Editorial February 16, 1918 Issue

Value of Righteous Thinkers

William P. McKenzie

There is something dramatic in Abraham's endeavor to discover how far the saving influence of the righteous would be effective. Informed as to the impending destruction of the licentious cities of the plain, in one of which his nephew Lot then lived, he interceded with the divine messenger, having large hopes as to the number of righteous men that might be in these cities. His intercession is related with all the leisureliness of the oriental tale. "Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?" The answer to his question was that should there be in Sodom fifty righteous all the place would be spared for their sakes. Beginning to doubt his first vision of the possibilities, Abraham said, "Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous," and was again reassured. Next he made his proposal that there might only be forty, lessened it to thirty, then to twenty, and at last to ten, and the final reassurance was, "I will not destroy it for ten's sake."

Abraham evidently gave Lot credit for larger influence than he achieved. In the record given by Peter the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha are said to be in their overthrow "an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly," from which overthrow there was delivered "just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked: for that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds." Nevertheless he was so involved by domestic ties that he never thought of removing until under the urgency of the divine messengers it became not a question of removing but of escaping with his life.

If Lot had been able to teach but a small group to be righteous thinkers, for the sake of ten of them destruction might have been averted, but he was a maker of concessions and his evilly minded neighbors pressed in upon him, determined to dishonor even his angelic guests until they intervened and "smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door." When Abraham in the early morning viewed the plain, there was smoke as from a furnace where the cities had been, but though the cities were destroyed "God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow."

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