18 And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so my Lord! 19 Behold now, thy servant 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 e Acts 10. 14. mountainous region of Moab, several miles to the east of Sodom. escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die: 20 Behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh, let me escape thither! (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live. avails, and at the same time by the result to teach his short sighted servant how much wiser a part he would have acted had he confided in a child-like manner in God, and fled to the mountains in the first instance. For it is clear from the sequel, v. 30, that his terror would not suffer him to remain in the place he had chosen, but that he was soon glad to take refuge in the very mountains which he had foolishly declined to seek. This instance should fix firmly in our minds the conviction that we can never gain any thing by attempting to improve upon God's ap 18, 19. And Lot said unto them, &c. It must certainly be set down to the account of a weak and wavering faith in Lot that he now made this request to his divine deliverer. His duty evidently was to have yielded a simple obedience to the declared will of heaven. He should have known that what God dictated was best; that if he had commanded him to go to the mountains, he would certainly enable him to get there, and that he could as well protect him there as any where else. But he is filled with alarm in view of the dis-pointments. He will choose for us intance of the mountains, imagining that he will be unable to reach them in time to secure his safety, and therefore pleads hard for permission to flee to the neighbouring city of Zoar, and hopes he may be excused in this desire seeing it was a little one;' a reason the force of which probably lay in the implication, that as the city was small its sins were comparatively small, and on this account might be favoured with exemption from the coming calamity. The preferring of such a request in such circumstances we should no doubt suppose would have drawn forth some marked expression of the divine displeasure, and that with a frown the Lord would have repeated the former command. But with characteristic clemency he lends a gracious ear to his petition. His infirmity is not rebuked; his request was granted; the city was spared for his sake. In this God designed at once to show how much the fervent prayer of a righteous man finitely better than we can for ourselves. test the פן הרעה .Heb evil; i. e. the threatened He was apprehensive he 21 And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow this city, for the which thou hast spoken. f Job 42. 8, 9. Ps. 145. 19. 22 Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till. thou he come thither: therefore the name of the city was called Zoar. g ch. 32. 25, 26.. Ex. 32. 10. Deut. 9. 14. Mark 6. 5. h ch. 13. 10. & 14. 2. should not be able to reach the destin- come thither. The inability here mened place of safety till the fiery tempest tioned is of course wholly of the moral had burst forth. and not of the physical kind, si ilar in 20. Is it not a little one? Heb.its nature, though arising from an oppoMitzar in allusion to which the name site cause, to that affirmed of our Savof the city was afterwards called 'Zoar,' iour, Mark, 6. 5, 'He could there do no whereas before it was known by the mighty work,' by reason of the unbename of 'Bela,' Gen. 14. 2. Targ. lief of the people. He could not beJerus. It is little, and its sins are little.' cause he would not. There was a mor21. I have accepted thee. Heb. al unfitness between such a state of mind and such a display of power, so that he determined not to put it forth. But the expression in the present instance is very remarkable. What an evidence does it afford of the favour in which God holds a good man! What a testimony to the efficacy of his prayers and intercessions. The Most High is pleased to represent his hands as bound by his paramount regard to the welfare of such; he can do nothing towards the punishment of the wicked till their safety is secured. Had we not a divine warrant for the use of such language, it would doubtless be a high presumption in us to employ it, and when we find the Holy Spirit adopting it, we still pause in devout admiration mingled with a latent misgiving whether we are indeed to understand the words in their most obvious sense. But our doubts are precluded by adverting to numerous parallel instances in God's dealings with his people. On more than one occasion when he had determined to execute vengeance on Israel for their perverseness, the intercessions of Moses are represented as having been in effect, irresistible, so that the threatened judgment was averted. What an argu I have accepted thy face, or I have lifted up thy face; i. e. I have a compassionate respect to thee, and will gratify thee by granting this request. The expression probably arose from an Eastern custom. Persons there in preferring a petition, instead of falling upon their knees, often prostrate themselves with their face to the ground. When the petition is accepted, the prince or potentate commands them to be raised from their lowly posture, which is expressed by 'lifting up the face.' In common usage therefore, the phrase, is clearly synonymous with 'showing favour,' but it is sometimes taken in a bad sense, and prohibited as implying what is termed respect of persons,' or undue partialtiy, which is denied of God, Deut. 10. 