit to Europe were the Jesuit missionaries, whose services
to the material basis of the science of comparative philology had
already been so great; and the importance of the new discovery
was soon seen among all scholars, whether orthodox or scientific.
In 1784 the Asiatic Society at Calcutta was founded, and with it
began Sanskrit philology. Scholars like Sir William Jones,
Carey, Wilkins, Foster, Colebrooke, did noble work in the new
field. A new spirit brooded over that chaos, and a great new orb
of science was evolved.

The little group of scholars who gave themselves up to these
researches, though almost without exception reverent Christians,
were recognised at once by theologians as mortal foes of the
whole sacred theory of language. Not only was the dogma of the
multiplication of languages at the Tower of Babel swept out of
sight by the new discovery, but the still more vital dogma of the
divine origin of language, never before endangered, was felt to
be in peril, since the evidence became overwhelming that so many
varieties had been produced by a process of natural growth.

Heroic efforts were therefore made, in the supposed interest of
Scripture, to discredit the new learning. Even such a man as
Dugald Stewart declared that the discovery of Sanskrit was
altogether fraudulent, and endeavoured to prove that the Brahmans
had made it up from the vocabulary and grammar of Greek and
Latin. Others exercised their ingenuity in picking the new
discovery to pieces, and still others attributed it all to the
machinations of Satan.

On the other hand, the more thoughtful men in the Church
endeavoured to save something from the wreck of the old system by
a compromise. They attempted to prove that Hebrew is at least a
cognate tongue with the original speech of mankind, if not the
original speech itself; but here they were confronted by the
authority they dreaded most--the great Christian scholar, Sir
William Jones himself. His words were: "I can only declare my
belief that the language of Noah is irretrievably lost. After
diligent search I can not find a single word used in common by
the Arabian, Indian, and Tartar families, before the intermixture
of dialects occasioned by the Mohammedan conquests."

So, too, in Germany came full acknowledgment of the new truth,
and from a Roman Catholic, Frederick Schlegel. He accepted the
discoveries in the old language and literature of India as final:
he saw the significance of these discoveries as regards
philology, and grouped the languages of India, Persia, Greece,
Italy, and Germany under the name afterward so universally
accepted--Indo-Germanic.

It now began to be felt more and more, even among the most
devoted churchmen, that the old theological dogmas regarding the
origin of language, as held "always, everywhere, and by all,"
were wrong, and that Lucretius and sturdy old Gregory of Nyssa
might be right.

But this was not the only wreck. During ages the great men in
the Church had been calling upon the world to admire the amazing
exploit of Adam in naming the animals which Jehovah had brought
before him, and to accept the history of language in the light of
this exploit. The early fathers, the mediaeval doctors, the
great divines of the Reformation period, Catholic and Protestant,
had united in this universal chorus. Clement of Alexandria
declared Adam's naming of the animals proof of a prophetic gift.
St. John Chrysostom insisted that it was an evidence of
consummate intelligence. Eusebius held that the phrase "That was
the name thereof" implied that each name embodied the real
character and description of the animal concerned.

This view was echoed by a multitude of divines in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Typical among these was the great Dr.
South, who, in his sermon on The State of Man before the Fall,
declared that "Adam came into the world a philosopher, which
sufficiently appears by his writing the nature of things upon
their names."

In the chorus of modern English divines there appeared one of
eminence who declared against this theory: Dr. Shuckford,
chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty George II, in the preface to
his work on The Creation and Fall of Man, pronounced the whole
theory "romantic and irrational."  He goes on to say: "The
original of our speaking was from God; not that God put into
Adam's mouth the very sounds which he designed he should use as
the names of things; but God made Adam with the powers of a man;
he had the use of an understanding to form notions in his mind of
the things about him, and he had the power to utter sounds which
should be to himself the names of things according as he might
think fit to call them."

This echo of Gregory of Nyssa was for many years of little avail.
Historians of philosophy still began with Adam, because only a
philosopher could have named all created things. There was,
indeed, one difficulty which had much troubled some theologians:
this was, that fishes were not specially mentioned among the
animals brought by Jehovah before Adam for naming. To meet this
difficulty there was much argument, and some theologians laid
stress on the difficulty of bringing fishes from the sea to the
Garden of Eden to receive their names; but naturally other
theologians replied that the almighty power which created the
fishes could have easily brought them into the garden, one by
one, even from the uttermost parts of the sea. This point,
therefore, seems to have been left in abeyance.[418]

[418] For the danger of "the little system of the history of the
world," see Sayce, as above. On Dugald Stewart's contention, see
Max Muller, Lectures on Language, pp. 167, 168. For Sir William
Jones, see his Works, London, 1807, vol. i, p. 199. For
Schlegel, see Max Muller, as above. For an enormous list of
great theologians, from the fathers down, who dwelt on the divine
inspiration and wonderful gifts of Adam on this subject, see
Canon Farrar, Language and Languages. The citation from Clement
of Alexandria is Strom.. i, p. 335. See also Chrysostom, Hom.
XIV in Genesin; also Eusebius, Praep. Evang. XI, p. 6. For the
two quotations given above from Shuckford, see The Creation and
Fall of Man, London, 1763, preface, p. lxxxiii; also his Sacred
and Profane History of the World, 1753; revised edition by
Wheeler, London, 1858. For the argument regarding the difficulty
of bringing the fishes to be named into the Garden of Eden, see
Massey, Origin and Progress of Letters, London, 1763, pp. 14-19.

It had continued, then, the universal belief in the Church that
the names of all created things, except possibly fishes, were
given by Adam and in Hebrew; but all this theory was whelmed in
ruin when it was found that there were other and indeed earlier
names for the same animals than those in the Hebrew language;
and especially was this enforced on thinking men when the
Egyptian discoveries began to reveal the pictures of animals with
their names in hieroglyphics at a period earlier than that agreed
on by all the sacred chronologists as the date of the Creation.

Still another part of the sacred theory now received its
death-blow. Closely allied with the question of the origin of
language was that of the origin of letters. The earlier writers
had held that letters were also a divine gift to Adam; but as we
go on in the eighteenth century we find theological opinion
inclining to the belief that this gift was reserved for Moses.
This, as we have seen, was the view of St. John Chrysostom; and
an eminent English divine early in the eighteenth century, John
Johnson, Vicar of Kent, echoed it in the declaration concerning
the alphabet, that "Moses first learned it from God by means of
the lettering on the tables of the law."  But here a difficulty
arose--the biblical statement that God commanded Moses to "write
in a book" his decree concerning Amalek before he went up into
Sinai. With this the good vicar grapples manfully. He supposes
that God had previously concealed the tables of stone in Mount
Horeb, and that Moses, "when he kept Jethro's sheep thereabout,
had free access to these tables, and perused them at discretion,
though he was not permitted to carry them down with him."  Our
reconciler then asks for what other reason could God have kept
Moses up in the mountain forty days at a time, except to teach
him to write; and says, "It seems highly probable that the angel
gave him the alphabet of the Hebrew, or in some other way unknown
to us became his guide."

But this theory of letters was soon to be doomed like the other
parts of the sacred theory. Studies in Comparative Philology,
based upon researches in India, began to be reenforced by facts
regarding the inscriptions in Egypt, the cuneiform inscriptions
of Assyria, the legends of Chaldea, and the folklore of
China--where it was found in the sacred books that the animals
were named by Fohi, and with such wisdom and insight that every
name disclosed the nature of the corresponding animal.

But, although the old theory was doomed, heroic efforts were
still made to support it. In 1788 James Beattie, in all the
glory of his Oxford doctorate and royal pension, made a vigorous
onslaught, declaring the new system of philology to be "degrading
to our nature," and that the theory of the natural development of
language is simply due to the beauty of Lucretius' poetry. But
his main weapon was ridicule, and in this he showed himself a
master. He tells the world, "The following paraphrase has
nothing of the elegance of Horace or Lucretius, but seems to have
all the elegance that so ridiculous a doctrine deserves":

"When men out of the earth of old
A dumb and beastly vermin crawled;
For acorns, first, and holes of shelter,
They tooth and nail, and helter skelter,
Fought fist to fist; then with a club
Each learned his brother brute to drub;
Till, more experienced grown, these cattle
Forged fit accoutrements for battle.
At last (Lucretius says and Creech)
They set their wits to work on SPEECH:
And that their thoughts might all have marks
To make them known, these learned clerks
Left off the trade of cracking crowns,
And manufactured verbs and nouns."

But a far more powerful theologian entered the field in England
to save the sacred theory of language--Dr. Adam Clarke. He
was no less severe against Philology than against Geology. In
1804, as President of the Manchester Philological Society, he
delivered an address in which he declared that, while men of all
sects were eligible to membership, "he who rejects the
establishment of what we believe to be a divine revelation, he
who would disturb the peace of the quiet, and by doubtful
disputations unhinge the minds of the simple and unreflecting,
and endeavour to turn the unwary out of the way of peace and
rational subordination, can have no seat among the members of
this institution."  The first sentence in this declaration gives
food for reflection, for it is the same confusion of two ideas
which has been at the root of so much interference of theology
with science for the last two thousand years. Adam Clarke speaks
of those "who reject the establishment of what, WE BELIEVE, to be
a divine revelation."  Thus comes in that customary begging of
the question--the substitution, as the real significance of
Scripture, of "WHAT WE BELIEVE" for what IS.

The intended result, too, of this ecclesiastical sentence was
simple enough. It was, that great men like Sir William Jones,
Colebrooke, and their compeers, must not be heard in the
Manchester Philological Society in discussion with Dr. Adam
Clarke on questions regarding Sanskrit and other matters
regarding which they knew all that was then known, and Dr.
Clarke knew nothing.

But even Clarke was forced to yield to the scientific current.
Thirty years later, in his Commentary on the Old Testament, he
pitched the claims of the sacred theory on a much lower key. He
says: "Mankind was of one language, in all likelihood the
Hebrew....The proper names and other significations given in
the Scripture seem incontestable evidence that the Hebrew
language was the original language of the earth,--the language in
which God spoke to man, and in which he gave the revelation of
his will to Moses and the prophets."  Here are signs that this
great champion is growing weaker in the faith: in the citations
made it will be observed he no longer says "IS," but "SEEMS"; and
finally we have him saying, "What the first language was is
almost useless to inquire, as it is impossible to arrive at any
satisfactory information on this point."

In France, during the first half of the nineteenth century, yet
more heavy artillery was wheeled into place, in order to make a
last desperate defence of the sacred theory. The leaders in
this effort were the three great Ultramontanes, De Maistre, De
Bonald, and Lamennais. Condillac's contention that "languages
were gradually and insensibly acquired, and that every man had
his share of the general result," they attacked with reasoning
based upon premises drawn from the book of Genesis. De Maistre
especially excelled in ridiculing the philosophic or scientific
theory. Lamennais, who afterward became so vexatious a thorn in
the side of the Church, insisted, at this earlier period, that
"man can no more think without words than see without light."
And then, by that sort of mystical play upon words so well known
in the higher ranges of theologic reasoning, he clinches his
argument by saying, "The Word is truly and in every sense `the
light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.'"

But even such champions as these could not stay the progress of
thought. While they seemed to be carrying everything before them
in France, researches in philology made at such centres of
thought as the Sorbonne and the College of France were
undermining their last great fortress. Curious indeed is it to
find that the Sorbonne, the stronghold of theology through so
many centuries, was now made in the nineteenth century the
arsenal and stronghold of the new ideas. But the most striking
result of the new tendency in France was seen when the greatest
of the three champions, Lamennais himself, though offered the
highest Church preferment, and even a cardinal's hat, braved the
papal anathema, and went over to the scientific side.[419]

[419] For Johnson's work, showing how Moses learned the alphabet,
see the Collection of Discourses by Rev. John Johnson, A. M.,
Vicar of Kent, London, 1728, p. 42, and the preface. For
Beattie, see his Theory of Language, London, 1788, p. 98; also
pp. 100, 101. For Adam Clarke, see, for the speech cited, his
Miscellaneous Works, London, 1837; for the passage from his
Commentary, see the London edition of 1836, vol. i, p. 93; for
the other passage, see Introduction to Bibliographical
Miscellany, quoted in article, Origin of Language and
Alphabetical Characters, in Methodist Magazine, vol. xv, p. 214.
For De Bonald, see his Recherches Philosophiques, part iii, chap.
ii, De l'Origine du Language, in his Oeuvres, Bruxelles, 1852,
vol. i, Les Soirees de Saint Petersbourg, deuxieme entretien,
passim. For Lamennais, see his Oeuvres Completes, Paris, 1836-
'37, tome ii, pp.78-81, chap. xv of Essai sur l'Indifference en
Matiere de Religion.

In Germany philological science took so strong a hold that its
positions were soon recognised as impregnable. Leaders like the
Schlegels, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and above all Franz Bopp and
Jacob Grimm, gave such additional force to scientific truth that
it could no longer be withstood. To say nothing of other
conquests, the demonstration of that great law in philology which
bears Grimm's name brought home to all thinking men the evidence
that the evolution of language had not been determined by the
philosophic utterances of Adam in naming the animals which
Jehovah brought before him, but in obedience to natural law.

True, a few devoted theologians showed themselves willing to lead
a forlorn hope; and perhaps the most forlorn of all was that of
1840, led by Dr. Gottlieb Christian Kayser, Professor of
Theology at the Protestant University of Erlangen. He does not,
indeed, dare put in the old claim that Hebrew is identical with
the primitive tongue, but he insists that it is nearer it than
any other. He relinquishes the two former theological
strongholds--first, the idea that language was taught by the
Almighty to Adam, and, next, that the alphabet was thus taught to
Moses--and falls back on the position that all tongues are thus
derived from Noah, giving as an example the language of the
Caribbees, and insisting that it was evidently so derived. What
chance similarity in words between Hebrew and the Caribbee tongue
he had in mind is past finding out. He comes out strongly in
defence of the biblical account of the Tower of Babel, and
insists that "by the symbolical expression `God said, Let us go
down,' a further natural phenomenon is intimated, to wit, the
cleaving of the earth, whereby the return of the dispersed became
impossible--that is to say, through a new or not universal flood,
a partial inundation and temporary violent separation of great
continents until the time of the rediscovery" By these words the
learned doctor means nothing less than the separation of Europe
from America.

While at the middle of the nineteenth century the theory of the
origin and development of language was upon the continent
considered as settled, and a well-ordered science had there
emerged from the old chaos, Great Britain still held back, in
spite of the fact that the most important contributors to the
science were of British origin. Leaders in every English church
and sect vied with each other, either in denouncing the
encroachments of the science of language or in explaining them
away.

But a new epoch had come, and in a way least expected. Perhaps
the most notable effort in bringing it in was made by Dr.
Wiseman, afterward Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. His is
one of the best examples of a method which has been used with
considerable effect during the latest stages of nearly all the
controversies between theology and science. It consists in
stating, with much fairness, the conclusions of the scientific
authorities, and then in persuading one's self and trying to
persuade others that the Church has always accepted them and
accepts them now as "additional proofs of the truth of
Scripture."  A little juggling with words, a little amalgamation
of texts, a little judicious suppression, a little imaginative
deduction, a little unctuous phrasing, and the thing is done.
One great service this eminent and kindly Catholic champion
undoubtedly rendered: by this acknowledgment, so widely spread
in his published lectures, he made it impossible for Catholics or
Protestants longer to resist the main conclusions of science.
Henceforward we only have efforts to save theological
appearances, and these only by men whose zeal outran their
discretion.

On both sides of the Atlantic, down to a recent period, we see
these efforts, but we see no less clearly that they are mutually
destructive. Yet out of this chaos among English-speaking
peoples the new science began to develop steadily and rapidly.
Attempts did indeed continue here and there to save the old
theory. Even as late as 1859 we hear the eminent Presbyterian
divine, Dr. John Cumming, from his pulpit in London, speaking of
Hebrew as "that magnificent tongue--that mother-tongue, from
which all others are but distant and debilitated progenies."

But the honour of producing in the nineteenth century the most
absurd known attempt to prove Hebrew the primitive tongue belongs
to the youngest of the continents, Australia. In the year 1857
was printed at Melbourne The Triumph of Truth, or a Popular
Lecture on the Origin of Languages, by B. Atkinson,
M.R.C.P.L.--whatever that may mean. In this work, starting with
the assertion that "the Hebrew was the primary stock whence all
languages were derived," the author states that Sanskrit is "a
dialect of the Hebrew," and declares that "the manuscripts found
with mummies agree precisely with the Chinese version of the
Psalms of David."  It all sounds like Alice in Wonderland.
Curiously enough, in the latter part of his book, evidently
thinking that his views would not give him authority among
fastidious philologists, he says, "A great deal of our consent to
the foregoing statements arises in our belief in the Divine
inspiration of the Mosaic account of the creation of the world
and of our first parents in the Garden of Eden."  A yet more
interesting light is thrown upon the author's view of truth, and
of its promulgation, by his dedication: he says that, "being
persuaded that literary men ought to be fostered by the hand of
power," he dedicates his treatise "to his Excellency Sir H.
Barkly," who was at the time Governor of Victoria.

Still another curious survival is seen in a work which appeared
as late as 1885, at Edinburgh, by William Galloway, M.A., Ph.D.,
M.D. The author thinks that he has produced abundant
evidence to prove that "Jehovah, the Second Person of the
Godhead, wrote the first chapter of Genesis on a stone pillar,
and that this is the manner by which he first revealed it to
Adam; and thus Adam was taught not only to speak but to read and
write by Jehovah, the Divine Son; and that the first lesson he
got was from the first chapter of Genesis."  He goes on to say:
"Jehovah wrote these first two documents; the first containing
the history of the Creation, and the second the revelation of
man's redemption,...for Adam's and Eve's instruction; it is
evident that he wrote them in the Hebrew tongue, because that was
the language of Adam and Eve."  But this was only a flower out of
season.

And, finally, in these latter days Mr. Gladstone has touched
the subject. With that well-known facility in believing anything
he wishes to believe, which he once showed in connecting
Neptune's trident with the doctrine of the Trinity, he floats
airily over all the impossibilities of the original Babel legend
and all the conquests of science, makes an assertion regarding
the results of philology which no philologist of any standing
would admit, and then escapes in a cloud of rhetoric after his
well-known fashion.

This, too, must be set down simply as a survival, for in the
British Isles as elsewhere the truth has been established. Such
men as Max Muller and Sayce in England,--Steinthal, Schleicher,
Weber, Karl Abel, and a host of others in Germany,--Ascoli and De
Gubernatis in Italy,--and Whitney, with the scholars inspired by
him, in America, have carried the new science to a complete
triumph. The sons of Yale University may well be proud of the
fact that this old Puritan foundation was made the headquarters
of the American Oriental Society, which has done so much for the
truth in this field.[420]

[420] For Mr. Gladstone's view, see his Impregnable Rock of Holy
Scripture, London, 1890, pp. 241 et seq. The passage connecting
the trident of Neptune with the Trinity is in his Juventus Mundi.
To any American boy who sees how inevitably, both among Indian
and white fishermen, the fish spear takes the three-pronged form,
this utterance of Mr. Gladstone is amazing.

V. SUMMARY.

It may be instructive, in conclusion, to sum up briefly the
history of the whole struggle.

First, as to the origin of speech, we have in the beginning the
whole Church rallying around the idea that the original language
was Hebrew; that this language, even including the medieval
rabbinical punctuation, was directly inspired by the Almighty;
that Adam was taught it by God himself in walks and talks; and
that all other languages were derived from it at the "confusion
of Babel."

Next, we see parts of this theory fading out: the inspiration of
the rabbinical points begins to disappear. Adam, instead of
being taught directly by God, is "inspired" by him.

Then comes the third stage: advanced theologians endeavour to
compromise on the idea that Adam was "given verbal roots and a
mental power."

Finally, in our time, we have them accepting the theory that
language is the result of an evolutionary process in obedience to
laws more or less clearly ascertained. Babel thus takes its
place quietly among the sacred myths.

As to the origin of writing, we have the more eminent theologians
at first insisting that God taught Adam to write; next we find
them gradually retreating from this position, but insisting that
writing was taught to the world by Noah. After the retreat from
this position, we find them insisting that it was Moses whom God
taught to write. But scientific modes of thought still
progressed, and we next have influential theologians agreeing
that writing was a Mosaic invention; this is followed by another
theological retreat to the position that writing was a
post-Mosaic invention. Finally, all the positions are
relinquished, save by some few skirmishers who appear now and
then upon the horizon, making attempts to defend some subtle
method of "reconciling" the Babel myth with modern science.

Just after the middle of the nineteenth century the last stage of
theological defence was evidently reached--the same which is seen
in the history of almost every science after it has successfully
fought its way through the theological period--the declaration
which we have already seen foreshadowed by Wiseman, that the
scientific discoveries in question are nothing new, but have
really always been known and held by the Church, and that they
simply substantiate the position taken by the Church. This new
contention, which always betokens the last gasp of theological
resistance to science, was now echoed from land to land. In
1856 it was given forth by a divine of the Anglican Church,
Archdeacon Pratt, of Calcutta. He gives a long list of eminent
philologists who had done most to destroy the old supernatural
view of language, reads into their utterances his own wishes, and
then exclaims, "So singularly do their labours confirm the
literal truth of Scripture."

Two years later this contention was echoed from the American
Presbyterian Church, and Dr. B. W. Dwight, having stigmatized as
"infidels" those who had not incorporated into their science the
literal acceptance of Hebrew legend, declared that "chronology,
ethnography, and etymology have all been tortured in vain to make
them contradict the Mosaic account of the early history of man."
Twelve years later this was re-echoed from England. The Rev.
Dr. Baylee, Principal of the College of St. Aidan's, declared,
"With regard to the varieties of human language, the account of
the confusion of tongues is receiving daily confirmation by all
the recent discoveries in comparative philology."  So, too, in
the same year (1870), in the United Presbyterian Church of
Scotland, Dr. John Eadie, Professor of Biblical Literature and
Exegesis, declared, "Comparative philology has established the
miracle of Babel."

A skill in theology and casuistry so exquisite as to contrive
such assertions, and a faith so robust as to accept them,
certainly leave nothing to be desired. But how baseless these
contentions are is shown, first, by the simple history of the
attitude of the Church toward this question; and, secondly, by
the fact that comparative philology now reveals beyond a doubt
that not only is Hebrew not the original or oldest language upon
earth, but that it is not even the oldest form in the Semitic
group to which it belongs. To use the words of one of the most
eminent modern authorities, "It is now generally recognised that
in grammatical structure the Arabic preserves much more of the
original forms than either the Hebrew or Aramaic."

History, ethnology, and philology now combine inexorably to place
the account of the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of
races at Babel among the myths; but their work has not been
merely destructive: more and more strong are the grounds for
belief in an evolution of language.

A very complete acceptance of the scientific doctrines has been
made by Archdeacon Farrar, Canon of Westminster. With a
boldness which in an earlier period might have cost him dear, and
which merits praise even now for its courage, he says: "For all
reasoners except that portion of the clergy who in all ages have
been found among the bitterest enemies of scientific discovery,
these considerations have been conclusive. But, strange to say,
here, as in so many other instances, this self-styled
orthodoxy--more orthodox than the Bible itself--directly
contradicts the very Scriptures which it professes to explain,
and by sheer misrepresentation succeeds in producing a needless
and deplorable collision between the statements of Scripture and
those other mighty and certain truths which have been revealed to
science and humanity as their glory and reward."

Still another acknowledgment was made in America through the
instrumentality of a divine of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
whom the present generation at least will hold in honour not only
for his scholarship but for his patriotism in the darkest hour of
his country's need--John McClintock. In the article on
Language, in the Biblical Cyclopaedia, edited by him and the Rev.
Dr. Strong, which appeared in 1873, the whole sacred theory is
given up, and the scientific view accepted.[421]

[421] For Kayser, see his work, Ueber die Ursprache, oder uber
eine Behauptung Mosis, dass alle Sprachen der Welt von einer
einzigen der Noahhischen abstammen, Erlangen, 1840; see
especially pp. 5, 80, 95, 112. For Wiseman, see his Lectures on
the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, London,
1836. For examples typical of very many in this field, see the
works of Pratt, 1856; Dwight, 1858; Jamieson, 1868. For citation
from Cumming, see his Great Tribulation, London, 1859, p. 4; see
also his Things Hard to be Understood, London, 1861, p. 48. For
an admirable summary of the work of the great modern
philologists, and a most careful estimate of the conclusions
reached, see Prof. Whitney's article on Philology in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. A copy of Mr. Atkinson's book is in the
Harvard College Library, it having been presented by the Trustees
of the Public Library of Victoria. For Galloway, see his
Philosophy of the Creation, Edinburgh and London, 1885, pp. 21,
238, 239, 446. For citation from Baylee, see his Verbal
Inspiration the True Characteristic of God's Holy Word, London,
1870, p. 14 and elsewhere. For Archdeacon Pratt, see his
Scripture and Science not at Variance, London, 1856, p. 55. For
the citation from Dr. Eadie, see his Biblical Cyclopaedia,
London, 1870, p. 53. For Dr. Dwight, see The New-Englander, vol.
xvi, p. 465. For the theological article referred to as giving
up the sacred theory, see the Cyclopaedia of Biblical,
Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, prepared by Rev. John
McClintock, D. D., and James Strong, New York, 1873, vol. v, p.
233. For Arabic as an earlier Semitic development than Hebrew,
as well as for much other valuable information on the questions
recently raised, see article Hebrew, by W. R. Smith, in the
latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For quotation
from Canon Farrar, see his language and Languages, London, 1878,
pp. 6,7.

It may, indeed, be now fairly said that the thinking leaders of
theology have come to accept the conclusions of science regarding
the origin of language, as against the old explanations by myth
and legend. The result has been a blessing both to science and
to religion. No harm has been done to religion; what has been
done is to release it from the clog of theories which thinking
men saw could no longer be maintained. No matter what has become
of the naming of the animals by Adam, of the origin of the name
Babel, of the fear of the Almighty lest men might climb up into
his realm above the firmament, and of the confusion of tongues
and the dispersion of nations; the essentials of Christianity, as
taught by its blessed Founder, have simply been freed, by
Comparative Philology, from one more great incubus, and have
therefore been left to work with more power upon the hearts and
minds of mankind.

Nor has any harm been done to the Bible. On the contrary, this
divine revelation through science has made it all the more
precious to us. In these myths and legends caught from earlier
civilizations we see an evolution of the most important religious
and moral truths for our race. Myth, legend, and parable seem,
in obedience to a divine law, the necessary setting for these
truths, as they are successively evolved, ever in higher and
higher forms. What matters it, then, that we have come to know
that the accounts of Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, and much
else in our sacred books, were remembrances of lore obtained from
the Chaldeans? What matters it that the beautiful story of
Joseph is found to be in part derived from an Egyptian romance,
of which the hieroglyphs may still be seen? What matters it that
the story of David and Goliath is poetry; and that Samson, like
so many men of strength in other religions, is probably a
sun-myth? What matters it that the inculcation of high duty in
the childhood of the world is embodied in such quaint stories as
those of Jonah and Balaam? The more we realize these facts, the
richer becomes that great body of literature brought together
within the covers of the Bible. What matters it that those who
incorporated the Creation lore of Babylonia and other Oriental
nations into the sacred books of the Hebrews, mixed it with their
own conceptions and deductions? What matters it that Darwin
changed the whole aspect of our Creation myths; that Lyell and
his compeers placed the Hebrew story of Creation and of the
Deluge of Noah among legends; that Copernicus put an end to the
standing still of the sun for Joshua; that Halley, in
promulgating his law of comets, put an end to the doctrine of
"signs and wonders"; that Pinel, in showing that all insanity is
physical disease, relegated to the realm of mythology the witch
of Endor and all stories of demoniacal possession; that the Rev.
Dr. Schaff, and a multitude of recent Christian travellers
in Palestine, have put into the realm of legend the story of
Lot's wife transformed into a pillar of salt; that the
anthropologists, by showing how man has risen everywhere from low
and brutal beginnings, have destroyed the whole theological
theory of "the fall of man"? Our great body of sacred literature
is thereby only made more and more valuable to us: more and more
we see how long and patiently the forces in the universe which
make for righteousness have been acting in and upon mankind
through the only agencies fitted for such work in the earliest
ages of the world--through myth, legend, parable, and poem.

CHAPTER XVIII.

FROM THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS TO COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY,

I. THE GROWTH OF EXPLANATORY TRANSFORMATION MYTHS.

A few years since, Maxime Du Camp, an eminent member of the
French Academy, travelling from the Red Sea to the Nile through
the Desert of Kosseir, came to a barren slope covered with
boulders, rounded and glossy.

His Mohammedan camel-driver accounted for them on this wise:

"Many years ago Hadji Abdul-Aziz, a sheik of the dervishes, was
travelling on foot through this desert: it was summer: the sun
was hot and the dust stifling; thirst parched his lips, fatigue
weighed down his back, sweat dropped from his forehead, when
looking up he saw--on this very spot--a garden beautifully green,
full of fruit, and, in the midst of it, the gardener.

"`O fellow-man,' cried Hadji Abdul-Aziz, `in the name of Allah,
clement and merciful, give me a melon and I will give you my
prayers.'"

The gardener answered: `I care not for your prayers; give me
money, and I will give you fruit.'

"`But,' said the dervish, `I am a beggar; I have never had
money; I am thirsty and weary, and one of your melons is all that
I need.'

"`No,' said the gardener; `go to the Nile and quench your
thirst.'

"Thereupon the dervish, lifting his eyes toward heaven, made this
prayer: `O Allah, thou who in the midst of the desert didst make
the fountain of Zem-Zem spring forth to satisfy the thirst of
Ismail, father of the faithful: wilt thou suffer one of thy
creatures to perish thus of thirst and fatigue? '

"And it came to pass that, hardly had the dervish spoken, when an
abundant dew descended upon him, quenching his thirst and
refreshing him even to the marrow of his bones.

"Now at the sight of this miracle the gardener knew that the
dervish was a holy man, beloved of Allah, and straightway offered
him a melon.

"`Not so,' answered Hadji Abdul-Aziz; `keep what thou hast, thou
wicked man. May thy melons become as hard as thy heart, and thy
field as barren as thy soul!'

"And straightway it came to pass that the melons were changed
into these blocks of stone, and the grass into this sand, and
never since has anything grown thereon."

In this story, and in myriads like it, we have a survival of that
early conception of the universe in which so many of the leading
moral and religious truths of the great sacred books of the world
are imbedded.

All ancient sacred lore abounds in such mythical explanations of
remarkable appearances in nature, and these are most frequently
prompted by mountains, rocks, and boulders seemingly misplaced.

In India we have such typical examples among the Brahmans as the
mountain-peak which Durgu threw at Parvati; and among the
Buddhists the stone which Devadatti hurled at Buddha.

In Greece the Athenian, rejoicing in his belief that Athena
guarded her chosen people, found it hard to understand why the
great rock Lycabettus should be just too far from the Acropolis
to be of use as an outwork; but a myth was developed which
explained all. According to this, Athena had intended to make
Lycabettus a defence for the Athenians, and she was bringing it
through the air from Pallene for that very purpose; but,
unfortunately, a raven met her and informed her of the wonderful
birth of Erichthonius, which so surprised the goddess that she
dropped the rock where it now stands.

So, too, a peculiar rock at Aegina was accounted for by a long
and circumstantial legend to the effect that Peleus threw it at
Phocas.

A similar mode of explaining such objects is seen in the
mythologies of northern Europe. In Scandinavia we constantly
find rocks which tradition accounts for by declaring that they
were hurled by the old gods at each other, or at the early
Christian churches.

In Teutonic lands, as a rule, wherever a strange rock or stone is
found, there will be found a myth or a legend, heathen or
Christian, to account for it.

So, too, in Celtic countries: typical of this mode of thought in
Brittany and in Ireland is the popular belief that such features
in the landscape were dropped by the devil or by fairies.

Even at a much later period such myths have grown and bloomed.
Marco Polo gives a long and circumstantial legend of a mountain
in Asia Minor which, not long before his visit, was removed by a
Christian who, having "faith as a grain of mustard seed," and
remembering the Saviour's promise, transferred the mountain to
its present place by prayer, "at which marvel many Saracens
became Christians."[422]

[422] For Maxime Du Camp, see Le Nil: Egypte et Nubie, Paris,
1877, chapter v. For India, see Duncker, Geschichte des
Alterthums, vol. iii, p. 366; also Coleman, Mythology of the
Hindus, p. 90. For Greece, as to the Lycabettus myth, see Leake,
Topography of Athens, vol. i, sec. 3; also Burnouf, La Legende
Athenienne, p. 152. For the rock at Aegina, see Charton, vol. i,
p. 310. For Scandanavia, see Thorpe, Northern Antiquities,
passim. For Teutonic countries, see Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie;
Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, vol. ii; Zingerle,
Sagen aus Tyrol, pp. 111 et seq., 488, 504, 543; and especially
J. B. Friedrich, Symbolik und Mythologie der Natur, pp. 116 et
seq. For Celtic examples I am indebted to that learned and
genial scholar, Prof. J. P. Mahaffy, of Trinity College, Dublin.
See also story of the devil dropping a rock when forced by the
archangel Michael to aid him in building Mont Saint-Michel on the
west coast of France, in Sebillot's Traditions de la Haute
Bretagne, vol. i, p. 22; also multitudes of other examples in the
same work. For Marco Polo, see in Grynaeus, p. 337; also
Charton, Voyageurs anciens et modernes, tome ii, pp. 274 et seq.,
where the legend is given in full.

Similar mythical explanations are also found, in all the older
religions of the world, for curiously marked meteoric stones,
fossils, and the like.

Typical examples are found in the imprint of Buddha's feet on
stones in Siam and Ceylon; in the imprint of the body of Moses,
which down to the middle of the last century was shown near Mount
Sinai; in the imprint of Poseidon's trident on the Acropolis at
Athens; in the imprint of the hands or feet of Christ on stones
in France, Italy, and Palestine; in the imprint of the Virgin's
tears on stones at Jerusalem; in the imprint of the feet of
Abraham at Jerusalem and of Mohammed on a stone in the Mosque of
Khait Bey at Cairo; in the imprint of the fingers of giants on
stones in the Scandinavian Peninsula, in north Germany, and in
western France; in the imprint of the devil's thighs on a rock
in Brittany, and of his claws on stones which he threw at
churches in Cologne and Saint-Pol-de-Leon; in the imprint of the
shoulder of the devil's grand mother on the "elbow-stone" at the
Mohriner see; in the imprint of St. Otho's feet on a stone
formerly preserved in the castle church at Stettin; in the
imprint of the little finger of Christ and the head of Satan at
Ehrenberg; and in the imprint of the feet of St. Agatha at
Catania, in Sicily. To account for these appearances and myriads
of others, long and interesting legends were developed, and out
of this mass we may take one or two as typical.

One of the most beautiful was evolved at Rome. On the border of
the medieval city stands the church of "Domine quo vadis"; it
was erected in honour of a stone, which is still preserved,
bearing a mark resembling a human footprint--perhaps the bed of a
fossil.

Out of this a pious legend grew as naturally as a wild rose in a
prairie. According to this story, in one of the first great
persecutions the heart of St. Peter failed him, and he
attempted to flee from the city: arriving outside the walls he
was suddenly confronted by the Master, whereupon Peter in
amazement asked, "Lord, whither goest thou?"  (Domine quo
vadis?); to which the Master answered, "To Rome, to be crucified
again."  The apostle, thus rebuked, returned to martyrdom; the
Master vanished, but left, as a perpetual memorial, his footprint
in the solid rock.

Another legend accounts for a curious mark in a stone at
Jerusalem. According to this, St. Thomas, after the ascension
of the Lord, was again troubled with doubts, whereupon the Virgin
Mother threw down her girdle, which left its imprint upon the
rock, and thus converted the doubter fully and finally.

And still another example is seen at the very opposite extreme of
Europe, in the legend of the priestess of Hertha in the island of
Rugen. She had been unfaithful to her vows, and the gods
furnished a proof of her guilt by causing her and her child to
sink into the rock on which she stood.[423]

[423] For myths and legend crystallizing about boulders and other
stones curiously shaped or marked, see, on the general subject,
in addition to works already cited, Des Brosses, Les Dieux
Fetiches, 1760, passim, but especially pages 166, 167; and for a
condensed statement as to worship paid them, see Gerard de
Rialle, Mythologie comparee, vol. vi, chapter ii.  For imprints
of Buddha's feet, see Tylor, Researches into the Early History of
Mankind, London, 1878, pp. 115 et seq.; also Coleman, p. 203, and
Charton, Voyageurs anciens et modernes, tome i, pp. 365, 366,
where engravings of one of the imprints, and of the temple above
another, are seen. There are five which are considered authentic
by the Siamese, and a multitude of others more or less strongly
insisted upon. For the imprint os Moses' body, see travellers
from Sir John Mandeville down. For the mark of Neptune's
trident, see last edition of Murray's Handbook of Greece, vol. i,
p. 322; and Burnouf, La Legende Athenienne, p. 153. For imprint
of the feet of Christ, and of the Virgin's girdle and tears, see
many of the older travellers in Palestine, as Arculf, Bouchard,
Roger, and especially Bertrandon de la Brocquiere in Wright's
collection, pp. 339, 340; also Maundrell's Travels, and
Mandeville. For the curious legend regarding the imprint of
Abraham's foot, see Weil, Biblische Legenden der Muselmanner, pp.
91 et seq. For many additional examples in Palestine,
particularly the imprints of the bodies of three apostles on
stones in the Garden of Gethsemane and of St. Jerome's body in
the desert, see Beauvau, Relation du Voyage du Lavant, Nancy,
1615, passim. For the various imprints made by Satan and giants
in Scandanavia and Germany, see Thorpe, vol. ii, p. 85;
Friedrichs, pp. 126 and passim. For a very rich collection of
such explanatory legends regarding stones and marks in Germany,
see Karl Bartsch, Sagen, Marchen und Gebrauche aus Meklenburg,
Wien, 1880, vol. ii, pp. 420 et seq. For a woodcut representing
the imprint of Christ's feet on the stone from which he ascended
to heaven, see woodcut in Mandeville, edition of 1484, in the
White Library, Cornell University. For the legend of Domine quo
vadis, see many books of travel and nearly all guide books for
Rome, from the mediaeval Mirabilia Romae to the latest edition of
Murray. The footprints of Mohammed at Cairo were shown to the
present writer in 1889. On the general subject, with many
striking examples, see Falsan, La Periode glaciaire, Paris, 1889,
pp. 17, 294, 295.

