warrant us to observe, that wicked education very rarely fails to be successful.

The house and family were quite secure; but the two visitants were not come to take or give repose. They declared their commission and purpose; and that one thing only was first to be done; Lot must go to his sons-in-law (and their families), and warn them instantly to quit the city. He did so in vain! No wonder the sons-in-law should despise his warning; but their wives, his daughters, were of the same mind. They by this time, probably, had lost his God; and therefore he must lose them. It would be with a sad adieu that he left the house of each. He returned to receive the peremptory command to take his own family and instantly be gone. The angels had calmly waited while he had gone to do his part; now they were to do theirs. The morning was beginning to appear.

"He lingered;" whether from some degree of unbelief; or from being confused and stupified 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." Such a situation displays the contrast between the "immortals" and the feeble spirits clothed in flesh;—on the part of the former the serenity,-the entireness of determination,—the fulness of might and will for the most tremendous agency,— and yet the indulgent kindness. The angels led them out of the devoted city. "Escape for thy life; look not behind thee; flee to the mountain, neither tarry thou in all the plain." All this might well be named visible providence. It was the protection of the Almighty, and the guardian cares 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,

and cares no less patient and kind, 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!

Lot was departing; and it is strange he should not have been willing to remove as far as possible from such a scene as this devoted place was going to be. But he ventured to entreat he might make his asylum in Zoar, implying in the petition that it might for that purpose be spared. This does look like weakness actually becoming presumption, but the wonderfully indulgent reply was, "See, I have accepted thee in this thing also;" and with the addition, "I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither." But the command to hasten forward is finally repeated with a most peremptory urgency. It was but for his sake, it had been signified, that the catastrophe was delayed; and not for his sake would it be delayed long. The divine vengeance was suspended a little while for the piety and the necessity of a favoured mortal; but it was not to be suspended for his trifling or unbelief. The last moments of Sodom were measuring out by the steps of the fugitives across the plain. During these moments and this flight, the thoughts of Lot would work in unspeakable amazement. Only a few short hours before, he was sitting at the gate and two men approached, who were invited into his house;—an outrage was committed, and then they were angels! A few minutes more, and he was commanded away, with the declaration of a direful immediate doom impending over all the region. The last impression of their visages, their hands, and their voices, was still on his senses; and he was now impelled on by the dreadful apprehension of hearing or seeing some tremendous sign of commencing destruction.

It is quite possible, that in such amazement of spirit he might not even be sensible of the fate of his wife, till he

found her wanting at the entrance of Zoar; especially as he did not look back, and she was in the disposition rather to fall behind his steps than to advance before or beside him. For we cannot doubt, that it was her mind that looked back, as well as her eyes. Though very possibly, the mere literal disobedience to the injunction would have been fatal. But to lose her so, perhaps much more than midway to the place of refuge, was most mournful. What an admonition to the relatives of a pious person, to go the whole way with him to the eternal refuge!

The reduced family entered Zoar and the sun had risen on the earth. But the two men who had come to Sodom were left there to await this destined moment; to witness, in inaction and contemplation how a wicked multitude began a day of which they were not to see the evening. But could nothing beguile or tempt them away, before the moment for action should arrive! And will nothing be done to send them away? One word from their great Master, and they would have fled like the shades of the night! And shall not one word be sent up to him to implore it? Not one word for this, after the cry of their wickedness had so long ascended to heaven?

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repented" over Nineveh when it listened to the warning voice. But here all was over! And "the Lord rained fire and brimstone;" and "an horrible tempest!"

What was the precise manner of this fearful catastrophe is beyond our conjecture. From the consequence, as remaining to this hour, it would seem that an earthquake either accompanied or followed; but "the fire from heaven" is decidedly indicated as the grand chief agent of the destruction. What descent of fire, however, and how such an effect on the earth, none can tell. But we repel that philosophizing spirit, as it would be called, which insists on resolving all the extraordinary phenomena, recorded in the

VOL. I.

Old Testament into the effect of merely natural causes as they are called. Nothing can be more contemptible than such presumption of philosophy; just as if the order of nature had been constituted by some other and greater Being, and entrusted to the Almighty to be administered, under an obligation, never to suspend for a moment, the fixed laws! Just as if it could not consist with infinite Wisdom to order a system so that in particular cases a greater advantage should arise from a momentary deviation than from an invariable procedure!

The people of Sodom had no time for speculations; there was but just time for terror, and conscience, and despair! The images of that hour of destruction we leave to contemplative thought. And only add in conclusion,-that 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!

June 19th, 1822.

LECTURE XII.

ON SOBER-MINDEDNESS.

TITUS ii. 6.

Young men likewise exhort to be sober-minded."

Ir is plain that the exhortation was meant expressly for young men, but when we take the precept in the most general sense which the word in our version ("soberminded") allows,—it may be presumed that young persons of the other sex will consider themselves as quite within the scope of such counsel. We would, therefore, address the exhortation to young persons generally.

But, "sober-minded!"-methinks this, at the first sound, is likely to be one of the least pleasing words in the whole language, to many young persons. To them it will seem as if such a word could come only from old, time-worn people, whose feelings are dried up into a kind of cold, stiffened prudence, which they wish to have reputed as wisdom; persons who, having suffered the extinction of all vivacity in themselves, envy the young for possessing what they have lost.

The word may have suggested ideas of something heavy, spiritless, formal, and calculating; almost mechanical in all pursuits and interests; the image of a person narrow in his notions, plodding in his operations, placed wholly out of sympathy with every thing partaking of ardour, sensibility, adventure, or enthusiasm; and at the same time taking to himself great merit for all this. (Just such a one I have before my mind.-Mr. K. "Nonsense, your mental energy!")