1. And the two angels came to Sodom at even ; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom : and Lot 2 saw them, and rose up to meet them ; and he bowed himself with his face to the earth ; and he said, Behold now, my lords, turn aside, I pray you, into your servant’s house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your way. And they said, 3 Nay ; but we will abide in the street all night. And he urged them greatly ; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house ; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened 4 bread, and they did eat. But before they lay down, the men of the city, eces the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both young and old, all the people from every quarter ; 5 and they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this 6 night ? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. And Lot went out unto them to 7 the door, and shut the door after him. And he said, I pray you, my brethren, do not so 8 wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man ; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes : only unto these men 9 do nothing ; forasmuch as they are come under the shadow of my roof. And they said, Stand back. And they said, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge ; now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even 10 Lot, and drew near to break the door. But the men put forth their hand, and brought Lot 11 into the house to them, and shut to the door. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great ; so that they wearied themselves to find 12 the door. And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides ? son in law, and thy sons, 13 and thy daughters, and whomsoever thou hast in the city ; bring them out of the place ; for we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the LORD ; and the 14 LORD hath sent us to destroy it. And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place ; for the LORD will destroy the 15 city. But he seemed unto his sons in law as one that mocked. And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters which are 16 here ; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city. But he lingered ; and the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters ; the LORD being merciful unto him : and they brought him forth, and set him without the city. 17 And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life ; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the Plain ; escape to the mountain, lest 18 thou be consumed. And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my lord ; behold now, thy servant 19 hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life ; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest evil overtake me, and I 20 die ; behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one : Oh, let me escape 21 thither, (is it not a little one ?) and my soul shall live. And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow the city of which thou hast 22 spoken. Haste thee, escape thither ; for I cannot do anything till thou be come thither. 23 Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar. The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot 24 came unto Zoar. Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire 25 from the LORD out of heaven ; and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the 26 inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back 27 from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. And Abraham got up early in the morning 28 to the place where he had stood before the LORD ; and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the Plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smok : of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace.

The two strangers who entered the gate of | Mamre. The mission of these celestial visitors Sodom on the evening before its fall had dined | had for its first object, as we have seen, the an- with Abraham that day upon the heights of | nunciation of glad tidings to Abraham’s wife ; its second was to visit Sodom with judgment. So impartially do Heaven’s messengers execute alike its mercy and its severity. Dykes.—The gain of this world is but transitory; faith reaps a late but lasting recompense. The Angels of God descended to fulfil in one and the same mission a double purpose;—to take from Lot his earthly portion, and to prepare for the accomplishment of the everlasting blessings promised to Abraham; to destroy Sodom, while they foretold the approaching birth of Isaac. Newman.

1. At even, Lot sat in the gate of Sodom.** We can imagine the setting sun for the last time, throwing a mild and softened radiance on the cities and across the plain; and no warning by elemental disorder. Nature keeps the secret of her great Governor. If conscience will not alarm the sinners, nothing else shall. But what was there latent in that soft tranquillity? There was there the hovering power of divine justice—the spirit of retribution, just growing to the intensity to reveal itself in resistless flame. J. F.

Gate. The covered doorways, and the piazzas adjoining (such are to be seen in modern fortified towns), were in ancient times usual places of concourse, where the inhabitants met for amusement, or to transact public business, especially the administration of justice. Gerl.—At first the tent of Lot was only pitched near the gate of Sodom. By and by he abandoned tent-life altogether, and inhabited a house in the city. At last he betrothed his girls to native Sodomites, and sat in its gateway as one of its conspicuous citizens at a time when the cry of its pollutions had gone up to heaven, Dykes.

2. When our Saviour made as though He would have gone farther, He effectually questioned His disciples as to the condition of their hearts in relation to the duties of hospitality. The angels, in answering that they would abide in the street all night, made the same experiment on Lot. This species of simulation involves no falsehood; its design is not to deceive, but to catechize or instruct. The whole action is to be regarded as a sign by which a question is proposed, or the mind excited to such a degree of curiosity and attention that lessons of truth can be successfully imparted. The command to Abraham to sacrifice his son involved a series of practical interrogatories to which no other form of proposing them could have elicited such satisfactory responses. The principle holds here which obtains in reference to fictions and fables. The action is only the dress of the thought, and where the purpose in view is honorable and just, no exceptions can be taken on the score of veracity to the drapery in which it is adorned. Thornwell.

4,5. The utter shamelessness of the inhabitants of Sodom, as well as their unbridled licentiousness, is briefly but most emphatically expressed in these verses. The Canaanitish nations in general, and the cities of the plain especially, were addicted to those deadly sins so strictly forbidden to the Israelites. E. H. B.—It was the most unnatural and abominable wickedness that they were now set upon, a sin that still bears their name, and is called sodomy. They were carried headlong by those vile affections (Rom. 1:26, 27), which are worse than brutish, and the eternal reproach of the human nature, and which cannot be thought of without horror, by those that have the least spark of virtue, and any remains of natural light and conscience. They proclaimed war with virtue, and bid open defiance to it. Hence daring sinners are said to declare their sin as Sodom (Is. 3:9). H.

6-8. The good man craves and pleads the laws of hospitality; and when he sees headstrong purposes of mischief, chooses rather to be an ill father than an ill host: his intention was good, but his offer was faulty; if through his allowance the Sodomites had defiled his daughters, it had been his sin; if through violence they had defiled his guests, it had been only theirs: there can be no warrant for us to sin, lest others should sin: it is for God to prevent sins with judgments, it is not for men to prevent a greater sin with a less: God meant better to Lot, than to suffer his weak offer to be accepted. Bp. H.

6. In defence of the sacred rights of a guest, Lot even risked his own life; the one flash of manly spirit which redeems in any measure the story of that night. But in his very hospitality Lot betrayed how the air of Sodom had blunted his sense of personal purity. Dykes.—The sacred writer relates the history simply and without comment, not holding up Lot as an example for imitation, but telling his faults as well as his virtues, and leaving us to draw the inferences. He brought all his troubles on himself by the home he had chosen. He was bound to defend his guests at the risk of his own life, but not by the sacrifice of his daughters. E. H. B.

10,11. Now Lot’s guests begin to show themselves angels, and first delivered Lot in Sodom, then from Sodom; first strike them with blindness, whom they will after consume with fire. How little did the Sodomites think that vengeance was so near them! While they went groping in the streets, and cursing those whom they could not find, Lot with the angels is in secure light, and sees them miserable, and foresees them burning. It is the use of God, to blind and beset those whom he means to destroy. Bp. H.