17, and forbidden to men, Deut. 16. 19. Gr. εθαύμασα σου Tоν о I have admired thy face or thy person; parallel to which the Apostle, Jude, 16, says, 'having men's persons in admiration;' i. e. with sinister motives, because of advantage. Thus doth a gracious God, according to the words of the Psalmist, Ps. 145. 19, 'fulfil the desire of them that fear him; he also will hear their ery, and will save them.' 22. I cannot do any thing till thou be ment is this for our pressing earnestly 23 The sun was risen upon | brimstone and fire from the LORD the earth when Lot entered into out of heaven; Zoar. 24 Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah i Deut 29. 23. Is. 13. 19. Jer. 20. 16. & 50. 40. Ezek. 16. 49, 50. Hos. 11. 8. Amos 4. 11. Zeph. 2. 9. Luke 17. 29. 2 Pet. 2. 6. Jude 7. forward to the acquisition of the same character. If we are prompted at all by the noble ambition of becoming benefactors of our race, let us seek to form ourselves on the models proposed in the Scriptures, and thus by being made eminently acceptable to God become in the highest degree useful to the communities in which we live. 25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and *that which grew upon the ground. k ch. 14. 3. Ps. 107. 34. brings with it the means of escape. When the day breaks upon us it scatters peace, and joy, and safety in its smiles. Alas! how little do we know where danger lurks, and when the dream of happiness shall be broken! Sodom escapes the perils of the night to fall by unexpected vengeance in the morning! As the destruction was unexpected, it was the more terrible; and as it was sudden it admitted of no escape. The sons-in-law of Lot, who had mocked his admonitions, are rous tance by the hand of death. Let this consideration prepare us for a still greater event, in the solemnities of which we must all participate, and in reference to which our Saviour has taught us how we are to improve the narrative of the present awful scene, Luke 17. 28-30, did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone 23. The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. Rather, according to the Hebrew, 'The sun rose or went forth upon the earth, and Lot entered into Zoar.' The sun-lighted to a sense of their truth and imporof the last day which was ever to dawn upon ill-fated Sodom, had now appeared, and the inhabitants, unconscious, or rather incredulous of danger, gaze upon those early beams, which, as it respected them, were soon to be extinguished in eternal night. The opening of the day in its usual serenity probably confirm-'As it was in the days of Lot, they ed them in their insensibility to peril. The night for the most part is the season of alarm and danger. It was at night that the destroying angel passed through Egypt to slay the first-born-from heaven and destroyed them all: at night, that the sword of the Lord Even thus shall it be in the day when penetrated the camp of Assyria, and the Son of man is revealed.' destroyed a hundred and eighty-five 24. The Lord rained-brimstone and thousand men at night, that the shad-fire from the Lord out of heaven. Heb. ow of a hand wrote on the wall of Belshazzar's palace the departure of his that is, by a common idiom, ignited or kingdom and the close of his glories burning brimstone. Thus 1 Chron. and his life together. But the day has 22. 5, 'Of fame and of glory,' i. e. of ever been regarded as the season of se- glorious fame. Jer. 22. 3, ' Execute ye curity. The first ray of the morning judgment and righteousness,' i. e. righdispels the phantoms of the imagina- teous judgment. Jer. 29. 11, 'To give tion, and transfers us from scenes of an end and expectation,' i. e. an exfancied suffering to those of real enjoy-pected end. Acts, 14. 13, 'Brought ment. Light discovers actual peril and oxen and garlands,' i. e. oxen garland ; brimstone and fire גפרית bow. The mountains which enclose the Ghor, or valley of the Jordan, open considerably at the northern extremity of the lake, and, encompassing it on the east and west sides, approach again at the southern extremity, leaving between them only a narrow plain which, under the names of El Ghor and El Araba, is continued southward to the eastern gulf of the Red Sea. The dimensions of the lake are very variously stated. The account most usually followed is that of Josephus, which seems to make it 72 miles long by 18 broad; but it would appear that this must be taken as a large estimate, for many modern observers have been disposed to reduce it by one-third, or even one-half. It is probable that the dimensions of the lake have become more contracted than in former times; but nothing more determinate than ocular impressions has hitherto been offer ed, or having their heads adorned with fillets. As we are informed in a previous chapter that the vale of Siddim was full of bitumen pits, and the towns must have been situated on a mine, as it were, of that combustible matter, it does not perhaps detract from the supernatural character of the visitation to suppose that the Almighty saw fit to employ natural agencies in bringing it about. As then the phrase 'brimstone and fire' may with equal propriety be rendered 'burning brimstone;' and as sulphur is found in greater or less quantities in the neighbouring hills, it is conceivable that it may have been 'rained down from heaven' in consequence of being first thrown up by a volcanic eruption, of which there are striking indications at the present day pervading that whole region. But reserving this point for a fuller discussion in the sequel of the present note, it will be proper here to give a somewhat de-ed on this subject. The epithets 'Dead,' tailed account of that remarkable body of water which occupies the site of the devastated plain of Siddim. This, the reader is aware, is a heavy, sluggish, fetid, and unwholesome lake known by the various titles of the 'Salt Sea' (Numb. 34. 