become a by-word, and in a city which has given a name to
the vilest of unnatural crimes. Lot, his wife, and their two unmarried
daughters, were the only persons preserved from the terrible fate which
Jehovah, in one of his periodic fits of anger, inflicted upon the famous
Cities of the Plain. They witnessed a signal instance of his ancient
method of dealing with his disobedient children. In the New Testament,
God promises the wicked and the unbelievers everlasting fire after they
are dead; in the Old Testament, he drowns them or burns them up in this
world. Lot and his family saw the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by
"brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven"; and they, four persons
in all, just half the number that survived the Flood a few centuries
before, were the only ones that escaped. God specially spared them. Yet
Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt for looking back as she fled
from the doomed city, and the old man himself soon after got drunk and
committed incest with his daughters. From this crime sprang Moab and
Ammon, the founders of two nations who became for many centuries the
most implacable enemies of God's chosen people.

Why did the Lord spare these four persons? Why did he not profit by the
lesson of the Flood? The eight persons rescued from drowning in that
great catastrophe were infected with original sin, and the consequence
was that the world peopled from their stock was a great deal worse than
the ante-diluvian world. It would clearly have been better to destroy
all and start absolutely afresh. The eight rescued persons were
apparently just as bad as those who were drowned. So with the four
persons spared at the destruction of Sodom. The people of that city
could hardly have been much worse than Lot and his children. The Lord
appears to have been as stupid in his mercy as he was brutal in his
wrath.

Lot was Abraham's nephew, and evidently came of a bad stock. The uncle's
evil career will be sketched in our series of "Bible Heroes." For
the present we content ourselves with the remark that no good could
reasonably be expected from such a family. Lot's father was Haran, a son
of Terah, and brother to Abraham.

He "died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of
the Chaldees." A city was called by his name in the land of Canaan, and
Terah and the family dwelt there after they left Ur, until the patriarch
died and Abraham was called out from his kindred to foun