15. The prophet Ezekiel (16 : 49) enumerates these three causes of the sins of Sodom, “pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness.” And how they are still the parents of vice in prosperous communities we know full well. It shows how widespread and inveterate the wickedness of the community was, that when the fiery deluge came down, not one beyond Lot’s family was counted worthy to escape. Kerr.

16. “He lingered;” whether from some degree of unbelief; or from being confused and stupefied with amazement and horror. But there was calmness and decision there, though he had none. The angels laid hold on the hands of Lot and his family, “The Lord being merciful unto him,” and led them out of the devoted city. All this might well be named visible providence. It was the protection of the Almighty, and the guardian care of his angels displayed in exercise,—in the visible personal agency of these powerful spirits. But, though there be now no such palpable manifestations, how often may there be in a good man’s life interpositions as critical, if the agency were made visible in any one of many conjunctures. And then for his soul there is a series of agency of a still far nobler kind! A greater Spirit is employed there! J. F.

17. He said, Escape for thy life.** Hebrew, for thy soul. Chaldean, “Pity thine own soul, and save thyself.” It would seem that a new speaker, even the Angel-Jehovah, who had by this time left Abraham and joined the two angels at Sodom, utters these words. The tenor of the ensuing narrative makes it clear that the personage called Jehovah was present at the overthrow of Sodom, and that it was no other than he who sustains the character of chief speaker in the discourses recorded. Bash.—*One speaks with Lot. They lead him out, but He speaks to him. Here has the Lord, or the appointed Angel of the Lord, His coequal Revealer, again joined the other two. Lot recognizes Him as the first among them; since, while he directs his words to all three, he speaks yet but with One, whom he addresses by the name of God, “Lord;” and He now declares in His own name what He will do. Gerl.

Escape to the mountain. Such as these are the commands given to those who through grace are delivered out of a sinful state and condition. Return not to sin and Satan, for that is looking back to Sodom. Rest not in self and the world, for that is staying in the plain. And reach toward Christ and Heaven, for that is escaping to the mountain, short of which we must not take up. H.—In the conduct of the angel messengers of mercy and of wrath on this occasion, you see symbolized the style and manner of the Gospel warning and of the Gospel offers wherever the Gospel comes in contact with sinful men. It is ever, as here, in the tone of hasteful urgency. “Up, get you out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city; escape for thy life; tarry not in all the plain.” S. R.

20. It was Lot’s weakness to think a city of his own choosing safer than the mountain of God’s appointing. And he argued against himself, when he pleaded, Thou hast magnified thy mercy in saving my life, and I cannot escape to the mountain; for could not he that had plucked him out of Sodom, when he lingered, carry him safe to the mountain, though he began to tire?

21. See what favor God showed a true saint, though weak. Zoar was spared to gratify him. Though his intercession for it was not, as Abraham’s for Sodom, from a principle of generous charity, but merely from self-interest, yet God granted his request, to show how much the prayer of a righteous man avails. Sodom’s ruin was suspended, till he was safe. H.—Oh the large bounty of God, which reacheth not to us only, but to ours! God saves Lot for Abraham’s sake, and Zoar for Lot’s sake; if Sodom had not been too wicked, it had escaped: were it not for God’s dear children, that are intermixed with the world, it could not stand: the wicked owe their lives unto those few good, whom they hate and persecute.

23,24. Now at once the sun rises upon Zoar, and fire falls down upon Sodom: Abraham stands upon the hill, and sees the cities burning; it is fair weather with God’s children, when it is foulest with the wicked. Those, which burned with the fire of lust, are now consumed with the fire of vengeance: they sinned against nature; and now against the course of nature, fire descends from heaven, and consumes them. Bp. H.—Long time the hand of the Almighty may seem to tremble, as if adverse to strike. But He is only waiting for the day—that fixed and appointed day—to which, as the Apostle Peter says, the ungodly are reserved. Once “the sun is risen upon Zoar,” at the appointed day the blow descends with terrible decision. There is no relenting then with the judge of all the earth. If he waits to be gracious till it seems as if he knew not how to smite, he smites at last as if he knew not how to pity. Not, indeed, in sudden anger, but in the calmness of deliberate judgment he awards the punishment to which the wicked are reserved. Up to the very last moment of the day of grace all things continue as they are. But the last sunrise comes at length. Such is the view of the justice of God here brought out; and this picture is but the type and illustration, says Jesus Christ—a rehearsing on a smaller stage of the general judgment which shall at last burn up the earth itself and “melt the elements with fervent heat.” S. R.—It is the Son who has executed judgment from the beginning: overthrowing the proud tower of Babel, and confounding men’s languages; punishing the whole world by the violence of waters; raining upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone, the LORD FROM THE LORD. Tertullian.—And the neighbouring cities, Admah and Zeboim as appears from Deut. 29:23. Bp. Patrick.

The overwhelming destruction produced is set forth in language which enumerates the cities themselves, their inhabitants, the whole surrounding region, and all the rich verdure with which the country had been previously clothed. It is said that “God overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.” The extensiveness of the catastrophe is implied in what Abraham beheld, when, early the next morning, he looked toward Sodom from one of the eminences about Hebron. At the distance of more than thirty miles from the probable site of Sodom, he saw the smoke of the whole country of the plain going up “as the smoke of a furnace.” N. C. B.—For its awful suddenness, for its thoroughness, and for its perpetual tokens, this ancient overthrow stands forth in history as the appointed type of all divine acts of judgment; and chiefly of that last act to which we now look forward, and for which it is every man’s wisdom to prepare himself. This dreadful office it continued to fill down to the close of revelation. For the smoke of Sodom flings its shadow even across the predictions of our Lord, to heighten the impressiveness of that picture which the Judge Himself in His mercy sketched beforehand of His day of inquisition and of wrath. Dykes.

25. All the Plain. The entire plain no doubt possessed originally the same fertility which afterward made the adjacent Jericho one of the loveliest and richest spots in Syria. Fed by the Jordan and the springs which send down streams to it from the sheltering hills, a copious supply of water could easily be led by artificial conduits to any part of the district; and the almost tropical heat of that deep depression must have forced, then as now, a luxuriance and variety of vegetation which are to be found nowhere else on the same parallel of latitude. Dykes.—Think of a region blooming and smiling in all the riches of nature; on every hand something to raise the contemplative thought to the glorious Creator; something, it might be supposed, to refine and harmonize the sentiments; and a copious fertility of supply, to make every tract speak the bounty of Providence. But amidst all this, what was MAN? A hideous assemblage of beings, “sensual—devilish,” such as might almost be conceived to have been thrown up from the infernal realms, to go down again in an earthquake and tempest of fire! J. F.—There is not another country on the face of the globe where blessing or curse might so readily be realized, as a space so narrow does not, in any other part, present so numerous sources either of the one or of the other. The almost Paradisiacal valley of Siddim becomes in one day a pool of destruction, whence everything that has life flees; thus showing the solemnity of Divine judgments to all succeeding generations. K.