3. Deut. 3. 17. Josh. 15. 5); the Sea of the Plain' (Deut. 4. 39); and the 'East Sea' (Ezek. 47. 18. Joel, 2. 20,) from its situation relatively to Judea. By Josephus and other Greek writers it was called the 'Lake Asphaltites,' that is, the Bituminous Lake,' from the abundance of asphaltum or bitumen found in it and around it; while by the Arabs it is termed 'Bahar Loth' Sea of Lot, and by the Turks 'Ula Deguisi.' Its usual appellation among Europeans is the 'Dead Sea.' It is situated in the south of Palestine, and is of an irregular oblong figure, extending generally from north to south, but with a leaning of the northern portion eastward, which gives to the whole figure an appearance which has been compared to that of a and 'Salt,' which are applied to this great lake, may respectively form the points on which a short account of it may turn; the former denoting its general appearance, and the latter the quality of its waters. The name 'Dead Sea' is supposed to have been given to the lake in consequence of the desolate appearance of all things around, and the absence of animal and vegetable life; for the waters being intensely salt, and the soil around deeply impregnated with saline matter, no plants or trees will grow there, and the saturation of the air with saline particles and sulphureous and bituminous vapours is also unfavourable to vegetable life. It is a necessary consequence of this, that no wild animals resort thither for food or drink, nor are flocks or herds led to its shores. The absence of fish also in its waters prevents even the resort of those water-fowl whose presence gives some animation to lakes less peculiarly circumstanced; and, altogether, the general aspect of nature in this blighted region is dull, cheerless, ' phens says that almost at the moment and depressing. The unusual stillness of his turning from the Jordan to the of so large a body of water is quite in Dead Sea, notwithstanding the long unison with the general desolation, to credited accounts that no bird could which it not a little contributes. This fly over without dropping dead upon is doubtless owing in a great degree to its surface, he saw a flock of gulls the shelter of the mountains which en- floating quietly on its bosoin; and close it, and shut out the strong winds; when roused with a stone, they flew but part of the effect may perhaps be down the lake, skimming its surface attributed to the heaviness of the wa- until they had carried themselves out ter. 'It was nearly dark,' says Mr. of sight. As to the absence of fish, Stephens (Incid. of Trav., vol. 2. p. there is no good reason to doubt it. 212), 'when we reached the top of the We do not recollect that any European mountain, and I sat down for a motravellers discovered any, although ment to take a last look at the Dead some heard of fish from the natives; Sea. From this distance its aspect but we know how little reliance in fully justified its name. It was calm, general is to be placed on the remotionless, and seemingly dead; there ports of the Orientals on such subjects. was no wave or ripple on its surface, The few shells of fish, always unocnor was it hurrying on, like other wa-cupied, which have occasionally been ters, to pay its tribute to the ocean; the found on the shores by Maundrell and mountains around it were also dead; no other travellers, do not seem to afford trees or shrubs, not a blade of grass any satisfactory evidence on the subgrew on their naked sides; and, as inject. Mr. Madden remarks (Travels, the days of Moses, Brimstone and salt; it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth thereon." Where the waters occasionally overflow their usual limit, a saline crust is left upon the surface of the soil resembling hoarfrost, or snow. The lake, and the lake only, being at certain seasons covered with a dense mist which is dissipated by the rays of the sun, it came to be said that black and sulphureous exhalations, destructive to animal life, were constantly arising; and it was added, that these exhalations struck dead any birds that attempted to fly across. The rare appearance of birds in consequence of the saltness of the water and the absence of fish, probably occasioned this report, which is now known to be incorrect. It is not uncommon to see swallows dipping for the water necessary to build their nests. Maundrell saw several birds flying about, and skimming the surface without any visible harm. The same fact is attested by Volney; and Mr. Ste , vol. 2. p. 210), 'I found several fresh |