The New York herald., 1879-12-25

The progressive stages OF historical criti-
cism are among the curiosities of the age.
1t may be broadly stated that the older
historians believed and the later doubted.
What had been stated as fact was sharply
divided into myth and probable fact. 10
the former were relegated those legendary
tales where the grandiose, fantastic and
superhuman predominated. Ii the story
did not square with the knowledge of the
period it was called myth. But as knowl-
edge widens the reconstructive historian
takes his place. He peers into the misty
recesses OF the past with earnest gaze, not
satisfied that its legends and traditions are
all mere romnnces, invented by the idle for
pastime or by cunning priests and kings
for selfish ends. They delve with the
spade like Layard and Schliemann they
search through forgotten records of human
speech like Rawlinson and Muller they
measure far distant dates by elaborate as
Economical calculations, and so they recon-
struct While the voyages of Jason, the
storiss of Homer, the lost Atlantis of Plato
are given more solid form, the superhuman
elements in them are presented in differ
ent light. They are no longer supernatural.
The glamour of compelling gods and inter
ceding goddesses gives place to the glow of
the great forces of nature, or the glare Of
heroic but simply human deeds. The
events themselves recede under this scien-
tifc scrutiny to ages still more remote.
What the first historians agglomerated in
the dramatic legend of ON epoch Of unoer-
tain but not great remoteness, and which
the doubling historians rejected for its over
completeness of detail and arrangement,
the reconstructive historian discerns as
the broidered or corrupted narrative of
events perhaps ages apart, and all reaching
back into the cycles Of time before man had
made single written sign.
Of course the Bible has been the
study OF the two orders of critics of his
tory. In the last century progressive"
ts.-ught rejected in scorn the cosnogony Of
the Old Testament along with its inspira-
tion. Then what childs story they
thought the Deluge, how they laughed at
the builders OF Babel and scoffed at the fire
from heaven which destroyed the cities of the
plain! But the story of great Asian cat
aclysm in far off ages, borne out by writ
ings not at all inspired, becomes more and
more of q certainty, thanks to the Assyri-
ologists, and in the confusion Of tongues is
traced tho story of the parentage aud
linsual differentiation Of great, world
conquering race.
Professor Proctor's letter on death-deal-
ing meteorites in Tuesdays HERALD sug-
gests that science may ''naturalize" the de-
struction OF Sodom. If either his computa-
ton that one person in every four hundred
years may be, or the statement that nine
persons in the last nine centuries have been
killed by meteorites is demonstrable the
natural basis for such q calamity is estab-
lished. And what has happened once may
happen again. Remember how the atmo-
sphere as the earth speeds through space at
over eleven hundred miles to tho minute
would heat any dense bodies passing
through IL. Says Genesis:--
The sun was risen upon the earth whom Lot en-.
tcred into Zoar. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom
and Gomorrah birthstone and fire from tho Lord out
| OF heaven.
Tradition would not soon lose sight OF
such terrible story as is here indicated.
Would not pioty Mt length give the legend
OF natural catastrophe like this great
personal impulse from on high, and make
it point to the distant after ages, when
writing began, moral Of wickedness pun
ishedP