The people of Sodom had no time for speculations; there was but just time for terror, and conscience, and despair! Our Lord says, there is a still greater guilt and a more awful destruction, even than theirs! They will see greater criminals than themselves at the last day; and from lands where the fire of heaven did not fall! The man that lives and dies rejecting HIM had better have been exposed to the rain of fire and brimstone, and gone down in the horrid gulf of the Vale of Siddim! J. F.—Love has a side of wrath and is a consuming flame by its very nature when turned against that which resists it and is alien to it. Every force in the universe and everything great and conserving in the nature and the soul of man becomes such a fire when threatened by that which is opposed to it. The greatest men have been those who have shown this most—Cromwell, Luther, Pascal, John, Paul, and, more terribly and mightily than all, in Christ himself. With what withering denunciations he condemned whatever was false and ugly in character! What a curse was that pronounced upon the offending cities of Bethsaida and Chorazin, and the worldly and conceited Pharisees! Was the heart of Christ less full of tenderness and truth because it was as a flame of fire when he confronted the unbelief and pride and worldly ambition of those who would resist and destroy his good works? And so it is that God over all, who is represented to us in Christ, and in nature and the highest soul of man, is a consuming fire. Blot that out? You may tear it out from your Bible, but you cannot tear it out from the universe! R. S. S.

26. His wife looked back, and became a pillar of salt.** From love to her former abode, and from unbelief she would not abstain from disobedience to God’s commands. She remained standing. The sulphur blast overtook her, and like all the country round she was enveloped in an encrustation of salt. Gert.—Small precepts from God are of importance; obedience is as well tried, and disobedience as well punished, in little, as in much; his wife doth but turn back her head, whether in curiosity, or unbelief, or love and compassion of the place; she is turned into a monument of disobedience; what doth it avail her not to be turned into ashes in Sodom, when she is turned into a pillar of salt in the plain! He, that saved a whole city, cannot save his own wife. Bp. H.—Behold the goodness and severity of God; toward Lot that went forward, goodness; toward his wife that looked back, severity. Though she was nearly related to a righteous man, though better than her neighbors, and though a monument of distinguishing mercy in her deliverance out of Sodom, yet God did not connive at her disobedience; for great privileges will not secure us from the wrath of God, if we do not carefully and faithfully improve them. Her looking back bespoke an inclination to go back; and therefore our Saviour uses it as a warning against apostasy from our Christian profession. We have all renounced the world and the flesh, and have set our faces heavenward; we are in the plain, upon our probation; and it is at our peril, if we return into the interests we profess to have abandoned. Drawing back is to perdition, and looking back is toward it. Let us therefore fear. H.

This is the strangest and saddest of all the delusions and inconsistencies of fallen humanity, this believing the word of God’s messengers and yet dallying with the message! It is not so wonderful that the men of Sodom refuse to listen; it is but in harmony with their stolid unbelief. It is not so wonderful that Lot’s sons-in-law refuse to listen, for they are confirmed infidels. But it is passing wonderful that Lot’s wife—warned, and believing the warning, alarmed, moved to escape, yea, brought by the hand of God himself to the very verge of safety—should linger, disobey, look back and perish! And just so still, the strangest of all the inconsistencies of sinners, is that of him “who, often reproved, hardeneth his neck and shall be utterly destroyed, and that without remedy.” S. R.—There is no time for loitering Sodom was intended to show that; where one faithless soul, by loitering, was lost. Let no man therefore deceive himself with any vain expectation, that though he is not such as he could wish at present, he shall be so at some future time: that if he is not prepared to meet his God now, he shall be so before he dies. This is the delusion under which so many perish. The broad way is crowded with people, who intended to grow better, but never did. When once they fix this habit of loitering, as they live, they die. Jones of N.

The right of destruction may be fairly inquired into by human reason, and ought to be well studied as a fact that has been repeatedly realized in human history. Throughout the Bible, God has reserved to himself the right to take back whatever he has given, because all his gifts have been offered upon conditions about which there can be no mistake. He takes back the life of the body; he takes away the power of reason; he reclaims our physical strength; by many a severity he asserts that the earth is his own and the fulness thereof; yet we are to suppose that he cannot put an end to our existence; it has grieved him, mocked him, defied him, abandoned his sanctuary, violated his laws, slain his Son, quenched his Spirit, given the lie to his promises and heaped up the measure of its iniquity in his very face, but he cannot put an end to it! Not such is the doctrine of the Word of God. There the Lord is King; his power is infinite; he only has the right to live; he only does live, and if we live it is because we abide in him, “as a branch abideth in the vine.” The sovereignty of God is as absolute at the end as at the beginning; “he can create, and he can destroy;” and we live by his will alone. Furthermore, we can see the infinite reasonableness and justice of this sovereignty; it subdues all things under the Lord’s feet, and gives him an undivided throne. . . . We hold life as God’s gift upon certain conditions; we can choose good or we can choose evil; God loves us, cares for us, has given his Son to save us, and is watching us every moment; he wishes all men to be saved; he promises pardon to the penitent, and foretells the death of the impenitent sinner; by these principles he will judge us, and by these will the wicked go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous into life eternal. The human conscience must answer, This is right! Such a judgment gives us a sense of rest. With such a judgment to come, the presumption is that the Providence which leads up to it is as equitable and as sublime as itself. Witness, too, that as God is to judge us, he also himself appeals to our judgment! He asks us to consider his ways, and challenges us to tell what iniquity we have found in him. Hence in many parts of the Bible, notably in the Psalms, we have judgments pronounced by man upon the Lord, as if the Lord had placed himself at our bar and asked us to acquit or condemn his providence. He proceeds upon reasons. His principles are ascertainable, and such as can be judged. Wonderful is this, that God should allow us to judge his way! He does not silence the Psalmist, nor does he reprove the acclaiming angels; he will be judged by all who are honest in soul. And beautiful, too, is this, that notwithstanding the severity and awfulness of his judgments, the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works! J. P.

Men needed to have it made visible—writ large in indelible and decipherable characters, even on the earth’s surface—that there is a moral Governor Who takes cognizance of evil, to Whose ear the cry for vengeance goes up when deeds are done that outrage humanity, and within Whose hand lies every agency which can either make or blast the fortunes of a commonwealth. Other branches of the human family were hurrying along the same path. It was mercy to erect, right in the centre of the populous lands, on the very road by which men passed from north to south and east to west, a monument of Heaven’s justice. It was specially merciful to the other Canaanitish tribes to have such a spectacle laid at their own door. Dykes.

