"But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt." A learned writer* observes, "The sulphureous storm did not begin to fall upon Sodom, till Lot was safely arrived at Zoar. But his wife looked back before he reached Zoar: for she looked back from behind him, as he was going to Zoar. When she looked back, Sodom and its plains appeared as pleasant as before. She looked back with affection to the place, and regret at leaving it: according to the import of the original word. This implied unbelief." She wavered "she stopped by the way, and left her husband to go by himself"-in the fluctuations of her mind, "she would proceed no farther; and might be at a considerable distance from Zoar, and so near to Sodom, as, probably, to be involved in the terrible shower, and thereby turned into a nitro-sulphureous pillar:"—or at least to be suffocated by it, and incrusted with it. This gives proper force to our Lord's admonition, Remember Lot's wife.t Let the judgment of God upon her, warn you, of the folly and danger of hankering after, and being loath to part with, small and temporal things, when your life and happiness, the greatest, and most lasting concerns, are at stake." We lead you forwards to another branch of evidence;

II. THE TESTIMONY OF ANCIENT WRITERS.

It is asserted by Tacitus, that the traces of the fire which consumed these cities were visible in his days. "At no great distance are those fields, which, as it is said, were formerly fruitful, and covered with great

*Dr. Taylor, in his Scheme of Scripture Divinity: now out of print, but preserved in Bishop Watson's Theological Tracts, vol. i,chap. xxv, p.106. †Luke xvii, 32.

cities, till they were consumed by lightning: the vestiges of which remain in the parched appearance of the country, which has lost its fertility.*"

The testimony of Philot and of Pliny‡ accords with that of the Roman historian.

Diodorus Siculus describes the lake Asphaltites at large, in two different parts of his work; and concludes his account by saying, "The region round about burning with fire, exhales a stench so intolerable, that the bodies of the inhabitants are diseased, and their lives contracted.§"

Strabo, in writing on the same subject, thus concludes: "There are many indications that fire has been over this country: for about Masada they shew rough and scorched rocks, and caverns in many places eaten in, and the earth reduced to ashes, and drops of pitch distilling from the rocks, and hot streams, offensive afar off, and habitations overthrown; which renders credible, some reports among the inhabitants, that there were formerly thirteen cities on that spot, the principal of which was Sodom; so extensive as to be sixty furlongs in circumference; but that by earthquakes, and an eruption of fire, and by hot and bituminous waters, it became a lake as it now is; the rocks were consumed, some of the cities were swallowed up, and others abandoned by those of the inhabitants who were able to escape.

Similar to this is the language of Solinus. "At a considerable distance from Jerusalem, a frightful lake extends itself, which has been struck by lightning, as is evident from the ground, black; and reduced to ashes." He goes on to relate the fable of the apples

growing near it, which were said to appear fair to the eye, but to contain only sooty ashes, and upon being touched, to exhale into smoke, or to vanish into dust. The same fiction is mentioned also by Tacitus: but we must learn, in receiving the testimony of ancient historians, to distinguish between truth and fable, to separate the former from the latter, with which it is often found overwhelmed, to discriminate between the fact and the legend, to divide that which they saw, from that which they admitted only from tradition, to make allowance for their credulity, and impartially to weigh the evidence which they produce. Moses is not answerable for the fondness which they discovered for the marvellous, nor for the fables which tradition blended with his history. Neither is their account of that which they saw, to be rejected for the easy credit which they gave to that which they only heard, and heard from disputable authority. While the facts of the Mosaic history are confirmed, his superior purity, and consequently credibility is established.

Among the moderns, Bisselius in his treatise on illustrious ruins, and a great number of travellers, have described this singular lake. Maundrel, Volney, Pococke, Shaw, and other men of eminence, have communicated to the public the result of their observations.

Alexander Trallianus mentions an heathen form of exorcism, that confirms the scripture representation of the calamity which overtook Lot's wife. It runs thus "In the name of God, who turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt."* We have yet to examine

Dodd. Lect. part. VI. Prop. cix. Demon. 7. page 294, quarto edition. Consult Grot, de Verit. Sect. xiv. in not. See also, for the whole of these quotations, note 3, of this Lecture, at the end of the volume.

III. THE EVIDENCES REMAINING ON THE SPOT.

We remark,

1. THE APPEARANCE OF THE LAKE, AND OF THE SURROUNDING COUNTRY, HAS BEEN VERY SIMILAR IN EVERY AGE. It has carried the same mournful vestiges of destruction. Not only do the respective testimonies of ancient writers agree with each other, but the several subsequent representations of this fact, given in the Bible, accord entirely with the Mosaic history: a decisive proof that the spot has carried the same features of ruin from the first; and a pleasing evidence that the sacred writings preserve the most perfect harmony with themselves. A selection of a few passages, written at various and distinct periods, will exhibit the appearances of these desolated cities, as they presented themselves to the different writers; and will furnish a coincidence and concord which truth alone can produce. It is worthy consideration, that, in these several passages, appeals are made to this fact as an event well known, and a subject on which the world were, at that time, able to obtain ample satisfaction, by visiting, and considering, the spot itself. Moses refers the Israelites of his day, to the appearance which these wasted plains then presented, as an image of what their own possessions would become if they disobeyed the commands of God. He threatens "The generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it; and that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not soren, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, LIKE THE OVERTHROW OF SODOM, AND GOMORRAH, ADMAH, AND Zeboim,

WHICH THE Lord overthrEW IN HIS ANGER, AND IN HIS WRATH: even all the nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what mean th the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers; which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt."* When Babylon is threatened, another appeal is made to this event, as to a fact well known, and indisputably authenticated. Isaiah proclaims her fall, and this is her awful sentence: "Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be AS WHEN GOD OVERTHREW SODOM AND GOMORRAH. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their fold there."† Jeremiah beheld the same face of things when he made these ruins prefigure the downfall of Edom. "Edom shall be a desolation: every one that goeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all the plagues thereof. AS IN THE OVERTHROW OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH, and the neighboring cities thereof, saith the LORD, no man shall abide there, neither shall the son of man drwell in it." Jesus, who is Truth itself, appeals to the same desolation, and to all its circumstances, as an image of his own visitation of the Jewish nation. "As it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it RAINED FIRE AND BRIMSTONE FROM HEAVEN, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the Jer. xlix, 17, 18, L. 40.

* Deut. xxix, 22-25. Is. xiii, 19, 20.