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.[[235]]
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.
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