The doom of Sodom was not to be regarded as an isolated judgment; but the scene of desolation, which was forever to occupy the site of the cities of the plain, would also forever exhibit to Israel the consequences of sin, and be to them a type of future judgment. It is in this light that the Scriptures both of the Old and the New Testament present to us the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. A. E.—In some twenty passages scattered over Scripture from the Pentateuch to the Apocalypse, this is referred to by name as the most conspicuous instance of divine vengeance upon sin. Sodom is employed as a type of Babylon’s fall by two of the greatest prophets. It is conjoined with Tyre and Sidon in the solemn warnings of our Lord Himself. And in the Revelation it stands side by side with Egypt as a type of exceptional impiety. Dykes.

The case became for all future time a standard illustration of God’s most sudden, fearful and utter destruction of the wicked. (See Deut. 29:23 and Isa. 13:19 and Jer. 20:16 and 50:40 and Amos 4:11 and 2 Pet. 2:6 and Jude 7.) It classes itself naturally with the deluge of Noah’s time and with the fall of Pharaoh’s host in the Red Sea, and the swallowing up of Korah and his company in the wilderness—all combining to show that God never lacks the means or the power to begin his threatened retribution upon the wicked here in time whenever he deems it wise for the moral ends of warning. In view of this appalling scene, how terribly significant become the words of Jude—‘Set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire!’ How easily and yet how fearfully can the Almighty execute the judgments written against guilty sinners who scorn his words of warning and dare his vengeance! H. C.

Even if the positive and irrefragable proofs of the truths of religion could be subverted, an unquenchable instinct of the soul remains to retain hold of the notion of a moral system, and of law and justice. This sense of the fitness of RETRIBUTION flashes upon us in some form every hour. We cannot read a page of history, we cannot listen to the news of the day, we cannot walk the streets, without forcibly admitting the idea that there must be a vindication of right. If at any time the films of false philosophy have deceived us into the opinion that vice and virtue are one and the same—this sophistry is instantly and irrecoverably scattered by our first brunt with some real affair of common life that appeals to the ordinary sentiments of humanity:—the illusion fades—truth and nature stand out and speak aloud, and we dare not refuse to hear them. But if there is to be retribution at all, if any crime or cruelty, the most atrocious which history records or which history has forgotten, is to be brought to account in an afterlife, and is to receive its due award of chastisement;—if the authority of God, as Governor of men, is to be in any manner asserted and maintained, then is it possible to believe that such retribution shall be otherwise than ABSOLUTELY IMPARTIAL? and when we say impartial, we must mean that it shall be in the strictest sense UNIVERSAL. It must bear alike, and equally, upon every responsible agent, and must come close home to the entire merit and demerit of each.

There is in fact no justice that is not universal justice. Justice altogether is nullified and disgraced by even a single and the smallest instance of oblivion, or inequality, or perversion of facts. I. T.

The Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea, to use its modern and more familiar name, is usually called in the Bible the “Salt Sea,” but is also styled the “Sea of the Plain,” or the Arabah; the “East Sea.” To the writers of the Talmud it was known as the “Sea of Sodom” and the “Sea of Salt,” to Josephus as the “Asphaltic” and “Sodomitic” Lake; and it is now called by the Bedouin “Bahr Lut,” the Sea of Lot. The title “Dead Sea” probably originated in the very general belief, that the waters of the lake covered the doomed Cities of the Plain, and were of such a deadly character that no bird could fly over them; and that the shores were desolate and barren. Recent investigation has completely disposed of these erroneous impressions.

The Dead Sea occupies the deepest portion of the great depression of the Jordan valley; it is oblong in form, the longest dimension being almost due north and south; and its width is nearly uniform, except near the southern end, where a long low peninsula, the Lisan, stretches out for some distance from the eastern shore, and divides its waters into two unequal portions. The lake has a length of forty-six miles, and an average width of ten miles; on either side the mountain ranges run parallel to each other, and on the east they rise abruptly from the water’s edge, leaving no margin, except at those points where small deltas have been formed at the mouths of the larger ravines that discharge their waters into the lake. The northern end, bordered by the plain of Jericho, is somewhat rounded, and at the southern end the shore is for some two or three miles perfectly flat and but slightly raised above the surface of the water; beyond this it is shut in by the salt mountain of Jebel Usdum and the rising ground that separates the waters of the lake from those of the Red Sea. The extraordinary depression of the surface of the lake, 1292 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, together with the absence of any outlet for its waters, render it the most remarkable body of water in the world; and its great depth, 1308 feet at the deepest point, is equally worthy of notice. The total depression of the bed of the lake is thus 2600 feet, almost the same as the elevation of the Mount of Olives above the Mediterranean. The water of the Dead Sea is clear and bright, but, owing to the large quantities of various salts held in solution, it is intensely salt, and has a nauseous, bitter taste. The specific gravity, 1228, distilled water being 1000, and the Mediterranean 1025, is greater than that of any known water, and to this may be attributed the extreme buoyancy noticed by so many travellers. When the surrounding mountains are lighted up by the bright rays of the sun, there is, perhaps, no place in the world that can equal this region for brilliancy and richness of coloring; and the vivid tints in Mr. Holman Hunt’s picture of the “Scapegoat” are no exaggeration of those frequently witnessed on the shores of the Dead Sea. No one who has stood on the Mount of Olives and seen the mountains of Moab glowing under the rays of the setting sun, can ever forget the wondrous beauty of the scene, with the bright blue water lying in the depths below, and the burnished mountains rising beyond like the border of some enchanted fairyland. Striking atmospheric effects are occasionally produced by the enormous evaporation. Irby and Mangles noticed it “rising in broad, transparent columns of vapor, not unlike water-spouts in appearance, but very much longer.” The geology of the basin of the Dead Sea was carefully examined by M. Louis Lartet, the distinguished geologist who accompanied the expedition of the Duc de Luynes, and the conclusion he arrived at was that the lake “had never been in communication with the neighboring oceans, although its waters formerly stood at a much higher level than they now do.” The fact that a hill of cretaceous formation, 781 feet above the sea, separates the waters of the Dead Sea from those of the Gulf of Akabah, and that the cretaceous strata are covered with their own débris alone, and show no trace of any water-course running in a southerly direction, effectually disproves the theory of an ancient prolongation of the Jordan to the Red Sea; and that of an ancient marine communication with the surrounding oceans is equally disproved by “the absence of any marine organizations in the most ancient strata of the basin, the fluviatile character of the post-eocene deposits of the Arabah, the existing traces of the direction of the streams toward the Dead Sea, and the non-existence of any material elevation of the ground in the middle of the Arabah since the formation of the present valleys.” M. Lartet thinks that the position of the cretaceous and eocene beds on both sides of the Jordan valley, and the striking rectilineal character of the valley itself, seems “to favor the idea of the existence of a vast line of fracture through the middle of the country;” and that “the eastern side of the highlands of Judah must have undergone a considerable downward movement all along the line of dislocation, and thus originated the depressed trench which separates Palestine proper from the highlands on the other side of Jordan.” The basin of the Dead Sea has thus been formed without any influence from, or communication with, the ocean; whence it follows that the lake which occupies the bottom of the basin has never been anything but a reservoir for the rainfall, the saltiness of which originally proceeded from the constitution of the environs of the lake, and has greatly increased under the influence of incessant evaporation. M. Lartet found the ancient deposits of the Dead Sea extending up the Jordan valley as far north as Wady Zerka, where they were at least 300 feet above the present surface of the lake, so that the water must at one time have stood at that level, filling up a large portion of the valley, and have then deposited the marls which are so rich in salt and gypsum beds. At a later date volcanic eruptions have taken place to the north-east and east of the Dead Sea, and the last phenomena which affected its basin were the hot and mineral springs and bituminous eruptions which often accompany and follow volcanic action. Maj. Wilson.