Another and very fruitful source of explanatory myths is found in
ancient centres of volcanic action, and especially in old craters
of volcanoes and fissures filled with water.

In China we have, among other examples, Lake Man, which was once
the site of the flourishing city Chiang Shui--overwhelmed and
sunk on account of the heedlessness of its inhabitants regarding
a divine warning.

In Phrygia, the lake and morass near Tyana were ascribed to the
wrath of Zeus and Hermes, who, having visited the cities which
formerly stood there, and having been refused shelter by all the
inhabitants save Philemon and Baucis, rewarded their benefactors,
but sunk the wicked cities beneath the lake and morass.

Stories of similar import grew up to explain the crater near
Sipylos in Asia Minor and that of Avernus in Italy: the latter
came to be considered the mouth of the infernal regions, as every
schoolboy knows when he has read his Virgil.

In the later Christian mythologies we have such typical legends
as those which grew up about the old crater in Ceylon; the salt
water in it being accounted for by supposing it the tears of Adam
and Eve, who retreated to this point after their expulsion from
paradise and bewailed their sin during a hundred years.

So, too, in Germany we have multitudes of lakes supposed to owe
their origin to the sinking of valleys as a punishment for human
sin. Of these are the "Devil's Lake," near Gustrow, which rose
and covered a church and its priests on account of their
corruption; the lake at Probst-Jesar, which rose and covered an
oak grove and a number of peasants resting in it on account of
their want of charity to beggars; and the Lucin Lake, which rose
and covered a number of soldiers on account of their cruelty to a
poor peasant.

Such legends are found throughout America and in Japan, and will
doubtless be found throughout Asia and Africa, and especially
among the volcanic lakes of South America, the pitch lakes of the
Caribbean Islands, and even about the Salt Lake of Utah; for
explanatory myths and legends under such circumstances are
inevitable.[424]

[424] As to myths explaining volcanic craters and lakes, and
embodying ideas of the wrath of Heaven against former inhabitants
of the neighboring country, see Forbiger, Alte Geographie,
Hamburg, 1877, vol. i, p. 563. For exaggerations concerning the
Dead Sea, see ibid., vol. i, p. 575. For the sinking of Chiang
Shui and other examples, see Denny's Folklore of China, pp. 126
et seq. For the sinking of the Phrygian region, the destruction
of its inhabitants, and the saving of Philemon and Baucis, see
Ovid's Metamorphoses, book viii; also Botticher, Baumcultus der
Alten, etc. For the lake in Ceylon arising from the tears of
Adam and Eve, see variants of the original legend in Mandeville
and in Jurgen Andersen, Reisebeschreibung, 1669, vol. ii, p. 132.
For the volcanic nature of the Dead Sea, see Daubeny, cited in
Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. Palestine. For lakes in
Germany owing their origin to human sin and various supernatural
causes, see Karl Bartsch, Sagen, Marche und Gebrauche aus
Meklenburg, vol. i, pp. 397 et seq. For lakes in America, see
any good collection of Indian legends. For lakes in Japan sunk
supernaturally, see Braun's Japanesische Marche und Sagen,
Leipsic, 1885, pp. 350, 351.

To the same manner of explaining striking appearances in physical
geography, and especially strange rocks and boulders, we mainly
owe the innumerable stories of the transformation of living
beings, and especially of men and women, into these natural
features.

In the mythology of China we constantly come upon legends of such
transformations--from that of the first Counsellor of the Han
dynasty to those of shepherds and sheep. In the Brahmanic
mythology of India, Salagrama, the fossil ammonite, is recognised
as containing the body of Vishnu's wife, and the Binlang stone
has much the same relation to Siva; so, too, the nymph Ramba was
changed, for offending Ketu, into a mass of sand; by the breath
of Siva elephants were turned into stone; and in a very touching
myth Luxman is changed into stone but afterward released. In
the Buddhist mythology a Nat demon is represented as changing
himself into a grain of sand.

Among the Greeks such transformation myths come constantly before
us--both the changing of stones to men and the changing of men to
stones. Deucalion and Pyrrha, escaping from the flood,
repeopled the earth by casting behind them stones which became
men and women; Heraulos was changed into stone for offending
Mercury; Pyrrhus for offending Rhea; Phineus, and Polydectes with
his guests, for offending Perseus: under the petrifying glance
of Medusa's head such transformations became a thing of course.

To myth-making in obedience to the desire of explaining unusual
natural appearances, coupled with the idea that sin must be
followed by retribution, we also owe the well-known Niobe myth.
Having incurred the divine wrath, Niobe saw those dearest to her
destroyed by missiles from heaven, and was finally transformed
into a rock on Mount Sipylos which bore some vague resemblance to
the human form, and her tears became the rivulets which trickled
from the neighbouring strata.

Thus, in obedience to a moral and intellectual impulse, a
striking geographical appearance was explained, and for ages
pious Greeks looked with bated breath upon the rock at Sipylos
which was once Niobe, just as for ages pious Jews, Christians,
and Mohammedans looked with awe upon the salt pillar at the Dead
Sea which was once Lot's wife.

Pausanias, one of the most honest of ancient travellers, gives us
a notable exhibition of this feeling. Having visited this
monument of divine vengeance at Mount Sipylos, he tells us very
naively that, though he could discern no human features when
standing near it, he thought that he could see them when standing
at a distance. There could hardly be a better example of that
most common and deceptive of all things--belief created by the
desire to believe.

In the pagan mythology of Scandinavia we have such typical
examples as Bors slaying the giant Ymir and transforming his
bones into boulders; also "the giant who had no heart"
transforming six brothers and their wives into stone; and, in
the old Christian mythology, St. Olaf changing into stone the
wicked giants who opposed his preaching.

So, too, in Celtic countries we have in Ireland such legends as
those of the dancers turned into stone; and, in Brittany, the
stones at Plesse, which were once hunters and dogs violating the
sanctity of Sunday; and the stones of Carnac, which were once
soldiers who sought to kill St. Cornely.

Teutonic mythology inherited from its earlier Eastern days a
similar mass of old legends, and developed a still greater mass
of new ones. Thus, near the Konigstein, which all visitors to
the Saxon Switzerland know so well, is a boulder which for ages
was believed to have once been a maiden transformed into stone
for refusing to go to church; and near Rosenberg in Mecklenburg
is another curiously shaped stone of which a similar story is
told. Near Spornitz, in the same region, are seven boulders
whose forms and position are accounted for by a long and
circumstantial legend that they were once seven impious herdsmen;
near Brahlsdorf is a stone which, according to a similar
explanatory myth, was once a blasphemous shepherd; near Schwerin
are three boulders which were once wasteful servants; and at
Neustadt, down to a recent period, was shown a collection of
stones which were once a bride and bridegroom with their
horses--all punished for an act of cruelty; and these stories are
but typical of thousands.

At the other extremity of Europe we may take, out of the
multitude of explanatory myths, that which grew about the
well-known group of boulders near Belgrade. In the midst of
them stands one larger than the rest: according to the legend
which was developed to account for all these, there once lived
there a swineherd, who was disrespectful to the consecrated Host;
whereupon he was changed into the larger stone, and his swine
into the smaller ones. So also at Saloniki we have the pillars
of the ruined temple, which are widely believed, especially among
the Jews of that region, to have once been human beings, and are
therefore known as the "enchanted columns."

Among the Arabs we have an addition to our sacred account of
Adam--the legend of the black stone of the Caaba at Mecca, into
which the angel was changed who was charged by the Almighty to
keep Adam away from the forbidden fruit, and who neglected his
duty.

Similar old transformation legends are abundant among the Indians
of America, the negroes of Africa, and the natives of Australia
and the Pacific islands.

Nor has this making of myths to account for remarkable
appearances yet ceased, even in civilized countries.

About the beginning of this century the Grand Duke of Weimar,
smitten with the classical mania of his time, placed in the
public park near his palace a little altar, and upon this was
carved, after the manner so frequent in classical antiquity, a
serpent taking a cake from it. And shortly there appeared, in
the town and the country round about, a legend to explain this
altar and its decoration. It was commonly said that a huge
serpent had laid waste that region in the olden time, until a
wise and benevolent baker had rid the world of the monster by
means of a poisoned biscuit.

So, too, but a few years since, in the heart of the State of New
York, a swindler of genius having made and buried a "petrified
giant," one theologian explained it by declaring it a Phoenician
idol, and published the Phoenician inscription which he thought
he had found upon it; others saw in it proofs that "there were
giants in those days," and within a week after its discovery
myths were afloat that the neighbouring remnant of the Onondaga
Indians had traditions of giants who frequently roamed through
that region.[425]

[425] For transformation myths and legends, identifying rocks and
stones with gods and heroes, see Welcker, Gotterlehre, vol. i, p.
220. For recent and more accessible statements for the general
reader, see Robertson Smith's admirable Lectures on the Religion
of the Semites, Edinburgh, 1889, pp. 86 et seq. For some
thoughtful remarks on the ancient adoration of stones rather than
statues, with refernce to the anointing of stones at Bethel by
Jacob, see Dodwell, Tour through Greece, vol. ii, p. 172; also
Robertson Smith, as above, Lecture V. For Chinese transformation
legends, see Denny's Folklore of China, pp. 96, 128. For Hindu
and other ancient legends of transformations, see Dawson,
Dictionary of Hindu Mythology; also Coleman, as above; also Cox,
Mythology of the Aryan Nations, pp. 81-97, etc. For such
transformations in Greece, see the Iliad, and Ovid, as above;
also Stark, Niobe und die Niobiden, p. 444 and elsewhere; also
Preller, Griechische Mythologie, passim; also Baumeister,
Denkmaler des classischen Alterthums, article Niobe; also
Botticher,as above; also Curtius, Griechische Geschichte, vol.i,
pp. 71, 72. For Pausanius's naive confession regarding the
Sipylos rock, see book i, p. 215. See also Texier, Asie Mineure,
pp. 265 et seq.; also Chandler, Travels in Greece, vol. ii, p.
80, who seems to hold to the later origin of the statue. At the
end of Baumeister there is an engraving copied from Stuart which
seems to show that, as to the Niobe legend, at a later period,
Art was allowed to help Nature. For the general subject, see
Scheiffle, Programm des K. Gymnasiums in Ellwangen: Mythologische
Parallelen, 1865. For Scandinavian and Teutonic transformation
legends, see Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, vierte Ausg., vol. i, p.
457; also Thorpe, Northern Antiquities; also Friedrich, passim,
especially p. 116 et seq.; also, for a mass of very curious ones,
Karl Bartsch, Sagen, Marchen und gebrauche aus Meklenburg, vol.
i, pp. 420 et seq.; also Karl Simrock's edition of the Edda,
ninth edition, p. 319; also John Fiske, Myths and Myth-makers,
pp. 8, 9. On the universality of such legends and myths, see
Ritter's Erdkunde, vol. xiv, pp. 1098-1122. For Irish examples,
see Manz, Real-Encyclopadie, article Stein; and for multitudes of
examples in Brittany, see Sebillot, Traditions de la Haute-
Bretagne. For the enchanted columns at Saloniki, see the latest
edition of Murray's Handbook of Turkey, vol. ii, p. 711. For the
legend of the angel changed into stone for neglecting to guard
Adam, see Weil, university librarian at Heidelberg, Biblische
Legende der Muselmanner, Frankfort-am-Main, 1845, pp. 37, 84.
For similar transformation legends in Australia and among the
American Indians, see Andrew Lang, Mythology, French translation,
pp. 83, 102; also his Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. i, pp. 150
et seq., citing numerous examples from J. G. Muller,
Urreligionen, and Dorman's Primitive Superstitions; also Report
of the Bureau of Ethnoligy for 1880-'81; and for an African
example, see account of the rock at Balon which was once a woman,
in Berenger-Feraud, Contes populaires de la Senegambie, chap.
viii. For the Weimar legend, see Lewes, Life of Goethe, book iv.
For the myths which arose about the swindling "Cardiff giant" in
the State of New York, see especially an article by G. A.
Stockwell, M. D., in The Popular Science Monthly for June, 1878;
see also W. A. McKinney in The New-Englander for October, 1875;
and for the "Phoenician inscription," given at length with a
translation, see the Rev. Alexander McWhorter, in The Galaxy for
July, 1872. The present writer visited the "giant" shortly after
it was "discovered," carefully observed it, and the myths to
which it gave rise, has in his possession a mass of curious
documents regarding this fraud, and hopes ere long to prepare a
supplement to Dr. Stockwell's valuable paper.

To the same stage of thought belongs the conception of human
beings changed into trees. But, in the historic evolution of
religion and morality, while changes into stone or rock were
considered as punishments, or evidences of divine wrath, those
into trees and shrubs were frequently looked upon as rewards, or
evidences of divine favour.

A very beautiful and touching form of this conception is seen in
such myths as the change of Philemon into the oak, and of Baucis
into the linden; of Myrrha into the myrtle; of Melos into the
apple tree; of Attis into the pine; of Adonis into the rose
tree; and in the springing of the vine and grape from the blood
of the Titans, the violet from the blood of Attis, and the
hyacinth from the blood of Hyacinthus.

Thus it was, during the long ages when mankind saw everywhere
miracle and nowhere law, that, in the evolution of religion and
morality, striking features in physical geography became
connected with the idea of divine retribution.[426]

[426] For the view taken in Greece and Rome of transformations
into trees and shrubs, see Botticher, Baumcultus der Hellenen,
book i, chap. xix; also Ovid, Metamorphoses, passim; also
foregoing notes.

But, in the natural course of intellectual growth, thinking men
began to doubt the historical accuracy of these myths and
legends--or, at least, to doubt all save those of the theology in
which they happened to be born; and the next step was taken when
they began to make comparisons between the myths and legends of
different neighbourhoods and countries: so came into being the
science of comparative mythology--a science sure to be of vast
value, because, despite many stumblings and vagaries, it shows
ever more and more how our religion and morality have been
gradually evolved, and gives a firm basis to a faith that higher
planes may yet be reached.

Such a science makes the sacred books of the world more and more
precious, in that it shows how they have been the necessary
envelopes of our highest spiritual sustenance; how even myths
and legends apparently the most puerile have been the natural
husks and rinds and shells of our best ideas; and how the
atmosphere is created in which these husks and rinds and shells
in due time wither, shrivel, and fall away, so that the fruit
itself may be gathered to sustain a nobler religion and a purer
morality.

The coming in of Christianity contributed elements of inestimable
value in this evolution, and, at the centre of all, the thoughts,
words, and life of the Master. But when, in the darkness that
followed the downfall of the Roman Empire, there was developed a
theology and a vast ecclesiastical power to enforce it, the most
interesting chapters in this evolution of religion and morality
were removed from the domain of science.

So it came that for over eighteen hundred years it has been
thought natural and right to study and compare the myths and
legends arising east and west and south and north of Palestine
with each other, but never with those of Palestine itself; so it
came that one of the regions most fruitful in materials for
reverent thought and healthful comparison was held exempt from
the unbiased search for truth; so it came that, in the name of
truth, truth was crippled for ages. While observation, and
thought upon observation, and the organized knowledge or science
which results from these, progressed as regarded the myths and
legends of other countries, and an atmosphere was thus produced
giving purer conceptions of the world and its government, myths
of that little geographical region at the eastern end of the
Mediterranean retained possession of the civilized world in their
original crude form, and have at times done much to thwart the
noblest efforts of religion, morality, and civilization.

II. MEDIAEVAL GROWTH OF THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS.

The history of myths, of their growth under the earlier phases of
human thought and of their decline under modern thinking, is one
of the most interesting and suggestive of human studies; but,
since to treat it as a whole would require volumes, I shall
select only one small group, and out of this mainly a single
myth--one about which there can no longer be any dispute--the
group of myths and legends which grew upon the shore of the Dead
Sea, and especially that one which grew up to account for the
successive salt columns washed out by the rains at its
southwestern extremity.

The Dead Sea is about fifty miles in length and ten miles in
width; it lies in a very deep fissure extending north and south,
and its surface is about thirteen hundred feet below that of the
Mediterranean. It has, therefore, no outlet, and is the
receptacle for the waters of the whole system to which it
belongs, including those collected by the Sea of Galilee and
brought down thence by the river Jordan.

It certainly--or at least the larger part of it--ranks
geologically among the oldest lakes on earth. In a broad sense
the region is volcanic: On its shore are evidences of volcanic
action, which must from the earliest period have aroused wonder
and fear, and stimulated the myth-making tendency to account for
them. On the eastern side are impressive mountain masses which
have been thrown up from old volcanic vents; mineral and hot
springs abound, some of them spreading sulphurous odours;
earthquakes have been frequent, and from time to time these have
cast up masses of bitumen; concretions of sulphur and large
formations of salt constantly appear.

The water which comes from the springs or oozes through the salt
layers upon its shores constantly brings in various salts in
solution, and, being rapidly evaporated under the hot sun and dry
wind, there has been left, in the bed of the lake, a strong brine
heavily charged with the usual chlorides and bromides--a sort of
bitter "mother liquor" This fluid has become so dense as to have
a remarkable power of supporting the human body; it is of an
acrid and nauseating bitterness; and by ordinary eyes no
evidence of life is seen in it.

Thus it was that in the lake itself, and in its surrounding
shores, there was enough to make the generation of explanatory
myths on a large scale inevitable.

The main northern part of the lake is very deep, the plummet
having shown an abyss of thirteen hundred feet; but the southern
end is shallow and in places marshy.

The system of which it forms a part shows a likeness to that in
South America of which the mountain lake Titicaca is the main
feature; as a receptacle for surplus waters, only rendering them
by evaporation, it resembles the Caspian and many other seas; as
a sort of evaporating dish for the leachings of salt rock, and
consequently holding a body of water unfit to support the higher
forms of animal life, it resembles, among others, the Median lake
of Urumiah; as a deposit of bitumen, it resembles the pitch
lakes of Trinidad.[427]

[427] For modern views of the Dead Sea, see the Rev. Edward
Robinson, D. D., Biblical Researches, various editions; Lynch's
Exploring Expedition; De Saulcy, Voyage autour de la Mer Morte;
Stanley's Palestine and Syria; Schaff's Through Bible Lands; and
other travellers hereafter quoted. For good photogravures,
showing the character of the whole region, see the atlas forming
part of De Luynes's monumental Voyage d'Exploration. For
geographical summaries, see Reclus, La Terre, Paris, 1870, pp.
832-834; Ritter, Erdkunde, volumes devoted to Palestine and
especially as supplemented in Gage's translation with additions;
Reclus, Nouvelle Geographie Universelle, vol. ix, p. 736, where a
small map is given presenting the difference in depth between the
two ends of the lake, of which so much was made theologically
before Lartet. For still better maps, see De Saulcy, and
especially De Luynes, Voyage d'Exploration (atlas). For very
interesting panoramic views, see last edition of Canon Tristram's
Land of Israel, p. 635. For the geology, see Lartet, in his
reports to the French Geographical Society, and especially in
vol. iii of De Luynes's work, where there is an admirable
geological map with sections, etc.; also Ritter; also Sir J. W.
Dawson's Egypt and Syria, published by the Religious Tract
Society; also Rev. Cunningham Geikie, D. D., Geology of
Palestine; and for pictures showing salt formation, Tristram, as
above. For the meteorology, see Vignes, report to De Luynes, pp.
65 et seq. For chemistry of the Dead Sea, see as above, and
Terreil's report, given in Gage's Ritter, vol. iii, appendix 2,
and tables in De Luynes's third volume. For zoology of the Dead
Sea, as to entire absence of life in it, see all earlier
travellers; as to presence of lower forms of life, see
Ehrenberg's microscopic examinations in Gage's Ritter. See also
reports in third volume of De Luynes. For botany of the Dead
Sea, and especially regarding "apples of Sodom," see Dr. Lortet's
La Syrie, p. 412; also Reclus, Nouvelle Geographie, vol. ix, p.
737; also for photographic representations of them, see portfolio
forming part of De Luynes's work, plate 27. For Strabo's very
perfect description, see his Geog., lib. xvi, cap. ii; also
Fallmerayer, Werke, pp. 177, 178. For names and positions of a
large number of salt lakes in various parts of the world more or
less resembling the Dead Sea, see De Luynes, vol. iii, pp. 242 et
seq. For Trinidad "pitch lakes," found by Sir Walter Raleigh in
1595, see Lengegg, El Dorado, part i, p. 103, and part ii, p.
101; also Reclus, Ritter, et al. For the general subject, see
Schenkel, Bibel-Lexikon, s.v. Todtes Meer, an excellent summery.
The description of the Dead Sea in Lenormant's great history is
utterly unworthy of him, and must have been thrown together from
old notes after his death. It is amazing to see in such a work
the old superstitions that birds attempting to fly over the sea
are sufficated. See Lenormant, Histoire ancienne de l'Orient,
edition of 1888, vol. vi, p. 112. For the absorption and
adoption of foreign myths and legends by the Jews, see
Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, p. 390. For the
views of Greeks and Romans, see especially Tacitus, Historiae,
book v, Pliny, and Strabo, in whose remarks are the germs of many
of the mediaeval myths. For very curious examples of these, see
Baierus, De Excidio Sodomae, Halle, 1690, passim.

In all this there is nothing presenting any special difficulty to
the modern geologist or geographer; but with the early dweller
in Palestine the case was very different. The rocky, barren
desolation of the Dead Sea region impressed him deeply; he
naturally reasoned upon it; and this impression and reasoning we
find stamped into the pages of his sacred literature, rendering
them all the more precious as a revelation of the earlier thought
of mankind. The long circumstantial account given in Genesis,
its application in Deuteronomy, its use by Amos, by Isaiah, by
Jeremiah, by Zephaniah, and by Ezekiel, the references to it in
the writings attributed to St. Paul, St. Peter, and St.
Jude, in the Apocalypse, and, above all, in more than one
utterance of the Master himself--all show how deeply these
geographical features impressed the Jewish mind.

At a very early period, myths and legends, many and
circumstantial, grew up to explain features then so
incomprehensible.

As the myth and legend grew up among the Greeks of a refusal of
hospitality to Zeus and Hermes by the village in Phrygia, and the
consequent sinking of that beautiful region with its inhabitants
beneath a lake and morass, so there came belief in a similar
offence by the people of the beautiful valley of Siddim, and the
consequent sinking of that valley with its inhabitants beneath
the waters of the Dead Sea. Very similar to the accounts of the
saving of Philemon and Baucis are those of the saving of Lot and
his family.

But the myth-making and miracle-mongering by no means ceased in
ancient times; they continued to grow through the medieval 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
instructive to note the conscientious efforts to prolong their
life by making futile compromises between science and theology
regarding them; but I shall mention this main group only
incidentally, confining my self almost entirely to the one above
named--the most remarkable of all--the myth which grew about the
salt pillars of Usdum.

I select this mainly because it involves only elementary
principles, 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
influence 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.

An eminent clergyman who visited this spot recently 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 traveller might have a new pillar of salt to wonder over at
intervals of a few years."[428]

[428] As to the substance of the "pillars" or "statues" or
"needles" of salt at Usdum, many travellers speak of it as "marl
and salt."  Irby and Mangles, in their Travels in Egypt, Nubia,
Syria, and the Holy Land, chap. 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, vol.ii, pp. 478, 479. For
engravings of the salt pillar at different times, compare that
given by Lynch in 1848, when it appeared as a column forty feet
high, with that given by Palmer as the frontpiece 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 he 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. For
similar pillars of salt washed out from the mud at Catalonia, see
Lyell.

Few things could be more certain than that, in the indolent
dream-life of the East, myths and legends would grow up to
account for this as for other strange appearances in all that
region. The question which a religious Oriental put to himself
in ancient times at Usdum was substantially that which his
descendant to-day puts to himself at Kosseir. "Why is this
region thus blasted?"  "Whence these pillars of salt?"  or
"Whence these blocks of granite?"  "What aroused the vengeance of
Jehovah or of Allah to work these miracles of desolation?"

And, just as Maxime Du Camp recorded the answer of the modern
Shemite at Kosseir, so the compilers of the Jewish sacred books
recorded the answer of the ancient Shemite at the Dead Sea; just
as Allah at Kosseir blasted the land and transformed the melons
into boulders which are seen to this day, so Jehovah at Usdum
blasted the land and transformed Lot's wife into a pillar of
salt, which is seen to this day.

No more difficulty was encountered in the formation of the Lot
legend, to account for that rock resembling the human form, than
in the formation of the Niobe legend, which accounted for a
supposed resemblance in the rock at Sipylos: it grew up just as
we have seen thousands of similar myths and legends grow up about
striking natural appearances in every early home of the human
race. Being thus consonant with the universal view regarding
the relation of physical geography to the divine government, it
became a treasure of the Jewish nation and of the Christian
Church--a treasure not only to be guarded against all hostile
intrusion, but to be increased, as we shall see, by the
myth-making powers of Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans for
thousands of years. The spot where the myth originated was
carefully kept in mind; indeed, it could not escape, for in that
place alone were constantly seen the phenomena which gave rise to
it. We have a steady chain of testimony through the ages, all
pointing to the salt pillar as the irrefragable evidence of
divine judgment. That great theological test of truth, the
dictum of St. Vincent of Lerins, would certainly prove that the
pillar was Lot's wife, for it was believed so to be by Jews,
Christians, and Mohammedans from the earliest period down to a
time almost within present memory-- "always, everywhere, and by
all."  It would stand perfectly the ancient test insisted upon by
Cardinal Newman," Securus judicat orbis terrarum."

For, ever since the earliest days of Christianity, the identity
of the salt pillar with Lot's wife has been universally held and
supported by passages in Genesis, in St. Luke's Gospel, and in
the Second Epistle of St. Peter--coupled with a passage in the
book of the Wisdom of Solomon, which to this day, by a majority
in the Christian Church, is believed to be inspired, and from
which are specially cited the words, "A standing pillar of salt
is a monument of an unbelieving soul."[429]

[429] For the usual biblical citations, see Genesis xix, 26; St.
Luke xvii, 32; II Peter ii, 6. For the citation from Wisdom, see
chap. x, v. 7. For the account of the transformation of Lot's
wife put into its proper relations with the Jehovistic and
Elohistic documents, see Lenormant's La Genese, Paris, 1883, pp.
53, 199, and 317, 318.

Never was chain of belief more continuous. In the first century
of the Christian era Josephus refers to the miracle, and declares
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 the
miraculous statue to be still standing.

In the second century that great father of the Church, bishop and
martyr, Irenaeus, not only vouched for it, but gave his approval
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 dead 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
with the legends of human beings transformed into boulders in
various mythologies, was for centuries regarded as an additional
confirmation 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 miraculous
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 medieval period, that the bitumen could only he
dissolved 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
travellers and monkish chroniclers for hundreds of years: so it
came to he 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
into which Lot's wife was transformed was still existing. In
the fourth, the continuance of the statue was vouched for by St.
Silvia, who visited the place: though she could not see it, she
was told by the Bishop of Segor that it had been there some time
before, and she concluded that it had been temporarily covered by
the sea. In both the fourth and fifth centuries such great
doctors in the Church as St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, and
St. Cyril of Jerusalem agreed in this belief and statement; hence
it was, doubtless, that the Hebrew word which is translated in
the authorized English version "pillar," was translated in the
Vulgate, which the majority of Christians believe virtually
inspired, by the word "statue"; we shall find this fact insisted
upon by theologians arguing in behalf of the statue, as a result
and monument of the miracle, for over fourteen hundred years
afterward.[430]

[430] See Josephus, Antiquities, book i, chap. xi; Epist. I;
Cyril Hieros, Catech., xix; Chrysostom, Hom. XVIII, XLIV, in
Genes.; Irenaeus, lib. iv, c. xxxi, of his Heresies, edition
Oxon., 1702. For St. Silvia, see S. Silviae Aquitanae
Peregrinatio ad Loca Sancta, Romae, 1887, p. 55; also edition of
1885, p. 25. For recent translation, see Pilgrimage of St.
Silvia, p. 28, in publications of Palestine Text Society for
1891. For legends of signs of continued life in boulders and
stones into which human beings have been transformed for sin, see
Karl Bartsch, Sage, etc., vol. ii, pp. 420 et seq.

About the middle of the sixth century Antoninus Martyr visited
the Dead Sea region and described it, but curiously reversed a
simple truth in these words: "Nor do sticks or straws float
there, nor can a man swim, but whatever is cast into it sinks
to the bottom."  As to the statue of Lot's wife, he threw doubt
upon its miraculous renewal, but testified that it was still
standing.

In the seventh century the Targum of Jerusalem not only testified
that the salt pillar at Usdum was once Lot's wife, but declared
that she must retain that form until the general resurrection.
In the seventh century too, Bishop Arculf travelled to the Dead
Sea, and his work was added to the treasures of the Church. He
greatly develops the legend, and especially that part of it given
by Josephus. The bitumen that floats upon the sea "resembles
gold and the form of a bull or camel"; "birds can not live near
it"; and "the very beautiful apples" which grow there, when
plucked, "burn and are reduced to ashes, and smoke as if they
were still burning."

In the eighth century the Venerable Bede takes these statements
of Arculf and his predecessors, binds them together in his work
on The Holy Places, and gives the whole mass of myths and
legends an enormous impulse.[431]

[431] For Antoninus Martyr, see Tobler's edition of his work in
the Itinera, vol. i, p. 100, Geneva, 1877. For the Targum of
Jerusalem, see citation in Quaresmius, Terrae Sanctae
Elucidation, Peregrinatio vi, cap. xiv; new Venice edition. For
Arculf, see Tobler. For Bede, see his De Locis Sanctis in
Tobler's Itinera, vol. i, p. 228. For an admirable statement of
the mediaeval theological view of scientific research, see
Eicken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung,
Stuttgart, 1887, chap. vi.

In the tenth century new force is given to it by the pious Moslem
Mukadassi. Speaking of the town of Segor, near the salt region,
he says that the proper translation of its name is "Hell"; and
of the lake he says, "Its waters are hot, even as though the
place stood over hell-fire."

In the crusading period, immediately following, all the legends
burst forth more brilliantly than ever.

The first of these new travellers who makes careful statements is
Fulk of Chartres, who in 1100 accompanied King Baldwin to the
Dead Sea and saw many wonders; but, though he visited the salt
region at Usdum, he makes no mention of the salt pillar:
evidently he had fallen on evil times; the older statues had
probably been washed away, and no new one had happened to be
washed out of the rocks just at that period.

But his misfortune was more than made up by the triumphant
experience of a far more famous traveller, half a century
later--Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela.

Rabbi Benjamin finds new evidences of miracle in the Dead Sea,
and develops to a still higher point the legend of the salt
statue of Lot's wife, enriching the world with the statement that
it was steadily and miraculously rene wed; that, though the
cattle of the region licked its surface, it never grew smaller.
Again a thrill of joy went through the monasteries and pulpits of
Christendom at this increasing "evidence of the truth of
Scripture."

Toward the end of the thirteenth century there appeared in
Palestine a traveller superior to most before or since--Count
Burchard, monk of Mount Sion. He had the advantage of knowing
something of Arabic, and his writings show him to have been
observant and thoughtful. No statue of Lot's wife appears to
have been washed clean of the salt rock at his visit, but he
takes it for granted that the Dead Sea is "the mouth of hell,"
and that the vapour rising from it is the smoke from Satan's
furnaces.

These ideas seem to have become part of the common stock, for
Ernoul, who travelled to the Dead Sea during the same century,
always speaks of it as the "Sea of Devils."

Near the beginning of the fourteenth century appeared the book of
far wider influence which bears the name of Sir John Mandeville,
and in the various editions of it myths and legends of the Dead
Sea and of the pillar of salt burst forth into wonderful
luxuriance.

This book tells us that masses of fiery matter are every day
thrown up from the water "as large as a horse"; that, though it
contains no living thing, it has been shown that men thrown into
it can not die; and, finally, as if to prove the worthlessness
of devout testimony to the miraculous, he says: "And whoever
throws a piece of iron therein, it floats; and whoever throws a
feather therein, it sinks to the bottom; and, because that is
contrary to nature, I was not willing to believe it until I saw
it."

The book, of course, mentions Lot's wife, and says that the
pillar of salt "stands there to-day," and "has a right salty
taste."

Injustice has perhaps been done to the compilers of this famous
work in holding them liars of the first magnitude. They simply
abhorred scepticism, and thought it meritorious to believe all
pious legends. The ideal Mandeville was a man of overmastering
faith, and resembled Tertullian in believing some things "because
they are impossible"; he was doubtless entirely conscientious;
the solemn ending of the book shows that he listened, observed,
and wrote under the deepest conviction, and those who re-edited
his book were probably just as honest in adding the later stories
of pious travellers.

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, thus appealing to the
popular heart, were most widely read in the monasteries and
repeated among the people. Innumerable copies were made in
manuscript, and finally in print, and so the old myths received a
new life.[432]

[432] For Fulk of Chartres and crusading travellers generally,
see Bongars' Gesta Dei and the French Recueil; also Histories of
the Crusades by Wilken, Sybel, Kugler, and others; see also
Robinson, Biblical Researches, vol. ii, p. 109, and Tobler,
Bibliographia Geographica Palestinae, 1867, p. 12. For Benjamin
of Tudela's statement, see Wright's Collection of Travels in
Palestine, p. 84, and Asher's edition of Benjamin of Tudela's
travels, vol. i, pp. 71, 72; also Charton, vol. i, p. 180. For
Borchard or Burchard, see full text in the Reyssbuch dess
Heyligen Landes; also Grynaeus, Nov. Orbis, Basil, 1532, fol.
298, 329. For Ernoul, see his L'Estat de la Cite de Hierusalem,
in Michelant and Reynaud, Itineraires Francaises au 12me et 13me
Siecles. For Petrus Diaconus, see his book De Locis Sanctis,
edited by Gamurrini, Rome, 1887, pp. 126, 127. For Mandeville I
have compared several editions, especially those in the
Reyssbuch, in Canisius, and in Wright, with Halliwell's reprint
and with the rare Strasburg edition of 1484 in the Cornell
University Library: the whole statement regarding the experiment
with iron and feathers is given differently in different copies.
The statement that he saw the feathers sink and the iron swim is
made in the Reyssbuch edition, Frankfort, 1584. The story, like
the saints' legends, evidently grew as time went on, but is none
the less interesting as showing the general credulity. Since
writing the above, I have been glad to find my view of
Mandeville's honesty confirmed by the Rev. Dr. Robinson, and by
Mr. Gage in his edition of Ritter's Palestine.

In the fifteenth century wonders increased. In 1418 we have the
Lord of Caumont, who makes a pilgrimage and gives us a statement
which is the result of the theological reasoning of centuries,
and especially interesting as a typical example of the
theological method in contrast with the scientific. He could
not understand how the blessed waters of the Jordan could be
allowed to mingle with the accursed waters of the Dead Sea. In
spite, then, of the eye of sense, he beheld the water with the
eye of faith, and calmly announced that the Jordan water passes
through the sea, but that the two masses of water are not
mingled. As to the salt statue of Lot's wife, he declares it to
be still existing; and, copying a table of indulgences granted by
the Church to pious pilgrims, he puts down the visit to the salt
statue as giving an indulgence of seven years.

Toward the end of the century we have another traveller yet more
influential: Bernard of Breydenbach, Dean of Mainz. His book of
travels was published in 1486, at the famous press of Schoeffer,
and in various translations it was spread through Europe,
exercising an influence wide and deep. His first important
notice of the Dead Sea is as follows: "In this, Tirus the
serpent is found, and from him the Tiriac medicine is made. He
is blind, and so full of venom that there is no remedy for his
bite except cutting off the bitten part. He can only be taken by
striking him and making him angry; then his venom flies into his
head and tail."  Breydenbach calls the Dead Sea "the chimney of
hell," and repeats the old story as to the miraculous solvent for
its bitumen. He, too, makes the statement that the holy water of
the Jordan does not mingle with the accursed water of the
infernal sea, but increases the miracle which Caumont had
announced by saying that, although the waters appear to come
together, the Jordan is really absorbed in the earth before it
reaches the sea.

