to suppose, that bitumen abounded in Goshen, a region famed for the richness of its pastures. Hence it may be fairly concluded, that the vale of Siddim before its destruction, in respect of natural fertility, resembled the plain of Shinar, and the land of Egypt along the Nile. But it is well known, that wherever brimstone and saline matter abound, there sterility and desolation reign. Is it not then reasonable to infer, that the sulphureous and saline matters, discovered in the waters and on the shores of the Asphaltites, are the relics of the divine vengeance executed on the cities of the plain, and not original ingredients in the soil?

If we listen to the testimony of the sacred writers, what was reasonable hypothesis rises into absolute certainty. Moses expressly ascribes the brimstone, the salt, and the burning, in the overthrow of Sodom, to the immediate vengeance of heaven :- When they see the plagues of that land, that the whole land is brimstone, and salt, and burning; that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth thereon (like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath); even all nations will say, Wherefore has the Lord done thus unto this land? What meaneth

the heat of this great anger.'* In this passage, the brimstone, salt, and burning, are mentioned as true and proper effects of the divine wrath; and since this fearful destruction is compared to the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, the brimstone and salt into which the vale of Siddim was turned, must also be the true and proper effects of divine anger. This indeed, Moses asserts in the plainest terms :-Then the Lord rained upon Sodom, and upon Gomorrah, brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.' But since the brimstone and the fire were rained from hea † Gen. xix. 24,

* Deut. xxix. 22-24,

ven, so must the salt, with which they are connected in the former quotation: and this is the opinion received by the Jewish doctors. The frightful sterility which followed the brimstone, salt, and burning, in the first quotation, is, in the same manner, represented as an effect of the divine judgment upon the vale of Siddim: It is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth thereon.'

The barrenness and desolation that result from the action of brimstone and salt, are introduced by the prophet in these words :-' Thus saith the Lord, Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land, and not inhabited." ** In this passage, the salt is assigned as the cause that the parched places in the wilderness remain in a state of perpetual sterility. In the judgments which the prophet Zephaniah was directed to predict against the kingdom of Moab, he alludes expressly to the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah, and intimates, that one part of that punishment consisted in the vale being turned into salt: As I live, saith the Lord, Surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, even the breeding of nettles and salt pits, and a perpetual desolation.' The qualities of the lake which now covers the once fertile and delightful vale of Siddim, and the desolate appearance of the surrounding country, as has been already shown, perfectly correspond with the words of the inspired writers, and the conclusions of

reason.

6

Some writers suppose the Dead Sea to be the crater of a volcano. But this opinion is entirely without foundation; for all extinguished volcanoes exhibit the same characters, that is to say, mountains excavated † Zeph. ii. 9.

* Jer. xvii. 5, 6.

in the form of a tunnel, lava and ashes, which exhibit incontestible proofs of the agency of fire. The Dead Sea, on the contrary, is a lake of great length, curved like a bow, placed between two ranges of mountains, which have no natural coherence in form, no homogeneousness of soil. They do not meet at the two extremities of the lake; but continue, the one to bound the valley of Jordan, and to run northward as far as the lake of Tiberias; the other to stretch away to the south, till they are lost in the sands of Yemen. Bitumen, warm springs, and phosphoric stones are found, it is true, in the mountains of Arabia: Chateaubriand, however, met with none of these in the opposite chain; nor is the presence of hot springs, sulphur, and asphaltos, sufficient to attest the anterior existence of a volcano,

[The hypothesis that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was occasioned by the eruption of a neighbouring volcano, seems to rest, as its original foundation, on a passage of the geographer Strabo, to the effect, that, according to a tradition of the inhabitants of the country, the plain of Siddim, with thirteen cities, was overwhelmed by a torrent of liquid fire, which that writer adds (probably as his own opinion) issued from a burning mountain. It is enough to excite a suspicion, at first sight, against any theory on this subject, that it was broached by a heathen, and zealously espoused by a modern infidel; and yet, as it has been partially adopted by several writers in recent times, whose scientific attainments, and undoubted faith in revelation, entitle them to respectful attention, it is necessary to bestow a sentence or two on this hypothesis, the more especially as our author's remarks in the preceding paragraphs are not very correct. In support of the opinion, it is said, that the whole valley of the Jordan lies on a bed that has evidently been subjected to volcanic action; that the mountains which encompass it on both sides, instead of having any natural coherence of form, or homogeneousness of soil,' are

throughout limestone rocks; that the fossil salt and bitumen, so plentifully found around the Dead Sea, are the product of volcanic action; that although Chateaubriand found no bitumen or phosphoric stones and hot springs on the western side of the Jordan, others have, who describe the crater of an extinct volcano, not far from Capernaum, as well as other traces of the agency of fire; that the smoke which is frequently seen issuing from the sea, shows that the subterraneous fire is still at work; that as the matter of the volcano, which is so destructive, is often projected to a great height, it might be said to be 'rained from heaven;' that on this supposition, the fate of Lot's wife, who was enveloped in a stream of lava, is naturally accounted for, as well as the conduct of that patriarch himself, who, after staying a night in Zoar, retired to a more elevated position in the adjoining mountains, to be beyond the reach of the fiery torrent which threatened still to advance. In answer to these arguments, it is maintained, that such an hypothesis plainly unsettles the foundations of our faith, inasmuch as it implies that either Moses did not know the nature of the facts he was narrating, or deceived the people, by ascribing to the direct agency of God, what he knew to have been a natural phenomenon; that there is no smoke issuing from the lake, different from the vapour that would ascend from all lakes in the same circumstances; that on the supposition of the catastrophe having been occasioned by the eruption of a volcano, the only miraculous thing about the occurrence is, the fore-knowledge of it, which must rest on the testimony of Abraham and Lot; and as this was not believed, it is impossible to see how the doom of these guilty cities could either alarm the fears of that profane age, or be an ensample to those who should after live ungodly;' that it is incredible how Lot could tell the people of Zoar, that it was an infliction from heaven, from which they had been saved by his intercession, if the inhabitants of that

town saw in it nothing but a natural phenomenon, produced by physical causes; and, finally, that it is expressly said by Christ himself, in a passage, the simple and conversational style of which manifestly excludes the idea of poetical exaggeration or embellishment, 'the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and consumed them

all.'

[There is much more probability in the other hypothesis, which has been hinted at in a former page, viz. that as bitumen abounded so plentifully in the plain of Siddim, and the houses in the doomed cities were probably built with that substance, those eminently inflammable materials were struck with lightning, directed by the hand of a justly offended God; and although a physical agent is thus introduced as the proximate cause of the catastrophe, there is nothing involved in such a supposition at variance with the spirit and style of the Scriptures, which frequently represent God as employing famine, pestilence, and earthquakes, as his instruments in punishing the guilty nations, and which particularly tell us, that 'flaming fire is his messenger.' Dr Robinson, who strongly inclines to this theory, though he speaks with the cautious language of a man who is more anxious to discover the truth of the sacred narrative, than to construct a new view of his own, arrived, after very careful and minute observations on the great depression and figure of the lake, and especially the appearance of the bay, and the flat shores and shallow water of the southern part of the sea, at the conclusion, that there had always been a lake in that region, in which the Jordan discharged itself, although anciently it was much less; that by some awful convulsion, either the surface of the rich plain of Siddim was scooped out, or the sea was heaved up, so as to cause the waters to overflow, and cover permanently a larger tract than formerly;' and that while the streams that on both sides pour into the lake

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