[For map, etc., see New Testament, vol. 1, p. 657.]

There is no evidence, but the contrary, that there has been any change in the general form and appearance of the Lake since the creation of man. It has no outlet whatever, being, in fact, the deepest depression known on the surface of the earth. It receives at its northern end the constant flow of the River Jordan, on its eastern side the Callirhoe and the Aruon, now the Zerka Main and the Mojib, besides some smaller streams. At its south end, the Fikreh, Jeib, Kuseib, Ghurundel, and other streams draining the Arabah, empty themselves into it; and on the west, the little stream of Engedi and several others add to its waters. Yet this enormous inflow is fully counterbalanced by the continual evaporation from its surface. There are also many springs on its shores and within its shallower waters, some hot, some salt, some sulphurous, and others fresh, which contribute to its bulk. Though no life, animal or vegetable, can possibly continue in the Lake, there is—wherever, as on the whole south-east shore and in various spots on the west side, fresh water flows into the Lake—a positive exuberance of life to the water’s edge. This is especially the case in the “Safieh,” the southern plains of

Moab at the south-east, and at Engedi on the opposite shore. From the earliest times to the present these spots have been carefully cultivated. Engedi was contemporary with the Cities of the Plain. When we see the surprising fertility and delicious climate of these buried nooks, we can well understand the attractiveness of these cities and their lands to Lot.

Of the Site of the Four Cities,

Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, destroyed by fire and brimstone from the Lord, it is scarcely necessary to say that no trace remains. Scripture does not state that they were engulfed in the Sea, but that they were destroyed, and “the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein” (Deut. 29:23). A description which would equally apply to the desolate plain at the south end and to the barren, sulphur-spread tract between Jericho and the north end. It has been questioned at which end these, almost the oldest cities in the records of human history, stood. Tradition places them at the south. There is, however, reason for supposing them to have been at the north end. When they are first mentioned (Gen. 10:19) they are spoken of as cities of the Canaanites on their border. They are next named in Gen. 13, in the account of the separation of Abraham and Lot. Abraham and Lot stood together between Bethel and Hai, when “Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar” (Gen. 13:10). From the hills where they stood, it is impossible to gain a glimpse of the south end of the Dead Sea, while the plain of Jericho is spread almost at the beholder’s feet. Again, after the destruction of the cities we are told that Abraham, then encamped at Mamre, “looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace” (Gen. 19:28). The accuracy of the expression is to be noted. Not he saw, but he looked toward the Cities of the Plain. From the hill above Mamre the plain itself cannot be seen, but the depression between the nearer hills and the distant tops of Gilead is plainly to be perceived, which is not the case with the depression of the southern end of the Dead Sea. Thus Abraham could at once have identified the locality whence the smoke arose. Once more, in the view which was granted to

Moses from the top of Pisgah, he beheld “the south and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm-trees, unto Zoar.” Now from the summit of Nebo it is utterly impossible to behold the south-east of the Dead Sea, the situation of the modern Dra’a, which is said, by a tradition not earlier than the times of Josephus and Jerome to be Zoar; but if we place Zoar in the parallel of Engedi, on the east side of the Dead Sea—we see the limit of Moses’ view, in accordance with the Sacred Record. From the top of Nebo, the view of the plain of the Jordan runs on uninterruptedly till it is cut off by the headland of Ras Feshkhah, the Arabic equivalent of Pisgah, and exactly in front of it, Ziara, projecting in front of Nebo. I believe the exact site of Zoar is to be found just below Nebo, in a line between it and Ras Feshkhah, and on a knoll slightly rising above the plain of Shittim. H. B. T.

As it is hardly possible for any one to read the account in Gen. 13 : 10 without feeling that Abraham and Lot were actually looking down on Sodom and Gomorrah when “Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah,” it follows that those cities must have been situated on some part of the plain north of the Dead Sea, and visible from the heights east of Bethel. In support of this view we may draw attention to the mention, in verse 10, of “the plain of Jordan,” which could not have extended below the point at which the river entered the Dead Sea, and the direct testimony, in verse 11, that Lot journeyed east, a course which would have led him far away from the southern end of the Dead Sea. Wil-on.

On the rebellion of the Cities of the Plain, we are told (Gen. 14) that the Assyrians smote the Horites in Mount Seir unto El Paran, and returned and smote the country of the Amalekites and also the Amorites that dwelt in Hazezon-Tamar or Engedi. After this the King of Sodom and his confederates met the invaders in the Vale of Siddim, and, on their defeat, Abraham pursued the victors on their march home by Damascus, and overtook them in Laish, or Dan, under Mount Hermon. Had Sodom and the other cities been situated at the south end of the Sea, it was certainly not after smiting the Amalekites and the Amorites at Engedi that they would have met the invader, but long before he reached Hazezon-Tamar. But if Sodom and the confederate cities were in the plain of Jordan, there is a topographical sequence in the whole story : while Abraham and his allies hurriedly pursue the plunderers up the Ghor, or Jordan Valley, without delay, till they overtake them at the source of the Jordan. [As a final point] there is a wide plain, a dead level, extending some eight or ten miles south of the lake, called by the Arabs “El Ghor,” which is conjectured to have been the site of the Cities of the Plain. But this plain is covered by a layer of sand, gypsum, and salt, and yields no evidence of having ever been cultivated in historical times. H. B. T.