As to Lot's wife, various travellers at that time had various
fortunes. Some, like Caumont and Breydenbach, took her
continued existence for granted; some, like Count John of Solms,
saw her and were greatly edified; some, like Hans Werli, tried to
find her and could not, but, like St. Silvia, a thousand years
before, were none the less edified by the idea that, for some
inscrutable purpose, the sea had been allowed to hide her from
them; some found her larger than they expected, even forty feet
high, as was the salt pillar which happened to be standing at the
visit of Commander Lynch in 1848; but this only added a new proof
to the miracle, for the text was remembered, "There were giants
in those days."

Out of the mass of works of pilgrims during the fifteenth century
I select just one more as typical of the theological view then
dominant, and this is the noted book of Felix Fabri, a preaching
friar of Ulm. I select him, because even so eminent an
authority in our own time as Dr. Edward Robinson declares him to
have been the most thorough, thoughtful, and enlightened
traveller of that century.

Fabri is greatly impressed by the wonders of the Dead Sea, and
typical of his honesty influenced by faith is his account of the
Dead Sea fruit; he describes it with almost perfect accuracy,
but adds the statement that when mature it is "filled with ashes
and cinders."

As to the salt statue, he says: "We saw the place between the
sea and Mount Segor, but could not see the statue itself because
we were too far distant to see anything of human size; but we saw
it with firm faith, because we believed Scripture, which speaks
of it; and we were filled with wonder."

To sustain absolute faith in the statue he reminds his reader's
that "God is able even of these stones to raise up seed to
Abraham," and goes into a long argument, discussing such
transformations as those of King Atlas and Pygmalion's statue,
with a multitude of others, winding up with the case, given in
the miracles of St. Jerome, of a heretic who was changed into a
log of wood, which was then burned.

He gives a statement of the Hebrews that Lot's wife received her
peculiar punishment because she had refused to add salt to the
food of the angels when they visited her, and he preaches a short
sermon in which he says that, as salt is the condiment of food,
so the salt statue of Lot's wife "gives us a condiment of
wisdom."[433]

[433] For Bernard of Breydenbach, I have used the Latin edition,
Mentz, 1486, in the White collection, Cornell University, also
the German edition in the Reyssbuch. For John of Solms, Werli,
and the like, see the Reyssbuch, which gives a full text of their
travels. For Fabri (Schmid), see, for his value, Robinson; also
Tobler, Bibliographia, pp. 53 et seq.; and for texts, see
Reyssbuch, pp. 122b et seq., but best the Fratris Fel. Fabri
Evagatorium, ed. Hassler, Stuttgart, 1843, vol. iii, pp. 172 et
seq. His book now has been translated into English by the
Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society.

There were, indeed, many discrepancies in the testimony of
travellers regarding the salt pillar--so many, in fact, that at a
later period the learned Dom Calmet acknowledged that they shook
his belief in the whole matter; but, during this earlier time,
under the complete sway of the theological spirit, these
difficulties only gave new and more glorious opportunities for
faith.

For, if a considerable interval occurred between the washing of
one salt pillar out of existence and the washing of another into
existence, the idea arose that the statue, by virtue of the soul
which still remained in it, had departed on some mysterious
excursion. Did it happen that one statue was washed out one
year in one place and another statue another year in another
place, this difficulty was surmounted by believing that Lot's
wife still walked about. Did it happen that a salt column was
undermined by the rains and fell, this was believed to be but
another sign of life. Did a pillar happen to be covered in part
by the sea, this was enough to arouse the belief that the statue
from time to time descended into the Dead Sea depths--possibly to
satisfy that old fatal curiosity regarding her former neighbours.

Did some smaller block of salt happen to be washed out near the
statue, it was believed that a household dog, also transformed
into salt, had followed her back from beneath the deep. Did more
statues than one appear at one time, that simply made the mystery
more impressive.

In facts now so easy of scientific explanation the theologians
found wonderful matter for argument.

One great question among them was whether the soul of Lot's wife
did really remain in the statue. On one side it was insisted
that, as Holy Scripture declares that Lot's wife was changed into
a pillar of salt, and as she was necessarily made up of a soul
and a body, the soul must have become part of the statue. This
argument was clinched by citing that passage in the Book of
Wisdom in which the salt pillar is declared to be still standing
as "the monument of an unbelieving SOUL."  On the other hand, it
was insisted that the soul of the woman must have been
incorporeal and immortal, and hence could not have been changed
into a substance corporeal and mortal. Naturally, to this it
would be answered that the salt pillar was no more corporeal than
the ordinary materials of the human body, and that it had been
made miraculously immortal, and "with God all things are
possible."  Thus were opened long vistas of theological
discussion.[434]

[434] For a brief statement of the main arguments for and against
the idea that the soul of Lot's wife remained within the salt
statue, see Cornelius a Lapide, Commentarius in Pentateuchum,
Antwerp, 1697, chap. xix.

As we enter the sixteenth century the Dead Sea myths, and
especially the legends of Lot's wife, are still growing. In
1507 Father Anselm of the Minorites declares that the sea
sometimes covers the feet of the statue, sometimes the legs,
sometimes the whole body.

In 1555, Gabriel Giraudet, priest at Puy, journeyed through
Palestine. His faith was robust, and his attitude toward the
myths of the Dead Sea is seen by his declaration that its waters
are so foul that one can smell them at a distance of three
leagues; that straw, hay, or feathers thrown into them will
sink, but that iron and other metals will float; that criminals
have been kept in them three or four days and could not drown.
As to Lot's wife, he says that he found her "lying there, her
back toward heaven, converted into salt stone; for I touched her,
scratched her, and put a piece of her into my mouth, and she
tasted salt."

At the centre of all these legends we see, then, the idea that,
though there were no living beasts in the Dead Sea, the people of
the overwhelmed cities were still living beneath its waters,
probably in hell; that there was life in the salt statue; and
that it was still curious regarding its old neighbours.

Hence such travellers in the latter years of the century as Count
Albert of Lowenstein and Prince Nicolas Radziwill are not at all
weakened in faith by failing to find the statue. What the former
is capable of believing is seen by his statement that in a
certain cemetery at Cairo during one night in the year the dead
thrust forth their feet, hands, limbs, and even rise wholly from
their graves.

There seemed, then, no limit to these pious beliefs. The idea
that there is merit in credulity, with the love of myth-making
and miracle-mongering, constantly made them larger. Nor did the
Protestant Reformation diminish them at first; it rather
strengthened them and fixed them more firmly in the popular mind.
They seemed destined to last forever. How they were thus
strengthened at first, under Protestantism, and how they were
finally dissolved away in the atmosphere of scientific thought,
will now be shown.[435]

[435] For Father Anselm, see his Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, in H.
Canisius, Thesaurus Monument Eccles., Basnage edition, Amsterdam,
1725, vol. iv, p. 788. For Giraudet, see his Discours du Voyage
d'Outre-Mer, Paris, 1585, p. 56a. For Radziwill and Lowenstein,
see the Reyssbuch, especially p. 198a.

III. POST-REFORMATION CULMINATION OF THE DEAD SEA
LEGENDS.--BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.

The first effect of the Protestant Reformation was to popularize
the older Dead Sea legends, and to make the public mind still
more receptive for the newer ones.

Luther's great pictorial Bible, so powerful in fixing the ideas
of the German people, showed by very striking engravings all
three of these earlier myths--the destruction of the cities by
fire from heaven, the transformation of Lot's wife, and the vile
origin of the hated Moabites and Ammonites; and we find the salt
statue, especially, in this and other pictorial Bibles, during
generation after generation.

Catholic peoples also held their own in this display of faith.
About 1517 Francois Regnault published at Paris a compilation on
Palestine enriched with woodcuts: in this the old Dead Sea
legend of the "serpent Tyrus" reappears embellished, and with it
various other new versions of old stories. Five years later
Bartholomew de Salignac travels in the Holy Land, vouches for the
continued existence of the Lot's wife statue, and gives new life
to an old marvel by insisting that the sacred waters of the
Jordan are not really poured into the infernal basin of the Dead
Sea, but that they are miraculously absorbed by the earth.

These ideas were not confined to the people at large; we trace
them among scholars.

In 1581, Bunting, a North German professor and theologian,
published his Itinerary of Holy Scripture, and in this the Dead
Sea and Lot legends continue to increase. He tells us that the
water of the sea "changes three times every day"; that it "spits
forth fire" that it throws up "on high" great foul masses which
"burn like pitch" and "swim about like huge oxen"; that the
statue of Lot's wife is still there, and that it shines like
salt.

In 1590, Christian Adrichom, a Dutch theologian, published his
famous work on sacred geography. He does not insist upon the
Dead Sea legends generally, but declares that the statue of Lot's
wife is still in existence, and on his map he gives a picture of
her standing at Usdum.

Nor was it altogether safe to dissent from such beliefs. Just
as, under the papal sway, men of science were severely punished
for wrong views of the physical geography of the earth in
general, so, when Calvin decided to burn Servetus, he included in
his indictment for heresy a charge that Servetus, in his edition
of Ptolemy, had made unorthodox statements regarding the physical
geography of Palestine.[436]

[436] For biblical engravings showing Lot's wife transformed into
a salt statue, etc., see Luther's Bible, 1534, p. xi; also the
pictorial Electoral Bible; also Merian's Icones Biblicae of 1625;
also the frontpiece of the Luther Bible published at Nuremberg in
1708; also Scheuchzer's Kupfer-Bibel, Augsburg, 1731, Tab. lxxx.
For the account of the Dead Sea serpent "Tyrus," etc., see La
Grande Voyage de Hierusalem, Paris (1517?), p. xxi. For De
Salignac's assertion regarding the salt pillar and suggestion
regarding the absorption of the Jordan before reaching the Dead
Sea, see his Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, Magdeburg, 1593, SS
34 and 35. For Bunting, see his Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae,
Magdeburg, 1589, pp. 78, 79. For Andrichom's picture of the salt
statue, see map, p. 38, and text, p. 205, of his Theatrum Terrae
Sanctae, 1613. For Calvin and Servetus, see Willis, Servetus and
Calvin, pp. 96, 307; also the Servetus edition of Ptolemy.

Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the making of
new myths. Thus, in his Most Devout Journey, published in
1608, Jean Zvallart, Mayor of Ath in Hainault, confesses himself
troubled by conflicting stories about the salt statue, but
declares himself sound in the faith that "some vestige of it
still remains," and makes up for his bit of freethinking by
adding a new mythical horror to the region--"crocodiles," which,
with the serpents and the "foul odour of the sea," prevented his
visit to the salt mountains.

In 1615 Father Jean Boucher publishes the first of many editions
of his Sacred Bouquet of the Holy Land. He depicts the horrors
of the Dead Sea in a number of striking antitheses, and among
these is the statement that it is made of mud rather than of
water, that it soils whatever is put into it, and so corrupts the
land about it that not a blade of grass grows in all that region.

In the same spirit, thirteen years later, the Protestant
Christopher Heidmann publishes his Palaestina, in which he
speaks of a fluid resembling blood oozing from the rocks about
the Dead Sea, and cites authorities to prove that the statue of
Lot's wife still exists and gives signs of life.

Yet, as we near the end of the sixteenth century, some evidences
of a healthful and fruitful scepticism begin to appear.

The old stream of travellers, commentators, and preachers,
accepting tradition and repeating what they have been told, flows
on; but here and there we are refreshed by the sight of a man
who really begins to think and look for himself.

First among these is the French naturalist Pierre Belon. As
regards the ordinary wonders, he had the simple faith of his
time. Among a multitude of similar things, he believed that he
saw the stones on which the disciples were sleeping during the
prayer of Christ; the stone on which the Lord sat when he raised
Lazarus from the dead; the Lord's footprints on the stone from
which he ascended into heaven; and, most curious of all, "the
stone which the builders rejected."  Yet he makes some advance on
his predecessors, since he shows in one passage that he had
thought out the process by which the simpler myths of Palestine
were made. For, between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, he sees a
field covered with small pebbles, and of these he says: "The
common people tell you that a man was once sowing peas there,
when Our Lady passed that way and asked him what he was doing;
the man answered "I am sowing pebbles" and straightway all the
peas were changed into these little stones."

His ascribing belief in this explanatory transformation myth to
the "common people" marks the faint dawn of a new epoch.

Typical also of this new class is the German botanist Leonhard
Rauwolf. He travels through Palestine in 1575, and, though
devout and at times credulous, notes comparatively few of the old
wonders, while he makes thoughtful and careful mention of things
in nature that he really saw; he declines to use the eyes of the
monks, and steadily uses his own to good purpose.

As we go on in the seventeenth century, this current of new
thought is yet more evident; a habit of observing more carefully
and of comparing observations had set in; the great voyages of
discovery by Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, and others were
producing their effect; and this effect was increased by the
inductive philosophy of Bacon, the reasonings of Descartes, and
the suggestions of Montaigne.

So evident was this current that, as far back as the early days
of the century, a great theologian, Quaresmio of Lodi, had made
up his mind to stop it forever. In 1616, therefore, he began
his ponderous work entitled The Historical, Theological, and
Moral Explanation of the Holy Land. He laboured upon it for nine
years, gave nine years more to perfecting it, and then put it
into the hands of the great publishing house of Plantin at
Antwerp: they were four years in printing and correcting it, and
when it at last appeared it seemed certain to establish the
theological view of the Holy Land for all time. While taking
abundant care of other myths which he believed sanctified by Holy
Scripture, Quaresmio devoted himself at great length to the Dead
Sea, but above all to the salt statue; and he divides his
chapter on it into three parts, each headed by a question:
First, "HOW was Lot's wife changed into a statue of salt?"
secondly, "WHERE was she thus transformed?" and, thirdly, "DOES
THAT STATUE STILL EXIST?"  Through each of these divisions he
fights to the end all who are inclined to swerve in the slightest
degree from the orthodox opinion. He utterly refuses to
compromise with any modern theorists. To all such he says, "The
narration of Moses is historical and is to be received in its
natural sense, and no right-thinking man will deny this."  To
those who favoured the figurative interpretation he says, "With
such reasonings any passage of Scripture can be denied."

As to the spot where the miracle occurred, he discusses four
places, but settles upon the point where the picture of the
statue is given in Adrichom's map. As to the continued
existence of the statue, he plays with the opposing view as a cat
fondles a mouse; and then shows that the most revered ancient
authorities, venerable men still living, and the Bedouins, all
agree that it is still in being. Throughout the whole chapter
his thoroughness in scriptural knowledge and his profundity in
logic are only excelled by his scorn for those theologians who
were willing to yield anything to rationalism.

So powerful was this argument that it seemed to carry everything
before it, not merely throughout the Roman obedience, but among
the most eminent theologians of Protestantism.

As regards the Roman Church, we may take as a type the missionary
priest Eugene Roger, who, shortly after the appearance of
Quaresmio's book, published his own travels in Palestine. He
was an observant man, and his work counts among those of real
value; but the spirit of Quaresmio had taken possession of him
fully. His work is prefaced with a map showing the points of most
importance in scriptural history, and among these he identifies
the place where Samson slew the thousand Philistines with the
jawbone of an ass, and where he hid the gates of Gaza; the
cavern which Adam and Eve inhabited after their expulsion from
paradise; the spot where Balaam's ass spoke; the tree on which
Absalom was hanged; the place where Jacob wrestled with the
angel; the steep place where the swine possessed of devils
plunged into the sea; the spot where the prophet Elijah was taken
up in a chariot of fire; and, of course, the position of the salt
statue which was once Lot's wife. He not only indicates places
on land, but places in the sea; thus he shows where Jonah was
swallowed by the whale, and "where St. Peter caught one hundred
and fifty-three fishes."

As to the Dead Sea miracles generally, he does not dwell on them
at great length; he evidently felt that Quaresmio had exhausted
the subject; but he shows largely the fruits of Quaresmio's
teaching in other matters.

So, too, we find the thoughts and words of Quaresmio echoing afar
through the German universities, in public disquisitions,
dissertations, and sermons. The great Bible commentators, both
Catholic and Protestant, generally agreed in accepting them.

But, strong as this theological theory was, we find that, as time
went on, it required to be braced somewhat, and in 1692 Wedelius,
Professor of Medicine at Jena, chose as the subject of his
inaugural address The Physiology of the Destruction of Sodom and
of the Statue of Salt.

It is a masterly example of "sanctified science."  At great
length he dwells on the characteristics of sulphur, salt, and
thunderbolts; mixes up scriptural texts, theology, and chemistry
after a most bewildering fashion; and finally comes to the
conclusion that a thunderbolt, flung by the Almighty, calcined
the body of Lot's wife, and at the same time vitrified its
particles into a glassy mass looking like salt.[437]

[437] For Zvallart, see his Tres-devot Voyage de Ierusalem,
Antwerp, 1608, book iv, chapter viii. His journey was made
twenty years before. For Father Boucher, see his Bouquet de la
Terre Saincte, Paris, 1622, pp. 447, 448. For Heidmann, see his
Palaestina, 1689, pp. 58-62. For Belon's credulity in matters
referred to, see his Observations de Plusieurs Singularitez,
etc., Paris, 1553, pp. 141-144; and for the legend of the peas
changed into pebbles, p. 145; see also Lartet in De Luynes, vol.
iii, p. 11. For Rauwolf, see the Reyssbuch, and Tobler,
Bibliographia. For a good acoount of the influence of Montaigne
in developing French scepticism, see Prevost-Paradol's study on
Montaigne prefixed to the Le Clerc edition of the Essays, Paris,
1865; also the well-known passages in Lecky's Rationalism in
Europe. For Quaresmio I have consulted both the Plantin edition
of 1639 and the superb new Venice edition of 1880-'82. The
latter, though less prized by book fanciers, is the more
valuable, since it contains some very interesting recent notes.
For the above discussion, see Plantin edition, vol. ii, pp. 758
et seq., and Venice edition, vol. ii, pp. 572-574. As to the
effect of Quaresmio on the Protestant Church, see Wedelius, De
Statua Salis, Jenae, 1692, pp.6, 7, and elswehere. For Eugene
Roger, see his La Terre Saincte, Paris, 1664; the map, showing
various sites referred to, is in the preface; and for basilisks,
salamanders, etc., see pp. 89-92, 139, 218, and elsewhere.

Not only were these views demonstrated, so far as
theologico-scientific reasoning could demonstrate anything, but
it was clearly shown, by a continuous chain of testimony from the
earliest ages, that the salt statue at Usdum had been recognised
as the body of Lot's wife by Jews, Mohammedans, and the universal
Christian Church, "always, everywhere, and by all."

Under the influence of teachings like these--and of the winter
rains--new wonders began to appear at the salt pillar. In 1661
the Franciscan monk Zwinner published his travels in Palestine,
and gave not only most of the old myths regarding the salt
statue, but a new one, in some respects more striking than any of
the old--for he had heard that a dog, also transformed into salt,
was standing by the side of Lot's wife.

Even the more solid Benedictine scholars were carried away, and
we find in the Sacred History by Prof. Mezger, of the order of
St. Benedict, published in 1700, a renewal of the declaration
that the salt statue must be a "PERPETUAL memorial."

But it was soon evident that the scientific current was still
working beneath this ponderous mass of theological authority. A
typical evidence of this we find in 1666 in the travels of
Doubdan, a canon of St. Denis. As to the Dead Sea, he says
that he saw no smoke, no clouds, and no "black, sticky water"; as
to the statue of Lot's wife, he says, "The moderns do not believe
so easily that she has lasted so long"; then, as if alarmed at
his own boldness, he concedes that the sea MAY be black and
sticky in the middle; and from Lot's wife he escapes under cover
of some pious generalities. Four years later another French
ecclesiastic, Jacques Goujon, referring in his published travels
to the legends of the salt pillar, says: "People may believe
these stories as much as they choose; I did not see it, nor did
I go there."  So, too, in 1697, Morison, a dignitary of the
French Church, having travelled in Palestine, confesses that, as
to the story of the pillar of salt, he has difficulty in
believing it.

The same current is observed working still more strongly in the
travels of the Rev. Henry Maundrell, an English chaplain at
Aleppo, who travelled through Palestine during the same year.
He pours contempt over the legends of the Dead Sea in general:
as to the story that birds could not fly over it, he says that he
saw them flying there; as to the utter absence of life in the
sea, he saw small shells in it; he saw no traces of any buried
cities; and as to the stories regarding the statue of Lot's wife
and the proposal to visit it, he says, "Nor could we give faith
enough to these reports to induce us to go on such an errand."

The influence of the Baconian philosophy on his mind is very
clear; for, in expressing his disbelief in the Dead Sea apples,
with their contents of ashes, he says that he saw none, and he
cites Lord Bacon in support of scepticism on this and similar
points.

But the strongest effect of this growing scepticism is seen near
the end of that century, when the eminent Dutch commentator
Clericus (Le Clerc) published his commentary on the Pentateuch
and his Dissertation on the Statue of Salt.

At great length he brings all his shrewdness and learning to bear
against the whole legend of the actual transformation of Lot's
wife and the existence of the salt pillar, and ends by saying
that "the whole story is due to the vanity of some and the
credulity of more."

In the beginning of the eighteenth century we find new
tributaries to this rivulet of scientific thought. In 1701
Father Felix Beaugrand dismisses the Dead Sea legends and the
salt statue very curtly and dryly--expressing not his belief in
it, but a conventional wish to believe.

In 1709 a scholar appeared in another part of Europe and of
different faith, who did far more than any of his predecessors to
envelop the Dead Sea legends in an atmosphere of truth--Adrian
Reland, professor at the University of Utrecht. His work on
Palestine is a monument of patient scholarship, having as its
nucleus a love of truth as truth: there is no irreverence in
him, but he quietly brushes away a great mass of myths and
legends: as to the statue of Lot's wife, he treats it warily,
but applies the comparative method to it with killing effect, by
showing that the story of its miraculous renewal is but one among
many of its kind.[438]

[438] For Zwinner, see his Blumenbuch des Heyligen Landes,
Munchen, 1661, p. 454. For Mezger, see his Sacra Historia,
Augsburg, 1700, p. 30. For Doubdan, see his Voyage de la Terre-
Sainte, Paris, 1670, pp. 338, 339; also Tobler and Gage's Ritter.
For Goujon, see his Histoire et Voyage de la Terre Saincte,
Lyons, 1670, p. 230, etc. For Morison, see his Voyage, book ii,
pp. 516, 517. For Maundrell, see in Wright's Collection, pp. 383
et seq. For Clericus, see his Dissertation de Salis Statua, in
his Pentateuch, edition of 1696, pp. 327 et seq. For Father
Beaugrand, see his Voyage, Paris, 1701, pp. 137 et seq. For
Reland, see his Palaestina, Utrecht, 1714, vol. i, pp. 61-254,
passim.

Yet to superficial observers the old current of myth and marvel
seemed to flow into the eighteenth century as strong as ever, and
of this we may take two typical evidences. The first of these
is the Pious Pilgrimage of Vincent Briemle. His journey was made
about 171O; and his work, brought out under the auspices of a
high papal functionary some years later, in a heavy quarto, gave
new life to the stories of the hellish character of the Dead Sea,
and especially to the miraculous renewal of the salt statue.

In 172O came a still more striking effort to maintain the old
belief in the north of Europe, for in that year the eminent
theologian Masius published his great treatise on The Conversion
of Lot's Wife into a Statue of Salt.

Evidently intending that this work should be the last word on
this subject in Germany, as Quaresmio had imagined that his work
would be the last in Italy, he develops his subject after the
high scholastic and theologic manner. Calling attention first
to the divine command in the New Testament, "Remember Lot's
wife," he argues through a long series of chapters. In the ninth
of these he discusses "the impelling cause" of her looking back,
and introduces us to the question, formerly so often treated by
theologians, whether the soul of Lot's wife was finally saved.
Here we are glad to learn that the big, warm heart of Luther
lifted him above the common herd of theologians, and led him to
declare that she was "a faithful and saintly woman," and that she
certainly was not eternally damned. In justice to the Roman
Church also it should be said that several of her most eminent
commentators took a similar view, and insisted that the sin of
Lot's wife was venial, and therefore, at the worst, could only
subject her to the fires of purgatory.

The eleventh chapter discusses at length the question HOW she
was converted into salt, and, mentioning many theological
opinions, dwells especially upon the view of Rivetus, that a
thunderbolt, made up apparently of fire, sulphur, and salt,
wrought her transformation at the same time that it blasted the
land; and he bases this opinion upon the twenty-ninth chapter of
Deuteronomy and the one hundred and seventh Psalm.

Later, Masius presents a sacred scientific theory that "saline
particles entered into her until her whole body was infected";
and with this he connects another piece of sanctified science, to
the effect that "stagnant bile" may have rendered the surface of
her body "entirely shining, bitter, dry, and deformed."

Finally, he comes to the great question whether the salt pillar
is still in existence. On this he is full and fair. On one
hand he allows that Luther thought that it was involved in the
general destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and he cites various
travellers who had failed to find it; but, on the other hand, he
gives a long chain of evidence to show that it continued to
exist: very wisely he reminds the reader that the positive
testimony of those who have seen it must outweigh the negative
testimony of those who have not, and he finally decides that the
salt statue is still in being.

No doubt a work like this produced a considerable effect in
Protestant countries; indeed, this effect seems evident as far
off as England, for, in 172O, we find in Dean Prideaux's Old and
New Testament connected a map on which the statue of salt is
carefully indicated. So, too, in Holland, in the Sacred
Geography published at Utrecht in 1758 by the theologian
Bachiene, we find him, while showing many signs of rationalism,
evidently inclined to the old views as to the existence of the
salt pillar; but just here comes a curious evidence of the real
direction of the current of thought through the century, for,
nine years later, in the German translation of Bachiene's work we
find copious notes by the translator in a far more rationalistic
spirit; indeed, we see the dawn of the inevitable day of
compromise, for we now have, instead of the old argument that the
divine power by one miraculous act changed Lot's wife into a salt
pillar, the suggestion that she was caught in a shower of sulphur
and saltpetre, covered by it, and that the result was a lump,
which in a general way IS CALLED in our sacred books "a pillar
of salt."[439]

[439] For Briemle, see his Andachtige Pilgerfahrt, p. 129. For
Masius, see his De Uxore Lothi in Statuam Salis Conversa,
Hafniae, 1720, especially pages 29-31. For Dean Prideaux, see
his Old and New Testament connected in the History of the Jews,
1720,  map at page 7. For Bachiene, see his Historische und
geographische Beschreibung von Palaestina, Leipzig, 1766, vol. i,
pp. 118-120, and notes.

But, from the middle of the eighteenth century, the new current
sets through Christendom with ever-increasing strength. Very
interesting is it to compare the great scriptural commentaries of
the middle of this century with those published a century
earlier.

Of the earlier ones we may take Matthew Poole's Synopsis as a
type: as authorized by royal decree in 1667 it contains very
substantial arguments for the pious belief in the statue. Of
the later ones we may take the edition of the noted commentary of
the Jesuit Tirinus seventy years later: while he feels bound to
present the authorities, he evidently endeavours to get rid of
the subject as speedily as possible under cover of
conventionalities; of the spirit of Quaresmio he shows no
trace.[440]

[440] For Poole (Polus) see his Synopsis, 1669, p. 179; and for
Titinus, the Lyons edition of his Commentary, 1736, p. 10.

About 1760 came a striking evidence of the strength of this new
current. The Abate Mariti then published his book upon the Holy
Land; and of this book, by an Italian ecclesiastic, the most
eminent of German bibliographers in this field says that it first
broke a path for critical study of the Holy Land. Mariti is
entirely sceptical as to the sinking of the valley of Siddim and
the overwhelming of the cities. He speaks kindly of a Capuchin
Father who saw everywhere at the Dead Sea traces of the divine
malediction, while he himself could not see them, and says, "It
is because a Capuchin carries everywhere the five senses of
faith, while I only carry those of nature."  He speaks of "the
lies of Josephus," and makes merry over "the rude and shapeless
block" which the guide assured him was the statue of Lot's wife,
explaining the want of human form in the salt pillar by telling
him that this complete metamorphosis was part of her punishment.

About twenty years later, another remarkable man, Volney,
broaches the subject in what was then known as the "philosophic"
spirit. Between the years 1783 and 1785 he made an extensive
journey through the Holy Land and published a volume of travels
which by acuteness of thought and vigour of style secured general
attention. In these, myth and legend were thrown aside, and we
have an account simply dictated by the love of truth as truth.
He, too, keeps the torch of science burning by applying his
geological knowledge to the regions which he traverses.

As we look back over the eighteenth century we see mingled with
the new current of thought, and strengthening it, a constantly
increasing stream of more strictly scientific observation and
reflection.

To review it briefly: in the very first years of the century
Maraldi showed the Paris Academy of Sciences fossil fishes found
in the Lebanon region; a little later, Cornelius Bruyn, in the
French edition of his Eastern travels, gave well-drawn
representations of fossil fishes and shells, some of them from
the region of the Dead Sea; about the middle of the century
Richard Pococke, Bishop of Meath, and Korte of Altona made more
statements of the same sort; and toward the close of the
century, as we have seen, Volney gave still more of these
researches, with philosophical deductions from them.

The result of all this was that there gradually dawned upon
thinking men the conviction that, for ages before the appearance
of man on the planet, and during all the period since his
appearance, natural laws have been steadily in force in Palestine
as elsewhere; this conviction obliged men to consider other than
supernatural causes for the phenomena of the Dead Sea, and myth
and marvel steadily shrank in value.

But at the very threshold of the nineteenth century Chateaubriand
came into the field, and he seemed to banish the scientific
spirit, though what he really did was to conceal it temporarily
behind the vapours of his rhetoric. The time was propitious for
him. It was the period of reaction after the French Revolution,
when what was called religion was again in fashion, and when even
atheists supported it as a good thing for common people: of such
an epoch Chateaubriand, with his superficial information, thin
sentiment, and showy verbiage, was the foreordained prophet.
His enemies were wont to deny that he ever saw the Holy Land;
whether he did or not, he added nothing to real knowledge, but
simply threw a momentary glamour over the regions he described,
and especially over the Dead Sea. The legend of Lot's wife he
carefully avoided, for he knew too well the danger of ridicule in
France.

As long as the Napoleonic and Bourbon reigns lasted, and indeed
for some time afterward, this kind of dealing with the Holy Land
was fashionable, and we have a long series of men, especially of
Frenchmen, who evidently received their impulse from
Chateaubriand.

About 1831 De Geramb, Abbot of La Trappe, evidently a very noble
and devout spirit, sees vapour above the Dead Sea, but stretches
the truth a little--speaking of it as "vapour or smoke."  He
could not find the salt statue, and complains of the "diversity
of stories regarding it."  The simple physical cause of this
diversity--the washing out of different statues in different
years--never occurs to him; but he comforts himself with the
scriptural warrant for the metamorphosis.[441]

[441] For Mariti, see his Voyage, etc., vol. ii, pp. 352-356.
For Tobler's high opinion of him, see the Bibliographia, pp. 132,
133. For Volney, see his Voyage en Syrie et Egypte, Paris, 1807,
vol. i, pp. 308 et seq.; also, for a statement of contributions
of the eighteenth century to geology, Lartet in De Luynes's Mer
Morte, vol. iii, p. 12. For Cornelius Bruyn, see French edition
of his works, 1714 (in which his name is given as "Le Brun"),
especially for representations of fossils, pp. 309, 375. For
Chateaubriand, see his Voyage, etc., vol. ii, part iii. For De
Geramb, see his Voyage, vol. ii, pp. 45-47.

But to the honour of scientific men and scientific truth it
should be said that even under Napoleon and the Bourbons there
were men who continued to explore, observe, and describe with the
simple love of truth as truth, and in spite of the probability
that their researches would be received during their lifetime
with contempt and even hostility, both in church and state.

The pioneer in this work of the nineteenth century was the German
naturalist Ulrich Seetzen. He began his main investigation in
1806, and soon his learning, courage, and honesty threw a flood
of new light into the Dead Sea questions.

In this light, myth and legend faded more rapidly than ever.
Typical of his method is his examination of the Dead Sea fruit.
He found, on reaching Palestine, that Josephus's story regarding
it, which had been accepted for nearly two thousand years, was
believed on all sides; more than this, he found that the
original myth had so grown that a multitude of respectable people
at Bethlehem and elsewhere assured him that not only apples, but
pears, pomegranates, figs, lemons, and many other fruits which
grow upon the shores of the Dead Sea, though beautiful to look
upon, were filled with ashes. These good people declared to
Seetzen that they had seen these fruits, and that, not long
before, a basketful of them which had been sent to a merchant of
Jaffa had turned to ashes.

Seetzen was evidently perplexed by this mass of testimony and
naturally anxious to examine these fruits. On arriving at the
sea he began to look for them, and the guide soon showed him the
"apples."  These he found to be simply an asclepia, which had
been described by Linnaeus, and which is found in the East
Indies, Arabia, Egypt, Jamaica, and elsewhere--the "ashes" being
simply seeds. He looked next for the other fruits, and the
guide soon found for him the "lemons": these he discovered to be
a species of solanum found in other parts of Palestine and
elsewhere, and the seeds in these were the famous "cinders."  He
looked next for the pears, figs, and other accursed fruits; but,
instead of finding them filled with ashes and cinders, he found
them like the same fruits in other lands, and he tells us that he
ate the figs with much pleasure.

So perished a myth which had been kept alive two thousand
years,--partly by modes of thought natural to theologians, partly
by the self-interest of guides, and partly by the love of
marvel-mongering among travellers.

The other myths fared no better. As to the appearance of the
sea, he found its waters not "black and sticky," but blue and
transparent; he found no smoke rising from the abyss, but tells
us that sunlight and cloud and shore were pleasantly reflected
from the surface. As to Lot's wife, he found no salt pillar
which had been a careless woman, but the Arabs showed him many
boulders which had once been wicked men.

His work was worthily continued by a long succession of true
investigators,--among them such travellers or geographers as
Burckhardt, Irby, Mangles, Fallmerayer, and Carl von Raumer: by
men like these the atmosphere of myth and legend was steadily
cleared away; as a rule, they simply forgot Lot's wife
altogether.

In this noble succession should be mentioned an American
theologian, Dr. Edward Robinson, professor at New York.
Beginning about 1826, he devoted himself for thirty years to the
thorough study of the geography of Palestine, and he found a
worthy coadjutor in another American divine, Dr. Eli Smith.
Neither of these men departed openly from the old traditions:
that would have cost a heart-breaking price--the loss of all
further opportunity to carry on their researches. Robinson did
not even think it best to call attention to the mythical
character of much on which his predecessors had insisted; he
simply brought in, more and more, the dry, clear atmosphere of
the love of truth for truth's sake, and, in this, myths and
legends steadily disappeared. By doing this he rendered a far
greater service to real Christianity than any other theologian
had ever done in this field.

Very characteristic is his dealing with the myth of Lot's wife.
Though more than once at Usdum,--though giving valuable
information regarding the sea, shore, and mountains there, he
carefully avoids all mention of the salt pillar and of the legend
which arose from it. In this he set an example followed by most
of the more thoughtful religious travellers since his time.
Very significant is it to see the New Testament injunction,
"Remember Lot's wife," so utterly forgotten. These later
investigators seem never to have heard of it; and this constant
forgetfulness shows the change which had taken place in the
enlightened thinking of the world.

But in the year 1848 came an episode very striking in its
character and effect.

At that time, the war between the United States and Mexico having
closed, Lieutenant Lynch, of the United States Navy, found
himself in the port of Vera Cruz, commanding an old hulk, the
Supply. Looking about for something to do, it occurred to him
to write to the Secretary of the Navy asking permission to
explore the Dead Sea. Under ordinary circumstances the proposal
would doubtless have been strangled with red tape; but,
fortunately, the Secretary at that time was Mr. John Y. Mason, of
Virginia. Mr. Mason was famous for his good nature. Both at
Washington and at Paris, where he was afterward minister, this
predominant trait has left a multitude of amusing traditions; it
was of him that Senator Benton said, "To be supremely happy he
must have his paunch full of oysters and his hands full of
cards."

The Secretary granted permission, but evidently gave the matter
not another thought. As a result, came an expedition the most
comical and one of the most rich in results to be found in
American annals. Never was anything so happy-go-lucky.
Lieutenant Lynch started with his hulk, with hardly an instrument
save those ordinarily found on shipboard, and with a body of men
probably the most unfit for anything like scientific
investigation ever sent on such an errand; fortunately, he picked
up a young instructor in mathematics, Mr. Anderson, and added to
his apparatus two strong iron boats.

Arriving, after a tedious voyage, on the coast of Asia Minor, he
set to work. He had no adequate preparation in general history,
archaeology, or the physical sciences; but he had his American
patriotism, energy, pluck, pride, and devotion to duty, and these
qualities stood him in good stead. With great labour he got the
iron boats across the country. Then the tug of war began.
First of all investigators, he forced his way through the whole
length of the river Jordan and from end to end of the Dead Sea.
There were constant difficulties--geographical, climatic, and
personal; but Lynch cut through them all. He was brave or
shrewd, as there was need. Anderson proved an admirable helper,
and together they made surveys of distances, altitudes, depths,
and sundry simple investigations in a geological, mineralogical,
and chemical way. Much was poorly done, much was left undone,
but the general result was most honourable both to Lynch and
Anderson; and Secretary Mason found that his easy-going patronage
of the enterprise was the best act of his official life.

The results of this expedition on public opinion were most
curious. Lynch was no scholar in any sense; he had travelled
little, and thought less on the real questions underlying the
whole investigation; as to the difference in depth of the two
parts of the lake, he jumped--with a sailor's disregard of
logic--to the conclusion that it somehow proved the mythical
account of the overwhelming of the cities, and he indulged in
reflections of a sort probably suggested by his recollections of
American Sunday-schools.

