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.
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