An interesting thing about the Dead Sea is the fact that on its shores were the sites of the ancient Sodom and Gomorrah, the two towns which became so wicked that the Lord rained fire and brimstone upon them. There are said to be sulphur springs in the country about, and it may have been a volcano which caused the destruction. It was right here on the plain of the Jordan that the nephew of Abraham and the cousin of Ishmael and Isaac, the good man Lot, had his estate. It was in Sodom that he lived, one of the richest of its citizens, and the only just man in the city. From there he went out with Mrs. Lot and the two girls. And it is said to be at the southwest end of the lake, not far away, that Madame Lot turned and looked back and, as we may suppose, longed for the fleshpots. And lo! she became a pillar of salt. There are still deposits of rock-salt at that end of the lake, and the guides now show the remains of a pillar which they say was once Mrs. Lot, but which has been licked by the camels until it has almost disappeared. CHAPTER XVIII BETHLEHEM During my several trips to Palestine I have visited Bethlehem, where our Saviour was born, and have lived for days in Nazareth, where His boyhood was spent. I have gone over much of the road Joseph and Mary followed when they carried the child into Egypt, and have crossed the mountains of Samaria from Galilee to Jerusalem, where He went as a boy of twelve and was found teaching the doctrine in Solomon’s Temple. I have even climbed the hills and gone into the wilderness where our Lord was tempted of the devil after those forty days of hunger and thirst. At Capernaum I saw the recently excavated marble synagogue where some of His first preaching was done. I have climbed to the top of the hill above the Sea of Galilee, where He delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and have picked flowers from the rolling green sward below, where the miracle of the loaves and fishes was performed. Not far from that place, on the opposite shore, may be seen a steep hill down which rushed the swine possessed of the devils our Saviour had cast out of the Gadarene man. I have been in Bethany, where lived Mary and Martha, and have sat under the trees in the Garden of Gethsemane. Many of these places are about the same as they were when our Saviour was alive. Some have been covered with churches and convents, but the warring sects of Christians have not been able to change the bright sky. Nature is the same now as it was then. The same flowers bloom and the same birds sing. Besides, it is not so long, after all, since Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The average lifetime of a man is not much more than was that of our Saviour. He lived thirty-three years. It would take only fifty-eight such lifetimes to cover the period between now and the birth of Christ. Each of us has a relative who is, perhaps, sixty-five years old. The lives of thirty such men would, if joined together, reach back to the days of King Herod.