Especially noteworthy is his treatment of the legend of Lot's
wife. He found the pillar of salt. It happened to be at that
period a circular column of friable salt rock, about forty feet
high; yet, while he accepts every other old myth, he treats the
belief that this was once the wife of Lot as "a superstition."
One little circumstance added enormously to the influence of this
book, for, as a frontispiece, he inserted a picture of the salt
column. It was delineated in rather a poetic manner: light
streamed upon it, heavy clouds hung above it, and, as a
background, were ranged buttresses of salt rock furrowed and
channelled out by the winter rains: this salt statue picture was
spread far and wide, and in thousands of country pulpits and
Sunday-schools it was shown as a tribute of science to Scripture.

Nor was this influence confined to American Sunday-school
children: Lynch had innocently set a trap into which several
European theologians stumbled. One of these was Dr. Lorenz
Gratz, Vicar-General of Augsburg, a theological professor. In
the second edition of his Theatre of the Holy Scriptures,
published in 1858, he hails Lynch's discovery of the salt pillar
with joy, forgets his allusion to the old theory regarding it as
a superstition, and does not stop to learn that this was one of a
succession of statues washed out yearly by the rains, but accepts
it as the originaL Lot's wife.

The French churchmen suffered most. About two years after
Lynch, De Saulcy visited the Dead Sea to explore it thoroughly,
evidently in the interest of sacred science--and of his own
promotion. Of the modest thoroughness of Robinson there is no
trace in his writings. He promptly discovered the overwhelmed
cities, which no one before or since has ever found, poured
contempt on other investigators, and threw over his whole work an
air of piety. But, unfortunately, having a Frenchman's dread of
ridicule, he attempted to give a rationalistic explanation of
what he calls "the enormous needles of salt washed out by the
winter rain," and their connection with the Lot's wife myth, and
declared his firm belief that she, "being delayed by curiosity or
terror, was crushed by a rock which rolled down from the
mountain, and when Lot and his children turned about they saw at
the place where she had been only the rock of salt which covered
her body."

But this would not do at all, and an eminent ecclesiastic
privately and publicly expostulated with De Saulcy--very
naturally declaring that "it was not Lot who wrote the book of
Genesis."

The result was that another edition of De Saulcy's work was
published by a Church Book Society, with the offending passage
omitted; but a passage was retained really far more suggestive of
heterodoxy, and this was an Arab legend accounting for the origin
of certain rocks near the Dead Sea curiously resembling salt
formations. This in effect ran as follows:

"Abraham, the friend of God, having come here one day with his
mule to buy salt, the salt-workers impudently told him that they
had no salt to sell, whereupon the patriarch said: `Your words
are, true. you have no salt to sell,' and instantly the salt of
this whole region was transformed into stone, or rather into a
salt which has lost its savour."

Nothing could be more sure than this story to throw light into
the mental and moral process by which the salt pillar myth was
originally created.

In the years 1864 and 1865 came an expedition on a much more
imposing scale: that of the Duc de Luynes. His knowledge of
archaeology and his wealth were freely devoted to working the
mine which Lynch had opened, and, taking with him an iron vessel
and several savants, he devoted himself especially to finding
the cities of the Dead Sea, and to giving less vague accounts of
them than those of De Saulcy. But he was disappointed, and
honest enough to confess his disappointment. So vanished one of
the most cherished parts of the legend.

But worse remained behind. In the orthodox duke's company was
an acute geologist, Monsieur Lartet, who in due time made an
elaborate report, which let a flood of light into the whole
region.

The Abbe Richard had been rejoicing the orthodox heart of France
by exhibiting some prehistoric flint implements as the knives
which Joshua had made for circumcision. By a truthful statement
Monsieur Lartet set all France laughing at the Abbe, and then
turned to the geology of the Dead Sea basin. While he conceded
that man may have seen some volcanic crisis there, and may have
preserved a vivid remembrance of the vapour then rising, his
whole argument showed irresistibly that all the phenomena of the
region are due to natural causes, and that, so far from a sudden
rising of the lake above the valley within historic times, it has
been for ages steadily subsiding.

Since Balaam was called by Balak to curse his enemies, and
"blessed them altogether," there has never been a more unexpected
tribute to truth.

Even the salt pillar at Usdum, as depicted in Lynch's book, aided
to undermine the myth among thinking men; for the background of
the picture showed other pillars of salt in process of formation;
and the ultimate result of all these expeditions was to spread an
atmosphere in which myth and legend became more and more
attenuated.

To sum up the main points in this work of the nineteenth century:
Seetzen, Robinson, and others had found that a human being could
traverse the lake without being killed by hellish smoke; that
the waters gave forth no odours; that the fruits of the region
were not created full of cinders to match the desolation of the
Dead Sea, but were growths not uncommon in Asia Minor and
elsewhere; in fact, that all the phenomena were due to natural
causes.

Ritter and others had shown that all noted features of the Dead
Sea and the surrounding country were to be found in various other
lakes and regions, to which no supernatural cause was ascribed
among enlightened men. Lynch, Van de Velde, Osborne, and others
had revealed the fact that the "pillar of salt" was frequently
formed anew by the rains; and Lartet and other geologists had
given a final blow to the myths by making it clear from the
markings on the neighbouring rocks that, instead of a sudden
upheaval of the sea above the valley of Siddim, there had been a
gradual subsidence for ages.[442]

[442] For Seetzen, see his Reisen, edited by Kruse, Berlin, 1854-
'59; for the "Dead Sea Fruits," vol. ii, pp. 231 et seq.; for the
appearance of the sea, etc., p. 243, and elsewhere; for the Arab
explanatory transformation legends, vol. iii, pp. 7, 14, 17. As
to similarity of the "pillars of salt" to columns washed out by
rains elsewhere, see Kruse's commentary in vol. iv, p. 240; also
Fallmerayer, vol. i, p. 197. For Irby and Mangles, see work
already cited. For Robinson, see his Biblical Researches,
London,1841; also his Later Biblical Researches, London, 1856.
For Lynch, see his Narrative, London, 1849. For Gratz, see his
Schauplatz der Heyl. Schrift, pp. 186, 187. For De Saulcy, see
his Voyage autour de la Mer Morte, Paris, 1853, especially vol.
i, p. 252, and his journal of the early months of 1851, in vol.
ii, comparing it with his work of the same title published in
1858 in the Bibliotheque Catholique de Voyages et du Romans, vol.
i, pp. 78-81. For Lartet, see his papers read before the
Geographical Society at Paris; also citations in Robinson; but,
above all, his elaborate reports which form the greater part of
the second and third volumes of the monumental work which bears
the name of De Luynes, already cited. For exposures of De
Saulcey's credulity and errors, see Van de Velde, Syria and
Palestine, passim; also Canon Tristram's Land of Israel; also De
Luynes, passim.

Even before all this evidence was in, a judicial decision had
been pronounced upon the whole question by an authority both
Christian and scientific, from whom there could be no appeal.
During the second quarter of the century Prof. Carl Ritter, of
the University of Berlin, began giving to the world those
researches which have placed him at the head of all geographers
ancient or modern, and finally he brought together those relating
to the geography of the Holy Land, publishing them as part of his
great work on the physical geography of the earth. He was a
Christian, and nothing could be more reverent than his treatment
of the whole subject; but his German honesty did not permit him
to conceal the truth, and he simply classed together all the
stories of the Dead Sea--old and new--no matter where found,
whether in the sacred books of Jews, Christians, or Mohammedans,
whether in lives of saints or accounts of travellers, as "myths"
and "sagas."

From this decision there has never been among intelligent men any
appeal.

The recent adjustment of orthodox thought to the scientific view
of the Dead Sea legends presents some curious features. As
typical we may take the travels of two German theologians between
1860 and 1870--John Kranzel, pastor in Munich, and Peter Schegg,
lately professor in the university of that city.

The archdiocese of Munich-Freising is one of those in which the
attempt to suppress modern scientific thought has been most
steadily carried on. Its archbishops have constantly shown
themselves assiduous in securing cardinals' hats by thwarting
science and by stupefying education. The twin towers of the old
cathedral of Munich have seemed to throw a killing shadow over
intellectual development in that region. Naturally, then, these
two clerical travellers from that diocese did not commit
themselves to clearing away any of the Dead Sea myths; but it is
significant that neither of them follows the example of so many
of their clerical predecessors in defending the salt-pillar
legend: they steadily avoid it altogether.

The more recent history of the salt pillar, since Lynch, deserves
mention. It appears that the travellers immediately after him
found it shaped by the storms into a spire; that a year or two
later it had utterly disappeared; and about the year 1870 Prof.
Palmer, on visiting the place, found at some distance from the
main salt bed, as he says, "a tall, isolated needle of rock,
which does really bear a curious resemblance to an Arab woman
with a child upon her shoulders."

And, finally, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, the standard work
of reference for English-speaking scholars, makes its concession
to the old belief regarding Sodom and Gomorrah as slight as
possible, and the myth of Lot's wife entirely disappears.

IV. THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE.--
TRIUMPH OF THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW.

The theological effort to compromise with science now came in
more strongly than ever. This effort had been made long before:
as we have seen, it had begun to show itself decidedly as soon as
the influence of the Baconian philosophy was felt. Le Clerc
suggested that the shock caused by the sight of fire from heaven
killed Lot's wife instantly and made her body rigid as a statue.
Eichhorn suggested that she fell into a stream of melted bitumen.
Michaelis suggested that her relatives raised a monument of salt
rock to her memory. Friedrichs suggested that she fell into the
sea and that the salt stiffened around her clothing, thus making
a statue of her. Some claimed that a shower of sulphur came
down upon her, and that the word which has been translated "salt"
could possibly be translated "sulphur."  Others hinted that the
salt by its antiseptic qualities preserved her body as a mummy.
De Saulcy, as we have seen, thought that a piece of salt rock
fell upon her, and very recently Principal Dawson has ventured
the explanation that a flood of salt mud coming from a volcano
incrusted her.

But theologians themselves were the first to show the inadequacy
of these explanations. The more rationalistic pointed out the
fact that they were contrary to the sacred text: Von Bohlen, an
eminent professor at Konigsberg, in his sturdy German honesty,
declared that the salt pillar gave rise to the story, and
compared the pillar of salt causing this transformation legend to
the rock in Greek mythology which gave rise to the transformation
legend of Niobe.

On the other hand, the more severely orthodox protested against
such attempts to explain away the clear statements of Holy Writ.
Dom Calmet, while presenting many of these explanations made as
early as his time, gives us to understand that nearly all
theologians adhered to the idea that Lot's wife was instantly and
really changed into salt; and in our own time, as we shall
presently see, have come some very vigorous protests.

Similar attempts were made to explain the other ancient legends
regarding the Dead Sea. One of the most recent of these is that
the cities of the plain, having been built with blocks of
bituminous rock, were set on fire by lightning, a contemporary
earthquake helping on the work. Still another is that
accumulations of petroleum and inflammable gas escaped through a
fissure, took fire, and so produced the catastrophe.[443]

[443] For Kranzel, see his Reise nach Jerusalem, etc. For Schegg,
see his Gedenkbuch einer Pilgerreise, etc., 1867, chap. xxiv.
For Palmer, see his Desert of the Exodus, vol. ii, pp. 478, 479.
For the various compromises, see works alredy cited, passim. For
Von Bohlen, see his Genesis, Konigsberg, 1835, pp. 200-213. For
Calmet, see his Dictionarium, etc, Venet., 1766. For very recent
compromises, see J. W. Dawson and Dr. Cunningham Geikie in works
cited.

The revolt against such efforts to RECONCILE scientific fact
with myth and legend had become very evident about the middle of
the nineteenth century. In 1851 and 1852 Van de Velde made his
journey. He was a most devout man, but he confessed that the
volcanic action at the Dead Sea must have been far earlier than
the catastrophe mentioned in our sacred books, and that "the
overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing to do with this."  A
few years later an eminent dignitary of the English Church, Canon
Tristram, doctor of divinity and fellow of the Royal Society, who
had explored the Holy Land thoroughly, after some generalities
about miracles, gave up the whole attempt to make science agree
with the myths, and used these words: "It has been frequently
assumed that the district of Usdum and its sister cities was the
result of some tremendous geological catastrophe....Now,
careful examination by competent geologists, such as Monsieur
Lartet and others, has shown that the whole district has assumed
its present shape slowly and gradually through a succession of
ages, and that its peculiar phenomena are similar to those of
other lakes."  So sank from view the whole mass of Dead Sea myths
and legends, and science gained a victory both for geology and
comparative mythology.

As a protest against this sort of rationalism appeared in 1876 an
edition of Monseigneur Mislin's work on The Holy Places. In
order to give weight to the book, it was prefaced by letters from
Pope Pius IX and sundry high ecclesiastics--and from Alexandre
Dumas! His hatred of Protestant missionaries in the East is
phenomenal: he calls them "bagmen," ascribes all mischief and
infamy to them, and his hatred is only exceeded by his credulity.
He cites all the arguments in favour of the salt statue at Usdum
as the identical one into which Lot's wife was changed, adds some
of his own, and presents her as "a type of doubt and heresy."
With the proverbial facility of dogmatists in translating any
word of a dead language into anything that suits their purpose,
he says that the word in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis which
is translated "statue" or "pillar," may be translated "eternal
monument"; he is especially severe on poor Monsieur De Saulcy
for thinking that Lot's wife was killed by the falling of a piece
of salt rock; and he actually boasts that it was he who caused De
Saulcy, a member of the French Institute, to suppress the
obnoxious passage in a later edition.

Between 1870 and 1880 came two killing blows at the older
theories, and they were dealt by two American scholars of the
highest character. First of these may be mentioned Dr. Philip
Schaff, a professor in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at
New York, who published his travels in 1877. In a high degree
he united the scientific with the religious spirit, but the trait
which made him especially fit for dealing with this subject was
his straightforward German honesty. He tells the simple truth
regarding the pillar of salt, so far as its physical origin and
characteristics are concerned, and leaves his reader to draw the
natural inference as to its relation to the myth. With the fate
of Dr. Robertson Smith in Scotland and Dr. Woodrow in South
Carolina before him--both recently driven from their
professorships for truth-telling-- Dr. Schaff deserves honour
for telling as much as he does.

Similar in effect, and even more bold in statement, were the
travels of the Rev. Henry Osborn, published in 1878. In a
truly scientific spirit he calls attention to the similarity of
the Dead Sea, with the river Jordan, to sundry other lake and
river systems; points out the endless variations between writers
describing the salt formations at Usdum; accounts rationally for
these variations, and quotes from Dr. Anderson's report,
saying, "From the soluble nature of the salt and the crumbling
looseness of the marl, it may well be imagined that, while some
of these needles are in the process of formation, others are
being washed away."

Thus came out, little by little, the truth regarding the Dead Sea
myths, and especially the salt pillar at Usdum; but the final
truth remained to be told in the Church, and now one of the
purest men and truest divines of this century told it. Arthur
Stanley, Dean of Westminster, visiting the country and thoroughly
exploring it, allowed that the physical features of the Dead Sea
and its shores suggested the myths and legends, and he sums up
the whole as follows: "A great mass of legends and
exaggerations, partly the cause and partly the result of the old
belief that the cities were buried under the Dead Sea, has been
gradually removed in recent years."

So, too, about the same time, Dr. Conrad Furrer, pastor of the
great church of St. Peter at Zurich, gave to the world a book
of travels, reverent and thoughtful, and in this honestly
acknowledged that the needles of salt at the southern end of the
Dead Sea "in primitive times gave rise to the tradition that
Lot's wife was transformed into a statue of salt."  Thus was the
mythical character of this story at last openly confessed by
Leading churchmen on both continents.

Plain statements like these from such sources left the high
theological position more difficult than ever, and now a new
compromise was attempted. As the Siberian mother tried to save
her best-beloved child from the pursuing wolves by throwing over
to them her less favoured children, so an effort was now made in
a leading commentary to save the legends of the valley of Siddim
and the miraculous destruction of the cities by throwing
overboard the legend of Lot's wife.[444]

[444] For Mislin, see his Les Saints Lieux, Paris, vol. iii, pp.
290-293, especially note at foot of page 292. For Schaff, see
his Through Bible Lands, especially chapter xxix; see also Rev.
H. S. Osborn, M. A., The Holy Land, pp. 267 et seq.; also
Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, London, 1887, especially pp.
290-293. For Furrer, see his En Palestine, Geneva, 1886, vol. i,
p.246. For the attempt to save one legend by throwing overboard
the other, see Keil and Delitzsch, Biblischer Commentar uber das
Alte Testament, vol. i, pp. 155, 156. For Van de Velde, see his
Syria and Palestine, vol. ii, p. 120.

An amusing result has followed this development of opinion. As
we have already seen, traveller after traveller, Catholic and
Protestant, now visits the Dead Sea, and hardly one of them
follows the New Testament injunction to "remember Lot's wife."
Nearly every one of them seems to think it best to forget her.
Of the great mass of pious legends they are shy enough, but that
of Lot's wife, as a rule, they seem never to have heard of, and
if they do allude to it they simply cover the whole subject with
a haze of pious rhetoric.[445]

[445] The only notice of the Lot's wife legend in the editions of
Robinson at my command is a very curious one by Leopold von Buch,
the eminent geologist. Robinson, with a fearlessness which does
him credit, consulted Von Buch, who in his answer was evidently
inclined to make things easier for Robinson by hinting that Lot
was so much struck by the salt formations that HE IMAGINED that
his wife had been changed into salt. On this theory, Robinson
makes no comment. See Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine,
etc., London, 1841, vol. ii, p. 674.

Naturally, under this state of things, there has followed the
usual attempt to throw off from Christendom the responsibility of
the old belief, and in 1887 came a curious effort of this sort.
In that year appeared the Rev. Dr. Cunningham Geikie's
valuable work on The Holy Land and the Bible. In it he makes the
following statement as to the salt formation at Usdum: "Here and
there, hardened portions of salt withstanding the water, while
all around them melts and wears off, rise up isolated pillars,
one of which bears among the Arabs the name of `Lot's wife.'"

In the light of the previous history, there is something at once
pathetic and comical in this attempt to throw the myth upon the
shoulders of the poor Arabs. The myth was not originated by
Mohammedans; it appears, as we have seen, first among the Jews,
and, I need hardly remind the reader, comes out in the Book of
Wisdom and in Josephus, and has been steadily maintained by
fathers, martyrs, and doctors of the Church, by at least one
pope, and by innumerable bishops, priests, monks, commentators,
and travellers, Catholic and Protestant, ever since. In thus
throwing the responsibility of the myth upon the Arabs Dr.
Geikie appears to show both the "perfervid genius" of his
countrymen and their incapacity to recognise a joke.

Nor is he more happy in his rationalistic explanations of the
whole mass of myths. He supposes a terrific storm, in which the
lightning kindled the combustible materials of the cities, aided
perhaps by an earthquake; but this shows a disposition to break
away from the exact statements of the sacred books which would
have been most severely condemned by the universal Church during
at least eighteen hundred years of its history. Nor would the
explanations of Sir William Dawson have fared any better: it is
very doubtful whether either of them could escape unscathed today
from a synod of the Free Church of Scotland, or of any of the
leading orthodox bodies in the Southern States of the American
Union.[446]

[446] For these most recent explanations, see Rev. Cunningham
Geikie, D. D., in work cited; also Sir J. W. Dawson, Egypt and
Syria, published by the Religious Tract Society, 1887, pp. 125,
126; see also Dawson's article in The Expositor for January,
1886.

How unsatisfactory all such rationalism must be to a truly
theological mind is seen not only in the dealings with Prof.
Robertson Smith in Scotland and Prof. Woodrow in South
Carolina, but most clearly in a book published in 1886 by
Monseigneur Haussmann de Wandelburg. Among other things, the
author was Prelate of the Pope's House-hold, a Mitred Abbot,
Canon of the Holy Sepulchre, and a Doctor of Theology of the
Pontifical University at Rome, and his work is introduced by
approving letters from Pope Leo XIII and the Patriarch of
Jerusalem. Monseigneur de Wandelburg scorns the idea that the
salt column at Usdum is not the statue of Lot's wife; he points
out not only the danger of yielding this evidence of miracle to
rationalism, but the fact that the divinely inspired authority of
the Book of Wisdom, written, at the latest, two hundred and fifty
years before Christ, distinctly refers to it. He summons
Josephus as a witness. He dwells on the fact that St. Clement of
Rome, Irenaeus, Hegesippus, and St. Cyril, "who as Bishop of
Jerusalem must have known better than any other person what
existed in Palestine," with St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, and a
multitude of others, attest, as a matter of their own knowledge
or of popular notoriety, that the remains of Lot's wife really
existed in their time in the form of a column of salt; and he
points triumphantly to the fact that Lieutenant Lynch found this
very column. In the presence of such a continuous line of
witnesses, some of them considered as divinely inspired, and all
of them greatly revered--a line extending through thirty-seven
hundred years--he condemns most vigorously all those who do not
believe that the pillar of salt now at Usdum is identical with
the wife of Lot, and stigmatizes them as people who "do not wish
to believe the truth of the Word of God."

His ignorance of many of the simplest facts bearing upon the
legend is very striking, yet he does not hesitate to speak of men
who know far more and have thought far more upon the subject as
"grossly ignorant."  The most curious feature in his ignorance is
the fact that he is utterly unaware of the annual changes in the
salt statue. He is entirely ignorant of such facts as that the
priest Gabriel Giraudet in the sixteenth century found the statue
lying down; that the monk Zwinner found it in the seventeenth
century standing, and accompanied by a dog also transformed into
salt; that Prince Radziwill found no statue at all; that the
pious Vincent Briemle in the eighteenth century found the
monument renewing itself; that about the middle of the nineteenth
century Lynch found it in the shape of a tower or column forty
feet high; that within two years afterward De Saulcy found it
washed into the form of a spire; that a year later Van de Velde
found it utterly washed away; and that a few years later Palmer
found it "a statue bearing a striking resemblance to an Arab
woman with a child in her arms."  So ended the last great
demonstration, thus far, on the side of sacred science--the last
retreating shot from the theological rear guard.

It is but just to say that a very great share in the honour of
the victory of science in this field is due to men trained as
theologians. It would naturally be so, since few others have
devoted themselves to direct labour in it; yet great honour is
none the less due to such men as Reland, Mariti, Smith, Robinson,
Stanley, Tristram, and Schat.

They have rendered even a greater service to religion than to
science, for they have made a beginning, at least, of doing away
with that enforced belief in myths as history which has become a
most serious danger to Christianity.

For the worst enemy of Christianity could wish nothing more than
that its main Leaders should prove that it can not be adopted
save by those who accept, as historical, statements which
unbiased men throughout the world know to be mythical. The
result of such a demonstration would only be more and more to
make thinking people inside the Church dissemblers, and thinking
people outside, scoffers. Far better is it to welcome the aid of
science, in the conviction that all truth is one, and, in the
light of this truth, to allow theology and science to work
together in the steady evolution of religion and morality.

The revelations made by the sciences which most directly deal
with the history of man all converge in the truth that during the
earlier stages of this evolution moral and spiritual teachings
must be inclosed in myth, legend, and parable. "The Master"
felt this when he gave to the poor peasants about him, and so to
the world, his simple and beautiful illustrations. In making
this truth clear, science will give to religion far more than it
will take away, for it will throw new life and light into all
sacred literature.

CHAPTER XIX.

FROM LEVITICUS TO POLITICAL ECONOMY

I. ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF HOSTILITY TO LOANS AT INTEREST.

Among questions on which the supporters of right reason in
political and social science have only conquered theological
opposition after centuries of war, is the taking of interest on
loans. In hardly any struggle has rigid adherence to the letter
of our sacred books been more prolonged and injurious.

Certainly, if the criterion of truth, as regards any doctrine, be
that of St. Vincent of Lerins--that it has been held in the
Church "always, everywhere, and by all"--then on no point may a
Christian of these days be more sure than that every savings
institution, every loan and trust company, every bank, every loan
of capital by an individual, every means by which accumulated
capital has been lawfully lent even at the most moderate
interest, to make men workers rather than paupers, is based on
deadly sin.

The early evolution of the belief that taking interest for money
is sinful presents a curious working together of metaphysical,
theological, and humanitarian ideas.

In the main centre of ancient Greek civilization, the loaning of
money at interest came to be accepted at an early period as a
condition of productive industry, and no legal restriction was
imposed. In Rome there was a long process of development: the
greed of creditors in early times led to laws against the taking
of interest; but, though these lasted long, that strong
practical sense which gave Rome the empire of the world
substituted finally, for this absolute prohibition, the
establishment of rates by law. Yet many of the leading Greek and
Roman thinkers opposed this practical settlement of the question,
and, foremost of all, Aristotle. In a metaphysical way he
declared that money is by nature "barren"; that the birth of
money from money is therefore "unnatural"; and hence that the
taking of interest is to be censured and hated. Plato, Plutarch,
both the Catos, Cicero, Seneca, and various other leaders of
ancient thought, arrived at much the same conclusion--sometimes
from sympathy with oppressed debtors; sometimes from dislike of
usurers; sometimes from simple contempt of trade.

From these sources there came into the early Church the germ of a
theological theory upon the subject.

But far greater was the stream of influence from the Jewish and
Christian sacred books. In the Old Testament stood various
texts condemning usury--the term usury meaning any taking of
interest: the law of Moses, while it allowed usury in dealing
with strangers, forbade it in dealing with Jews. In the New
Testament, in the Sermon on the Mount, as given by St. Luke,
stood the text "Lend, hoping for nothing again."  These texts
seemed to harmonize with the most beautiful characteristic of
primitive Christianity; its tender care for the poor and
oppressed: hence we find, from the earliest period, the whole
weight of the Church brought to bear against the taking of
interest for money.[448]

[448] On the general allowance of interest for money in Greece,
even at high rates, see Bockh, Public Economy of the Athenians,
translated by Lamb, Boston, 1857, especially chaps. xxii, xxiii,
and xxiv of book i. For a view of usury taken by Aristotle, see
his Politics and Economics, translated by Walford, p. 27; also
Grote, History of Greece, vol. iii, chap. xi. For summary of
opinions in Greece and Rome, and their relation to Christian
thought, see Bohm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest, translated by
Smart, London, 1890, chap. i. For a very full list of scripture
texts against the taking of interest, see Pearson, The Theories
on Usury in Europe, 1100-1400, Cambridge (England), 1876, p. 6.
The texts most frequently cited were Leviticus xxv, 36, 37;
Deuteronomy xxiii, 19 and 26; Psalms, xv, 5; Ezekiel xviii, 8 and
17; St. Luke, vi, 35. For a curious modern use of them, see D.
S. Dickinson's speech in the State of New York, in vol. i of his
collected writings. See also Lecky, History of Rationalism in
Europe, vol. ii, chap. vi; and above all, as the most recent
historical summary by a leading historian of political economy,
Bohm-Bawerk, as above.

The great fathers of the Eastern Church, and among them St.
Basil, St. Chrysostom, and St. Gregory of Nyssa,--the fathers of
the Western Church, and among them Tertullian, St. Ambrose, St.
Augustine, and St. Jerome, joined most earnestly in this
condemnation. St. Basil denounces money at interest as a "fecund
monster," and says, "The divine law declares expressly, `Thou
shalt not lend on usury to thy brother or thy neighbour.'" St.
Gregory of Nyssa calls down on him who lends money at interest
the vengeance of the Almighty. St. Chrysostom says: "What can
be more unreasonable than to sow without land, without rain,
without ploughs?  All those who give themselves up to this
damnable culture shall reap only tares. Let us cut off these
monstrous births of gold and silver; let us stop this execrable
fecundity."

Lactantius called the taking of interest "robbery."  St. Ambrose
declared it as bad as murder, St. Jerome threw the argument into
the form of a dilemma, which was used as a weapon against
money-lenders for centuries. Pope Leo the Great solemnly
adjudged it a sin worthy of severe punishment.[449]

[449] For St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nyssa, see French
translation of their diatribes in Homelies contre les Usuriers,
Paris, Hachette, 1861-'62, especially p. 30 of St. Basil. For
some doubtful reservations by St. Augustine, see Murray, History
of Usury. For St. Ambrose, see De Officiis, lib. iii, cap. ii,
in Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xvi; also the De Tobia, in Migne, vol.
xiv. For St. Augustine, see De Bapt. contr Donat., lib. iv, cap.
ix, in Migne, vol. xliii. For Lactantius, see his Opera, Leyden,
1660, p. 608. For Cyprian, see his Testimonies against the Jews,
translated by Wallis, book iii, article 48. For St. Jerome, see
his Com. in Ezekiel, xviii, 8, in Migne, vol. xxv, pp. 170 et
seq. For Leo the Great, see his letter to the bishops of various
provinces of Italy, cited in the Jus. Can., cap. vii, can. xiv,
qu. 4. For very fair statements of the attitude of the fathers
on this question, see Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary,
London, 1884, and Smith and Cheetham, Dictionary of Christian
Antiquities, London, 1875-'80; in each, under article Usury.

This unanimity of the fathers of the Church brought about a
crystallization of hostility to interest-bearing loans into
numberless decrees of popes and councils and kings and
legislatures throughout Christendom during more than fifteen
hundred years, and the canon law was shaped in accordance with
these. At first these were more especially directed against the
clergy, but we soon find them extending to the laity. These
prohibitions were enforced by the Council of Arles in 314, and a
modern Church apologist insists that every great assembly of the
Church, from the Council of Elvira in 306 to that of Vienne in
1311, inclusive, solemnly condemned lending money at interest.
The greatest rulers under the sway of the Church--Justinian, in
the Empire of the East; Charlemagne, in the Empire of the West;
Alfred, in England; St. Louis, in France--yielded fully to this
dogma. In the ninth century Alfred went so far as to confiscate
the estates of money-lenders, denying them burial in Consecrated
ground; and similar decrees were made in other parts of Europe.
In the twelfth century the Greek Church seems to have relaxed its
strictness somewhat, but the Roman Church grew more severe. St.
Anselm proved from the Scriptures that the taking of interest is
a breach of the Ten Commandments. Peter Lombard, in his
Sentences, made the taking of interest purely and simply theft.
St. Bernard, reviving religious earnestness in the Church, took
the same view. In 1179 the Third Council of the Lateran decreed
that impenitent money-lenders should be excluded from the altar,
from absolution in the hour of death, and from Christian burial.
Pope Urban III reiterated the declaration that the passage in St.
Luke forbade the taking of any interest whatever. Pope
Alexander III declared that the prohibition in this matter could
never be suspended by dispensation.

In the thirteenth century Pope Gregory IX dealt an especially
severe blow at commerce by his declaration that even to advance
on interest the money necessary in maritime trade was damnable
usury; and this was fitly followed by Gregory X, who forbade
Christian burial to those guilty of this practice; the Council
of Lyons meted out the same penalty. This idea was still more
firmly fastened upon the world by the two greatest thinkers of
the time: first, by St. Thomas Aquinas, who knit it into the mind
of the Church by the use of the Scriptures and of Aristotle; and
next by Dante, who pictured money-lenders in one of the worst
regions of hell.

About the beginning of the fourteenth century the "Subtile
Doctor" of the Middle Ages, Duns Scotus, gave to the world an
exquisite piece of reasoning in evasion of the accepted doctrine;
but all to no purpose: the Council of Vienne, presided over by
Pope Clement V, declared that if any one "shall pertinaciously
presume to affirm that the taking of interest for money is not a
sin, we decree him to be a heretic, fit for punishment."  This
infallible utterance bound the dogma with additional force on the
conscience of the universal Church.

Nor was this a doctrine enforced by rulers only; the people were
no less strenuous. In 1390 the city authorities of London
enacted that, "if any person shall lend or put into the hands of
any person gold or silver to receive gain thereby, such person
shall have the punishment for usurers."  And in the same year the
Commons prayed the king that the laws of London against usury
might have the force of statutes throughout the realm.

In the fifteenth century the Council of the Church at Salzburg
excluded from communion and burial any who took interest for
money, and this was a very general rule throughout Germany.

An exception was, indeed, sometimes made: some canonists held
that Jews might be allowed to take interest, since they were to
be damned in any case, and their monopoly of money-lending might
prevent Christians from losing their souls by going into the
business. Yet even the Jews were from time to time punished for
the crime of usury; and, as regards Christians, punishment was
bestowed on the dead as well as the living--the bodies of dead
money-lenders being here and there dug up and cast out of
consecrated ground.

The popular preachers constantly declaimed against all who took
interest. The medieval anecdote books for pulpit use are
especially full on this point. Jacques de Vitry tells us that
demons on one occasion filled a dead money-lender's mouth with
red-hot coins; Cesarius of Heisterbach declared that a toad was
found thrusting a piece of money into a dead usurer's heart; in
another case, a devil was seen pouring molten gold down a dead
money-lender's throat.[450]

[450] For an enumeration of councils condemning the taking of
interest for money, see Liegeois, Essai sur l'Histoire et la
Legislation de l'Usure, Paris, 1865, p. 78; also the Catholic
Dictionary as above. For curious additional details and sources
regarding mediaeval horror of usurers, see Ducange, Glossarium,
etc., article Caorcini. T he date 306, for the Council of Elvira
is that assigned by Hefele. For the decree of Alexander III, see
citation from the Latin text in Lecky. For a long catalogue of
ecclesiastical and civil decrees against taking of interest, see
Petit, Traite de l'Usure, Paris, 1840. For the reasoning at the
bottom of this, see Cunningham, Christian Opinion on Usury,
London, 1884. For the Salzburg decrees, see Zillner,
Salzburgusche Culturgeschichte, p. 232; and for Germany
generally, see Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland,
Halle, 1865, especially pp. 22 et seq; also Roscher, National-
Oeconomis. For effect of mistranslation of the passage of Luke in
the Vulgate, see Dollinger, p. 170, and especially pp. 224, 225
For the capitularies of Charlemagne against usury, see Liegeois,
p. 77. For Gregory X and the Council of Lyons, see Sextus
Decretalium liber, pp. 669 et. seq. For Peter Lombard, see his
Lib. Sententiarum, III, dist. xxxvii, 3. For St. Thomas Aquinas,
see his works, Migne, vol. iii, Paris 1889, quaestio 78, pp. 587
et seq., citing the Scriptures and Aristotle, and especially
developing Aristotle's metaphysical idea regarding the
"barrenness" of money. For a very good summary of St. Thomas's
ideas, see Pearson. pp. 30 et seq. For Dante, see in canto xi of
the Inferno a revelation of the amazing depth of the hostility to
the taking of interest. For the London law of 1390 and the
petition to the king, see Cunningham, Growth of English Industry
and Commerce, pp. 210, 326; also the Abridgment of the Records in
the Tower of London, p. 339. For the theory that Jews, being
damned already, might be allowed to practice usury, see Liegeois,
Histoire de l'Usure, p. 82. For St. Bernard's view, see Epist.
CCCLXIII, in Migne, vol. clxxxii, p. 567. For ideas and
anecdotes for preachers' use, see Joannes a San Geminiano, Summa
de Exemplis, Antwerp, 1629, fol. 493, a; also the edition of
Venice, 1584, ff. 132, 159; but especially, for multitudes of
examples, see the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, edited by Prof. T.
F. Crane, of Cornell University, London, 1890, pp. 203 et seq.
For the canon law in regard to interest, see a long line of
authorities cited in Die Wucherfrage, St. Louis, 1869, pp. 92 et
seq., and especially Decret. Gregor., lib.v, lit. 19, cap. iii,
and Clementin., lib. v, lit. 5, sec. 2; see also the Corpus Juris
Canonici, Paris, 1618, pp. 227, 228. For the position of the
English Church, see Gibson's Corpus Juris Ecclesiastici
Anglicani, pp. 1070, 1071, 1106.

This theological hostility to the taking of interest was imbedded
firmly in the canon law. Again and again it defined usury to be
the taking of anything of value beyond the exact original amount
of a loan; and under sanction of the universal Church it
denounced this as a crime and declared all persons defending it
to be guilty of heresy. What this meant the world knows but too
well.

The whole evolution of European civilization was greatly hindered
by this conscientious policy. Money could only be loaned in
most countries at the risk of incurring odium in this world and
damnation in the next; hence there was but little capital and
few lenders. The rates of interest became at times enormous; as
high as forty per cent in England, and ten per cent a month in
Italy and Spain. Commerce, manufactures, and general enterprise
were dwarfed, while pauperism flourished.

