04 - Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
Situation of Lot’s Family -- Practical Reflections on his Situation -- What some of his Dangers were -- About giving up business -- A common Error -- Good men, even, in wicked Places, must grow better or worse -- Reasons for believing that Lot was made worse.
Twelve years had passed after Lot’s rescue by Abraham, and twenty or more from the time he removed to Sodom; and yet, if we except the unfortunate circumstance of his being taken prisoner, and losing some of his property in the war, all things had probably gone on with him very prosperously. He had now a family of daughters, who were come to years of maturity, and some of them were already married or engaged to be married. He had probably by this time become so rich and so much at his ease, as people say, he thought all would go well with him as long as he lived.
How sad the mistake often made by those who think rich people are at their ease! If they do not quit business -- and the greater part do not -- their cares, and toils, and perplexities generally increase with their wealth, and instead of being more at ease, as the consequence, they are much less so. If, on the other hand, they do leave their business, they will certainly be miserable.
I have not forgotten the parable in the gospel, of the man who had become so rich that he concluded to give up his business, and said within himself; "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; now take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." But did he obtain ease? Was not his soul called away to judgment that very night? And had he lived, it would not have been to enjoy a life of exemption from cares. Men who are brought up to a life of action till they are thirty, forty, or fifty years of age, cannot safely leave off business. The very circumstance of their having always been active, creates a necessity of their continuing so. Those who spend the first half of their life in inaction, will not suffer quite so much, it is true, by remaining inactive during the remainder of it. The rich man in the gospel, is represented as having been an active, business-doing man; and therefore he must have suffered by "giving up his business," had he even been permitted to live.
It is very true that a considerable number of people try the plan of giving up their business. Probably most mercantile men intend to do so, when they commence. But having become very much engaged, and having acquired a little property, their desires to acquire more increase in proportion; and continue to do so, as long as they live; and death surprises them with their hearts much more anxiously set on money getting, than they were when they began in this world. But suppose they go on to forty or fifty years of age, become exceedingly rich, lay aside their business, and undertake to live at their ease; what then? I will tell you what often happens; not in every case, I know; but in six cases out of ten.
They no sooner dismiss their business than they say to themselves -- or rather think it than say it -- Now, "take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." So they go to eating and drinking more, and usually of richer food, than before they left off their business; while at the same time they use less exercise. Whereas, if they diminish their excercise, they ought to diminish their food, either as respects quantity, or quality, or both.
Well, they increase the quality of their food, as I said before; and also use such kinds of food as are more stimulating. This creates a feverish state of body, and a great many unpleasant feelings. These, however, it is soon found, can be removed, for a little while, by stimulating drinks, such as tea, coffee, beer, cider, wine, or distilled spirits. Not but that those drinks allow the troubles to return again, after a little while, which they were intended to cure; for they do. And the troubles not only return, but return some what aggravated, and more difficult of cure. But there is still one way of getting along, which is to increase the dose of stimulating drink. They soon learn this; and either drink more and more of their favorite kind, or take two or three kinds at a time, that is, on the same day.
Sometimes, in addition to large quantities of tea, or ale, or wine, or cider, they begin to take some medicinal drug, such as opium or camphor; or they chew or smoke medicine, such as tobacco. But all these things, whether they use little or much, only plant more and more firmly the seeds of disease, and they soon become bloated with gout or dropsy, or emaciated with dyspepsy or consumption; and, without living half way from forty to eighty years of age unless they have constitutions remarkably robust, they die a violent death, though it should be in a lingering manner; and the soul is hastened away from its wretched, defiled tenement, to the presence of the God who gave it -- and gave it not to be defiled, or to dwell in a defiled body -- but to be preserved in health and purity.
Some, who are called good men, by means of the sad mistake they run into, of giving up business, as they call it, get into this wretched condition; and I always think of Lot as one of this sort of men; though without knowing with certainty that this was the fact. It appears to me that he had already given up business, except, perhaps, a little judicial business, when Sodom was destroyed; and that, had it not been for the destruction of the place, and his consequent reduction to poverty, he might, in ten years more have died of some awful disease, brought on by intemperance, or gluttony, or some form of sensuality.
Men cannot very well live in such a place as Sodom, without either growing better or worse; and that very rapidly, too. Some think they can, but they are mistaken. I have no doubt that Lot thought he could, when he went to Sodom; but it is pretty evident to me that he found his mistake in the end: for we do not read of his making anybody better while he lived there -- certainly he had not much to boast of in regard to his own family; at least if we except his two daughters, and it is not probably that his example had a very favorable influence on others. Seven-eighths of the family of Noah appear to have been holy persons. How different with the family of Lot! But if he lived there twenty years, and made nobody any better by it, I am sure that he must have made many of his friends and neighbors worse.
You will call these remarks, my young readers, a digression. But they seemed to me quite called for, in the history of the adventures of Lot in Sodom. For, though he is commonly looked upon as having been situtated entirely different from any body now-a-days, while he lived in Sodom, it seems to me far otherwise. I regard people who live in crowded cities, and other bad places, at the present time, as exposed to similar temptations and dangers, though not always the very same, as those Lot encountered, and which, without the interference of Divine Providence, will inevitably ruin the best people in the world.