The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-02-18


 Into your home; you cannot keep 1t out.
 What Birmingham is that will your home 1 be; what Birmingham people are that | will your children be. You cannot live
 in sodom and keep yourself and your
 home free from its vice. Whatever you
 vote to be the life of your town will
 sooner or later be the life in your home.
 The leaven which is in the lump will l leaven every part of that lump.
 When you vote to set the tone of the 1 life of the community you are voting to set the life of yourself and your wife and children. So that terrible night the com | missioners have no need to go on the l streets to find out what sort of city | Sodom was, for Sodom knocked at the door of Lot that night to reveal itself to 1 them. They determine at once that the 1 city deserved destruction and so warned 1 Lot to flee to the hills and the next day l there came the overthrow of the wicked cities. Abram the righteous, is preserved and made a blessing to the earth; Lot and Sodom are taken away from cor ruptng the world.
 Lessons Painted in Picture.
 Now these things which were written aforetime were written for our learning, and there are lessons painted into these pictures. Thousands of old cities have been destroyed by visitations like this, but their taking away has not been pre- served to us. All over the east are the mounds of ancient cities which have per ished with tragedies more terrible than that of Sodom and Gomorrah, but their story constained no lessons for life and were not preserved. 1 see no value in this narrative as a piece of history; but as an exposition of God and His attitude tp men and cities 1t is of the greatest value. Let us learn some things 1t teaches
 It teaches that sin in society Is wrong against the persons who compose 1t or must live their lives in it in the future, and so rises to God as a complaint call ing for redress. We punish the person who commits d crime against society, but not the society which commits crime on the persons who compose H. And yet the life of the community mas more power for better or for worse on it's constituents than the constituent on the community.
 Birmingham, by approving gambling, makes more gamblers than any gambler i in our city. What you people of this city think about vice Is tenfold more potent i in the suppression of vice than the pun ishments which are doled out to the poor devils in your police courts. Sodom made Sodomite of every one who came under i her influence; and committed a crime on l everybody who came within her walls l The God of the universe hears the cry which goes up to Him from the ground, i from the city and comes to avenge the wrong which a wicked society does to i His universe. It is a serious matter to l have city of sinners in the world l The perpetuation of the life of a city or a society in the history of the world l is dependent upon its value for the l conservation of moral and social virtue of society. No one has a right to live l and poison the stream of human life. The soul that sinneth 1t shall die is law or social sanitation necessary to the preser- vation of the heritage of generations yet unborn. There is no excuse for continu- ing your life if it has ceased to conserve | the life process of the world. Sodom must end for the good of humanity; but Abram shall become the progenitor Of nations, for in him shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.
 Verdict of Commission.
 This is the verdict of the divine com mission which came from the courts of Heaven to examine into the situation Of earth in the days of old and I cannot know that the law has been changed since then. Let us make our city deserve to live and grow, for that is the best way to preserve it's growth and its pros perity.
 Just before the late war there existed in the slave portions of the south civil ization which, while gilded over with wealth, was rotten to the core in morals. Young men, sons of rich planters, caroused and debauched themselves; un- l till God wiped that debaslng regime from
 the face of the earth for the conservation l of the virtue of the south. If you have 1 ceased to be positive force for good, you have lost your right to live. And God sometimes does some work of social san itation by removing the vicious from the stream of human life So he who tamp- CTS with the morality of his city meddles with its right to live. Remember that when you go to vote
 World VitaIIy Related.
 The world Is vltally and organically re- lated in all Its parts, and the process of life Is linked by tie mysterious with
 the process of matter Geology Is the handmaid of history, and becomes it's scavenger on the plain of the Jordan. The physical is for the psychical, and the psychical for the physical Man and nature are linked together in the world process, and a mutual adaptation of one to the other Is to be observed in all their l history. This relation has always been observed far back as we can trace the thought of man; and has been attrib- uted by him to the common creator and preserver. The Allwise One has through 1 the ages been interfering with man in his own life and through that of his habitat l There is a care for goodness to be seen fin all the changes of the ongoing world
 removing the worse to make room for the better. This IS the hand of God who mal1eth all things to work together for good. that the world be not Sodomized. It is therefore the plain conclusion that he who would make his life count for good must give heed to correlate 1t with the good of his own time. This Is re- l ligion which Lot ignored but Abram re- 1 garded. Except as life conserves the good it has no right to prosper either in things temporal or spiritual When Lot pitched his tent as far as Sodom, and then discarded 1t for house in that city of vice. he not only threw his fate into the face of God, but of nature. If you want to prosper in things temporal 1t must be by regarding things eternal.