Yet worse than these were the moral results. Doing what one
holds to be evil is only second in bad consequences to doing what
is really evil; hence, all lending and borrowing, even for the
most legitimate purposes and at the most reasonable rates, tended
to debase both borrower and lender. The prohibition of lending
at interest in continental Europe promoted luxury and discouraged
economy; the rich, who were not engaged in business, finding no
easy way of employing their incomes productively, spent them
largely in ostentation and riotous living. One evil effect is
felt in all parts of the world to this hour. The Jews, so acute
in intellect and strong in will, were virtually drawn or driven
out of all other industries or professions by the theory that
their race, being accursed, was only fitted for the abhorred
profession of money-lending.[451]

[451] For evil economic results, and especially for the rise of
the rate of interest in England and elsewhere at times to forty
per cent, see Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and
Commerce, Cambridge, 1890, p. 189; and for its rising to ten per
cent a month, see Bedarride, Les Juifs en France, en Italie, at
en Espagne, p. 220; see also Hallam's Middle Ages, London, 1853,
pp. 401, 402. For the evil moral effects of the Church doctrine
against taking interest, see Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, lib.
xxi, chap. xx; see also Sismondi, cited in Lecky. For the
trifling with conscience, distinction between "consumptibles" and
"fungibles," "possessio" and "dominium," etc., see Ashley,
English Economic History, New York, pp. 152, 153; see also
Leopold Delisle, Etudes, pp. 198, 468. For the effects of these
doctrines on the Jews, see Milman, History of the Jews, vol. iii,
p. 179; also Wellhausen, History of Israel, London, 1885, p. 546;
also Beugnot, Les Juifs d'Occident, Paris, 1824, pt. 2, p. 114
(on driving Jews out of other industries than money-lending).
For a noted mediaeval evasion of the Church rules against usury,
see Peruzzi, Storia del Commercio e dei Banchieri di Firenze,
Florence, 1868, pp. 172, 173.

These evils were so manifest, when trade began to revive
throughout Europe in the fifteenth century, that
most earnest exertions were put forth to induce the Church to
change its position.

The first important effort of this kind was made by John Gerson.
His general learning made him Chancellor of the University of
Paris; his sacred learning made him the leading orator at the
Council of Constance; his piety led men to attribute to him The
Imitation of Christ. Shaking off theological shackles, he
declared, "Better is it to lend money at reasonable interest, and
thus to give aid to the poor, than to see them reduced by poverty
to steal, waste their goods, and sell at a low price their
personal and real property."

But this idea was at once buried beneath citations from the
Scriptures, the fathers, councils, popes, and the canon law.
Even in the most active countries there seemed to be no hope. In
England, under Henry VII, Cardinal Morton, the lord chancellor,
addressed Parliament, asking it to take into consideration loans
of money at interest. The result was a law which imposed on
lenders at interest a fine of a hundred pounds besides the
annulment of the loan; and, to show that there was an offence
against religion involved, there was added a clause "reserving to
the Church, notwithstanding this punishment, the correction of
their souls according to the laws of the same."

Similar enactments were made by civil authority in various parts
of Europe; and just when the trade, commerce, and manufactures
of the modern epoch had received an immense impulse from the
great series of voyages of discovery by such men as Columbus,
Vasco da Gama, Magellan, and the Cabots, this barrier against
enterprise was strengthened by a decree from no less enlightened
a pontiff than Leo X.

The popular feeling warranted such decrees. As late as the end
of the Middle Ages we find the people of Piacenza dragging the
body of a money-lender out of his grave in consecrated ground and
throwing it into the river Po, in order to stop a prolonged
rainstorm; and outbreaks of the same spirit were frequent in
other countries. [452]

[452] For Gerson's argument favouring a reasonable rate of
interest, see Coquelin and Guillaumin, Dictionnaire, article
Interet. For the renewed opposition to the taking of interest in
England, see Craik, History of British Commerce, chap. vi. The
statute cited is 3 Henry VII, chap. vi; it is found in Gibson's
Corpus Juris Eccles. Anglic., p. 1071. For the adverse decree of
Leo X, see Liegeois, p. 76. See also Lecky, Rationalism, vol. ii.
For the dragging out of the usurer's body at Piacenza, see
Burckhardt, The Renaissance in Italy, London, 1878, vol. ii, p.
339. For public opinion of similar strength on this subject in
England, see Cunningham, p. 239; also Pike, History of Crime in
England, vol. i, pp. 127, 193. For good general observations on
the same, see Stephen, History of Criminal Law in England,
London, 1883, vol. iii, pp. 195-197. For usury laws in Castile
and Aragon, see Bedarride, pp. 191, 192. For exceedingly valuable
details as to the attitude of the mediaeval Church, see Leopold
Delisle, Etudes sur la Classe Agricole en Normandie au Moyen Age,
Evreux, 1851, pp. 200 et seq., also p. 468. For penalties in
France, see Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, in the Rolls Series,
especially vol. iii, pp. 191, 192. For a curious evasion,
sanctioned by Popes Martin V and Calixtus III when Church
corporations became money-lenders, see H. C. Lea on The
Ecclesiastical Treatment of Usury, in the Yale Review for
February, 1894. For a detailed development of interesting
subordinate points, see Ashley, Introduction to English Economic
History and Theory, vol. ii, ch, vi.

Another mode of obtaining relief was tried. Subtle theologians
devised evasions of various sorts. Two among these inventions
of the schoolmen obtained much notoriety.

The first was the doctrine of "damnum emergens": if a lender
suffered loss by the failure of the borrower to return a loan at
a date named, compensation might be made. Thus it was that, if
the nominal date of payment was made to follow quickly after the
real date of the loan, the compensation for the anticipated delay
in payment had a very strong resemblance to interest. Equally
cogent was the doctrine of "lucrum cessans": if a man, in order
to lend money, was obliged to diminish his income from productive
enterprises, it was claimed that he might receive in return, in
addition to his money, an amount exactly equal to this diminution
in his income.

But such evasions were looked upon with little favour by the
great body of theologians, and the name of St. Thomas Aquinas
was triumphantly cited against them.

Opposition on scriptural grounds to the taking of interest was
not confined to the older Church. Protestantism was led by
Luther and several of his associates into the same line of
thought and practice. Said Luther. "To exchange anything with
any one and gain by the exchange is not to do a charity; but to
steal. Every usurer is a thief worthy of the gibbet. I call
those usurers who lend money at five or six per cent."  But it is
only just to say that at a later period Luther took a much more
moderate view. Melanchthon, defining usury as any interest
whatever, condemned it again and again; and the Goldberg
Catechism of 1558, for which he wrote a preface and
recommendation, declares every person taking interest for money a
thief. From generation to generation this doctrine was upheld by
the more eminent divines of the Lutheran Church in all parts of
Germany. The English reformers showed the same hostility to
interest-bearing loans. Under Henry VIII the law of Henry VII
against taking interest had been modified for the better; but
the revival of religious feeling under Edward VI caused in 1552
the passage of the "Bill of Usury."  In this it is said,
"Forasmuch as usury is by the word of God utterly prohibited, as
a vice most odious and detestable, as in divers places of the
Holy Scriptures it is evident to be seen, which thing by no godly
teachings and persuasions can sink into the hearts of divers
greedy, uncharitable, and covetous persons of this realm, nor
yet, by any terrible threatenings of God's wrath and vengeance,"
etc., it is enacted that whosoever shall thereafter lend money
"for any manner of usury, increase, lucre, gain, or interest, to
be had, received, or hoped for," shall forfeit principal and
interest, and suffer imprisonment and fine at the king's
pleasure.[453]

[453] For Luther's views, see his sermon, Von dem Wucher,
Wittenberg, 1519; also the Table Talk, cited in Coquelin and
Guillaumin, article Interet. For the later, more moderate views
of Luther, Melanchthon, and Zwingli, making a compromise with the
needs of society, see Bohm-Bawerk, p. 27, citing Wiskemann. For
Melanchthon and a long line of the most eminent Lutheran divines
who have denounced the taking of interest, see Die Wucherfrage,
St. Louis, 1869, pp. 94 et seq. For the law against usury under
Edward VI, see Cobbett's Parliamentary History, vol. i, p. 596;
see also Craik, History of British Commerce, chap. vi.

But, most fortunately, it happened that Calvin, though at times
stumbling over the usual texts against the taking of interest for
money, turned finally in the right direction. He cut through the
metaphysical arguments of Aristotle, and characterized the
subtleties devised to evade the Scriptures as "a childish game
with God."  In place of these subtleties there was developed
among Protestants a serviceable fiction--the statement that usury
means ILLEGAL OR OPPRESSIVE INTEREST. Under the action of this
fiction, commerce and trade revived rapidly in Protestant
countries, though with occasional checks from exact interpreters
of Scripture. At the same period in France, the great Protestant
jurist Dumoulin brought all his legal learning and skill in
casuistry to bear on the same side. A certain ferretlike
acuteness and litheness seem to have enabled him to hunt down the
opponents of interest-taking through the most tortuous arguments
of scholasticism.

In England the struggle went on with varying fortune; statesmen
on one side, and theologians on the other. We have seen how,
under Henry VIII, interest was allowed at a fixed rate, and how,
the development of English Protestantism having at first
strengthened the old theological view, there was, under Edward
VI, a temporarily successful attempt to forbid the taking of
interest by law.

The Puritans, dwelling on Old Testament texts, continued for a
considerable time especially hostile to the taking of any
interest. Henry Smith, a noted preacher, thundered from the
pulpit of St. Clement Danes in London against "the evasions of
Scripture" which permitted men to lend money on interest at all.
In answer to the contention that only "biting" usury was
oppressive, Wilson, a noted upholder of the strict theological
view in political economy, declared: "There is difference in
deed between the bite of a dogge and the bite of a flea, and yet,
though the flea doth lesse harm, yet the flea doth bite after hir
kinde, yea, and draweth blood, too. But what a world this is,
that men will make sin to be but a fleabite, when they see God's
word directly against them!"

The same view found strong upholders among contemporary English
Catholics. One of the most eminent of these, Nicholas Sanders,
revived very vigorously the use of an old scholastic argument.
He insisted that "man can not sell time," that time is not a
human possession, but something which is given by God alone: he
declared, "Time was not of your gift to your neighbour, but of
God's gift to you both."

In the Parliament of the period, we find strong assertions of the
old idea, with constant reference to Scripture and the fathers.
In one debate, Wilson cited from Ezekiel and other prophets and
attributed to St. Augustine the doctrine that "to take but a
cup of wine is usury and damnable."  Fleetwood recalled the law
of King Edward the Confessor, which submitted usurers to the
ordeal.

But arguments of this sort had little influence upon Elizabeth
and her statesmen. Threats of damnation in the next world
troubled them little if they could have their way in this. They
re-established the practice of taking interest under
restrictions, and this, in various forms, has remained in England
ever since. Most notable in this phase of the evolution of
scientific doctrine in political economy at that period is the
emergence of a recognised difference between USURY and
INTEREST. Between these two words, which had so long been
synonymous, a distinction now appears: the former being
construed to indicate OPPRESSIVE INTEREST, and the latter JUST
RATES for the use of money. This idea gradually sank into the
popular mind of Protestant countries, and the scriptural texts no
longer presented any difficulty to the people at large, since
there grew up a general belief that the word "usury," as employed
in Scripture, had ALWAYS meant exorbitant interest; and this in
spite of the parable of the Talents. Still, that the old
Aristotelian quibble had not been entirely forgotten, is clearly
seen by various passages in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.
But this line of reasoning seems to have received its quietus
from Lord Bacon. He did not, indeed, develop a strong and
connected argument on the subject; but he burst the bonds of
Aristotle, and based interest for money upon natural laws. How
powerful the new current of thought was, is seen from the fact
that James I, of all monarchs the most fettered by scholasticism
and theology, sanctioned a statute dealing with interest for
money as absolutely necessary. Yet, even after this, the old
idea asserted itself; for the bishops utterly refused to agree to
the law allowing interest until a proviso was inserted that
"nothing in this law contained shall be construed or expounded to
allow the practice of usury in point of religion or conscience."
The old view cropped out from time to time in various public
declarations. Famous among these were the Treatise of Usury,
published in 1612 by Dr. Fenton, who restated the old arguments
with much force, and the Usury Condemned of John Blaxton,
published in 1634. Blaxton, who also was a clergyman, defined
usury as the taking of any interest whatever for money, citing in
support of this view six archbishops and bishops and over thirty
doctors of divinity in the Anglican Church, some of their
utterances being very violent and all of them running their roots
down into texts of Scripture. Typical among these is a sermon
of Bishop Sands, in which he declares, regarding the taking of
interest: "This canker hath corrupted all England; we shall doe
God and our country true service by taking away this evill;
represse it by law, else the heavy hand of God hangeth over us
and will strike us."

II. RETREAT OF THE CHURCH, PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC.

But about the middle of the seventeenth century Sir Robert Filmer
gave this doctrine the heaviest blow it ever received in England.
Taking up Dr. Fenton's treatise, he answered it, and all works
like it, in a way which, however unsuitable to this century, was
admirably adapted to that. He cites Scripture and chops logic
after a masterly manner. Characteristic is this declaration:
"St. Paul doth, with one breath, reckon up seventeen sins, and
yet usury is none of them; but many preachers can not reckon up
seven deadly sins, except they make usury one of them."  Filmer
followed Fenton not only through his theology, but through his
political economy, with such relentless keenness that the old
doctrine seems to have been then and there practically worried
out of existence, so far as England was concerned.

Departures from the strict scriptural doctrines regarding
interest soon became frequent in Protestant countries, and they
were followed up with especial vigour in Holland. Various
theologians in the Dutch Church attempted to assert the
scriptural view by excluding bankers from the holy communion;
but the commercial vigour of the republic was too strong:
Salmasius led on the forces of right reason brilliantly, and by
the middle of the seventeenth century the question was settled
rightly in that country. This work was aided, indeed, by a far
greater man, Hugo Grotius; but here was shown the power of an
established dogma. Great as Grotius was--and it may well be held
that his book on War and Peace has wrought more benefit to
humanity than any other attributed to human authorship--he was,
in the matter of interest for money, too much entangled in
theological reasoning to do justice to his cause or to himself.
He declared the prohibition of it to be scriptural, but resisted
the doctrine of Aristotle, and allowed interest on certain
natural and practical grounds.

In Germany the struggle lasted longer. Of some little
significance, perhaps, is the demand of Adam Contzen, in 1629,
that lenders at interest should be punished as thieves; but by
the end of the seventeenth century Puffendorf and Leibnitz had
gained the victory.

Protestantism, open as it was to the currents of modern thought,
could not long continue under the dominion of ideas unfavourable
to economic development, and perhaps the most remarkable proof of
this was presented early in the eighteenth century in America, by
no less strict a theologian than Cotton Mather. In his
Magnalia he argues against the whole theological view with a
boldness, acuteness, and good sense which cause us to wonder that
this can be the same man who was so infatuated regarding
witchcraft.  After an argument so conclusive as his, there could
have been little left of the old anti-economic doctrine in New
England.[454]

[454] For Calvin's views, see his letter published in the
appendix to Pearson's Theories on Usury. His position is well-
stated in Bohm-Bawerk, pp. 28 et seq., where citations are given.
See also Economic Tracts, No. IV, New York, 1881, pp. 34, 35; and
for some serviceable Protestant fictions, see Cunningham,
Christian Opinion on Usury, pp. 60, 61. For  Dumoulin
(Molinaeus), see Bohm-Bawerk, as above, pp. 29 et seq. For
debates on usury in the British Parliament in Elizabeth's time,
see Cobbett, Parliamentary History, vol. i, pp 756 et seq. A
striking passage in Shakespeare is found in the Merchant of
Venice, Act I, scene iii: "If thou wilt lend this money, lend it
not as to thy friend; for when did friendship take a breed for
barren metal of his friend?"  For the right direction taken by
Lord Bacon, see Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland,
Halle, 1864, pp. 497, 498. For Salmasius, see his De Usuris,
Leyden, 1638, and for others mentioned, see Bohm-Bawerk, pp. 34
et seq.; also Lecky, vol. ii. p. 256. For the saving clause
inderted by the bishops in the statute of James I, see the Corpus
Juris Eccles. Anglic., p. 1071; also Murray, History of Usury,
Philadelphia, 1866, p. 49.

For Blaxton, see his English Usurer, or Usury Condemned, by John
Blaxton, Preacher of God's Word, London, 1634. Blaxton gives some
of Calvin's earlier utterances against interest. For Bishop
Sands;s sermon, see p. 11. For Filmer, see his Quaestio
Quodlibetica, London, 1652, reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany,
vol.x, pp. 105 et seq. For Grotius, see the De Jure Belli ac
Pacis, lib. ii, cap.xii. For Cotton Mather's argument, see the
Magnalia, London, 1702, pp. 5, 52.

But while the retreat of the Protestant Church from the old
doctrine regarding the taking of interest was henceforth easy, in
the Catholic Church it was far more difficult. Infallible popes
and councils, with saints, fathers, and doctors, had so
constantly declared the taking of any interest at all to be
contrary to Scripture, that the more exact though less fortunate
interpretation of the sacred text relating to interest continued
in Catholic countries. When it was attempted in France in the
seventeenth century to argue that usury "means oppressive
interest," the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne declared that
usury is the taking of any interest at all, no matter how little;
and the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel was cited to clinch this
argument.

Another attempt to ease the burden of industry and commerce was
made by declaring that "usury means interest demanded not as a
matter of favour but as a matter of right."  This, too, was
solemnly condemned by Pope innocent XI.

Again an attempt was made to find a way out of the difficulty by
declaring that "usury is interest greater than the law allows."
This, too, was condemned, and so also was the declaration that
"usury is interest on loans not for a fixed time."

Still the forces of right reason pressed on, and among them, in
the seventeenth century, in France, was Richard Simon. He
attempted to gloss over the declarations of Scripture against
lending at interest, in an elaborate treatise, but was
immediately confronted by Bossuet. Just as Bossuet had mingled
Scripture with astronomy and opposed the Copernican theory, so
now he mingled Scripture with political economy and denounced the
lending of money at interest. He called attention to the fact
that the Scriptures, the councils of the Church from the
beginning, the popes, the fathers, had all interpreted the
prohibition of "usury" to be a prohibition of any lending at
interest; and he demonstrated this interpretation to be the true
one. Simon was put to confusion and his book condemned.

There was but too much reason for Bossuet's interpretation.
There stood the fact that the prohibition of one of the most
simple and beneficial principles in political and economical
science was affirmed, not only by the fathers, but by
twenty-eight councils of the Church, six of them general
councils, and by seventeen popes, to say nothing of innumerable
doctors in theology and canon law. And these prohibitions by the
Church had been accepted as of divine origin by all obedient sons
of the Church in the government of France. Such rulers as
Charles the Bald in the ninth century, and St. Louis in the
thirteenth, had riveted this idea into the civil law so firmly
that it seemed impossible ever to detach it.[455]

[455] For the declaration of the Sorbonne in the seventeenth
century against taking of interest, see Lecky, Rationalism, vol.
ii, p. 248, note. For the special condemnation by Innocent XI,
see Viva, Damnatae Theses, Pavia, 1715, pp. 112-114. For
consideration of various ways of escaping the difficulty
regarding interest, see Lecky, Rationalism, vol. ii, pp. 249,
250. For Bousset's strong declaration against taking interest,
see his Oeuvres, Paris, 1845-'46, vol. i, p. 734, vol. vi, p.
654, and vol. ix, p. 49 et seq. For the number of councils and
popes condemning usury, see Lecky,as above, vol. ii, p. 255,
note, citing Concina.

As might well be expected, Italy was one of the countries in
which the theological theory regarding usury--lending at
interest--was most generally asserted and assented to. Among
the great number of Italian canonists who supported the theory,
two deserve especial mention, as affording a contrast to the
practical manner in which the commercial Italians met the
question.

In the sixteenth century, very famous among canonists was the
learned Benedictine, Vilagut. In 1589 he published at Venice
his great work on usury, supporting with much learning and vigour
the most extreme theological consequences of the old doctrine.
He defines usury as the taking of anything beyond the original
loan, and declares it mortal sin; he advocates the denial to
usurers of Christian burial, confession, the sacraments,
absolution, and connection with the universities; he declares
that priests receiving offerings from usurers should refrain from
exercising their ministry until the matter is passed upon by the
bishop.

About the middle of the seventeenth century another ponderous
folio was published in Venice upon the same subject and with the
same title, by Onorato Leotardi. So far from showing any signs
of yielding, he is even more extreme than Vilagut had been, and
quotes with approval the old declaration that lenders of money at
interest are not only robbers but murderers.

So far as we can learn, no real opposition was made in either
century to this theory, as a theory; as to PRACTICE, it was
different. The Italian traders did not answer theological
argument; they simply overrode it. In spite of theology, great
banks were established, and especially that of Venice at the end
of the twelfth century, and those of Barcelona and Genoa at the
beginning of the fifteenth. Nowhere was commerce carried on in
more complete defiance of this and other theological theories
hampering trade than in the very city where these great treatises
were published. The sin of usury, like the sin of commerce with
the Mohammedans, seems to have been settled for by the Venetian
merchants on their deathbeds; and greatly to the advantage of
the magnificent churches and ecclesiastical adornments of the
city.

By the seventeenth century the clearest thinkers in the Roman
Church saw that her theology must be readjusted to political
economy: so began a series of amazing attempts to reconcile a
view permitting usury with the long series of decrees of popes
and councils forbidding it.

In Spain, the great Jesuit casuist Escobar led the way, and
rarely had been seen such exquisite hair-splitting. But his
efforts were not received with the gratitude they perhaps
deserved. Pascal, revolting at their moral effect, attacked
them unsparingly in his Provincial Letters, citing especially
such passages as the following: "It is usury to receive profit
from those to whom one lends, if it be exacted as justly due;
but, if it be exacted as a debt of gratitude, it is not usury."
This and a multitude of similar passages Pascal covered with the
keen ridicule and indignant denunciation of which he was so great
a master.

But even the genius of Pascal could not stop such efforts. In
the eighteenth century they were renewed by a far greater
theologian than Escobar--by him who was afterward made a saint
and proclaimed a doctor of the Church--Alphonso Liguori.

Starting with bitter denunciations of usury, Liguori soon
developed a multitude of subtle devices for escaping the guilt of
it. Presenting a long and elaborate theory of "mental, usury"
he arrives at the conclusion that, if the borrower pay interest
of his own free will, the lender may keep it. In answer to the
question whether the lender may keep what the borrower paid, not
out of gratitude but out of fear--fear that otherwise loans might
be refused him in future--Liguori says, "To be usury it must be
paid by reason of a contract, or as justly due; payment by
reason of such a fear does not cause interest to be paid as an
actual price."  Again Liguori tells us, "It is not usury to exact
something in return for the danger and expense of regaining the
principal."  The old subterfuges of "Damnum emergens" and "Lucrum
cessans" are made to do full duty. A remarkable quibble is
found in the answer to the question whether he sins who furnishes
money to a man whom he knows to intend employing it in usury.
After citing affirmative opinions from many writers, Liguori
says, "Notwithstanding these opinions, the better opinion seems
to me to be that the man thus putting out his money is not bound
to make restitution, for his action is not injurious to the
borrower, but rather favourable to him," and this reasoning the
saint develops at great length.

In the Latin countries this sort of casuistry eased the relations
of the Church with the bankers, and it was full time; for now
there came arguments of a different kind. The eighteenth
century philosophy had come upon the stage, and the first
effective onset of political scientists against the theological
opposition in southern Europe was made in Italy--the most noted
leaders in the attack being Galiani and Maffei. Here and there
feeble efforts were made to meet them, but it was felt more and
more by thinking churchmen that entirely different tactics must
be adopted.

About the same time came an attack in France, and though its
results were less immediate at home, they were much more
effective abroad. In 1748 appeared Montesquieu's Spirit of the
Laws. In this famous book were concentrated twenty years of
study and thought by a great thinker on the interests of the
world about him. In eighteen months it went through twenty-two
editions; it was translated into every civilized language; and
among the things on which Montesquieu brought his wit and wisdom
to bear with especial force was the doctrine of the Church
regarding interest on loans. In doing this he was obliged to
use a caution in forms which seems strangely at variance with the
boldness of his ideas. In view of the strictness of
ecclesiastical control in France, he felt it safest to make his
whole attack upon those theological and economic follies of
Mohammedan countries which were similar to those which the
theological spirit had fastened on France.[456]

[456] For Vilagut, see his Tractatus de Usuris, Venice, 1589,
especially pp. 21, 25, 399. For Leotardi, see his De Usuris,
Venice, 1655, especially preface, pp. 6, 7 et seq. For Pascal
and Escobar, see the Provincial Letters, edited by Sayres,
Cambridge, 1880, Letter VIII, pp. 183-186; also a note to the
same letter, p. 196. For Liguori, see his Theologia Moralis,
Paris, 1834, lib. iii, tract v, cap. iii: De Contractibus, dub,
vii. For the eighteenth century attack in Italy, see Bohm-Bawerk,
pp. 48 et seq. For Montesquieu's view of interest on loans, see
the Esprit des Lois, livre xxii.

By the middle of the eighteenth century the Church authorities at
Rome clearly saw the necessity of a concession: the world would
endure theological restriction no longer; a way of escape MUST
be found. It was seen, even by the most devoted theologians,
that mere denunciations and use of theological arguments or
scriptural texts against the scientific idea were futile.

To this feeling it was due that, even in the first years of the
century, the Jesuit casuists had come to the rescue. With
exquisite subtlety some of their acutest intellects devoted
themselves to explaining away the utterances on this subject of
saints, fathers, doctors, popes, and councils. These
explanations were wonderfully ingenious, but many of the older
churchmen continued to insist upon the orthodox view, and at last
the Pope himself intervened. Fortunately for the world, the seat
of St. Peter was then occupied by Benedict XIV, certainly one of
the most gifted, morally and intellectually, in the whole line of
Roman pontiffs. Tolerant and sympathetic for the oppressed, he
saw the necessity of taking up the question, and he grappled with
it effectually: he rendered to Catholicism a service like that
which Calvin had rendered to Protestantism, by shrewdly cutting a
way through the theological barrier. In 1745 he issued his
encyclical Vix pervenit, which declared that the doctrine of the
Church remained consistent with itself; that usury is indeed a
sin, and that it consists in demanding any amount beyond the
exact amount lent, but that there are occasions when on special
grounds the lender may obtain such additional sum.

What these "occasions" and "special grounds" might be, was left
very vague; but this action was sufficient.

At the same time no new restrictions upon books advocating the
taking of interest for money were imposed, and, in the year
following his encyclical, Benedict openly accepted the dedication
of one of them--the work of Maffei, and perhaps the most cogent
of all.

Like the casuistry of Boscovich in using the Copernican theory
for "convenience in argument," while acquiescing in its
condemnation by the Church authorities, this encyclical of Pope
Benedict broke the spell. Turgot, Quesnay, Adam Smith, Hume,
Bentham, and their disciples pressed on, and science won for
mankind another great victory.[457]

[457] For Quesnay, see his Observations sur l'Interet de
l'Argent, in his Oeuvres, Frankfort and Paris, 1888, pp. 399 et
seq. For Turgot, see the Collections des Economistes, Paris,
1844, vols. iii and iv; also Blanqui, Histoire de l'Economie
Politique, English translation, p. 373. For an excellent though
brief summary of the efforts of the Jesuits to explain away the
old action of the Church, see Lecky, vol. ii, pp 256, 257. For
the action of Benedict XIV, see Reusch, Der Index der Vorbotenen
Bucher, Bonn, 1885, vol. ii, pp 847, 848. For a comical picture
of the "quagmire' into which the hierarchy brought itself in the
squaring of its practice with its theory, see Dollinger, as
above, pp. 227, 228. For cunningly vague statements of the
action of Benedict XIV, see Mastrofini, Sur l'Usure, French
translation, Lyons, 1834, pp. 125, 255. The abbate, as will be
seen, has not the slightest hesitaion in telling an untruth in
order to preserve the consistency of papal action in the matter
of usury-- e.g., pp. 93, 94 96, and elsewhere.

Yet in this case, as in others, insurrections against the sway of
scientific truth appeared among some overzealous religionists.
When the Sorbonne, having retreated from its old position, armed
itself with new casuistries against those who held to its earlier
decisions, sundry provincial doctors in theology protested
indignantly, making the old citations from the Scriptures,
fathers, saints, doctors, popes, councils, and canonists. Again
the Roman court intervened. In 1830 the Inquisition at Rome,
with the approval of Pius VIII, though still declining to commit
itself on the DOCTRINE involved, decreed that, as to PRACTICE,
confessors should no longer disturb lenders of money at legal
interest.

But even this did not quiet the more conscientious theologians.
The old weapons were again furbished and hurled by the Abbe
Laborde, Vicar of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Auch, and by
the Abbe Dennavit, Professor of Theology at Lyons. Good Abbe
Dennavit declared that he refused absolution to those who took
interest and to priests who pretend that the sanction of the
civil law is sufficient.

But the "wisdom of the serpent" was again brought into
requisition, and early in the decade between 1830 and 1840 the
Abbate Mastrofini issued a work on usury, which, he declared on
its title-page, demonstrated that "moderate usury is not contrary
to Holy Scripture, or natural law, or the decisions of the
Church."  Nothing can be more comical than the suppressions of
truth, evasions of facts, jugglery with phrases, and perversions
of history, to which the abbate is forced to resort throughout
his book in order to prove that the Church has made no mistake.
In the face of scores of explicit deliverances and decrees of
fathers, doctors, popes, and councils against the taking of any
interest whatever for money, he coolly pretended that what they
had declared against was EXORBITANT interest. He made a merit
of the action of the Church, and showed that its course had been
a blessing to humanity. But his masterpiece is in dealing with
the edicts of Clement V and Benedict XIV. As to the first, it
will be remembered that Clement, in accord with the Council of
Vienne, had declared that "any one who shall pertinaciously
presume to affirm that the taking of interest for money is not a
sin, we decree him to be a heiretic fit for punishment," and we
have seen that Benedict XIV did not at all deviate from the
doctrines of his predecessors. Yet Mastrofini is equal to his
task, and brings out, as the conclusion of his book, the
statement put upon his title-page, that what the Church condemns
is only EXORBITANT interest.

This work was sanctioned by various high ecclesiastical
dignitaries, and served its purpose; for it covered the retreat
of the Church.

In 1872 the Holy Office, answering a question solemnly put by the
Bishop of Ariano, as solemnly declared that those who take eight
per cent interest per annum are "not to be disquieted"; and in
1873 appeared a book published under authority from the Holy See,
allowing the faithful to take moderate interest under condition
that any future decisions of the Pope should be implicitly
obeyed. Social science as applied to political economy had
gained a victory final and complete. The Torlonia family at Rome
to-day, with its palaces, chapels, intermarriages, affiliations,
and papal favour--all won by lending money at interest, and by
liberal gifts, from the profits of usury, to the Holy See--is but
one out of many growths of its kind on ramparts long since
surrendered and deserted.[458]

[458] For the decree forbidding confessors to trouble lenders of
money at legal interest, see Addis and Arnold, Catholic
Dictionary, as above; also Mastrofini, as above, in the appendix,
where various other recent Roman decrees are given. As to the
controversy generally, see Mastrofini; also La Replique des douze
Docteurs, cited by Guillaumin and Coquelin; also Reusch, vol. ii,
p. 850. As an example of Mastrofini's way of making black appear
white, compare the Latin text of the decree on page 97 with his
statements regarding it; see also his cunning substitution of the
new significance of the word usury for the old in various parts
of his book. A good historical presentation of the general
subject will be found in Roscher, Geschichte der National-
Oeconomie in Deutschland, Munchen, 1874, under articles Wucher
and Zinsnehmen. For France, see especially Petit, Traite de
l'Usure, Paris, 1840; and for Germany, see Neumann, Geschichte
des Wuchers in Deutschland, Halle, 1865. For the view of a
modern leader of thought in this field, see Jeremy Bentham,
Defence of Usury, Letter X. For an admirable piece of research
into the nicer points involved in the whole subject, see H. C.
Lea, The Ecclesiatical Treatment of Usury, in the Yale Review for
February, 1894.

The dealings of theology with public economy were by no means
confined to the taking of interest for money. It would be
interesting to note the restrictions placed upon commerce by the
Church prohibition of commercial intercourse with infidels,
against which the Republic of Venice fought a good fight; to
note how, by a most curious perversion of Scripture in the Greek
Church, many of the peasantry of Russia were prevented from
raising and eating potatoes; how, in Scotland, at the beginning
of this century, the use of fanning mills for winnowing grain was
widely denounced as contrary to the text, "The wind bloweth where
it listeth," etc., as leaguing with Satan, who is "Prince of the
powers of the air," and therefore as sufficient cause for
excommunication from the Scotch Church. Instructive it would be
also to note how the introduction of railways was declared by an
archbishop of the French Church to be an evidence of the divine
displeasure against country innkeepers who set meat before their
guests on fast days, and who were now punished by seeing
travellers carried by their doors; how railways and telegraphs
were denounced from a few noted pulpits as heralds of Antichrist;
and how in Protestant England the curate of Rotherhithe, at the
breaking in of the Thames Tunnel, so destructive to life and
property, declared it from his pulpit a just judgment upon the
presumptuous aspirations of mortal man.

The same tendency is seen in the opposition of conscientious men
to the taking of the census in Sweden and the United States, on
account of the terms in which the numbering of Israel is spoken
of in the Old Testament. Religious scruples on similar grounds
have also been avowed against so beneficial a thing as life
insurance.

Apparently unimportant as these manifestations are, they indicate
a widespread tendency; in the application of scriptural
declarations to matters of social economy, which has not yet
ceased, though it is fast fading away.[459]

[459] For various interdicts laid upon commerce by the Church,
see Heyd, Histoire du Commerce du Levant au Moyen-Age, Leipsic,
1886, vol. ii, passim. For the injury done to commerce by
prohibition of intercourse with the infidel, see Lindsay, History
of Merchant Shipping, London, 1874, vol. ii. For superstitions
regarding the introduction of the potato in Russia, and the name
"devil's root" given it, see Hellwald, Culturgeschichte, vol. ii,
p. 476; also Haxthausen, La Russie. For opposition to winnowing
machines, see Burton, History of Scotland, vol. viii, p. 511;
also Lecky, Eighteenth Century, vol. ii, p. 83; also Mause
Headrigg's views in Scott's Old Mortality, chap. vii. For the
case of a person debarred from the communion for "raising the
devil's wind" with a winnowing machine, see Works of Sir J. Y.
Simpson, vol. ii. Those doubting the authority or motives of
Simpson may be reminded that he was to the day of his death one
of the strictest adherants to Scotch orthodoxy. As to the curate
of Rotherhithe, see Journal of Sir I. Brunel for May 20, 1827, in
Life of I. K. Brunel, p. 30. As to the conclusions drawn from
the numbering of Israel, see Michaelis, Commentaries on the Laws
of Moses, 1874, vol. ii, p. 3. The author of this work himself
witnessed the reluctance of a very conscientious man to answer
the questions of a census marshal, Mr. Lewis Hawley, of Syracuse,
New York; and this reluctance was based upon the reasons assigned
in II Samuel xxiv, 1, and I Chronicles xxi,1, for the numbering
of the children of Israel.

Worthy of especial study, too, would be the evolution of the
modern methods of raising and bettering the condition of the
poor,--the evolution, especially, of the idea that men are to be
helped to help themselves, in opposition to the old theories of
indiscriminate giving, which, taking root in some of the most
beautiful utterances of our sacred books, grew in the warm
atmosphere of medieval devotion into great systems for the
pauperizing of the labouring classes. Here, too, scientific
modes of thought in social science have given a new and nobler
fruitage to the whole growth of Christian benevolence.[460]

[460] Among the vast number of authorities regarding the
evolution of better methods in dealing with pauperism, I would
call attention to a work which is especially suggestive--
Behrends, Christianity and Socialism, New York, 1886.

CHAPTER XX.

FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM.

I. THE OLDER INTERPRETATION.

The great sacred books of the world are the most precious of
human possessions. They embody the deepest searchings into the
most vital problems of humanity in all its stages: the naive
guesses of the world's childhood, the opening conceptions of its
youth, the more fully rounded beliefs of its maturity.

These books, no matter how unhistorical in parts and at times,
are profoundly true. They mirror the evolution of man's
loftiest aspirations, hopes, loves, consolations, and
enthusiasms; his hates and fears; his views of his origin and
destiny; his theories of his rights and duties; and these not
merely in their lights but in their shadows. Therefore it is
that they contain the germs of truths most necessary in the
evolution of humanity, and give to these germs the environment
and sustenance which best insure their growth and strength.

With wide differences in origin and character, this sacred
literature has been developed and has exercised its influence in
obedience to certain general laws. First of these in time, if
not in importance, is that which governs its origin: in all
civilizations we find that the Divine Spirit working in the mind
of man shapes his sacred books first of all out of the chaos of
myth and legend; and of these books, when life is thus breathed
into them, the fittest survive.

So broad and dense is this atmosphere of myth and legend
enveloping them that it lingers about them after they have been
brought forth full-orbed; and, sometimes, from it are even
produced secondary mythical and legendary concretions--satellites
about these greater orbs of early thought. Of these secondary
growths one may be mentioned as showing how rich in myth-making
material was the atmosphere which enveloped our own earlier
sacred literature.

In the third century before Christ there began to be elaborated
among the Jewish scholars of Alexandria, then the great centre of
human thought, a Greek translation of the main books constituting
the Old Testament. Nothing could be more natural at that place
and time than such a translation; yet the growth of explanatory
myth and legend around it was none the less luxuriant. There
was indeed a twofold growth. Among the Jews favourable to the
new version a legend rose which justified it. This legend in its
first stage was to the effect that the Ptolemy then on the
Egyptian throne had, at the request of his chief librarian, sent
to Jerusalem for translators; that the Jewish high priest
Eleazar had sent to the king a most precious copy of the
Scriptures from the temple at Jerusalem, and six most venerable,
devout, and learned scholars from each of the twelve tribes of
Israel; that the number of translators thus corresponded with the
mysterious seventy-two appellations of God; and that the combined
efforts of these seventy-two men produced a marvellously perfect
translation.

