The Adventures of Lot, the Nephew of Abraham, page 1 by William Andrus Alcott
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ashington and Franklin, and other comparatively great and good men, lived at the time when the events recorded in the Bible took place; and had the inspired penmen found it necessary to mention their characters as particularly as they have those of Moses, and David, and Peter, do you thing they would be found faultless? Oh no; far, very far from it.
The truth is, then, that the Holy Spirit has caused the lives of the good men of old to be recorded just as they were. And, to my mind, the circumstance that we find their bad content mentioned, as well as their good, is one of the strongest proofs that the Bible was written under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Were it not so, we should either find the historians frequently excusing, or trying to excuse, the faults of their Bible heroes, or else keeping them whilly out of sight, as profane historians do the faults of their heroes. But this they have not done. You cannot find, from Josephus, or any other ancient historian, that a single fault of any of the good men mentioned in the Old and New Testaments, was covered or concealed by the authors of those books.
No, the writers of the books of both the Old and New Testaments, were simple, honest men; and have recorded, in the fear of God, and under his eye, or his direction rather, the FACTS just as they were. They have given us light and shade, virtue and vice; and without apology.
I should not have said so much on this point, had I not known that many young people object to the character of some of those whom the Bible represents as good men, and seem to revolt at the idea of studying their biography. Now it seems to me this feeling is a wrong one. These things are truly written "for our admonition." Even the history of the worldly-minded Lot, whom we can hardly consider as one of the best of the good men mentioned in the Bible, is highly instructive.
If you doubt the assertion I have just made, then be persuaded to read the following sketches of Lot's character, especially while he dwelt