The region at the southern end of the Dead Sea is a salt marsh and desert, with only a narrow belt of inhabitable land skirting its eastern border at the foot of the mountains. On the other hand, at the north end of the Dead Sea, there is a large and fertile plain which has been occupied by flourishing cities ever since the days of Moses and Joshua, at least. In speaking of the tell-system of the Jordan valley, I have shown that the ancient inhabitants built their cities upon natural or artificial mounds, and not down upon the flat land of the plain itself ; and I have shown that such tells, covered with ruins, exist at the north end of the Dead Sea, while there are none at the southern end. As we can identify some of these tells with places which existed in Josephus’s time, and still further back with cities which existed in the time of Joshua, it is not unreasonable to suppose that these same tells were occupied by cities in the time of Lot and Chedorlaomer. With regard to the account of the view of the Jordan valley which Lot had, or of that which Moses had, in both of which Zoar is mentioned, any justifiable rules of interpretation compel us to look for the site of Zoar at the north end of the Dead Sea. Only five sites are required ; namely, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim and Zoar. And on the plain of Shittim we have exactly five sites. Merrill.

[For the traditional view, that the cities stood at the south end of the Lake, see Wolcott, Bib. Sac., vol. 25.]

Agencies employed in Destruction. There is a very general belief that the cities were submerged, and that they now lie beneath the waters of the Dead Sea, but there is absolutely no ground for this supposition. Recent research has shown that in historic times there has been no great change in the Jordan valley, and that the waters of the Dead Sea formerly covered a much larger area than they do at present ; and though the exact nature of the catastrophe which overwhelmed the cities will perhaps never be known, we are expressly told in the Bible that their destruction was effected not by water, but by fire and brimstone rained on them from heaven (Gen. 19:24; Deut. 29:23; 2 Pet. 2:6; Jude 7). Wilson.

There is no mention of any earthquake, which, if it occurred, must in the judgment of the narrator have been altogether a subordinate feature. Nor is an earthquake necessarily implied in the expression “overthrown,” used in Deut. 29. Still, more or less tremor of the ground very probably occurred, and might have impressed itself on traditions of the event, especially as the district is subject to earthquakes, though it is not mentioned in theological narrative. The description is that of a bitumen or petroleum eruption, similar to those which on a small scale have been so destructive in the regions of Canada and the United States of America. They arise from the existence of reservoirs of compressed inflammable gas along with petroleum and water, existing at considerable depths below the surface. In the valley of the Euphrates, according to Layard, the Arabs can produce miniature eruptions of this kind, by breaking with stones the crust of hardened asphalt that has formed on the surface of the bitumen springs, and igniting the vapors and liquid petroleum. Now the valley of the Dead Sea is an “oil district,” and from the incidental mention of its slime pits, or literally asphalt pits, in Genesis 14, was apparently more productive in mineral pitch in ancient times. It is known that petroleum exudes from the rocks both on the sides and in the bottom of the Dead Sea, and, being hardened by evaporation and oxygenation, forms the asphaltum referred to by so many travellers. The source of the bituminous matter is in the great beds of bituminous limestone of Upper Cretaceous age which appear at Neby Mousa, on the Jericho road and at many other places in the vicinity of the sea, and no doubt underlie its bed and the lower part of the Jordan plain. From these beds bituminous and gaseous matter must have been at all times exuding. Further, the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea basis are on the line of a great fault or fracture traversing these beds, and affording means of escape to their products, especially when the district is shaken by earthquakes. We have thus only to suppose that at the time in question reservoirs of condensed gas and petroleum existed under the plain of Siddim, and that these were suddenly discharged, either by their own accumulated pressure, or by an earthquake shock fracturing the overlying beds, when the phenomena described by the writer in Genesis would occur, and after the eruption the site would be covered with a saline and sulphurous deposit, while many of the sources of petroleum previously existing might be permanently dried up. In connection with this there might be subsidence of the ground over the now exhausted reservoirs, and this might give rise to the idea of the submergence of the cities. It is to be observed, however, that the parenthetic statement in Genesis 14, “which is the Salt Sea,” does not certainly mean under the sea, and that it relates not to the cities themselves but to the plain where the battle recorded in the chapter was fought at a time previous to the eruption. . . . Sodom and its companion cities were no doubt so situated as to be specially subject to one particular kind of overthrow. But it may be safely said that there is no city in the world which is not equally, though perhaps by other agencies, within the reach of Divine power exercised through the energies of nature, should it be found to be destitute of “ten righteous men.” So that the conclusion still holds—“except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.” Dawson.

29. And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the Plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in the which Lot dwelt.

30. And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him;

31 for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters. And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come

32 in unto us after the manner of all the earth: come, let us make our father drink wine, and we

33 will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night : and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father ; and he knew not 34 when she lay down, nor when she arose. And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father : let us make him drink wine this night also ; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our 35 father. And they made their father drink wine that night also : and the younger arose, and 36 lay with him ; and he knew not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Thus were both the 37 daughters of Lot with child by their father. And the firstborn bare a son, and called his 38 name Moab : the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day. And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Ben-ammi : the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day.

Lot escaped the dreadful crisis of judgment with the loss of all his wealth. Abraham’s tent is still surrounded with comfort and plenty. Lot barely escaped destruction “so as by fire,” with the stain of the wickedness of Sodom upon the remnant of his household, to become the dishonored father of a dishonored race. Abraham, the friend of God, receives at the age of a hundred years the fulfilment of the promise that he shall be the father of a chosen people, and of the Messiah in whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Such is the contrast between the faithful pilgrim who held fast by faith to the promise of a better country, and the unfaithful pilgrim who eagerly turned away in his progress after the things of the world, and ceased to set his affections on things above. And such is the moral of the inspired drama. Lot passes away from the scenes of the history, and his descendants are heard of thereafter only as the enemies of Jehovah and his covenant people ; while Abraham proceeds onward through new scenes of trial and of triumph to fill the entire field of the history of redemption. And it soon appeared that the account of the dread judgment upon the cities of the plain is but an incidental episode in the history of Abraham. S. R.

29,30. Lot does not long remain in Zoar. The judgment executed upon Sodom had filled his soul with such awe that he now sought refuge in the wilderness. A cave in the mountains of what afterward became the land of Moab served him for a dwelling-place. K. — It was wrong at first not to betake himself to the mountain : it was wrong, afterward, to go to it when God had given him the assurance that Zoar should be spared for his sake. Both cases argue a strange want of faith in the truth and providence of God. Had he still dwelt at Zoar the shameful transaction afterward recorded had, in all probability, not taken place. A. C.