But in that atmosphere of myth and marvel the legend continued to
grow, and soon we have it blooming forth yet more gorgeously in
the statement that King Ptolemy ordered each of the seventy-two
to make by himself a full translation of the entire Old
Testament, and shut up each translator in a separate cell on the
island of Pharos, secluding him there until the work was done;
that the work of each was completed in exactly seventy-two days;
and that when, at the end of the seventy-two days, the
seventy-two translations were compared, each was found exactly
like all the others. This showed clearly Jehovah's APPROVAL.

But out of all this myth and legend there was also evolved an
account of a very different sort. The Jews who remained
faithful to the traditions of their race regarded this Greek
version as a profanation, and therefore there grew up the legend
that on the completion of the work there was darkness over the
whole earth during three days. This showed clearly Jehovah's
DISAPPROVAL.

These well-known legends, which arose within what--as compared
with any previous time--was an exceedingly enlightened period,
and which were steadfastly believed by a vast multitude of Jews
and Christians for ages, are but single examples among scores
which show how inevitably such traditions regarding sacred books
are developed in the earlier stages of civilization, when men
explain everything by miracle and nothing by law.[461]

[461] For the legend regarding the Septaguint, especially as
developed by the letters of Pseudo-Aristeas, and for quaint
citations from the fathers regarding it, see The History of the
Seventy-two Interpretors, from the Greek of Aristeas, translated
by Mr. Lewis, London, 1715; also Clement of Alexandria, in the
Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Edinburgh, 1867, p. 448. For
interesting summaries showing the growth of the story, see
Drummond, Philo Judaeus and the Growth of the Alexandrian
Philosophy, London, 1888, vol. i, pp. 231 et seq.; also Renan,
Histoire du Peuple Israel, vol. iv, chap. iv; also, for Philo
Judaeus's part in developing the legend, see Rev. Dr. Sanday's
Bampton Lectures for 1893, on Inspiration, pp. 86, 87.

As the second of these laws governing the evolution of sacred
literature may be mentioned that which we have constantly seen so
effective in the growth of theological ideas--that to which Comte
gave the name of the Law of Wills and Causes. Obedient to
this, man attributes to the Supreme Being a physical,
intellectual, and moral structure like his own; hence it is that
the votary of each of the great world religions ascribes to its
sacred books what he considers absolute perfection: he imagines
them to be what he himself would give the world, were he himself
infinitely good, wise, and powerful.

A very simple analogy might indeed show him that even a
literature emanating from an all-wise, beneficent, and powerful
author might not seem perfect when judged by a human standard;
for he has only to look about him in the world to find that the
work which he attributes to an all-wise, all-beneficent, and
all-powerful Creator is by no means free from evil and wrong.

But this analogy long escapes him, and the exponent of each great
religion proves to his own satisfaction, and to the edification
of his fellows, that their own sacred literature is absolutely
accurate in statement, infinitely profound in meaning, and
miraculously perfect in form. From these premises also he
arrives at the conclusion that his own sacred literature is
unique; that no other sacred book can have emanated from a divine
source; and that all others claiming to be sacred are impostures.

Still another law governing the evolution of sacred literature in
every great world religion is, that when the books which compose
it are once selected and grouped they come to be regarded as a
final creation from which nothing can be taken away, and of which
even error in form, if sanctioned by tradition, may not be
changed.

The working of this law has recently been seen on a large scale.

A few years since, a body of chosen scholars, universally
acknowledged to be the most fit for the work, undertook, at the
call of English-speaking Christendom, to revise the authorized
English version of the Bible.

Beautiful as was that old version, there was abundant reason for
a revision. The progress of biblical scholarship had revealed
multitudes of imperfections and not a few gross errors in the
work of the early translators, and these, if uncorrected, were
sure to bring the sacred volume into discredit.

Nothing could be more reverent than the spirit of the revisers,
and the nineteenth century has known few historical events of
more significant and touching beauty than the participation in
the holy communion by all these scholars--prelates, presbyters,
ministers, and laymen of churches most widely differing in belief
and observance--kneeling side by side at the little altar in
Westminster Abbey.

Nor could any work have been more conservative and cautious than
theirs; as far as possible they preserved the old matter and
form with scrupulous care.

Yet their work was no sooner done than it was bitterly attacked
and widely condemned; to this day it is largely regarded with
dislike. In Great Britain, in America, in Australia, the old
version, with its glaring misconceptions, mistranslations, and
interpolations, is still read in preference to the new; the
great body of English-speaking Christians clearly preferring the
accustomed form of words given by the seventeenth-century
translators, rather than a nearer approach to the exact teaching
of the Holy Ghost.

Still another law is, that when once a group of sacred books has
been evolved--even though the group really be a great library of
most dissimilar works, ranging in matter from the hundredth Psalm
to the Song of Songs, and in manner from the sublimity of Isaiah
to the offhand story-telling of Jonah--all come to be thought one
inseparable mass of interpenetrating parts; every statement in
each fitting exactly and miraculously into each statement in
every other; and each and every one, and all together, literally
true to fact, and at the same time full of hidden meanings.

The working of these and other laws governing the evolution of
sacred literature is very clearly seen in the great rabbinical
schools which flourished at Jerusalem, Tiberias, and elsewhere,
after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, and
especially as we approach the time of Christ. These schools
developed a subtlety in the study of the Old Testament which
seems almost preternatural. The resultant system was mainly a
jugglery with words, phrases, and numbers, which finally became a
"sacred science," with various recognised departments, in which
interpretation was carried on sometimes by attaching a numerical
value to letters; sometimes by interchange of letters from
differently arranged alphabets; sometimes by the making of new
texts out of the initial letters of the old; and with
ever-increasing subtlety.

Such efforts as these culminated fitly in the rabbinical
declaration that each passage in the law has seventy distinct
meanings, and that God himself gives three hours every day to
their study.

After this the Jewish world was prepared for anything, and it
does not surprise us to find such discoveries in the domain of
ethical culture as the doctrine that, for inflicting the forty
stripes save one upon those who broke the law, the lash should be
braided of ox-hide and ass-hide; and, as warrant for this
construction of the lash, the text, "The ox knoweth his owner,
and the ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not know"; and,
as the logic connecting text and lash, the statement that Jehovah
evidently intended to command that "the men who know not shall be
beaten by those animals whose knowledge shames them."

By such methods also were revealed such historical treasures as
that Og, King of Bashan, escaped the deluge by wading after
Noah's ark.

There were, indeed, noble exceptions to this kind of teaching.
It can not be forgotten that Rabbi Hillel formulated the golden
rule, which had before him been given to the extreme Orient by
Confucius, and which afterward received a yet more beautiful and
positive emphasis from Jesus of Nazareth; but the seven rules of
interpretation laid down by Hillel were multiplied and refined by
men like Rabbi Ismael and Rabbi Eleazar until they justified
every absurd subtlety.[462]

[462] For a multitude of amusing examples of rabbinical
interpretations, see an article in Blackwood's Magazine for
November, 1882. For a more general discussion, see Archdeacon
Farrar's History of Interpretation, lect. i and ii, and Rev.
Prof. H. P. Smith's Inspiration and Inerrancy, Cincinnati, 1893,
especially chap. iv; also Reuss, History of the New Testament,
English translation, pp. 527, 528.

An eminent scholar has said that while the letter of Scripture
became ossified in Palestine, it became volatilized at
Alexandria; and the truth of this remark was proved by the
Alexandrian Jewish theologians just before the beginning of our
era.

This, too, was in obedience to a law of development, which is,
that when literal interpretation clashes with increasing
knowledge or with progress in moral feeling, theologians take
refuge in mystic meanings--a law which we see working in all
great religions, from the Brahmans finding hidden senses in the
Vedas, to Plato and the Stoics finding them in the Greek myths;
and from the Sofi reading new meanings into the Koran, to eminent
Christian divines of the nineteenth century giving a non-natural
sense to some of the plainest statements in the Bible.

Nothing is more natural than all this. When naive statements of
sacred writers, in accord with the ethics of early ages, make
Brahma perform atrocities which would disgrace a pirate; and
Jupiter take part in adventures worthy of Don Juan; and Jahveh
practise trickery, cruelty, and high-handed injustice which would
bring any civilized mortal into the criminal courts, the
invention of allegory is the one means of saving the divine
authority as soon as men reach higher planes of civilization.

The great early master in this evolution of allegory, for the
satisfaction of Jews and Christians, was Philo: by him its use
came in as never before. The four streams of the garden of Eden
thus become the four virtues; Abraham's country and kindred,
from which he was commanded to depart, the human body and its
members; the five cities of Sodom, the five senses; the
Euphrates, correction of manners. By Philo and his compeers even
the most insignificant words and phrases, and those especially,
were held to conceal the most precious meanings.

A perfectly natural and logical result of this view was reached
when Philo, saturated as he was with Greek culture and nourished
on pious traditions of the utterances at Delphi and Dodona, spoke
reverently of the Jewish Scriptures as "oracles". Oracles they
became: as oracles they appeared in the early history of the
Christian Church; and oracles they remained for centuries:
eternal life or death, infinite happiness or agony, as well as
ordinary justice in this world, being made to depend on shifting
interpretations of a long series of dark and doubtful
utterances--interpretations frequently given by men who might
have been prophets and apostles, but who had become simply
oracle-mongers.

Pressing these oracles into the service of science, Philo became
the forerunner of that long series of theologians who, from
Augustine and Cosmas to Mr. Gladstone, have attempted to
extract from scriptural myth and legend profound contributions to
natural science. Thus he taught that the golden candlesticks in
the tabernacle symbolized the planets, the high priest's robe the
universe, and the bells upon it the harmony of earth and
water--whatever that may mean. So Cosmas taught, a thousand
years later, that the table of shewbread in the tabernacle showed
forth the form and construction of the world; and Mr. Gladstone
hinted, more than a thousand years later still, that Neptune's
trident had a mysterious connection with the Christian doctrine
of the Trinity.[463]

[463] For Philo Judaeus, see Yonge's translation, Bohn's edition;
see also Sanday, Inspiration, pp. 78-85. For admirable general
remarks on this period in history of exegesis, see Bartlett,
Bampton Lectures, 1888, p. 29. For efforts in general to save
the credit of myths by allegorical interpretation, and for those
of Philo in particular, see Drummond, Philo Judaeus, London,
1888, vol. i, pp. 18, 19, and notes. For interesting examples of
Alexandrian exegesis and for Philo's application of the term
"oracle" to the Jewish Scriptures, see Farrar, History of
Interpretation, p. 147 and note. For his discovery of symbols of
the universe in the furniture of the tabernacle, see Drummond, as
above, pp. 269 et seq. For the general subject, admirably
discussed from a historical point of view, see the Rev. Edwin
Hatch, D. D., The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the
Christian Church, Hibbert Lectures for 1888, chap. iii. For
Cosmas, see my chapters on Geography and Astronomy. For Mr.
Gladstone's view of the connection between Neptune's trident and
the doctrine of the Trinity, see his Juventus Mundi.

These methods, as applied to the Old Testament, had appeared at
times in the New; in spite of the resistance of Tertullian and
Irenaeus, they were transmitted to the Church; and in the works
of the early fathers they bloomed forth luxuriantly.

Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria vigorously extended them.
Typical of Justin's method is his finding, in a very simple
reference by Isaiah to Damascus, Samaria, and Assyria, a clear
prophecy of the three wise men of the East who brought gifts to
the infant Saviour; and in the bells on the priest's robe a
prefiguration of the twelve apostles. Any difficulty arising
from the fact that the number of bells is not specified in
Scripture, Justin overcame by insisting that David referred to
this prefiguration in the nineteenth Psalm: "Their sound is gone
out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the
world."

Working in this vein, Clement of Alexandria found in the form,
dimensions, and colour of the Jewish tabernacle a whole wealth of
interpretation--the altar of incense representing the earth
placed at the centre of the universe; the high priest's robe the
visible world; the jewels on the priest's robe the zodiac; and
Abraham's three days' journey to Mount Moriah the three stages of
the soul in its progress toward the knowledge of God.
Interpreting the New Testament, he lessened any difficulties
involved in the miracle of the barley loaves and fishes by
suggesting that what it really means is that Jesus gave mankind a
preparatory training for the gospel by means of the law and
philosophy; because, as he says, barley, like the law, ripens
sooner than wheat, which represents the gospel; and because,
just as fishes grow in the waves of the ocean, so philosophy grew
in the waves of the Gentile world.

Out of reasonings like these, those who followed, especially
Cosmas, developed, as we have seen, a complete theological
science of geography and astronomy.[464]

[464] For Justin, see the Dialogue with Trypho, chaps. xlii,
lxxvi, and lxxxiii. For Clement of Alexandria, see his
Miscellanies, book v, chaps. vi and xi, and book vii, chap. xvi,
and especially Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, as above, pp. 76, 77. As
to the loose views of the canon held by these two fathers and
others of their time, see Ladd, Doctrine of the Sacred
Scriptures, vol. ii, pp. 86, 88; also Diestel, Geschichte des
alten Testaments.

But the instrument in exegesis which was used with most cogent
force was the occult significance of certain numbers. The
Chaldean and Egyptian researches of our own time have revealed
the main source of this line of thought; the speculations of
Plato upon it are well known; but among the Jews and in the
early Church it grew into something far beyond the wildest
imaginings of the priests of Memphis and Babylon.

Philo had found for the elucidation of Scripture especially deep
meanings in the numbers four, six, and seven; but other
interpreters soon surpassed him. At the very outset this occult
power was used in ascertaining the canonical books of Scripture.
Josephus argued that, since there were twenty-two letters in the
Hebrew alphabet, there must be twenty-two sacred books in the Old
Testament; other Jewish authorities thought that there should be
twenty-four books, on account of the twenty-four watches in the
temple. St. Jerome wavered between the argument based upon
the twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet and that suggested
by the twenty-four elders in the Apocalypse. Hilary of Poitiers
argued that there must be twenty-four books, on account of the
twenty-four letters in the Greek alphabet. Origen found an
argument for the existence of exactly four gospels in the
existence of just four elements. Irenaeus insisted that there
could be neither more nor fewer than four gospels, since the
earth has four quarters, the air four winds, and the cherubim
four faces; and he denounced those who declined to accept this
reasoning as "vain, ignorant, and audacious."[465]

[465] For Jerome and Origen, see notes on pages following. For
Irenaeus, see Irenaeus, Adversus Hoeres., lib. iii, cap. xi, S 8.
For the general subject, see Sanday, Inspiration, p. 115; also
Farrar and H. P. Smith as above. For a recent very full and very
curious statement from a Roman Catholic authority regarding views
cherished in the older Church as to the symbolism of numbers, see
Detzel, Christliche Iconographie, Freiburg in Bresigau, Band i,
Einleitung, p. 4.

But during the first half of the third century came one who
exercised a still stronger influence in this direction--a great
man who, while rendering precious services, did more than any
other to fasten upon the Church a system which has been one of
its heaviest burdens for more than sixteen hundred years: this
was Origen. Yet his purpose was noble and his work based on
profound thought. He had to meet the leading philosophers of
the pagan world, to reply to their arguments against the Old
Testament, and especially to break the force of their taunts
against its imputation of human form, limitations, passions,
weaknesses, and even immoralities to the Almighty.

Starting with a mistaken translation of a verse in the book of
Proverbs, Origen presented as a basis for his main structure the
idea of a threefold sense of Scripture: the literal, the moral,
and the mystic--corresponding to the Platonic conception of the
threefold nature of man. As results of this we have such
masterpieces as his proof, from the fifth verse of chapter xxv of
Job, that the stars are living beings, and from the well-known
passage in the nineteenth chapter of St. Matthew his warrant
for self-mutilation. But his great triumphs were in the
allegorical method. By its use the Bible was speedily made an
oracle indeed, or, rather, a book of riddles. A list of kings in
the Old Testament thus becomes an enumeration of sins; the
waterpots of stone, "containing two or three firkins apiece," at
the marriage of Cana, signify the literal, moral, and spiritual
sense of Scripture; the ass upon which the Saviour rode on his
triumphal entry into Jerusalem becomes the Old Testament, the
foal the New Testament, and the two apostles who went to loose
them the moral and mystical senses; blind Bartimeus throwing off
his coat while hastening to Jesus, opens a whole treasury of
oracular meanings.

The genius and power of Origen made a great impression on the
strong thinkers who followed him. St. Jerome called him "the
greatest master in the Church since the apostles," and Athanasius
was hardly less emphatic.

The structure thus begun was continued by leading theologians
during the centuries following: St. Hilary of Poitiers--"the
Athanasius of Gaul"--produced some wonderful results of this
method; but St. Jerome, inspired by the example of the man whom
he so greatly admired, went beyond him. A triumph of his
exegesis is seen in his statement that the Shunamite damsel who
was selected to cherish David in his old age signified heavenly
wisdom.

The great mind of St. Augustine was drawn largely into this
kind of creation, and nothing marks more clearly the vast change
which had come over the world than the fact that this greatest of
the early Christian thinkers turned from the broader paths opened
by Plato and Aristotle into that opened by Clement of Alexandria.

In the mystic power of numbers to reveal the sense of Scripture
Augustine found especial delight. He tells us that there is
deep meaning in sundry scriptural uses of the number forty, and
especially as the number of days required for fasting. Forty,
he reminds us, is four times ten. Now, four, he says, is the
number especially representing time, the day and the year being
each divided into four parts; while ten, being made up of three
and seven, represents knowledge of the Creator and creature,
three referring to the three persons in the triune Creator, and
seven referring to the three elements, heart, soul, and mind,
taken in connection with the four elements, fire, air, earth, and
water, which go to make up the creature. Therefore this number
ten, representing knowledge, being multiplied by four,
representing time, admonishes us to live during time according to
knowledge--that is, to fast for forty days. Referring to such
misty methods as these, which lead the reader to ask himself
whether he is sleeping or waking, St. Augustine remarks that
"ignorance of numbers prevents us from understanding such things
in Scripture."  But perhaps the most amazing example is to be
seen in his notes on the hundred and fifty and three fishes
which, according to St. John's Gospel, were caught by St.
Peter and the other apostles. Some points in his long
development of this subject may be selected to show what the
older theological method could be made to do for a great mind.
He tells us that the hundred and fifty and three fishes embody a
mystery; that the number ten, evidently as the number of the
commandments, indicates the law; but, as the law without the
spirit only kills, we must add the seven gifts of the spirit, and
we thus have the number seventeen, which signifies the old and
new dispensations; then, if we add together every several number
which seventeen contains from one to seventeen inclusive, the
result is a hundred and fifty and three--the number of the
fishes. With this sort of reasoning he finds profound meanings
in the number of furlongs mentioned in he sixth chapter of St.
John. Referring to the fact that the disciples had rowed about
"twenty-five or thirty furlongs," he declares that "twenty-five
typifies the law, because it is five times five, but the law was
imperfect before the gospel came; now perfection is comprised in
six, since God in six days perfected the world, hence five is
multiplied by six that the law may be perfected by the gospel,
and six times five is thirty."

But Augustine's exploits in exegesis were not all based on
numerals; he is sometimes equally profound in other modes. Thus
he tells us that the condemnation of the serpent to eat dust
typifies the sin of curiosity, since in eating dust he
"penetrates the obscure and shadowy"; and that Noah's ark was
"pitched within and without with pitch" to show the safety of the
Church from the leaking in of heresy.

Still another exploit--one at which the Church might well have
stood aghast--was his statement that the drunkenness of Noah
prefigured the suffering and death of Christ. It is but just to
say that he was not the original author of this interpretation:
it had been presented long before by St. Cyprian. But this
was far from Augustine's worst. Perhaps no interpretation of
Scripture has ever led to more cruel and persistent oppression,
torture, and bloodshed than his reading into one of the most
beautiful parables of Jesus of Nazareth--into the words "Compel
them to come in"--a warrant for religious persecution: of all
unintended blasphemies since the world began, possibly the most
appalling. Another strong man follows to fasten these methods on
the Church: St. Gregory the Great. In his renowned work on the
book of Job, the Magna Moralia, given to the world at the end of
the sixth century, he lays great stress on the deep mystical
meanings of the statement that Job had seven sons. He thinks the
seven sons typify the twelve apostles, for "the apostles were
selected through the sevenfold grace of the Spirit; moreover,
twelve is produced from seven--that is, the two parts of seven,
four and three, when multiplied together give twelve."  He also
finds deep significance in the number of the apostles; this
number being evidently determined by a multiplication of the
number of persons in the Trinity by the number of quarters of the
globe. Still, to do him justice, it must be said that in some
parts of his exegesis the strong sense which was one of his most
striking characteristics crops out in a way very refreshing.
Thus, referring to a passage in the first chapter of Job,
regarding the oxen which were ploughing and the asses which were
feeding beside them, he tells us pithily that these typify two
classes of Christians: the oxen, the energetic Christians who do
the work of the Church; the asses, the lazy Christians who merely
feed.[466]

[466] For Origen, see the De Principiis, book iv, chaps. i-vii et
seq., Crombie's translation; also the Contra Celsum, vol. vi, p.
70; vol. vii, p. 20, etc.; also various citations in Farrar. For
Hilary, see his Tractatus super Psalmos, cap. ix, li, etc. in
Migne, vol. ix, and De Trinitate, lib. ii, cap. ii. For Jerome's
interpretation of the text relating to the Shunamite woman, see
Epist. lii, in Migne, vol. xxii, pp. 527, 528. For Augustine's
use of numbers, see the De Doctrina Christiana, lib. ii, cap.
xvi; and for the explanation of the draught of fishes, see
Augustine in, In Johan. Evangel., tractat. cxxii; and on the
twenty-five to thirty furlongs, ibid., tract. xxv, cap. 6; and
for the significance of the serpent eating dust, De Gen., lib.
ii, c. 18. or the view that the drunkenness of Noah prefigured
the suffering of Christ, as held by SS. Cyprian and Augustine,
see Farrar, as above, pp. 181, 238. For St. Gregory, see the
Magna Moralia, lib. i, cap. xiv.

Thus began the vast theological structure of oracular
interpretation applied to the Bible. As we have seen, the men
who prepared the ground for it were the rabbis of Palestine and
the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria; and the four great men who
laid its foundation courses were Origen, St. Augustine, St.
Jerome, and St. Gregory.

During the ten centuries following the last of these men this
structure continued to rise steadily above the plain meanings of
Scripture. The Christian world rejoiced in it, and the few
great thinkers who dared bring the truth to bear upon it were
rejected. It did indeed seem at one period in the early Church
that a better system might be developed. The School of Antioch,
especially as represented by Chrysostom, appeared likely to lead
in this better way, but the dominant forces were too strong; the
passion for myth and marvel prevailed over the love of real
knowledge, and the reasonings of Chrysostom and his compeers were
neglected.[467]

[467] For the work of the School of Antioch, and especially of
Chrysostom, see the eloquent tribute to it by Farrar, as above.

In the ninth century came another effort to present the claims of
right reason. The first man prominent in this was St. Agobard,
Bishop of Lyons, whom an eminent historian has well called the
clearest head of his time. With the same insight which
penetrated the fallacies and follies of image worship, belief in
witchcraft persecution, the ordeal, and the judicial duel, he saw
the futility of this vast fabric of interpretation, protested
against the idea that the Divine Spirit extended its inspiration
to the mere words of Scripture, and asked a question which has
resounded through every generation since: "If you once begin
such a system, who can measure the absurdity which will follow?"

During the same century another opponent of this dominant system
appeared: John Scotus Erigena. He contended that "reason and
authority come alike from the one source of Divine Wisdom"; that
the fathers, great as their authority is, often contradict each
other; and that, in last resort, reason must be called in to
decide between them.

But the evolution of unreason continued: Agobard was unheeded,
and Erigena placed under the ban by two councils--his work being
condemned by a synod as a "Commentum Diaboli."  Four centuries
later Honorius III ordered it to be burned, as "teeming with the
venom of hereditary depravity"; and finally, after eight
centuries, Pope Gregory XIII placed it on the Index, where, with
so many other works which have done good service to humanity, it
remains to this day. Nor did Abelard, who, three centuries
after Agobard and Erigena, made an attempt in some respects like
theirs, have any better success: his fate at the hands of St.
Bernard and the Council of Sens the world knows by heart. Far
more consonant with the spirit of the universal Church was the
teaching in the twelfth century of the great Hugo of St.
Victor, conveyed in these ominous words, "Learn first what is to
be believed" (Disce primo quod credendum est), meaning thereby
that one should first accept doctrines, and then find texts to
confirm them.

These principles being dominant, the accretions to the enormous
fabric of interpretation went steadily on. Typical is the fact
that the Venerable Bede contributed to it the doctrine that, in
the text mentioning Elkanah and his two wives, Elkanah means
Christ and the two wives the Synagogue and the Church. Even
such men as Alfred the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas were added to
the forces at work in building above the sacred books this
prodigious structure of sophistry.

Perhaps nothing shows more clearly the tenacity of the old system
of interpretation than the sermons of Savonarola. During the
last decade of the fifteenth century, just at the close of the
medieval period, he was engaged in a life-and-death struggle at
Florence. No man ever preached more powerfully the gospel of
righteousness; none ever laid more stress on conduct; even
Luther was not more zealous for reform or more careless of
tradition; and yet we find the great Florentine apostle and
martyr absolutely tied fast to the old system of allegorical
interpretation. The autograph notes of his sermons, still
preserved in his cell at San Marco, show this abundantly. Thus
we find him attaching to the creation of grasses and plants on
the third day an allegorical connection with the "multitude of
the elect" and with the "sound doctrines of the Church," and to
the creation of land animals on the sixth day a similar relation
to "the Jewish people" and to "Christians given up to things
earthly."[468]

[468] For Agobard, see the Liber adversus Fredigisum, cap. xii;
also Reuter's Relig. Aufklarung im Mittelalter, vol. i, p. 24;
also Poole, Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought,
London, 1884, pp. 38 et seq. For Erigena, see his De Divisione
Naturae, lib. iv, cap. v; also i, cap. lxvi-lxxi; and for general
account, see Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, New York, 1871,
vol. i, pp. 358 et seq.; and for the treatment of his work by the
Church, see the edition of the Index under Leo XIII, 1881. For
Abelard, see the Sic et Non, Prologue, Migne, vol. iii, pp. 371-
377. For Hugo of St. Victor, see Erudit. Didask., lib. vii, vi,
4, in Migne, clxxvi. For Savonarola's interpretations, see
various references to his preaching in Villari's life of
Savonarola, English translation, London, 1890, and especially the
exceedingly interesting table in the appendix to vol. i, chap.
vii.

The revival of learning in the fifteenth century seemed likely to
undermine this older structure.

Then it was that Lorenzo Valla brought to bear on biblical
research, for the first time, the spirit of modern criticism.
By truly scientific methods he proved the famous "Letter of
Christ to Abgarus" a forgery; the "Donation of Constantine," one
of the great foundations of the ecclesiastical power in temporal
things, a fraud; and the "Apostles' Creed" a creation which
post-dated the apostles by several centuries. Of even more
permanent influence was his work upon the New Testament, in which
he initiated the modern method of comparing manuscripts to find
what the sacred text really is. At an earlier or later period he
would doubtless have paid for his temerity with his life;
fortunately, just at that time the ruling pontiff and his
Contemporaries cared much for literature and little for
orthodoxy, and from their palaces he could bid defiance to the
Inquisition.

While Valla thus initiated biblical criticism south of the Alps,
a much greater man began a more fruitful work in northern Europe.
Erasmus, with his edition of the New Testament, stands at the
source of that great stream of modern research and thought which
is doing so much to undermine and dissolve away the vast fabric
of patristic and scholastic interpretation.

Yet his efforts to purify the scriptural text seemed at first to
encounter insurmountable difficulties, and one of these may
stimulate reflection. He had found, what some others had found
before him, that the famous verse in the fifth chapter of the
First Epistle General of St. John, regarding the "three
witnesses," was an interpolation. Careful research through all
the really important early manuscripts showed that it appeared in
none of them. Even after the Bible had been corrected, in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, by Lanfranc, Archbishop of
Canterbury, and by Nicholas, cardinal and librarian of the Roman
Church, "in accordance with the orthodox faith," the passage was
still wanting in the more authoritative Latin manuscripts.
There was not the slightest tenable ground for believing in the
authenticity of the text; on the contrary, it has been
demonstrated that, after a universal silence of the orthodox
fathers of the Church, of the ancient versions of the Scriptures,
and of all really important manuscripts, the verse first appeared
in a Confession of Faith drawn up by an obscure zealot toward the
end of the fifth century. In a very mild exercise, then, of
critical judgment, Erasmus omitted this text from the first two
editions of his Greek Testament as evidently spurious. A storm
arose at once. In England, Lee, afterward Archbishop of York;
in Spain, Stunica, one of the editors of the Complutensian
Polyglot; and in France, Bude, Syndic of the Sorbonne, together
with a vast army of monks in England and on the Continent,
attacked him ferociously. He was condemned by the University of
Paris, and various propositions of his were declared to be
heretical and impious. Fortunately, the worst persecutors could
not reach him; otherwise they might have treated him as they
treated his disciple, Berquin, whom in 1529 they burned at Paris.

The fate of this spurious text throws light into the workings of
human nature in its relations to sacred literature. Although
Luther omitted it from his translation of the New Testament, and
kept it out of every copy published during his lifetime, and
although at a later period the most eminent Christian scholars
showed that it had no right to a place in the Bible, it was,
after Luther's death, replaced in the German translation, and has
been incorporated into all important editions of it, save one,
since the beginning of the seventeenth century. So essential
was it found in maintaining the dominant theology that, despite
the fact that Sir Isaac Newton, Richard Porson, the
nineteenth-century revisers, and all other eminent authorities
have rejected it, the Anglican Church still retains it in its
Lectionary, and the Scotch Church continues to use it in the
Westminster Catechism, as a main support of the doctrine of the
Trinity.

Nor were other new truths presented by Erasmus better received.
His statement that "some of the epistles ascribed to St. Paul
are certainly not his," which is to-day universally acknowledged
as a truism, also aroused a storm. For generations, then, his
work seemed vain.

On the coming in of the Reformation the great structure of belief
in the literal and historical correctness of every statement in
the Scriptures, in the profound allegorical meanings of the
simplest texts, and even in the divine origin of the vowel
punctuation, towered more loftily and grew more rapidly than ever
before. The Reformers, having cast off the authority of the
Pope and of the universal Church, fell back all the more upon the
infallibility of the sacred books. The attitude of Luther
toward this great subject was characteristic. As a rule, he
adhered tenaciously to the literal interpretation of the
Scriptures; his argument against Copernicus is a fair example of
his reasoning in this respect; but, with the strong good sense
which characterized him, he from time to time broke away from the
received belief. Thus, he took the liberty of understanding
certain passages in the Old Testament in a different sense from
that given them by the New Testament, and declared St. Paul's
allegorical use of the story of Sarah and Hagar "too unsound to
stand the test."  He also emphatically denied that the Epistle to
the Hebrews was written by St. Paul, and he did this in the
exercise of a critical judgment upon internal evidence. His
utterance as to the Epistle of St. James became famous. He
announced to the Church: "I do not esteem this an apostolic,
epistle; I will not have it in my Bible among the canonical
books," and he summed up his opinion in his well-known allusion
to it as "an epistle of straw."

Emboldened by him, the gentle spirit of Melanchthon, while
usually taking the Bible very literally, at times revolted; but
this was not due to any want of loyalty to the old method of
interpretation: whenever the wildest and most absurd system of
exegesis seemed necessary to support any part of the reformed
doctrine, Luther and Melanchthon unflinchingly developed it.
Both of them held firmly to the old dictum of Hugo of St. Victor,
which, as we have seen, was virtually that one must first accept
the doctrine, and then find scriptural warrant for it. Very
striking examples of this were afforded in the interpretation by
Luther and Melanchthon of certain alleged marvels of their time,
and one out of several of these may be taken as typical of their
methods.

In 1523 Luther and Melanchthon jointly published a work under the
title Der Papstesel--interpreting the significance of a strange,
ass-like monster which, according to a popular story, had been
found floating in the Tiber some time before. This book was
illustrated by startling pictures, and both text and pictures
were devoted to proving that this monster was "a sign from God,"
indicating the doom of the papacy. This treatise by the two
great founders of German Protestantism pointed out that the ass's
head signified the Pope himself; "for," said they, "as well as an
ass's head is suited to a human body, so well is the Pope suited
to be head over the Church."  This argument was clinched by a
reference to Exodus. The right hand of the monster, said to be
like an elephant's foot, they made to signify the spiritual rule
of the Pope, since "with it he tramples upon all the weak": this
they proved from the book of Daniel and the Second Epistle to
Timothy. The monster's left hand, which was like the hand of a
man, they declared to mean the Pope's secular rule, and they
found passages to support this view in Daniel and St. Luke.
The right foot, which was like the foot of an ox, they declared
to typify the servants of the spiritual power; and proved this by
a citation from St. Matthew. The left foot, like a griffin's
claw, they made to typify the servants of the temporal power of
the Pope, and the highly developed breasts and various other
members, cardinals, bishops, priests, and monks, "whose life is
eating, drinking, and unchastity": to prove this they cited
passages from Second Timothy and Philippians. The alleged
fish-scales on the arms, legs, and neck of the monster they made
to typify secular princes and lords; "since," as they said, "in
St. Matthew and Job the sea typifies the world, and fishes men."
The old man's head at the base of the monster's spine they
interpreted to mean "the abolition and end of the papacy," and
proved this from Hebrews and Daniel. The dragon which opens his
mouth in the rear and vomits fire, "refers to the terrible,
virulent bulls and books which the Pope and his minions are now
vomiting forth into the world."  The two great Reformers then
went on to insist that, since this monster was found at Rome, it
could refer to no person but the Pope; "for," they said, "God
always sends his signs in the places where their meaning
applies."  Finally, they assured the world that the monster
in general clearly signified that the papacy was then near its
end. To this development of interpretation Luther and
Melanchthon especially devoted themselves; the latter by revising
this exposition of the prodigy, and the former by making
additions to a new edition. Such was the success of this kind of
interpretation that Luther, hearing that a monstrous calf had
been found at Freiburg, published a treatise upon it--showing, by
citations from the books of Exodus, Kings, the Psalms, Isaiah,
Daniel, and the Gospel of St. John, that this new monster was the
especial work of the devil, but full of meaning in regard to the
questions at issue between the Reformers and the older Church.

The other main branch of the Reformed Church appeared for a time
to establish a better system. Calvin's strong logic seemed at
one period likely to tear his adherents away from the older
method; but the evolution of scholasticism continued, and the
influence of the German reformers prevailed. At every
theological centre came an amazing development of interpretation.

Eminent Lutheran divines in the seventeenth century, like
Gerhard, Calovius, Coccerus, and multitudes of others, wrote
scores of quartos to further this system, and the other branch of
the Protestant Church emulated their example. The pregnant
dictum of St. Augustine--"Greater is the authority of Scripture
than all human capacity"--was steadily insisted upon, and, toward
the close of the seventeenth century, Voetius, the renowned
professor at Utrecht, declared, "Not a word is contained in the
Holy Scriptures which is not in the strictest sense inspired, the
very punctuation not excepted"; and this declaration was echoed
back from multitudes of pulpits, theological chairs, synods, and
councils. Unfortunately, it was very difficult to find what the
"authority of Scripture" really was. To the greater number of
Protestant ecclesiastics it meant the authority of any meaning in
the text which they had the wit to invent and the power to
enforce.

