Olympas. The sequel will make it plain that they were two angels and the Lord himself-not merely the Adonai, but the Yehovah of Abraham. They only assumed the human form, speech, and manners, and appeared to eat, and to be in all respects of the human race. The transfiguration on Mount Tabor, and the appearance of two men from heaven that were then present with the Lord, were not greatly unlike to the transfiguration of the Lord here and that of his attending spirits, who, with him, assumed the human form and tried Abraham's hospitality and Sarah's faith in the most discriminating style. But as we have not time to amplify on every incident here, I especially request your profound attention to the reason why the Lord divulged the secrets of his providence to Abraham at this crisis; for "the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him," as said king David of old.

Abraham, in true eastern politeness, accompanied his guests from his tent into the path that led them towards Sodom, whither, at that time, they were intent on going. Meanwhile, as the Lord conversed very intimately with Abraham while the two angels seemed to walk on before, he said to himself, "Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him for I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.”

Here is a volume in one sentence. Abraham is

a model of faith, of obedience, and is destined to be a model in family training and government; and because of these attributes he is to be, as in many other points, a great benefactor of nations. I know Abraham that he will "command his children." What, Thomas, think you, means the commanding of children and households?

Thomas. It would indicate the exercise of authority, tempered with wisdom and benevolence -attributes of which both God and man speak with approbation.

Olympas. To command a family is only another way of saying that it is subordinate to the parental government; and this, indeed, is a rarity in our land. Deinocracy is breathed into the infant's nostrils with the breath of life in the American atmosphere; and children soon learn to know that they, too, as well as their parents, have certain natural and inalienable rights and privileges from which they ought not to be debarred; amongst which are self-will, liberty to dissent from the commands of their parents, and the pursuit of pleasure any way and every they judge most fitting. Under this system there can be little or no moral culture. Abraham was to be monarch of his house: "I know Abraham that he will command his family and his household." He was to act the patriarch—the monarch father-and the result would be "They shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment.' This is the native consequence of such a system. I hope, therefore, we shall all do our duty, and that you, my dear children, will early learn to do justice and judg ment; for these imply every relative duty. We must leave the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham's intercession, till our next lesson.

CONVERSATION XX.

OLYMPAS having commanded the household to read the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters of Genesis, resumed the close of the eighteenth as follows:-"We have found one of the three guests of Abraham, under a very high title, communing with him on the immediate fate of Sodom. How is this revelation introduced?"

Reuben. "And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which is come unto me; and if not, I will know." This certainly would indicate that the Lord did not know all things, if we understand it literally as it reads. But I presume it is an accommodation of things supernatural to our usual modes of ascertaining facts.

Olympas. No more than when it is said,"Grieve not the Spirit"-"God repented that he had made man"-the Lord sees-the Lord remembers-the Lord hears, walks, rises, stands, &c. &c. These all are accommodations, and this is an Eastern periphrasis-a beautiful circumlocution, intimating that the Lord will impartially examine and adjudicate all the actions of men according to truth before he pronounces sentence. "The men then turned their faces from thence towards Sodom, and went on before the Lord."

Thomas. This would intimate to me that the

Lord's saying "I will go down and see," means not a descent from heaven, but from the place that he then occupied in communing with Abraham. Am I right?

Olympas. I almost fear to say you are right, and yet I dare not say that you are wrong; for all the Rabbies, Hebrew, and Greek, and English, down to Tillotson the Archbishop, A. Clarke, and all the moderns, speak of the Lord as descending from heaven. But this is one instance, that to follow the connexion and common sense is generally more natural and safe than to look afar off to hypothesis, analogy, or theory for light on difficult passages. The case is simply this: The Lord on earth was talking to Abraham on an eminence above the plain in which these four cities stood. To Abraham he says, "I will go down and examine the fame of Sodom, and ascertain its truth." The accompanying two angels left him and Abraham in converse, and departed as the Lord's messengers to examine the character of the inhabitants, as we shall see in the sequel. Meanwhile, Abraham stands in solemn attention to what Jehovah says; and waxing bold in his confidence, and full of compassion "he drew near" to the Lord and began his intercessions-the Lord and he standing upon the same piece of earth. He begins his intercession on the plea of fifty righteous being found in the city. And what numbers next, James?

James. Forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, ten. Olympas. Why did he not descend to five. Susan. He was ashamed, I think, to go below

ten.

Henry. Abraham asked six times, and I think

he ought to have been ashamed sooner, rather than to have asked any more.

Olympas. What seems to be the point, the main point in the intercessions of Abraham, Eliza?

Eliza. The confounding of the righteous with. the wicked. His plea was, "Wilt thou slay the righteous with the wicked?" This, Abraham thought, would be wrong; for he said, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

Olympas. So we still think; and the Lord thinks so too, and therefore he will "make a difference between him that serveth him and him that serveth him not." Observe that the Lord to whom Abraham spoke is here regarded by Abraham as the Judge of all the earth." After this long and wonderful intercession on the part of Abraham, in which it appears that Abraham became ashamed to ask, before the Lord refused to listen, we are told "the Lord went his way, and Abraham returned to his place." This intercession then, not only took place on earth, both the Lord and Abraham standing upon the soil; but the Lord walked on the earth in visible form as a man, and as the sequel shows, directed his course toward Sodom, whither the two other men-like celestials had gone before him. Do we again hear, Edward, of the former two angels?

Edward. I presume it is of these we read in the next chapter: "And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom, and seeing them rose up to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face to the ground."

Olympas. Doubtless you are right, Edward. These are the two; and a faithful day's journey it was, as it seems to me, to reach Sodom by sun