32. When God delivers us from destruction he doth not secure us from all afflictions : Lot hath lost his wife, his allies, his substance, and now betakes himself to an uncomfortable solitariness. Yet though he fled from company he could not fly from sin : he who could not be tainted with uncleanness in Sodom is overtaken with drunkenness and incest in a cave : rather than Satan shall not want baits his own daughters will prove Sodomites : those which should comfort, betrayed him. How little are some hearts moved with judgments ! The ashes of Sodom and the pillar of salt were not yet out of their eye, when they dare think of lying with their own father. They knew that while Lot was sober he could not be unchaste. Drunkenness is the way to all bestial affections and acts : wine knows no difference either of persons or sins. Bp. II.

36. The sacred writer, in furnishing us with particular relations contained in this book, always kept in mind the promise of the Messiah, and was desirous of showing that the expectation of this great object of the Jewish hopes was predominant in all times, and influenced the opinions and manners of every generation. The recollection of this will furnish the reason of many particulars mentioned in the book, which might otherwise appear extraordinary and exceptionable. It will, perhaps, serve to explain the conduct of Lot’s daughters ; the violent desire of Sarah for a son ; the solicitude of Isaac to remove the barrenness of Rebekah ; and the contention between the wives of Jacob. In conformity with this design also, Moses relates the jealousies between Ishmael and Isaac ; and between Esau and Jacob ; and many other minute and singular particulars, which an historian of his dignity would not have condescended to describe, but with a view to illustrate the general persuasion of and gradual preparation for the coming of the Messiah. Gray.

37. His name Moab.** This name is generally interpreted of the father. — 38. Ben-ammi, the son of my people. Both names justify the view that it was merely to preserve the family that the daughters of Lot made use of the above expedient. The generation which proceeded from this incestuous connection was certainly a bad one. The Moabites soon fell from the faith of God, and became idolaters, the people of Chemosh, and of Baal-peor (Num. 21: 29; 25: 1-3), and were enemies to the children of Abraham. And the Ammonites, who dwelt near to the Moabites, united with them in idolatry, and were also enemies to Israel. As both peoples made afterward a considerable figure in the Sacred History, the impartial inspired writer takes care to introduce an account of their origia. A. C.—These national stocks, thus morally tainted in their origin, were also morally perverse in their subsequent history. From a regard to their propinquity to them in blood and race, the children of Israel were obliged to spare them, and were not permitted either to conquer them or to force a passage through their country. They were never, however, incorporated with the people of God. They inhabited the mountains to the east of the Dead Sea,—the Ammonites further to the north than Moab,—and, consequently, were in an after age conterminous neighbors to the Israelites in the land of Canaan. It must not be forgotten that Ruth, who has a place in the genealogy of the Saviour, was a Moabitess. C. G. B.

For his drunkenness on two successive evenings, at least, Lot was responsible, if not for the incest to which it led. And the fact gives a painful insight into his moral state, even after experience which might have sobered any man. The conduct of his children out of Sodom is of a piece with what we know of their upbringing in Sodom. It is fair, indeed, to remember, that in that age, as the case of Abraham himself shows, the law of incest was not yet firmly defined; and the exceptional circumstances of their situation must count for something. Still, the circumstance that they despaired of winning their father’s consent when he was sober, is enough to show that they themselves felt their purpose to be, in spite of all excuses, an extremely doubtful one. Israel’s descent from the child of sacred promise and of obedient faith is made the more bright by contrast with the dismal origin of Israel’s kindred, the sons of Moab and of Ben-Ammi. Dykes.

And then we hear of him no more. He is left by the sacred narrative, saved indeed from the conflagration of Sodom, but an outcast, widowed, homeless, hopeless, without children or grandchildren, save the authors and the heirs of his shame. E. H. B.—It would seem as though this case were specially recorded as a caution against that uncharitableness of spirit that sometimes we find limiting our intercession for all the children of God. As we look at such and such an one that professes Jehovah—so worldly, so narrow, so selfish, so weak-headed as to be blown about by every popular breeze; so weak-hearted that our charity can hardly inclose him within the pale of the covenant at all—then we are to remember Abraham’s heroic intercession and this interposition of the Divine mercy, showing that, after all, Lot is one of Jehovah’s people, therefore shall he not perish with the wicked. This biography of Lot, brief and fragmentary as it is, is well worthy of our study, not only because it is a biography which the Spirit of God has thought it worth while to record for our instruction, but because of its intense significance as a warning to worldly-minded Christians. S. R.

Lot’s disregard of spiritual privileges brought upon him a bitter entail of sin and shame. There can be little doubt that Lot’s own religious character suffered from the long sojourn in Sodom. A man cannot voluntarily expose himself to the worst of influences, from the mere love of gain, without his religious sensibilities being deadened; and this only can account for the grievous termination to the history of Lot, which is among the most melancholy records in the Word of God. It is one of those cases which we must contemplate because it is there,—very terrible, and very necessary to be thought of; but we would wish to look at it as Abraham did at the ruin of Sodom, standing in the place where we have met God, and looking at it “a great way off.” There is a general consistency in the lives of men; and such a deplorable spiritual catastrophe could not well have happened to one who strove to maintain warm religious feeling, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. To Lot’s family the disregard of all religious associations was even worse. His wife caught the infection of the place, and became in love, deep and unholy, with its fashions. It may have been her influence which prevented Lot from leaving sooner, and, with all the urgency of doom behind, he could not carry her with him. The family of Lot mingled with the men of Sodom, and learned their ways. When the poor father, alarmed for his children’s safety, implored his sons-in-law—“Up, get you out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city,” “he seemed as one that mocked.” We can perceive, in this closing scene, how much Lot must have had to bear from those who were most nearly related to him. We know what sins followed the fall of Sodom, and what a salvation Lot still needed from the fearful pit and from the miry clay into which he was led. Of the remainder of his life we know nothing. Ker.—The edge of the moral which his example points lies in this, that to the last he continued to be a servant of Jehovah. He was not seduced by evil surroundings either into idolatry or into profligacy. The filthy deeds of his neighbors “vexed his righteous soul.” He must even have exasperated them by occasional, perhaps by habitual, remonstrances; else they could scarcely have cast it up to him at the last, that having come in as a foreigner, he had set himself up to be their judge. In spite of his faults, an apostle could still call him a “just” man; the “godly” one whom the Lord “knew how to deliver.” His very deliverance from a ruin so sweeping proved the exceptional pureness of his life. It is precisely this which makes his case so instructive. What warning can be more appalling against every unhallowed association which pious people can contract with ungodly comrades? What example could better illustrate the dangers which beset the path of those who “will be rich”? Literally, he was “saved as by fire;” “a firebrand plucked out of the burning” (Amos 4 : 11). Dykes.

Revolting Records of the Old Testament.

Old Testament history was written both to offer examples for imitation, and warnings against conduct to be avoided; thus affording lessons in the plan and method of God’s moral discipline of man, “profitable”—not only as models—but even more “for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”

Some reasons for the perpetuation, in the Book of God, for all time, and in all languages, and for all races of men, of the revolting records contained in Old Testament history.