To increase this vast confusion, came, in the older branch of the
Church, the idea of the divine inspiration of the Latin
translation of the Bible ascribed to St. Jerome--the Vulgate.
It was insisted by leading Catholic authorities that this was as
completely a product of divine inspiration as was the Hebrew
original. Strong men arose to insist even that, where the
Hebrew and the Latin differed, the Hebrew should be altered to
fit Jerome's mistranslation, as the latter, having been made
under the new dispensation, must be better than that made under
the old. Even so great a man as Cardinal Bellarmine exerted
himself in vain against this new tide of unreason.[469]

[469] For Valla, see various sources already named; and for an
especially interesting account, Symond's Renaissance in Italy,
the Revival of Learning, pp. 260-269; and for the opinion of the
best contemporary judge, see Erasmus, Opera, Leyden, 1703, tom.
iii, p. 98. For Erasmus and his opponents, see Life of Erasmus,
by Butler, London, 1825, pp. 179-182; but especially, for the
general subject, Bishop Creighton's History of the Papacy during
the Reformation. For the attack by Bude and the Sorbonne and the
burning of Berquin, see Drummond, Life and character of Erasmus,
vol. ii, pp. 220-223; also pp. 230-239. As to the text of the
Three Witnesses, see Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, chap. xxxvi, notes 116-118; also Dean Milman's note
thereupon. For a full and learned statement of the evidence
against the verse, see Porson's Letters to Travis, London, 1790,
in which an elaborate discussion of all the MSS. is given. See
also Jowett in Essays and Reviews, p. 307. For a very full and
impartial history of the long controversy over this passage, see
Charles Butler's Horae Biblicae, reprinted in Jared Sparks's
Theological Essays and Tracts, vol. ii. For Luther's ideas of
interpretation, see his Sammtliche Schriften, Walch edition, vol.
i, p. 1199, vol. ii, p. 1758, vol. viii, p. 2140; for some of his
more free views, vol. xiv, p. 472, vol. vi, p. 121, vol. xi, p.
1448, vol. xii, p. 830; also Tholuck, Doctrine of Inspiration,
Boston, 1867, citing the Colloquia, Frankfort, 1571, vol. ii, p.
102; also the Vorreden zu der deutschen Bibelubersetzung, in
Walch's edition, as above, vol. xiv, especially pp. 94, 98, and
146-150. As to Melanchthon, see especially his Loci Communes,
1521; and as to the enormous growth of commentaries in the
generations immediately following, see Charles Beard, Hibbert
Lectures for 1883, on the Reformation, especially the admirable
chapter on Protestant Scholasticism; also Archdeacon Farrar,
history of Interpretation. For the Papstesel, etc., see Luther's
Sammtliche Schriften, edit. Walch, vol. xiv, pp. 2403 et seq.;
also Melanchthon's Opera, edit. Bretschneider, vol. xx, pp. 665
et seq. In the White Library of Cornell University will be found
an original edition of the book, with engravings of the monster.
For the Monchkalb, see Luther's works as above, vol. xix, pp.
2416 et seq. For the spirit of Calvin in interpretation, see
Farrar, ans especially H. P. Smith, D. D., Inspiration and
Inerrancy, chap. iv, and the very brilliant essay forming chap.
iii of the same work, by L. J. Evans, pp. 66 and 67, note. For
the attitude of the older Church toward the Vulgate, see
Pallavicini, Histoire du Concile de Trente, Montrouge, 1844, tome
i, pp 19,20; but especially Symonds, The Catholic Reaction, vol.
i, pp. 226 et seq. As to a demand for the revision of the Hebrew
Bible to correct its differences from the Vulgate, see Emanuel
Deutsch's Literary Remains, New York, 1874, p. 9. For the work
and spirit of Calovius and other commentators immediately
folloeing the Reformation, see Farrar, as above; also Beard,
Schaff, and Hertzog, Geschichte des alten Testaments in der
christlichen Kirche, pp. 527 et seq. As to extreme views of
Voetius and others, see Tholuck, as above. For the Formula
Concensus Helvetica, which in 1675 affirmed the inspiration of
the vowel points, see Schaff, Creeds.

Nor was a fanatical adhesion to the mere letter of the sacred
text confined to western Europe. About the middle of the
seventeenth century, in the reign of Alexis, father of Peter the
Great, Nikon, Patriarch of the Russian Greek Church, attempted to
correct the Slavonic Scriptures and service-books. They were
full of interpolations due to ignorance, carelessness, or zeal,
and in order to remedy this state of the texts Nikon procured a
number of the best Greek and Slavonic manuscripts, set the
leading and most devout scholars he could find at work upon them,
and caused Russian Church councils in 1655 and 1666 to promulgate
the books thus corrected.

But the same feelings which have wrought so strongly against our
nineteenth-century revision of the Bible acted even more forcibly
against that revision in the seventeenth century. Straightway
great masses of the people, led by monks and parish priests, rose
in revolt. The fact that the revisers had written in the New
Testament the name of Jesus correctly, instead of following the
old wrong orthography, aroused the wildest fanaticism. The
monks of the great convent of Solovetsk, when the new books were
sent them, cried in terror: "Woe, woe! what have you done with
the Son of God?"  They then shut their gates, defying patriarch,
council, and Czar, until, after a struggle lasting seven years,
their monastery was besieged and taken by an imperial army.
Hence arose the great sect of the "Old Believers," lasting to
this day, and fanatically devoted to the corrupt readings of the
old text.[470]

[470] The present writer, visiting Moscow in the spring of 1894,
was presented by Count Leo Tolstoi to one of the most eminent and
influential members of the sect of "Old Believers," which dates
from the reform of Nikon. Nothing could exceed the fervor with
which this venerable man, standing in the chapel of his superb
villa, expatiated on the horrors of making the sign of the cross
with three fingers instead of two. His argument was that the TWO
fingers, as used by the "Old Believers," typify the divine and
human nature of our Lord, and hence that the use of them is
strictly correct; whereas signing with THREE fingers,
representing the blessed Trinity, is "virtually to crucify all
three persons of the Godhead afresh."  Not less cogent were his
arguments regarding the immense value of the old text of
Scripture as compared with the new. For the revolt against Nikon
and his reforms, see Rambaud, History of Russia, vol. i, pp. 414-
416; also Wallace, Russia, vol. ii, pp. 307-309; also Leroy-
Beaulieu, L'Empire des Tsars, vol. iii, livre iii.

Strange to say, on the development of Scripture interpretation,
largely in accordance with the old methods, wrought, about the
beginning of the eighteenth century, Sir Isaac Newton.

It is hard to believe that from the mind which produced the
Principia, and which broke through the many time-honoured
beliefs regarding the dates and formation of scriptural books,
could have come his discussions regarding the prophecies; still,
at various points even in this work, his power appears. From
internal evidence he not only discarded the text of the Three
Witnesses, but he decided that the Pentateuch must have been made
up from several books; that Genesis was not written until the
reign of Saul; that the books of Kings and Chronicles were
probably collected by Ezra; and, in a curious anticipation of
modern criticism, that the book of Psalms and the prophecies of
Isaiah and Daniel were each written by various authors at various
dates. But the old belief in prophecy as prediction was too
strong for him, and we find him applying his great powers to the
relation of the details given by the prophets and in the
Apocalypse to the history of mankind since unrolled, and tracing
from every statement in prophetic literature its exact fulfilment
even in the most minute particulars.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century the structure of
scriptural interpretation had become enormous. It seemed
destined to hide forever the real character of our sacred
literature and to obscure the great light which Christianity had
brought into the world. The Church, Eastern and Western,
Catholic and Protestant, was content to sit in its shadow, and
the great divines of all branches of the Church reared every sort
of fantastic buttress to strengthen or adorn it. It seemed to be
founded for eternity; and yet, at this very time when it appeared
the strongest, a current of thought was rapidly dissolving away
its foundations, and preparing that wreck and ruin of the whole
fabric which is now, at the close of the nineteenth century,
going on so rapidly.

The account of the movement thus begun is next to be given.[471]

[471] For Newton's boldness in textual criticism, compared with
his credulity as to the literal fulfilment of prophecy, see his
Observations upon the Prophesies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of
St. John, in his works, edited by Horsley, London, 1785, vol. v,
pp. 297-491.

II. BEGINNINGS OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.

At the base of the vast structure of the older scriptural
interpretation were certain ideas regarding the first five books
of the Old Testament. It was taken for granted that they had
been dictated by the Almighty to Moses about fifteen hundred
years before our era; that some parts of them, indeed, had been
written by the corporeal finger of Jehovah, and that all parts
gave not merely his thoughts but his exact phraseology. It was
also held, virtually by the universal Church, that while every
narrative or statement in these books is a precise statement of
historical or scientific fact, yet that the entire text contains
vast hidden meanings. Such was the rule: the exceptions made by
a few interpreters here and there only confirmed it. Even the
indifference of St. Jerome to the doctrine of Mosaic authorship
did not prevent its ripening into a dogma.

The book of Genesis was universally held to be an account, not
only divinely comprehensive but miraculously exact, of the
creation and of the beginnings of life on the earth; an account
to which all discoveries in every branch of science must, under
pains and penalties, be made to conform. In English-speaking
lands this has lasted until our own time: the most eminent of
recent English biologists has told us how in every path of
natural science he has, at some stage in his career, come across
a barrier labelled "No thoroughfare Moses."

A favourite subject of theological eloquence was the perfection
of the Pentateuch, and especially of Genesis, not only as a
record of the past, but as a revelation of the future.

The culmination of this view in the Protestant Church was the
Pansophia Mosaica of Pfeiffer, a Lutheran general
superintendent, or bishop, in northern Germany, near the
beginning of the seventeenth century. He declared that the text
of Genesis "must be received strictly"; that "it contains all
knowledge, human and divine"; that "twenty-eight articles of the
Augsburg Confession are to be found in it"; that "it is an
arsenal of arguments against all sects and sorts of atheists,
pagans, Jews, Turks, Tartars, papists, Calvinists, Socinians, and
Baptists"; "the source of all sciences and arts, including law,
medicine, philosophy, and rhetoric"; "the source and essence of
all histories and of all professions, trades, and works"; "an
exhibition of all virtues and vices"; "the origin of all
consolation."

This utterance resounded through Germany from pulpit to pulpit,
growing in strength and volume, until a century later it was
echoed back by Huet, the eminent bishop and commentator of
France. He cited a hundred authors, sacred and profane, to
prove that Moses wrote the Pentateuch; and not only this, but
that from the Jewish lawgiver came the heathen theology--that
Moses was, in fact, nearly the whole pagan pantheon rolled into
one, and really the being worshipped under such names as Bacchus,
Adonis, and Apollo.[472]

[472] For the passage from Huxley regarding Mosaic barriers to
modern thought, see his Essays, recently published. For
Pfeiffer, see Zoeckler, Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, vol. i,
pp. 688, 689. For St. Jerome's indifference as to the Mosaic
authorship, see the first of the excellent Sketches of the
Pentateuch Criticism, by the Rev. S. J. Curtiss, in the
Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1884. For Huet, see also Curtiss,
ibid.

About the middle of the twelfth century came, so far as the world
now knows, the first gainsayer of this general theory. Then it
was that Aben Ezra, the greatest biblical scholar of the Middle
Ages, ventured very discreetly to call attention to certain
points in the Pentateuch incompatible with the belief that the
whole of it had been written by Moses and handed down in its
original form. His opinion was based upon the well-known texts
which have turned all really eminent biblical scholars in the
nineteenth century from the old view by showing the Mosaic
authorship of the five books in their present form to be clearly
disproved by the books themselves; and, among these texts,
accounts of Moses' own death and burial, as well as statements
based on names, events, and conditions which only came into being
ages after the time of Moses.

But Aben Ezra had evidently no aspirations for martyrdom; he
fathered the idea upon a rabbi of a previous generation, and,
having veiled his statement in an enigma, added the caution, "Let
him who understands hold his tongue."[473]

[473] For the texts referred to by Aben Ezra as incompatible with
the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, see Meyer, Geschichte
der Exegese, vol. i, pp. 85-88; and for a pithy short account,
Moore's introduction to The Genesis of Genesis, by B. W. Bacon,
Hartford, 1893, p. 23; also Curtiss, as above. For a full
exhibition of the absolute incompatibility of these texts with
the Mosaic authorship, etc., see The Higher Criticism of the
Pentateuch, by C. A. Briggs, D. D., New York, 1893, especially
chap. iv; also Robertson Smith, art. Bible, in Encycl. Brit.

For about four centuries the learned world followed the prudent
rabbi's advice, and then two noted scholars, one of them a
Protestant, the other a Catholic, revived his idea. The first
of these, Carlstadt, insisted that the authorship of the
Pentateuch was unknown and unknowable; the other, Andreas Maes,
expressed his opinion in terms which would not now offend the
most orthodox, that the Pentateuch had been edited by Ezra, and
had received in the process sundry divinely inspired words and
phrases to clear the meaning. Both these innovators were dealt
with promptly: Carlstadt was, for this and other troublesome
ideas, suppressed with the applause of the Protestant Church;
and the book of Maes was placed by the older Church on the Index.

But as we now look back over the Revival of Learning, the Age of
Discovery, and the Reformation, we can see clearly that powerful
as the older Church then was, and powerful as the Reformed Church
was to be, there was at work something far more mighty than
either or than both; and this was a great law of nature--the law
of evolution through differentiation. Obedient to this law
there now began to arise, both within the Church and without it,
a new body of scholars--not so much theologians as searchers for
truth by scientific methods. Some, like Cusa, were
ecclesiastics; some, like Valla, Erasmus, and the Scaligers, were
not such in any real sense; but whether in holy orders, really,
nominally, or not at all, they were, first of all, literary and
scientific investigators.

During the sixteenth century a strong impulse was given to more
thorough research by several very remarkable triumphs of the
critical method as developed by this new class of men, and two of
these ought here to receive attention on account of their
influence upon the whole after course of human thought.

For many centuries the Decretals bearing the great name of
Isidore had been cherished as among the most valued muniments of
the Church. They contained what claimed to be a mass of canons,
letters of popes, decrees of councils, and the like, from the
days of the apostles down to the eighth century--all supporting
at important points the doctrine, the discipline, the ceremonial,
and various high claims of the Church and its hierarchy.

But in the fifteenth century that sturdy German thinker, Cardinal
Nicholas of Cusa, insisted on examining these documents and on
applying to them the same thorough research and patient thought
which led him, even before Copernicus, to detect the error of the
Ptolemaic astronomy.

As a result, he avowed his scepticism regarding this pious
literature; other close thinkers followed him in investigating
it, and it was soon found a tissue of absurd anachronisms, with
endless clashing and confusion of events and persons.

For a time heroic attempts were made by Church authorities to
cover up these facts. Scholars revealing them were frowned
upon, even persecuted, and their works placed upon the Index;
scholars explaining them away--the "apologists" or "reconcilers"
of that day--were rewarded with Church preferment, one of them
securing for a very feeble treatise a cardinal's hat. But all in
vain; these writings were at length acknowledged by all scholars
of note, Catholic and Protestant, to be mainly a mass of devoutly
cunning forgeries.

While the eyes of scholars were thus opened as never before to
the skill of early Church zealots in forging documents useful to
ecclesiasticism, another discovery revealed their equal skill in
forging documents useful to theology.

For more than a thousand years great stress had been laid by
theologians upon the writings ascribed to Dionysius the
Areopagite, the Athenian convert of St. Paul. Claiming to
come from one so near the great apostle, they were prized as a
most precious supplement to Holy Writ. A belief was developed
that when St. Paul had returned to earth, after having been
"caught up to the third heaven," he had revealed to Dionysius the
things he had seen. Hence it was that the varied pictures given
in these writings of the heavenly hierarchy and the angelic
ministers of the Almighty took strong hold upon the imagination
of the universal Church: their theological statements sank
deeply into the hearts and minds of the Mystics of the twelfth
century and the Platonists of the fifteenth; and the ten epistles
they contained, addressed to St. John, to Titus, to Polycarp,
and others of the earliest period, were considered treasures of
sacred history. An Emperor of the East had sent these writings
to an Emperor of the West as the most precious of imperial gifts.
Scotus Erigena had translated them; St. Thomas Aquinas had
expounded them; Dante had glorified them; Albert the Great had
claimed that they were virtually given by St. Paul and inspired
by the Holy Ghost. Their authenticity was taken for granted by
fathers, doctors, popes, councils, and the universal Church.

But now, in the glow of the Renascence, all this treasure was
found to be but dross. Investigators in the old Church and in
the new joined in proving that the great mass of it was spurious.

To say nothing of other evidences, it failed to stand the
simplest of all tests, for these writings constantly presupposed
institutions and referred to events of much later date than the
time of Dionysius; they were at length acknowledged by all
authorities worthy of the name, Catholic as well as Protestant,
to be simply--like the Isidorian Decretals--pious frauds.

Thus arose an atmosphere of criticism very different from the
atmosphere of literary docility and acquiescence of the "Ages of
Faith"; thus it came that great scholars in all parts of Europe
began to realize, as never before, the part which theological
skill and ecclesiastical zeal had taken in the development of
spurious sacred literature; thus was stimulated a new energy in
research into all ancient documents, no matter what their claims.
To strengthen this feeling and to intensify the stimulating
qualities of this new atmosphere came, as we have seen, the
researches and revelations of Valla regarding the forged Letter
of Christ to Abgarus, the fraudulent Donation of Constantine,
and the late date of the Apostles' Creed; and, to give this
feeling direction toward the Hebrew and Christian sacred books,
came the example of Erasmus.[474]

[474] For very fair statements regarding the great forged
documents of the Middle Ages, see Addis and Arnold, Catholic
Dictionary, articles Dionysius the Areopagite and False
Decretals, and in the latter the curious acknowledgment that the
mass of pseudo-Isidorian Decretals "is what we now call a
forgery."

For the derivation of Dionysius's ideas from St. Paul, and for
the idea of inspiration attributed to him, see Albertus Magnus,
Opera Omnia, vol. xiii, early chapters and chap. vi. For very
interesting details on this general subject, see Dollinger, Das
Papstthum, chap. ii; also his Fables respecting the Popes of the
Middle Ages, translated by Plummer and H. B. Smith, part i, chap.
v. Of the exposure of these works, see Farrar, as above, pp.
254, 255; also Beard, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 4, 354. For the
False Decretals, see Milman, History of Latin Christianity, vol.
ii, pp. 373 et seq. For the great work of the pseudo-Dionysius,
see ibid., vol. iii, p. 352, and vol. vi, pp. 402 et seq., and
Canon Westcott's article on Dionysius the Areopagite in vol. v of
the Contemporary Review; also the chapters on Astronomy in this
work.

Naturally, then, in this new atmosphere the bolder scholars of
Europe soon began to push more vigorously the researches begun
centuries before by Aben Ezra, and the next efforts of these men
were seen about the middle of the seventeenth century, when
Hobbes, in his Leviathan, and La Pevrere, in his Preadamites,
took them up and developed them still further. The result came
speedily. Hobbes, for this and other sins, was put under the
ban, even by the political party which sorely needed him, and was
regarded generally as an outcast; while La Peyrere, for this and
other heresies, was thrown into prison by the Grand Vicar of
Mechlin, and kept there until he fully retracted: his book was
refuted by seven theologians within a year after its appearance,
and within a generation thirty-six elaborate answers to it had
appeared: the Parliament of Paris ordered it to be burned by the
hangman.

In 1670 came an utterance vastly more important, by a man far
greater than any of these--the Tractatus Thrologico-Politicus of
Spinoza. Reverently but firmly he went much more deeply into
the subject. Suggesting new arguments and recasting the old, he
summed up all with judicial fairness, and showed that Moses could
not have been the author of the Pentateuch in the form then
existing; that there had been glosses and revisions; that the
biblical books had grown up as a literature; that, though great
truths are to be found in them, and they are to be regarded as a
divine revelation, the old claims of inerrancy for them can not
be maintained; that in studying them men had been misled by
mistaking human conceptions for divine meanings; that, while
prophets have been inspired, the prophetic faculty has not been
the dowry of the Jewish people alone; that to look for exact
knowledge of natural and spiritual phenomena in the sacred books
is an utter mistake; and that the narratives of the Old and New
Testaments, while they surpass those of profane history, differ
among themselves not only in literary merit, but in the value of
the doctrines they inculcate. As to the authorship of the
Pentateuch, he arrived at the conclusion that it was written long
after Moses, but that Moses may have written some books from
which it was compiled--as, for example, those which are mentioned
in the Scriptures, the Book of the Wars of God, the Book of the
Covenant, and the like--and that the many repetitions and
contradictions in the various books show a lack of careful
editing as well as a variety of original sources. Spinoza then
went on to throw light into some other books of the Old and New
Testaments, and added two general statements which have proved
exceedingly serviceable, for they contain the germs of all modern
broad churchmanship; and the first of them gave the formula
which was destined in our own time to save to the Anglican Church
a large number of her noblest sons: this was, that "sacred
Scripture CONTAINS the Word of God, and in so far as it contains
it is incorruptible"; the second was, that "error in speculative
doctrine is not impious."

Though published in various editions, the book seemed to produce
little effect upon the world at that time; but its result to
Spinoza himself was none the less serious. Though so deeply
religious that Novalis spoke of him as "a God-intoxicated man,"
and Schleiermacher called him a "saint," he had been, for the
earlier expression of some of the opinions it contained, abhorred
as a heretic both by Jews and Christians: from the synagogue he
was cut off by a public curse, and by the Church he was now
regarded as in some sort a forerunner of Antichrist. For all
this, he showed no resentment, but devoted himself quietly to his
studies, and to the simple manual labour by which he supported
himself; declined all proffered honours, among them a
professorship at Heidelberg; found pleasure only in the society
of a few friends as gentle and affectionate as himself; and died
contentedly, without seeing any widespread effect of his doctrine
other than the prevailing abhorrence of himself.

Perhaps in all the seventeenth century there was no man whom
Jesus of Nazareth would have more deeply loved, and no life which
he would have more warmly approved; yet down to a very recent
period this hatred for Spinoza has continued. When, about 1880,
it was proposed to erect a monument to him at Amsterdam,
discourses were given in churches and synagogues prophesying the
wrath of Heaven upon the city for such a profanation; and when
the monument was finished, the police were obliged to exert
themselves to prevent injury to the statue and to the eminent
scholars who unveiled it.

But the ideas of Spinoza at last secured recognition. They had
sunk deeply into the hearts and minds of various leaders of
thought, and, most important of all, into the heart and mind of
Lessing; he brought them to bear in his treatise on the
Education of the World, as well as in his drama, Nathan the Wise,
and both these works have spoken with power to every generation
since.

In France, also, came the same healthful evolution of thought.
For generations scholars had known that multitudes of errors had
crept into the sacred text. Robert Stephens had found over two
thousand variations in the oldest manuscripts of the Old
Testament, and in 1633 Jean Morin, a priest of the Oratory,
pointed out clearly many of the most glaring of these.
Seventeen years later, in spite of the most earnest Protestant
efforts to suppress his work, Cappellus gave forth his Critica
Sacra, demonstrating not only that the vowel pointing of
Scripture was not divinely inspired, but that the Hebrew text
itself, from which the modern translations were made, is full of
errors due to the carelessness, ignorance, and doctrinal zeal of
early scribes, and that there had clearly been no miraculous
preservation of the "original autographs" of the sacred books.

While orthodox France was under the uneasiness and alarm thus
caused, appeared a Critical History of the Old Testament by
Richard Simon, a priest of the Oratory. He was a thoroughly
religious man and an acute scholar, whose whole purpose was to
develop truths which he believed healthful to the Church and to
mankind. But he denied that Moses was the author of the
Pentateuch, and exhibited the internal evidence, now so well
known, that the books were composed much later by various
persons, and edited later still. He also showed that other
parts of the Old Testament had been compiled from older sources,
and attacked the time-honoured theory that Hebrew was the
primitive language of mankind. The whole character of his book
was such that in these days it would pass, on the whole, as
conservative and orthodox; it had been approved by the censor in
1678, and printed, when the table of contents and a page of the
preface were shown to Bossuet. The great bishop and theologian
was instantly aroused; he pronounced the work "a mass of
impieties and a bulwark of irreligion"; his biographer tells us
that, although it was Holy Thursday, the bishop, in spite of the
solemnity of the day, hastened at once to the Chancellor Le
Tellier, and secured an order to stop the publication of the book
and to burn the whole edition of it. Fortunately, a few copies
were rescued, and a few years later the work found a new
publisher in Holland; yet not until there had been attached to
it, evidently by some Protestant divine of authority, an essay
warning the reader against its dangerous doctrines. Two years
later a translation was published in England.

This first work of Simon was followed by others, in which he
sought, in the interest of scriptural truth, to throw a new and
purer light upon our sacred literature; but Bossuet proved
implacable. Although unable to suppress all of Simon's works,
he was able to drive him from the Oratory, and to bring him into
disrepute among the very men who ought to have been proud of him
as Frenchmen and thankful to him as Christians.

But other scholars of eminence were now working in this field,
and chief among them Le Clerc. Virtually driven out of Geneva,
he took refuge at Amsterdam, and there published a series of
works upon the Hebrew language, the interpretation of Scripture,
and the like. In these he combated the prevalent idea that
Hebrew was the primitive tongue, expressed the opinion that in
the plural form of the word used in Genesis for God, "Elohim,"
there is a trace of Chaldean polytheism, and, in his discussion
on the serpent who tempted Eve, curiously anticipated modern
geological and zoological ideas by quietly confessing his
inability to see how depriving the serpent of feet and compelling
him to go on his belly could be punishment--since all this was
natural to the animal. He also ventured quasi-scientific
explanations of the confusion of tongues at Babel, the
destruction of Sodom, the conversion of Lot's wife into a pillar
of salt, and the dividing of the Red Sea. As to the Pentateuch
in general, he completely rejected the idea that it was written
by Moses. But his most permanent gift to the thinking world was
his answer to those who insisted upon the reference by Christ and
his apostles to Moses as the author of the Pentateuch. The
answer became a formula which has proved effective from his day
to ours: "Our Lord and his apostles did not come into this world
to teach criticism to the Jews, and hence spoke according to the
common opinion."

Against all these scholars came a theological storm, but it raged
most pitilessly against Le Clerc. Such renowned theologians as
Carpzov in Germany, Witsius in Holland, and Huet in France
berated him unmercifully and overwhelmed him with assertions
which still fill us with wonder. That of Huet, attributing the
origin of pagan as well as Christian theology to Moses, we have
already seen; but Carpzov showed that Protestantism could not be
outdone by Catholicism when he declared, in the face of all
modern knowledge, that not only the matter but the exact form and
words of the Bible had been divinely transmitted to the modern
world free from all error.

At this Le Clerc stood aghast, and finally stammered out a sort
of half recantation.[475]

[475] For Carlstadt, and Luther's dealings with him on various
accounts, see Meyer, Geschichte der exegese, vol. ii, pp. 373,
397. As to the value of Maes's work in general, see Meyer, vol.
ii, p. 125; and as to the sort of work in question, ibid., vol.
iii, p. 425, note. For Carlstadt, see also Farrar, History of
Interpretation, and Moore's introduction, as above. For Hobbes's
view that the Pentateuch was written long after Moses's day, see
the Leviathan, vol. iii, p. 33. For La Peyrere's view, see
especially his Prae-Adamitae, lib. iv, chap. ii, also lib. ii,
passim; also Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, p. 294; also
interesting points in Bayle's Dictionary. For Spinoza's view,
see the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, chaps. ii and iii, and
for the persecution, see the various biographies. Details
regarding the demonstration against the unveiling of his statue
were given to the present writer at the time by Berthold
Auerbach, who took part in the ceremony. For Morinus and
Cappellus, see Farrar, as above, p. 387 and note. For Richard
Simon, see his Histoire Critique de l'Ancien Testament, liv. i,
chaps. ii, iii, iv, v, and xiii. For his denial of the
prevailing theory regarding Hebrew, see liv. i, chap. iv. For
Morinus (Morin) and his work, see the Biog. Univ. and Nouvelle
Biog. Generale; also Curtiss. For Bousset's opposition to Simon,
see the Histoire de Bousser in the Oeuvres de Bousset, Paris,
1846, tome xii, pp. 330, 331; also t. x, p. 378; also sundry
attacks in various volumes. It is interesting to note that among
the chief instigators of the persecution were the Port-Royalists,
upon whose persecution afterward by the Jesuits so much sympathy
has been lavished by the Protestant world. For Le Clerc, see
especially his Pentateuchus, Prolegom, dissertat. i; also Com. in
Genes., cap. vi-viii. For a translation of selected passages on
the points noted, see Twelve Dissertations out of Monsieur
LeClerc's Genesis, done out of Latin by Mr. Brown, London, 1696;
also Le Clerc's Sentiments de Quelques Theologiens de Hollande,
passim; also his work on Inspiration, English translation,
Boston, 1820, pp. 47-50, also 57-67. For Witsius and Carpzov,
see Curtiss, as above. For some subordinate points in the
earlier growth of the opinion at present dominant, see Briggs,
The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, New York, 1893, chap. iv.

During the eighteenth century constant additions were made to the
enormous structure of orthodox scriptural interpretation, some of
them gaining the applause of the Christian world then, though
nearly all are utterly discredited now. But in 1753 appeared
two contributions of permanent influence, though differing vastly
in value. In the comparative estimate of these two works the
world has seen a remarkable reversal of public opinion.

The first of these was Bishop Lowth's Prelections upon the Sacred
Poetry of the Hebrews. In this was well brought out that
characteristic of Hebrew poetry to which it owes so much of its
peculiar charm--its parallelism.

The second of these books was Astruc's Conjectures on the
Original Memoirs which Moses used in composing the Book of
Genesis. In this was for the first time clearly revealed the
fact that, amid various fragments of old writings, at least two
main narratives enter into the composition of Genesis; that in
the first of these is generally used as an appellation of the
Almighty the word "Elohim," and in the second the word "Yahveh"
(Jehovah); that each narrative has characteristics of its own,
in thought and expression, which distinguish it from the other;
that, by separating these, two clear and distinct narratives may
be obtained, each consistent with itself, and that thus, and thus
alone, can be explained the repetitions, discrepancies, and
contradictions in Genesis which so long baffled the ingenuity of
commentators, especially the two accounts of the creation, so
utterly inconsistent with each other.

Interesting as was Lowth's book, this work by Astruc was, as the
thinking world now acknowledges, infinitely more important; it
was, indeed, the most valuable single contribution ever made to
biblical study. But such was not the judgment of the world
THEN. While Lowth's book was covered with honour and its author
promoted from the bishopric of St. David's to that of London,
and even offered the primacy, Astruc and his book were covered
with reproach. Though, as an orthodox Catholic, he had mainly
desired to reassert the authorship of Moses against the argument
of Spinoza, he received no thanks on that account. Theologians
of all creeds sneered at him as a doctor of medicine who had
blundered beyond his province; his fellow-Catholics in France
bitterly denounced him as a heretic; and in Germany the great
Protestant theologian, Michaelis, who had edited and exalted
Lowth's work, poured contempt over Astruc as an ignoramus.

The case of Astruc is one of the many which show the wonderful
power of the older theological reasoning to close the strongest
minds against the clearest truths. The fact which he discovered
is now as definitely established as any in the whole range of
literature or science. It has become as clear as the day, and
yet for two thousand years the minds of professional theologians,
Jewish and Christian, were unable to detect it. Not until this
eminent physician applied to the subject a mind trained in making
scientific distinctions was it given to the world.

It was, of course, not possible even for so eminent a scholar as
Michaelis to pooh-pooh down a discovery so pregnant; and,
curiously enough, it was one of Michaelis's own scholars,
Eichhorn, who did the main work in bringing the new truth to bear
upon the world. He, with others, developed out of it the theory
that Genesis, and indeed the Pentateuch, is made up entirely of
fragments of old writings, mainly disjointed. But they did far
more than this: they impressed upon the thinking part of
Christendom the fact that the Bible is not a BOOK, but a
LITERATURE; that the style is not supernatural and unique, but
simply the Oriental style of the lands and times in which its
various parts were written; and that these must be studied in
the light of the modes of thought and statement and the literary
habits generally of Oriental peoples. From Eichhorn's time the
process which, by historical, philological, and textual research,
brings out the truth regarding this literature has been known as
"the higher criticism."

He was a deeply religious man, and the mainspring of his efforts
was the desire to bring back to the Church the educated classes,
who had been repelled by the stiff Lutheran orthodoxy; but this
only increased hostility to him. Opposition met him in Germany
at every turn; and in England, Lloyd, Regius Professor of Hebrew
at Cambridge, who sought patronage for a translation of
Eichhorn's work, was met generally with contempt and frequently
with insult.

Throughout Catholic Germany it was even worse. In 1774
Isenbiehl, a priest at Mayence who had distinguished himself as a
Greek and Hebrew scholar, happened to question the usual
interpretation of the passage in Isaiah which refers to the
virgin-born Immanuel, and showed then--what every competent
critic knows now--that it had reference to events looked for in
older Jewish history. The censorship and faculty of theology
attacked him at once and brought him before the elector.
Luckily, this potentate was one of the old easy-going
prince-bishops, and contented himself with telling the priest
that, though his contention was perhaps true, he "must remain in
the old paths, and avoid everything likely to make trouble."

But at the elector's death, soon afterward, the theologians
renewed the attack, threw Isenbiehl out of his professorship and
degraded him. One insult deserves mention for its ingenuity.
It was declared that he--the successful and brilliant
professor--showed by the obnoxious interpretation that he had not
yet rightly learned the Scriptures; he was therefore sent back
to the benches of the theological school, and made to take his
seat among the ingenuous youth who were conning the rudiments of
theology. At this he made a new statement, so carefully guarded
that it disarmed many of his enemies, and his high scholarship
soon won for him a new professorship of Greek--the condition
being that he should cease writing upon Scripture. But a crafty
bookseller having republished his former book, and having
protected himself by keeping the place and date of publication
secret, a new storm fell upon the author; he was again removed
from his professorship and thrown into prison; his book was
forbidden, and all copies of it in that part of Germany were
confiscated. In 1778, having escaped from prison, he sought
refuge with another of the minor rulers who in blissful
unconsciousness were doing their worst while awaiting the French
Revolution, but was at once delivered up to the Mayence
authorities and again thrown into prison.

The Pope, Pius VI, now intervened with a brief on Isenbiehl's
book, declaring it "horrible, false, perverse, destructive,
tainted with heresy," and excommunicating all who should read it.
At this, Isenbiehl, declaring that he had written it in the hope
of doing a service to the Church, recanted, and vegetated in
obscurity until his death in 1818.

But, despite theological faculties, prince-bishops, and even
popes, the new current of thought increased in strength and
volume, and into it at the end of the eighteenth century came
important contributions from two sources widely separated and
most dissimilar.

The first of these, which gave a stimulus not yet exhausted, was
the work of Herder. By a remarkable intuition he had
anticipated some of those ideas of an evolutionary process in
nature and in literature which first gained full recognition
nearly three quarters of a century after him; but his greatest
service in the field of biblical study was his work, at once
profound and brilliant, The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry. In this
field he eclipsed Bishop Lowth. Among other things of
importance, he showed that the Psalms were by different authors
and of different periods--the bloom of a great poetic literature.

Until his time no one had so clearly done justice to their
sublimity and beauty; but most striking of all was his discussion
of Solomon's Song. For over twenty centuries it had been
customary to attribute to it mystical meanings. If here and
there some man saw the truth, he was careful, like Aben Ezra, to
speak with bated breath.

The penalty for any more honest interpretation was seen, among
Protestants, when Calvin and Beza persecuted Castellio, covered
him with obloquy, and finally drove him to starvation and death,
for throwing light upon the real character of the Song of Songs;
and among Catholics it was seen when Philip II allowed the pious
and gifted Luis de Leon, for a similar offence, to be thrown into
a dungeon of the Inquisition and kept there for five years, until
his health was utterly shattered and his spirit so broken that he
consented to publish a new commentary on the song, "as
theological and obscure as the most orthodox could desire."

Here, too, we have an example of the efficiency of the older
biblical theology in fettering the stronger minds and in
stupefying the weaker. Just as the book of Genesis had to wait
over two thousand years for a physician to reveal the simplest
fact regarding its structure, so the Song of Songs had to wait
even longer for a poet to reveal not only its beauty but its
character. Commentators innumerable had interpreted it; St.
Bernard had preached over eighty sermons on its first two
chapters; Palestrina had set its most erotic parts to sacred
music; Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants, from Origen
to Aben Ezra and from Luther to Bossuet, had uncovered its deep
meanings and had demonstrated it to be anything and everything
save that which it really is. Among scores of these strange
imaginations it was declared to represent the love of Jehovah for
Israel; the love of Christ for the Church; the praises of the
Blessed Virgin; the union of the soul with the body; sacred
history from the Exodus to the Messiah; Church history from the
Crucifixion to the Reformation; and some of the more acute
Protestant divines found in it references even to the religious
wars in Germany and to the Peace of Passau. In these days it
seems hard to imagine how really competent reasoners could thus
argue without laughing in each other's faces, after the manner of
Cicero's augurs. Herder showed Solomon's Song to be what the
whole thinking world now knows it to be--simply an Oriental
love-poem.

But his frankness brought him into trouble: he was bitterly
assailed. Neither his noble character nor his genius availed
him. Obliged to flee from one pastorate to another, he at last
found a happy refuge at Weimar in the society of Goethe, Wieland,
and Jean Paul, and thence he exercised a powerful influence in
removing noxious and parasitic growths from religious thought.

It would hardly be possible to imagine a man more different from
Herder than was the other of the two who most influenced biblical
interpretation at the end of the eighteenth century. This was
Alexander Geddes--a Roman Catholic priest and a Scotchman.
Having at an early period attracted much attention by his
scholarship, and having received the very rare distinction, for a
Catholic, of a doctorate from the University of Aberdeen, he
began publishing in 1792 a new translation of the Old Testament,
and followed this in 1800 with a volume of critical remarks. In
these he supported mainly three views: first, that the
Pentateuch in its present form could not have been written by
Moses; secondly, that it was the work of various hands; and,
thirdly, that it could not have been written before the time of
David. Although there was a fringe of doubtful theories about
them, these main conclusions, supported as they were by deep
research and cogent reasoning, are now recognised as of great
value. But such was not the orthodox opinion then. Though a man
of sincere piety, who throughout his entire life remained firm in
the faith of his fathers, he and his work were at once condemned:
he was suspended by the Catholic authorities as a misbeliever,
denounced by Protestants as an infidel, and taunted by both as "a
would-be corrector of the Holy Ghost."  Of course, by this taunt
was meant nothing more than that he dissented from sundry ideas
inherited from less enlightened times by the men who just then
happened to wield ecclesiastical power.

But not all the opposition to him could check the evolution of
his thought. A line of great men followed in these paths opened
by Astruc and Eichhorn, and broadened by Herder and Geddes. Of
these was De Wette, whose various works, especially his
Introduction to the Old Testament, gave a new impulse early in
the nineteenth century to fruitful thought throughout
Christendom. In these writings, while showing how largely myths
and legends had entered into the Hebrew sacred books, he threw
especial light into the books Deuteronomy and Chronicles. The
former he showed to be, in the main, a late priestly summary of
law, and the latter a very late priestly recast of early history.
He had, indeed, to pay a penalty for thus aiding the world in its
march toward more truth, for he was driven out of Germany, and
obliged to take refuge in a Swiss professorship; while Theodore
Parker, who published an English translation of his work, was,
for this and similar sins, virtually rejected by what claimed to
be the most liberal of all Christian bodies in the United States.

