The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-11-12

 have gone from bad to worse. if at first about its courts the presence had been permitted of hangers on who sought to pick up precarious liveli- hood by liking things" whenever they found a possible and profitable chance; or if the bar of Sodom had continued to tolerate the lowest class of criminal law yera who swagger as demi-gods before the rabble while they practice lying tricks and a foul and swollen rhetoric. Moreover. if beside such things 1t had ever occurred to the rulers of Sodom to put the judiciary of the land at the mercy of any passing whim of popular election. or to subject even q good rec ord of just administration to the indig- nity of a party caucus in some back room, then-the foundations of the ju- dicial system being thus laid In the shifting sands of faction and favor,-it is easy to see how under such circum- stances, in the course of time, Sodom might have become an uncomfortable place of legal residence even for so harmless a citizen as time-serving, in- offensive Lot.
 Besides primitive forms of law, ,Sodom possessed, doubtless. some arts of heal ing and religion. But some medical crimes of modern cities were probably unknown even in Sodom. We are not informed whether there were pulpits in that city, but, if there were, the preach CTS no doubt in the latter days were careful always to preach religion, and never committed the indiscretion of meddhng with the politics of Sodom. As the printing press was not invented, the increasing number of healthy souls in Sodom were not vexed by seeing a cheap, immoral literature exposed for sale, or hearing 1t cried every Saturday on the streets.
 While the Bible is silent concerning many particulars which we should like to know relative to the civic and social institutions of Sodom. 1t presents vivid flashlight picture of street scene in the city just before it's destruction. The young men appear to have had everything their own way before Lots door, Even the angels seem to have lost their patience in view of what they saw and heard. Who those young men were the biblical narrative does not state Some of them may have been boys of the town to whom indulgent parents had been in the habit of giving night keys. Others of them may have been young gentlemen from some school of learning in the city. The Bible sur prises us by stating that there were also some old men, who ought to have been at home, out that night with the lustful and riotous crowd. The narra- tive speaks of men both old and young from every quarter of the city as hav- ing part in conduct to disgraceful to be described. It is not stated that there had been any extra excitement, such as a popular show or a ball game, to call the populace of Sodom out on the streets that riotous night. It seems to have been the ordinary lustful habit of the people. I do not know why the Bible, emitting so many other particu- lars, should have singled out this scene of midnight abandonment, unless it be to show about where the hand of the Lord himself began to draw the line between a Sodom to be tolerated in his mercy and the Sodom to be burned in His judgment.
 As another probable cause of the de- cline of the city might be mentioned the pre-occupation with their own af- fairs of many of the more respectable citizens of Sodom. It would be unchar- itable, and contrary to known human nature in the cities to suppose that | lao iv, had all been bad, or that the women had all belonged to some frivolous set. Undoubtedly there had been some shell tered homes, and perhaps not a few benevolently indifferent citizens in Sodom. But such men, whether they were many or at last but few. never could save a city. They did not count in any appreciable degree against the powers which were hurrying the city to its destiny. They did not succeed in Sodom, with their comfortable good ness, in saving even themselves and their own homes, when at last the birthstone of the Lord fell. The angels who had as much as they could do in getting Lot and his family out, seem to have forgotten entirely any such in-2 differently good citizens. These care- less citizens, if any such there were, were left to perish with all the rest we cannot blame the angels for that.
 In order that the merry city of the fertile plain should become the biblical sodom, it is not necessary, indeed, to suppose that 1t never had respectable men in it or that every man had be- come hopelessly corrupt. For if of the first ten men whom one might have met in Sodom, the first five only were ras- calls and the other five were moral towards ds-that would have been enough to bring to pass the eventful catastro- phe. If out of the next ten men in sodom five had been doing some busi- ness hurtful to good morals and the other five had business connections with some of the first five, so that they could say nothing about it, although they saw the first five prospering that of itself would have been trouble enough with the civilization of that land to render it's future very doubtful. The business of the bad, loaded upon the business of the better class. tended to make the whole civilization topple over. And very likely also. as things went on, the business in particular of supplying all Sodom with wines and H. uuors fel1 into so many hands, and the profits of 1t. were so diminished. espe- cially in some hard year of scanty vint-
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