1. To show the frightful capabilities of the human soul in the direction of moral evil. The biblical record as it stands, alone of all writings, presents without gloss, concealment or exaggeration, the complete and eternal truth concerning moral character. There is a popular idea about the patriarchs and the noted men of Old Testament history, which has no ground in the Bible itself, viz., that they were very holy men, patterns of all excellence; as examples, only second to the one great example of Christ himself. This idea is incorrect and harmful. Some of them the Bible does not represent as examples of any virtue at all. This is true of nearly all the twelve patriarchs. Men have canonized them; the Bible does not. But why should the divine record preserve and perpetuate these facts? Just for this reason, viz., that men everywhere and to the end of time may learn the gangrenous power of evil, and not shrink from the surgery of the Almighty but most merciful Father, when used for its removal from the soul, or from the human race. Let us suppose that all such records had been omitted from the biblical history. Men would say of the record, “These are unnatural characters. Human character now is formed under different conditions. Those men were without many of the temptations to which we are subject.” Men sometimes sink in discouragement when they hold before them the absolutely perfect example of Jesus only. They aspire toward that exaltation of character, but it is high and far away, till they read the record of the imperfect men who, notwithstanding, were saints of God in the ancient time.

Or suppose it were left for the human imagination to portray the moral character of men, and the moral conflicts of human life. Even with the light which the Bible sheds on the problem of moral evil, uninspired men have, with very few exceptions, drawn only caricatures of men, either for good or evil; and where the portrayal of moral character has verisimilitude, as in the writings of Shakespeare, the truthful sketching has resulted from the infiltration into literature of biblical ideas. Otherwise the patterns both of virtue and of vice are unnatural and false. Take uninspired historians. With very few exceptions the total moral impression of the characters and acts delineated is warped to actual falsity. What colossal prejudices; what distorted models; what bitter partisanship; what vivid cursing of the bad; what blind laudation of the good; what partial reading of motives is displayed on the historic page. But biblical history is written on a wholly different plan. Here character appears as it is. Balaam is painted no worse than he was. David is exhibited no better than he was. The low faults and follies of Samson are neither concealed nor extenuated. We are not told that while the races of Canaan were vile heathen, the children of Israel were very excellent people. Facts are told, and truth concerning character is the impression made. No reader can fail to see that races of men, that individual men, have appointed to them in this world a moral conflict with a gigantic presence and power of evil, which in its myriad forms is well-nigh omnipresent, and that victory is purchased only at the price of sleepless vigilance, of resisting unto blood, of enduring hardness as good soldiers, and that till life shall end. It is one of the fundamental conditions of any true moral uplifting of the human race, be it by human or by divine power, that men should know—what they dislike to know and what they very much desire to forget—that all sin, every form of evil, has a terrible power of reproduction and expansion. This is the first great, omnipresent fact that confronts us, in all thorough study of human experience or of human history. The permanent and repulsive bottom truth of moral character as experienced in human life, as seen in human history, demands the records of the Old Testament history, as they stand.

2. To show that the development of moral beings, or of a race of moral beings, in good is a long process, even for Omnipotence and infinite Love.

Infinite Power cannot shorten the process through which men must sweat and watch and fight for those moral ends which are the highest, for that life which is nearest the Son of God. Moral character is not a product resulting from the factors of infinite Power and finite being, but a product resulting from the factors of divine influence, instruction and discipline on the one hand, and the free play and exercise of finite mind and will, struggling,—almost blindly at the first,—toward light and liberty, on the other. The process is long; the progress slow; the halts are many; the wanderings are frequent; seeming and perhaps real retrogression are not wanting; but the goal is reached. “The mills of the gods grind slowly,” and forever, but they do grind their grist of moral grain; and the value and eternal duration of the product infinitely overbalance all the expenditure of time and precious resources in the long process.

3. The revolting narratives of Old Testament history give a most impressive lesson in the divine patience. The lesson in patience is one of the latest learned, also one of the most essential to perfect character. Old Testament history shows not only how wonderfully patient God has ever been with men in their moral training, but also, speaking after a human fashion yet without irreverence, that human sin has been a hard trial even for the infinite divine patience. The man whom God created in his own image, for freedom, holiness and light, enslaved himself to sin and turned away into darkness, at the very dawn of his life on the earth. The sin and wickedness of men grew and spread, in intensity and in the scope of its dominion, even faster than the rapid multiplication of mankind on the earth. Yet God bore with the men of the antediluvian world for a period equal to that from the days when the old Roman empire was in its glory to this day. Even after the announcement of the decision to destroy the guilty human race—and who can measure the degree of revulsion from the sin of men felt by infinite holiness?—the Lord waits a hundred and twenty years before bringing over the inhabited world the destroying flood! And when we follow the record of Old Testament history down through its earlier and its later stages, we ask, but we cannot answer, the question, How could infinite knowledge and holiness so bear with persistence in rebellion and in guilt?

We recoil from many things in the records of the Jewish people. What should we say, what should we feel and think, if the actual life, the unwritten history of races and tribes of men, much more morally corrupt than the Jews, were spread out before our own eyes as they ever are before the eye of the Omniscient? And yet for four thousand years the divine compassion waited, before sending the Saviour to become one of the human race, that He might redeem and save men. Is this indifference? Is it mystery? No! it is patience. And through all these thousands of years the divine patience has kept even pace with the divine love and wisdom, in working out the moral elevation of men. And now, in these latest generations, with all races of men so closely related and connected together as modern science and art have caused them to be—rather as God’s blessed purposes of mercy have caused them to be—is it enthusiasm, is it not rather a sober tracing of the indications which the Almighty finger points out, when we expect the near future to reveal to our eyes a much more rapid realization of what divine Love has been so long patiently working out for the salvation of men? The restored human character is to be moulded on that of God. And what one attribute of God is offered for human imitation more than his patience? The Apostle James fitly sets it as the very crown of character. “Perfect in patience is altogether perfect.” And certainly patience coupled with knowledge; patience which has its root in love and charity; patience which grows strong with exercise, both to bear and to do; patience which makes the soul more truly humble the longer it lives, and more intensely active also; patience which steadily but surely eliminates out of the character and the life all low aims and loves—all self-seeking, and leads other men to God while aspiring toward him,—this flower and mellow fruit of character is like the character of God. The element of the divine patience woven into the moral growth and upward progress of mankind is one of the most potential elements. And there is no record accessible to us which reveals in such clear light

the patience of God as the record of Old Testament history : and it is just the most revolting portions of this historic record which most impressively show and illustrate God’s patience in working out the slow process of man’s moral elevation.