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paid no kind of attention to the warning. He was obliged to leave them to their fate,-to perish with the wicked people around them.

When the morning light began to appear, the angels (for such they really were, though in human form,) hastened Lot, urging him immediately to depart. "Arise," said they, "take thy wife, and thy two daughters which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city."

"And while he lingered, 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." And one of them said; "Escape for thy life, look not behind thee, neither stay thou in the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed."

Lot felt as if it was a great distance to the mountain, and that before he could reach it, some terrible disaster might overtake him and his wife and daughters. He entreated that he might be permitted to find a place of safety in a small city which was near at hand. His request was granted, and the city was to be spared on his account.

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Still the angel urged him to make despatch. "Haste thee, escape thither: for I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither."

Lot did so, and entered the city, which was afterwards called Zoar, just as the sun had risen. His daughters were with him. What happened to his wife, we shall soon

see.

It was a great mercy that Lot was thus hurried out of Sodom, in time to escape the awful destruction that was to overtake it and its miserable inhabitants. Left to himself he might have lingered and lingered till it was too late.

God, my dear reader, would draw you from the awful destruction that he has declared must, at last, come upon all the wicked who do not repent and trust in Jesus Christ. He urges you to escape for your life; to give up your love of sin, and to abandon it. He tells you what you must do, to flee from the danger. He leads you to think of your duty, and to feel that you ought to do it. He strives with you thus, by his Holy Spirit, to draw you away from sin, and to save you from its deserved punishment. He promises to aid and strengthen

you in struggling to escape, and to flee to Christ for safety.

Delay not. Linger not. Lot's lingering came near to overwhelming him in destruction. Your lingering may bring a still more dreadful destruction upon you.

STORY XVI.

DESTRUCTION OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH.

WHILE escaping from Sodom, Lot's wife either forgot, or disregarded, the injunction of the angel, and looked back upon the city which they had left. Her affections still clung to it. She could not entirely give it up. She thought, with regret, of her late home and acquaintance there, and longed to return. She could not put her trust in God, and obey implicitly what had been enjoined upon her. Her looking back was nothing in itself; but it showed what her feelings were. It showed that she loved this world more than she loved God; and in his awful justice,

he inflicted a most striking punishment upon her.

She was instantly struck dead, and became a pillar of salt. There she stood lifeless, and statue-like, a monument of her own folly and disobedience, and of the displeasure of God against her.

As soon as Lot had entered Zoar, the terrible work of destruction began.

"Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah, brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground."

What an awful exhibition of the abhorrence with which God regarded the great wickedness of the people who dwelt there! How they must have been seized with surprise and terror, as the storm of divine vengeance began to pour down upon them; overwhelming them, in sudden and unavoidable ruin! Nothing escaped. Men, women, and children;-their bouses and what was in them; their animals of every description; the very trees, and plants, and all that the ground produced,-were burned up in this vast conflagration!

Abraham rose early in the morning, anxious to know the fate of those for whose pardon he had pleaded so earnestly with God. He hoped that ten righteous persons might have been found, and his prayers answered. But what was his surprise and awe! "He 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." He could see no houses nor people; no flocks of sheep and goats; no herds of cattle;-nothing over that wide plain which had lately looked so beautiful and flourishing, but one vast cloud of smoke, rising from the scene of desolation in awful grandeur to heaven.

He had known the excessive wickedness of the inhabitants; and he now saw the tremendous displeasure of God in their destruction. What affecting thoughts of his power and justice, must have passed through the mind of the venerable patriarch! What a holy fear of offending such a Being, must have taken possession of his soul! The scene would never be forgotten, nor the solemn instruction it was adapted to impart. The plain where these cities once stood, is

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