"adorning" not be like unhappy Jezebel's-the "outward plaiting of hair, or wearing of gold, or putting on apparel; but the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price?"-We will discuss but shortly the painful details of Jehu's farther massacres of the doomed family of Ahab, in the second chap'ter of to-day's lesson; which I made you read, to enable us to dismiss the subject altogether. But let us remark, that, however a knowledge of God's designs of vengeance might excuse Jehu's cruelty, the base treachery of the nobles of Israel, in cutting off the heads of seventy innocent children, who were intrusted to their care, to be brought up, admits of no palliation. Jehu might require the sacrifice from regard to God and His word, but they evidently complied from the abject "fear of man," and, like Judas, and all betrayers of innocent blood, it shall one day "be required at their hands." Whom did Jehu next exterminate, when he had made an end of the family of Ahab?

MARY. The brethren of Ahaziah, Mama; who were going down, fearing no danger, to see the poor princes whose heads were cut off.

MAMA. This seems hard, but they had no business there; or rather (to return to the root of all the evil), but for the sinful marriage which made

them cousins to Ahab, they would not have been involved in his destruction. What was Jehu's next act of wholesome severity? though nothing, not even his "zeal for the Lord," of which he was so proud, could excuse the treacherous lie by which he got all his intended victims into the snare?

MARY. Mama, he pretended he would worship Baal more than Ahab had done; and proclaimed a " solemn assembly" for him. That could never be right.

MAMA. No, my dear, it was very wrong. We know who is the "father of all lies," even of those which profess to have a good object; and God, who had enabled Jehu openly to annihilate two whole royal families, could not need the aid of a base stratagem to put idolatrous priests in his power. However, like many other bad actions of men, it was permitted, to serve God's purpose, in the total destruction of all the priests of Baal, and final abolition of his worship in Israel. But now comes the test of Jehu's sincerity in all this rage against idolatry. Did he with a perfect heart follow God, and God alone?

MARY. No, Mama; he unaccountably still worshipped the golden calves.

MAMA. Not unaccountably, my dear. In the first place, there is no relic of disobedience in

any

human heart which may not be fully and fatally "accounted for" by the depravity of our nature; and, in the next, Jehu and other tolerable kings of Israel adhered to this particular idolatry for a very simple political reason. If they had abolished it, the people must at once have gone up to worship at Jerusalem; the fear of which you know first made Jeroboam set his calves up at all. Man is a selfish as well as a sinful creature, and those sins where his interest is concerned will ever be the most difficult to shake off! How did God revenge this affront, though he graciously took notice of and rewarded the more praiseworthy parts of Jehu's conduct?

MARY. It says, "In those days the Lord began to cut Israel short; and Hazael smote them in all the coast of Israel."

and dreadful a manner.

MAMA. Yes; and you remember in how cruel This was no light punishment, and a fresh instance of God's raising up wicked men for scourges to each other.

This has been a sad history of bloodshed and retribution, my dear Mary; but if it makes us "stand in awe and sin not," we shall not have shuddered at it in vain! "Knowing" (as it has

made us do), "the terrors of the Lord," even in temporal visitations, shall they not "persuade " us to "flee from the wrath to come," and the hor

rors of that" second death," to which all the carnage and waste of life in this chapter are as a drop to the ocean, or as time compared to eternity?

186

MORNING TWENTY-FIRST.

LESSON.-2 Kings, Chapters xi. and xii.

MAMA. My dear Mary, I think we have to blush for, nay, to shudder over, such wicked female characters! No sooner have we seen Jezebel's monstrous wickedness receive its signal punishment, than a fiend in woman's shape, more unnatural still, arises to shock and appal us. What says the first verse of our chapter of Athaliah? was she?

Who

MARY. The daughter of Omri, king of Israel, and mother of Ahaziah, Mama; the same, you know, who gave him bad advice to his destruction.

MAMA. Well might she be an evil counsellor, Mary, when her own heart was so "desperately wicked!" What atrocity did this disgrace to womanhood commit, at a time when most mothers would have been bewailing the untimely death of their son?

MARY. She " arose and destroyed all the seedroyal."