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.
Pages:
1154
1155
1156
1157
1158
1159
1160
1161
1162
1163
1164
1165
1166
1167
1168
1169
1170
1171
1172
1173
1174
1175
1176
1177
1178