But contributions to the new thought continued from quarters
whence least was expected. Gesenius, by his Hebrew Grammar, and
Ewald, by his historical studies, greatly advanced it.

To them and to all like them during the middle years of the
nineteenth century was sturdily opposed the colossus of
orthodoxy--Hengstenberg. In him was combined the haughtiness of
a Prussian drill-sergeant, the zeal of a Spanish inquisitor, and
the flippant brutality of a French orthodox journalist. Behind
him stood the gifted but erratic Frederick William IV--a man
admirably fitted for a professorship of aesthetics, but whom an
inscrutable fate had made King of Prussia. Both these rulers in
the German Israel arrayed all possible opposition against the
great scholars labouring in the new paths; but this opposition
was vain: the succession of acute and honest scholars continued:
Vatke, Bleek, Reuss, Graf, Kayser, Hupfeld, Delitzsch, Kuenen,
and others wrought on in Germany and Holland, steadily developing
the new truth.

Especially to be mentioned among these is Hupfeld, who published
in 1853 his treatise on The Sources of Genesis. Accepting the
Conjectures which Astruc had published just a hundred years
before, he established what has ever since been recognised by the
leading biblical commentators as the true basis of work upon the
Pentateuch--the fact that THREE true documents are combined in
Genesis, each with its own characteristics. He, too, had to pay
a price for letting more light upon the world. A determined
attempt was made to punish him. Though deeply religious in his
nature and aspirations, he was denounced in 1865 to the Prussian
Government as guilty of irreverence; but, to the credit of his
noble and true colleagues who trod in the more orthodox
paths--men like Tholuck and Julius Muller--the theological
faculty of the University of Halle protested against this
persecuting effort, and it was brought to naught.

The demonstrations of Hupfeld gave new life to biblical
scholarship in all lands. More and more clear became the
evidence that throughout the Pentateuch, and indeed in other
parts of our sacred books, there had been a fusion of various
ideas, a confounding of various epochs, and a compilation of
various documents. Thus was opened a new field of thought and
work: in sifting out this literature; in rearranging it; and in
bringing it into proper connection with the history of the Jewish
race and of humanity.

Astruc and Hupfeld having thus found a key to the true character
of the "Mosaic" Scriptures, a second key was found which opened
the way to the secret of order in all this chaos. For many
generations one thing had especially puzzled commentators and
given rise to masses of futile "reconciliation": this was the
patent fact that such men as Samuel, David, Elijah, Isaiah, and
indeed the whole Jewish people down to the Exile, showed in all
their utterances and actions that they were utterly ignorant of
that vast system of ceremonial law which, according to the
accounts attributed to Moses and other parts of our sacred books,
was in full force during their time and during nearly a thousand
years before the Exile. It was held "always, everywhere, and by
all," that in the Old Testament the chronological order of
revelation was: first, the law; secondly, the Psalms; thirdly,
the prophets. This belief continued unchallenged during more
than two thousand years, and until after the middle of the
nineteenth century.

Yet, as far back as 1835, Vatke at Berlin had, in his Religion of
the Old Testament, expressed his conviction that this belief was
unfounded. Reasoning that Jewish thought must have been subject
to the laws of development which govern other systems, he arrived
at the conclusion that the legislation ascribed to Moses, and
especially the elaborate paraphernalia and composite ceremonies
of the ritual, could not have come into being at a period so rude
as that depicted in the "Mosaic" accounts.

Although Vatke wrapped this statement in a mist of Hegelian
metaphysics, a sufficient number of watchmen on the walls of the
Prussian Zion saw its meaning, and an alarm was given. The
chroniclers tell us that "fear of failing in the examinations,
through knowing too much, kept students away from Vatke's
lectures."  Naturally, while Hengstenberg and Frederick William
IV were commanding the forces of orthodoxy, Vatke thought it wise
to be silent.

Still, the new idea was in the air; indeed, it had been divined
about a year earlier, on the other side of the Rhine, by a
scholar well known as acute and thoughtful--Reuss, of Strasburg.
Unfortunately, he too was overawed, and he refrained from
publishing his thought during more than forty years. But his
ideas were caught by some of his most gifted scholars; and, of
these, Graf and Kayser developed them and had the courage to
publish them.

At the same period this new master key was found and applied by a
greater man than any of these--by Kuenen, of Holland; and thus
it was that three eminent scholars, working in different parts of
Europe and on different lines, in spite of all obstacles, joined
in enforcing upon the thinking world the conviction that the
complete Levitical law had been established not at the beginning,
but at the end, of the Jewish nation--mainly, indeed, after the
Jewish nation as an independent political body had ceased to
exist; that this code had not been revealed in the childhood of
Israel, but that it had come into being in a perfectly natural
way during Israel's final decay--during the period when heroes
and prophets had been succeeded by priests. Thus was the
historical and psychological evolution of Jewish institutions
brought into harmony with the natural development of human
thought; elaborate ceremonial institutions being shown to have
come after the ruder beginnings of religious development instead
of before them. Thus came a new impulse to research, and the
fruitage was abundant; the older theological interpretation,
with its insoluble puzzles, yielded on all sides.

The lead in the new epoch thus opened was taken by Kuenen.
Starting with strong prepossessions in favour of the older
thought, and even with violent utterances against some of the
supporters of the new view, he was borne on by his love of truth,
until his great work, The Religion of Israel, published in 1869,
attracted the attention of thinking scholars throughout the world
by its arguments in favour of the upward movement. From him now
came a third master key to the mystery; for he showed that the
true opening point for research into the history and literature
of Israel is to be found in the utterances of the great prophets
of the eighth century before our era. Starting from these, he
opened new paths into the periods preceding and following them.
Recognising the fact that the religion of Israel was, like other
great world religions, a development of higher ideas out of
lower, he led men to bring deeper thinking and wider research
into the great problem. With ample learning and irresistible
logic he proved that Old Testament history is largely mingled
with myth and legend; that not only were the laws attributed to
Moses in the main a far later development, but that much of their
historical setting was an afterthought; also that Old Testament
prophecy was never supernaturally predictive, and least of all
predictive of events recorded in the New Testament. Thus it was
that his genius gave to the thinking world a new point of view,
and a masterly exhibition of the true method of study. Justly
has one of the most eminent divines of the contemporary Anglican
Church indorsed the statement of another eminent scholar, that
"Kuenen stood upon his watch-tower, as it were the conscience of
Old Testament science"; that his work is characterized "not
merely by fine scholarship, critical insight, historical sense,
and a religious nature, but also by an incorruptible
conscientiousness, and a majestic devotion to the quest of
truth."

Thus was established the science of biblical criticism. And now
the question was, whether the Church of northern Germany would
accept this great gift--the fruit of centuries of devoted toil
and self-sacrifice--and take the lead of Christendom in and by
it.

The great curse of Theology and Ecclesiasticism has always been
their tendency to sacrifice large interests to small--Charity to
Creed, Unity to Uniformity, Fact to Tradition, Ethics to Dogma.
And now there were symptoms throughout the governing bodies of
the Reformed churches indicating a determination to sacrifice
leadership in this new thought to ease in orthodoxy. Every
revelation of new knowledge encountered outcry, opposition, and
repression; and, what was worse, the ill-judged declarations of
some unwise workers in the critical field were seized upon and
used to discredit all fruitful research. Fortunately, a man now
appeared who both met all this opposition successfully, and put
aside all the half truths or specious untruths urged by minor
critics whose zeal outran their discretion. This was a great
constructive scholar--not a destroyer, but a builder--Wellhausen.
Reverently, but honestly and courageously, with clearness,
fulness, and convicting force, he summed up the conquests of
scientific criticism as bearing on Hebrew history and literature.
These conquests had reduced the vast structures which theologians
had during ages been erecting over the sacred text to shapeless
ruin and rubbish: this rubbish he removed, and brought out from
beneath it the reality. He showed Jewish history as an
evolution obedient to laws at work in all ages, and Jewish
literature as a growth out of individual, tribal, and national
life. Thus was our sacred history and literature given a beauty
and high use which had long been foreign to them. Thereby was a
vast service rendered immediately to Germany, and eventually to
all mankind; and this service was greatest of all in the domain
of religion.[476]

[476] For Lowth, see the Rev. T. K. Cheyne, D. D., Professor of
the Interpretation of the Holy Scripture in the University of
Oxford, Founders of the Old Testament Criticism, London, 1893,
pp. 3, 4. For Astruc's very high character as a medical
authority, see the Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales, Paris,
1820; it is significant that at first he concealed his authorship
of the Conjectures. For a brief statement, see Cheyne; also
Moore's introduction to Bacon's Genesis of Genesis; but for a
statement remarkably full and interesting, and based on knowlegde
at first hand of Astruc's very rare book, see Curtiss, as above.
For Michaelis and Eichorn, see Meyer, Geschichte der Exegese;
also Cheyne and Moore. For Isenbiehl, see Reusch, in Allg.
deutsche Biographie. The texts cited against him were Isaiah vii,
14, and Matt. i, 22, 23. For Herder, see various historians of
literature and writers in exegesis, and especially Pfleiderer,
Development of Theology in Germany, chap. ii. For his influence,
as well as that of Lessing, see Beard's Hibbert Lectures, chap.
x. For a brief comparison of Lowth's work with that of Herder,
see Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 377. For examples of
interpretations of the Song of Songs, see Farrar, as above, p.
33. For Castellio (Chatillon), his anticipation of Herder's view
of Solomon's Song, and his persecution by Calvin and Beza, which
drove him to starvation and death, see Lecky, Rationalism, etc.,
vol. ii, pp. 46-48; also Bayle's Dictionary, article Castalio;
also Montaigne's Essais, liv,. i, chap. xxxiv; and especially the
new life of him by Buisson. For the persecution of Luis de Leon
for a similar offence, see Ticknor, History of Spanish
Literature, vol. ii, pp. 41, 42, and note. For a remarkably
frank acceptance of the consequences flowing from Herder's view
of it, see Sanday, Inspiration, pp. 211, 405. For Geddes, see
Cheyne, as above. For Theodore Parker, see his various
biographies, passim. For Reuss, Graf, and Kuenen, see Cheyne, as
above; and for the citations referred to, see the Rev. Dr.
Driver, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, in The Academy,
October 27, 1894; also a note to Wellhausen's article Pentateuch
in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For a generous yet weighty
tribute to Kuenen's method, see Pfleiderer, as above, book iii,
chap. ii. For the view of leading Christian critics on the book
of Chronicles, see especially Driver, Introduction to the
Literature of the Old Testament, pp. 495 et seq.; also
Wellhausen, as above; also Hooykaas, Oort, and Kuenen, Bible for
Learners. For many of the foregoing, see also the writings of
Prof. W. Robertson Smith; also Beard's Hibbert Lectures, chap. x.
For Hupfield and his discovery, see Cheyne, Founders, etc., as
above, chap. vii; also Moore's Introduction. For a justly
indignant judgment of Hengstenberg and his school, see Canon
Farrar, as above, p. 417, note; and for a few words throwing a
bright light into his character and career, see C. A. Briggs, D.
D., Authority of Holy Scripture, p. 93. For Wellhausen, see
Pfleiderer, as above, book iii, chap. ii. For an excellent
popular statement of the general results of German criticism, see
J. T. Sunderland, The Bible, Its Origin, Growth, and Character,
New York and London, 1893.

III. THE CONTINUED GROWTH OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.

The science of biblical criticism was, as we have seen, first
developed mainly in Germany and Holland. Many considerations
there, as elsewhere, combined to deter men from opening new paths
to truth: not even in those countries were these the paths to
preferment; but there, at least, the sturdy Teutonic love of
truth for truth's sake, strengthened by the Kantian ethics, found
no such obstacles as in other parts of Europe. Fair
investigation of biblical subjects had not there been extirpated,
as in Italy and Spain; nor had it been forced into channels which
led nowhither, as in France and southern Germany; nor were men
who might otherwise have pursued it dazzled and drawn away from
it by the multitude of splendid prizes for plausibility, for
sophistry, or for silence displayed before the ecclesiastical
vision in England. In the frugal homes of North German and Dutch
professors and pastors high thinking on these great subjects went
steadily on, and the "liberty of teaching," which is the glory of
the northern Continental universities, while it did not secure
honest thinkers against vexations, did at least protect them
against the persecutions which in other countries would have
thwarted their studies and starved their families.[477]

[477] As to the influence of Kant on honest thought in
Germany, see Pfleiderer, as above, chap. i.

In England the admission of the new current of thought was
apparently impossible. The traditional system of biblical
interpretation seemed established on British soil forever. It
was knit into the whole fabric of thought and observance; it was
protected by the most justly esteemed hierarchy the world has
ever seen; it was intrenched behind the bishops' palaces, the
cathedral stalls, the professors' chairs, the country
parsonages--all these, as a rule, the seats of high endeavour and
beautiful culture. The older thought held a controlling voice in
the senate of the nation; it was dear to the hearts of all
classes; it was superbly endowed; every strong thinker seemed to
hold a brief, or to be in receipt of a retaining fee for it. As
to preferment in the Church, there was a cynical aphorism
current, "He may hold anything who will hold his tongue."[478]

[478] For an eloquent and at the same time profound statement
of the evils flowing from the "moral terrorism" and "intellectual
tyrrany" at Oxford at the period referred to, see quotation in
Pfleiderer, Development of Theology, p. 371.

For the alloy of interested motives among English Church
dignitiaries, see the pungent criticism of Bishop Hampden by
Canon Liddon, in his Life of Pusey, vol. i, p. 363.

Yet, while there was inevitably much alloy of worldly wisdom in
the opposition to the new thought, no just thinker can deny far
higher motives to many, perhaps to most, of the ecclesiastics who
were resolute against it. The evangelical movement incarnate in
the Wesleys had not spent its strength; the movement begun by
Pusey, Newman, Keble, and their compeers was in full force. The
aesthetic reaction, represented on the Continent by
Chateaubriand, Manzoni, and Victor Hugo, and in England by Walter
Scott, Pugin, Ruskin, and above all by Wordsworth, came in to
give strength to this barrier.  Under the magic of the men who
led in this reaction, cathedrals and churches, which in the
previous century had been regarded by men of culture as mere
barbaric masses of stone and mortar, to be masked without by
classic colonnades and within by rococo work in stucco and papier
mache, became even more beloved than in the thirteenth century.
Even men who were repelled by theological disputations were
fascinated and made devoted reactionists by the newly revealed
beauties of medieval architecture and ritual.[479]

[479] A very curious example of this insensibility among
persons of really high culture is to be found in American
literature toward the end of the eighteenth century. Mrs. Adams,
wife of John Adams, afterward President of the United States, but
at that time minister to England, one of the most gifted women of
her time, speaking, in her very interesting letters from England,
of her journey to the seashore, refers to Canterbury Cathedral,
seen from her carriage windows, and which she evidently did not
take the trouble to enter, as "looking like a vast prison."  So,
too, about the same time, Thomas Jefferson, the American
plenipotentiary in France, a devoted lover of classical and
Renaissance architecture, giving an account of his journey to
Paris, never refers to any of the beautiful cathedrals or
churches upon his route.

The centre and fortress of this vast system, and of the reaction
against the philosophy of the eighteenth century, was the
University of Oxford. Orthodoxy was its vaunt, and a special
exponent of its spirit and object of its admiration was its
member of Parliament, Mr. William Ewart Gladstone, who, having
begun his political career by a laboured plea for the union of
church and state, ended it by giving that union what is likely to
be a death-blow. The mob at the circus of Constantinople in the
days of the Byzantine emperors was hardly more wildly orthodox
than the mob of students at this foremost seat of learning of the
Anglo-Saxon race during the middle decades of the nineteenth
century. The Moslem students of El Azhar are hardly more
intolerant now than these English students were then. A curious
proof of this had been displayed just before the end of that
period. The minister of the United States at the court of St.
James was then Edward Everett. He was undoubtedly the most
accomplished scholar and one of the foremost statesmen that
America had produced; his eloquence in early life had made him
perhaps the most admired of American preachers; his classical
learning had at a later period made him Professor of Greek at
Harvard; he had successfully edited the leading American review,
and had taken a high place in American literature; he had been
ten years a member of Congress; he had been again and again
elected Governor of Massachusetts; and in all these posts he had
shown amply those qualities which afterward made him President of
Harvard, Secretary of State of the United States, and a United
States Senator. His character and attainments were of the
highest, and, as he was then occupying the foremost place in the
diplomatic service of his country, he was invited to receive an
appropriate honorary degree at Oxford. But, on his presentation
for it in the Sheldonian Theatre, there came a revelation to the
people he represented, and indeed to all Christendom: a riot
having been carefully prepared beforehand by sundry zealots, he
was most grossly and ingeniously insulted by the mob of
undergraduates and bachelors of art in the galleries and masters
of arts on the floor; and the reason for this was that, though by
no means radical in his religious opinions, he was thought to
have been in his early life, and to be possibly at that time,
below what was then the Oxford fashion in belief, or rather
feeling, regarding the mystery of the Trinity.

At the centre of biblical teaching at Oxford sat Pusey, Regius
Professor of Hebrew, a scholar who had himself remained for a
time at a German university, and who early in life had imbibed
just enough of the German spirit to expose him to suspicion and
even to attack. One charge against him at that time shows
curiously what was then expected of a man perfectly sound in the
older Anglican theology. He had ventured to defend holy writ
with the argument that there were fishes actually existing which
could have swallowed the prophet Jonah. The argument proved
unfortunate. He was attacked on the scriptural ground that the
fish which swallowed Jonah was created for that express purpose.
He, like others, fell back under the charm of the old system: his
ideas gave force to the reaction: in the quiet of his study,
which, especially after the death of his son, became a hermitage,
he relapsed into patristic and medieval conceptions of
Christianity, enforcing them from the pulpit and in his published
works. He now virtually accepted the famous dictum of Hugo of
St. Victor--that one is first to find what is to be believed, and
then to search the Scriptures for proofs of it. His devotion to
the main features of the older interpretation was seen at its
strongest in his utterances regarding the book of Daniel.  Just
as Cardinal Bellarmine had insisted that the doctrine of the
incarnation depends upon the retention of the Ptolemaic
astronomy; just as Danzius had insisted that the very continuance
of religion depends on the divine origin of the Hebrew
punctuation; just as Peter Martyr had made everything sacred
depend on the literal acceptance of Genesis; just as Bishop
Warburton had insisted that Christianity absolutely depends upon
a right interpretation of the prophecies regarding Antichrist;
just as John Wesley had insisted that the truth of the Bible
depends on the reality of witchcraft; just as, at a later period,
Bishop Wilberforce insisted that the doctrine of the Incarnation
depends on the "Mosaic" statements regarding the origin of man;
and just as Canon Liddon insisted that Christianity itself
depends on a literal belief in Noah's flood, in the
transformation of Lot's wife, and in the sojourn of Jonah in the
whale: so did Pusey then virtually insist that Christianity must
stand or fall with the early date of the book of Daniel.
Happily, though the Ptolemaic astronomy, and witchcraft, and the
Genesis creation myths, and the Adam, Noah, Lot, and Jonah
legends, and the divine origin of the Hebrew punctuation, and the
prophecies regarding Antichrist, and the early date of the book
of Daniel have now been relegated to the limbo of ontworn
beliefs, Christianity has but come forth the stronger.

Nothing seemed less likely than that such a vast intrenched camp
as that of which Oxford was the centre could be carried by an
effort proceeding from a few isolated German and Dutch scholars.
Yet it was the unexpected which occurred; and it is instructive
to note that, even at the period when the champions of the older
thought were to all appearance impregnably intrenched in England,
a way had been opened into their citadel, and that the most
effective agents in preparing it were really the very men in the
universities and cathedral chapters who had most distinguished
themselves by uncompromising and intolerant orthodoxy.

A rapid survey of the history of general literary criticism at
that epoch will reveal this fact fully. During the last decade
of the seventeenth century there had taken place the famous
controversy over the Letters of Phalaris, in which, against
Charles Boyle and his supporters at Oxford, was pitted Richard
Bentley at Cambridge, who insisted that the letters were
spurious. In the series of battles royal which followed,
although Boyle, aided by Atterbury, afterward so noted for his
mingled ecclesiastical and political intrigues, had gained a
temporary triumph by wit and humour, Bentley's final attack had
proved irresistible. Drawing from the stores of his wonderfully
wide and minute knowledge, he showed that the letters could not
have been written in the time of Phalaris--proving this by an
exhibition of their style, which could not then have been in use,
of their reference to events which had not then taken place, and
of a mass of considerations which no one but a scholar almost
miraculously gifted could have marshalled so fully. The
controversy had attracted attention not only in England but
throughout Europe. With Bentley's reply it had ended. In spite
of public applause at Atterbury's wit, scholars throughout the
world acknowledged Bentley's victory: he was recognised as the
foremost classical scholar of his time; the mastership of
Trinity, which he accepted, and the Bristol bishopric, which he
rejected, were his formal reward.

Although, in his new position as head of the greatest college in
England, he went to extreme lengths on the orthodox side in
biblical theology, consenting even to support the doctrine that
the Hebrew punctuation was divinely inspired, this was as nothing
compared with the influence of the system of criticism which he
introduced into English studies of classical literature in
preparing the way for the application of a similar system to ALL
literature, whether called sacred or profane.

Up to that period there had really been no adequate criticism of
ancient literature. Whatever name had been attached to any
ancient writing was usually accepted as the name of the author:
what texts should be imputed to an author was settled generally
on authority.  But with Bentley began a new epoch. His acute
intellect and exquisite touch revealed clearly to English
scholars the new science of criticism, and familiarized the minds
of thinking men with the idea that the texts of ancient
literature must be submitted to this science. Henceforward a new
spirit reigned among the best classical scholars, prophetic of
more and more light in the greater field of sacred literature.
Scholars, of whom Porson was chief, followed out this method, and
though at times, as in Porson's own case, they were warned off,
with much loss and damage, from the application of it to the
sacred text, they kept alive the better tradition.

A hundred years after Bentley's main efforts appeared in Germany
another epoch-making book--Wolf's Introduction to Homer. In this
was broached the theory that the Iliad and Odyssey are not the
works of a single great poet, but are made up of ballad
literature wrought into unity by more or less skilful editing.
In spite of various changes and phases of opinion on this subject
since Wolf's day, he dealt a killing blow at the idea that
classical works are necessarily to be taken at what may be termed
their face value.

More and more clearly it was seen that the ideas of early
copyists, and even of early possessors of masterpieces in ancient
literature, were entirely different from those to which the
modern world is accustomed. It was seen that manipulations and
interpolations in the text by copyists and possessors had long
been considered not merely venial sins, but matters of right, and
that even the issuing of whole books under assumed names had been
practised freely.

In 1811 a light akin to that thrown by Bentley and Wolf upon
ancient literature was thrown by Niebuhr upon ancient history.
In his History of Rome the application of scientific principles
to the examination of historical sources was for the first time
exhibited largely and brilliantly. Up to that period the
time-honoured utterances of ancient authorities had been, as a
rule, accepted as final: no breaking away, even from the most
absurd of them, was looked upon with favour, and any one
presuming to go behind them was regarded as troublesome and even
as dangerous.

Through this sacred conventionalism Niebuhr broke fearlessly,
and, though at times overcritical, he struck from the early
history of Rome a vast mass of accretions, and gave to the world
a residue infinitely more valuable than the original amalgam of
myth, legend, and chronicle.

His methods were especially brought to bear on students' history
by one of the truest men and noblest scholars that the English
race has produced--Arnold of Rugby--and, in spite of the
inevitable heavy conservatism, were allowed to do their work in
the field of ancient history as well as in that of ancient
classical literature.

The place of myth in history thus became more and more
understood, and historical foundations, at least so far as
SECULAR history was concerned, were henceforth dealt with in a
scientific spirit. The extension of this new treatment to ALL
ancient literature and history was now simply a matter of time.

Such an extension had already begun; for in 1829 had appeared
Milman's History of the Jews. In this work came a further
evolution of the truths and methods suggested by Bentley, Wolf,
and Niebuhr, and their application to sacred history was made
strikingly evident. Milman, though a clergyman, treated the
history of the chosen people in the light of modern knowledge of
Oriental and especially of Semitic peoples. He exhibited sundry
great biblical personages of the wandering days of Israel as
sheiks or emirs or Bedouin chieftains; and the tribes of Israel
as obedient then to the same general laws, customs, and ideas
governing wandering tribes in the same region now. He dealt with
conflicting sources somewhat in the spirit of Bentley, and with
the mythical, legendary, and miraculous somewhat in the spirit of
Niebuhr. This treatment of the history of the Jews, simply as
the development of an Oriental tribe, raised great opposition.
Such champions of orthodoxy as Bishop Mant and Dr. Faussett
straightway took the field, and with such effect that the Family
Library, a very valuable series in which Milman's history
appeared, was put under the ban, and its further publication
stopped. For years Milman, though a man of exquisite literary
and lofty historical gifts, as well as of most honourable
character, was debarred from preferment and outstripped by
ecclesiastics vastly inferior to him in everything save worldly
wisdom; for years he was passed in the race for honours by
divines who were content either to hold briefs for all the
contemporary unreason which happened to be popular, or to keep
their mouths shut altogether. This opposition to him extended to
his works. For many years they were sneered at, decried, and
kept from the public as far as possible.

Fortunately, the progress of events lifted him, before the
closing years of his life, above all this opposition. As Dean of
St. Paul's he really outranked the contemporary archbishops: he
lived to see his main ideas accepted, and his History of Latin
Christianity received as certainly one of the most valuable, and
no less certainly the most attractive, of all Church histories
ever written.

The two great English histories of Greece--that by Thirlwall,
which was finished, and that by Grote, which was begun, in the
middle years of the nineteenth century--came in to strengthen
this new development. By application of the critical method to
historical sources, by pointing out more and more fully the
inevitable part played by myth and legend in early chronicles, by
displaying more and more clearly the ease with which
interpolations of texts, falsifications of statements, and
attributions to pretended authors were made, they paved the way
still further toward a just and fruitful study of sacred
literature.[480]

[480] For Mr. Gladstone's earlier opinion, see his Church and
State, and Macaulay's review of it. For Pusey, see Mozley, Ward,
Newman's Apologia, Dean Church, etc., and especially his Life, by
Liddon. Very characteristic touches are given in vol. i, showing
the origin of many of his opinions (see letter on p. 184). For
the scandalous treatment of Mr. Everett by the clerical mob at
Oxford, see a rather jaunty account of the preparations and of
the whole performance in a letter written at the time from Oxford
by the late Dean Church, in The Life and Letters of Dean Church,
London, 1894, pp. 40, 41. For a brief but excellent summary of
the character and services of Everett, see J. F. Rhodes's History
of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, New York, 1893,
vol. i, pp. 291 et seq. For a succinct and brilliant history of
the Bentley-Boyle controversy, see Macauley's article on Bentley
in the Encyclopaedia Britannica; also Beard's Hibbert Lectures
for 1893, pp. 344, 345; also Dissertation in Bentley's work,
edited by Dyce, London, 1836, vol. i, especially the preface.
For Wolf, see his Prolegomena ad Homerum, Halle, 1795; for its
effects, see the admirable brief statement in Beard, as above, p.
345. For Niebuhr, see his Roman History, translated by Hare and
Thirlwall, London, 1828; also Beard, as above. For Milman's view,
see, as a specimen, his History of the Jews, last edition,
especially pp. 15-27. For a noble tribute to his character, see
the preface to Lecky's History of European Morals. For
Thirlwall, see his History of Greece, passim; also his letters;
also his Charge of the Bishop of St. David's, 1863.

Down to the middle of the nineteenth century the traditionally
orthodox side of English scholarship, while it had not been able
to maintain any effective quarantine against Continental
criticism of classical literature, had been able to keep up
barriers fairly strong against Continental discussions of sacred
literature. But in the second half of the nineteenth century
these barriers were broken at many points, and, the stream of
German thought being united with the current of devotion to truth
in England, there appeared early in 1860 a modest volume entitled
Essays and Reviews.  This work discussed sundry of the older
theological positions which had been rendered untenable by modern
research, and brought to bear upon them the views of the newer
school of biblical interpretation.  The authors were, as a rule,
scholars in the prime of life, holding influential positions in
the universities and public schools. They were seven--the first
being Dr. Temple, a successor of Arnold at Rugby; and the others,
the Rev. Dr. Rowland Williams, Prof. Baden Powell, the Rev. H.
B. Wilson, Mr. C. W. Goodwin, the Rev. Mark Pattison, and the
Rev. Prof. Jowett--the only one of the seven not in holy orders
being Goodwin. All the articles were important, though the
first, by Temple, on The Education of the World, and the last, by
Jowett, on The Interpretation of Scripture, being the most
moderate, served most effectually as entering wedges into the old
tradition.

At first no great attention was paid to the book, the only notice
being the usual attempts in sundry clerical newspapers to
pooh-pooh it. But in October, 1860, appeared in the Westminster
Review an article exulting in the work as an evidence that the
new critical method had at last penetrated the Church of England.

The opportunity for defending the Church was at once seized by no
less a personage than Bishop Wilberforce, of Oxford, the same who
a few months before had secured a fame more lasting than enviable
by his attacks on Darwin and the evolutionary theory. His first
onslaught was made in a charge to his clergy. This he followed
up with an article in the Quarterly Review, very explosive in its
rhetoric, much like that which he had devoted in the same
periodical to Darwin. The bishop declared that the work tended
"toward infidelity, if not to atheism"; that the writers had been
"guilty of criminal levity"; that, with the exception of the
essay by Dr. Temple, their writings were "full of sophistries and
scepticisms." He was especially bitter against Prof. Jowett's
dictum, "Interpret the Scripture like any other book"; he
insisted that Mr. Goodwin's treatment of the Mosaic account of
the origin of man "sweeps away the whole basis of inspiration and
leaves no place for the Incarnation"; and through the article
were scattered such rhetorical adornments as the words "infidel,"
"atheistic," "false," and "wanton." It at once attracted wide
attention, but its most immediate effect was to make the fortune
of Essays and Reviews, which was straightway demanded on every
hand, went through edition after edition, and became a power in
the land. At this a panic began, and with the usual results of
panic--much folly and some cruelty. Addresses from clergy and
laity, many of them frantic with rage and fear, poured in upon
the bishops, begging them to save Christianity and the Church: a
storm of abuse arose: the seven essayists were stigmatized as
"the seven extinguishers of the seven lamps of the Apocalypse,"
"the seven champions NOT of Christendom." As a result of all this
pressure, Sumner, Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the last of
the old, kindly, bewigged pluralists of the Georgian period,
headed a declaration, which was signed by the Archbishop of York
and a long list of bishops, expressing pain at the appearance of
the book, but doubts as to the possibility of any effective
dealing with it. This letter only made matters worse. The
orthodox decried it as timid, and the liberals denounced it as
irregular. The same influences were exerted in the sister
island, and the Protestant archbishops in Ireland issued a joint
letter warning the faithful against the "disingenuousness" of the
book. Everything seemed to increase the ferment. A meeting of
clergy and laity having been held at Oxford in the matter of
electing a Professor of Sanscrit, the older orthodox party,
having made every effort to defeat the eminent scholar Max
Miller, and all in vain, found relief after their defeat in new
denunciations of Essays and Reviews.

Of the two prelates who might have been expected to breast the
storm, Tait, Bishop of London, afterward Archbishop of
Canterbury, bent to it for a period, though he soon recovered
himself and did good service; the other, Thirlwall, Bishop of St.
David's, bided his time, and, when the proper moment came, struck
most effective blows for truth and justice.

Tait, large-minded and shrewd, one of the most statesmanlike of
prelates, at first endeavoured to detach Temple and Jowett from
their associates; but, though Temple was broken down with a load
of care, and especially by the fact that he had upon his
shoulders the school at Rugby, whose patrons had become alarmed
at his connection with the book, he showed a most refreshing
courage and manliness. A passage from his letters to the Bishop
of London runs as follows: "With regard to my own conduct I can
only say that nothing on earth will induce me to do what you
propose. I do not judge for others, but in me it would be base
and untrue."  On another occasion Dr. Temple, when pressed in the
interest of the institution of learning under his care to detach
himself from his associates in writing the book, declared to a
meeting of the masters of the school that, if any statements were
made to the effect that he disapproved of the other writers in
the volume, he should probably find it his duty to contradict
them. Another of these letters to the Bishop of London contains
sundry passages of great force. One is as follows: "Many years
ago you urged us from the university pulpit to undertake the
critical study of the Bible. You said that it was a dangerous
study, but indispensable. You described its difficulties, and
those who listened must have felt a confidence (as I assuredly
did, for I was there) that if they took your advice and entered
on the task, you, at any rate, would never join in treating them
unjustly if their study had brought with it the difficulties you
described. Such a study, so full of difficulties, imperatively
demands freedom for its condition. To tell a man to study, and
yet bid him, under heavy penalties, come to the same conclusions
with those who have not studied, is to mock him. If the
conclusions are prescribed, the study is precluded." And again,
what, as coming from a man who has since held two of the most
important bishoprics in the English Church, is of great
importance: "What can be a grosser superstition than the theory
of literal inspiration? But because that has a regular footing it
is to be treated as a good man's mistake, while the courage to
speak the truth about the first chapter of Genesis is a wanton
piece of wickedness."

The storm howled on. In the Convocation of Canterbury it was
especially violent. In the Lower House Archdeacon Denison
insisted on the greatest severity, as he said, "for the sake of
the young who are tainted, and corrupted, and thrust almost to
hell by the action of this book."  At another time the same
eminent churchman declared: "Of all books in any language which I
ever laid my hands on, this is incomparably the worst; it
contains all the poison which is to be found in Tom Paine's Age
of Reason, while it has the additional disadvantage of having
been written by clergymen."

Hysterical as all this was, the Upper House was little more
self-contained. Both Tait and Thirlwall, trying to make some
headway against the swelling tide, were for a time beaten back by
Wilberforce, who insisted on the duty of the Church to clear
itself publicly from complicity with men who, as he said, "gave
up God's Word, Creation, redemption, and the work of the Holy
Ghost."

The matter was brought to a curious issue by two
prosecutions--one against the Rev. Dr. Williams by the Bishop of
Salisbury, the other against the Rev. Mr. Wilson by one of his
clerical brethren. The first result was that both these authors
were sentenced to suspension from their offices for a year. At
this the two condemned clergymen appealed to the Queen in
Council. Upon the judicial committee to try the case in last
resort sat the lord chancellor, the two archbishops, and the
Bishop of London; and one occurrence now brought into especial
relief the power of the older theological reasoning and
ecclesiastical zeal to close the minds of the best of men to the
simplest principles of right and justice. Among the men of his
time most deservedly honoured for lofty character, thorough
scholarship, and keen perception of right and justice was Dr.
Pusey. No one doubted then, and no one doubts now, that he would
have gone to the stake sooner than knowingly countenance wrong or
injustice; and yet we find him at this time writing a series of
long and earnest letters to the Bishop of London, who, as a
judge, was hearing this case, which involved the livelihood and
even the good name of the men on trial, pointing out to the
bishop the evil consequences which must follow should the authors
of Essays and Reviews be acquitted, and virtually beseeching the
judges, on grounds of expediency, to convict them. Happily,
Bishop Tait was too just a man to be thrown off his bearings by
appeals such as this.

The decision of the court, as finally rendered by the lord
chancellor, virtually declared it to be no part of the duty of
the tribunal to pronounce any opinion upon the book; that the
court only had to do with certain extracts which had been
presented. Among these was one adduced in support of a charge
against Mr. Wilson--that he denied the doctrine of eternal
punishment. On this the court decided that it did "not find in
the formularies of the English Church any such distinct
declaration upon the subject as to require it to punish the
expression of a hope by a clergyman that even the ultimate pardon
of the wicked who are condemned in the day of judgment may be
consistent with the will of Almighty God."  While the archbishops
dissented from this judgment, Bishop Tait united in it with the
lord chancellor and the lay judges.

And now the panic broke out more severely than ever. Confusion
became worse confounded. The earnest-minded insisted that the
tribunal had virtually approved Essays and Reviews; the cynical
remarked that it had "dismissed hell with costs." An alliance was
made at once between the more zealous High and Low Church men,
and Oxford became its headquarters: Dr. Pusey and Archdeacon
Denison were among the leaders, and an impassioned declaration
was posted to every clergyman in England and Ireland, with a
letter begging him, "for the love of God," to sign it. Thus it
was that in a very short time eleven thousand signatures were
obtained. Besides this, deputations claiming to represent one
hundred and thirty-seven thousand laymen waited on the
archbishops to thank them for dissenting from the judgment. The
Convocation of Canterbury also plunged into the fray, Bishop
Wilberforce being the champion of the older orthodoxy, and Bishop
Tait of the new. Caustic was the speech made by Bishop
Thirlwall, in which he declared that he considered the eleven
thousand names, headed by that of Pusey, attached to the Oxford
declaration "in the light of a row of figures preceded by a
decimal point, so that, however far the series may be advanced,
it never can rise to the value of a single unit."