"And Abraham got up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord: "And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace."--_Gen._ xix. 24, 25, 27, 28. [Illustration: THE PLAIN.] PHILOSOPHIZING ON THE DESTRUCTION OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH. There has been a great deal of philosophical speculation on the nature of the physical causes which were called into action in the destruction of these cities, and of the plain on which they stood. These speculations, however, are to be considered as ingenious and curious rather than useful, since they can not lead to any very tangible results. We can, in fact, know nothing positive of the phenomenon except what the sacred narrative records. And yet there is a certain propriety in making philosophical inquiries in respect to the nature even of miraculous effects, for we observe in respect to almost all of the miracles recorded in the Old Testament, that, though they transcend the power of nature, still, in character, they are always in a certain sense in harmony with it. Thus the plagues which were brought upon the Egyptians, in the time of Pharaoh, are the ordinary calamities to which the country was subject, following each other in a rapid and extraordinary succession, and developed in an aggravated and unusual form. The children of Israel, in their journeys through the desert, were fed miraculously on manna. There is a natural manna found in those regions as an ordinary production, from which undoubtedly the type and character of the miraculous supply were determined. The waters of the Red Sea were driven back at the time when the Israelites were to cross it, by the blowing of a strong east wind. The blowing of a wind has a natural tendency to drive back such waters, and to lay the shoals and shallows of a river bare. The effects produced in all these cases were far greater than the causes would naturally account for, but they were all, so to speak, in the same direction with the tendency of the causes. They transcended the ordinary course of nature; still, in character, they were in harmony with its laws. It is right and proper for us, therefore, where a miraculous effect is described, to look into the natural laws related to it, for the sake of observing whatever of analogy or conformity between the causes and effects may really appear.