desolation of Judah, the line of
hereditary descent was unbroken. The root remained, and some scion
worthy of the stock sprang from it.

When Athaliah was ingrafted on the stock of royal Judah, she so debased
it, that it seemed needful to purify it by cutting off all the branches
to the very root. Yet one was saved. And, as if to display his own power
and grace, God is at times pleased to select from the families the most
apostate and unholy, the instrument of his work and the trophy of his
grace. So he made the daughter of Athaliah the nurse and the
instructress of him who was to reform the kingdom of Judah.
Jehoshabeath, wife of the high-priest of the Lord, seems to have escaped
the character and the doom of her family. Her's was a task most
difficult. She was called to oppose the depravity of her mother and to
thwart her bloody policy, and yet not to appear as her accuser and as
hastening the execution of the Divine vengeance. Hard is it to the
virtuous child to reprobate the character and course of the unholy
parent, and yet preserve the reverence due to the relation. Jehoshabeath
appears before us in a light which leaves a most favourable impression.
The saviour of the infant heir of Judah, the son of her brother, she
cherished, instructed and guarded him. At the proper time the
high-priest communicated the secret of the existence of the child to the
princes of the land, and the son of Ahaziah was proclaimed king. No
assault was made upon Athaliah. She rushed, like others of her family,
upon her doom, as if she were infatuated. The tumult of the people, the
triumphant strains of sacred and martial music, the clashing of the
shields of the soldiers as they bore their king aloft, brought the first
tidings of the existence of the last of her race to Athaliah.

The daughter of Jezebel was not easily daunted. Her courage rose in the
hour of danger. She had purchased the throne at a price too great
readily to relinquish the possession of it. She forced her way through
the crowds who surrounded the Temple, and through the bands of soldiers
who guarded the young king, until she confronted the child whose brow
already bore the crown of Judah--a heavy weight for the infant king. In
vain she rent her royal robes, and in vain she cried, "Treason!
Treason!" None adhered to her--none followed her--none perished with
her. She died by the sword,

"And left a name to other times
Link'd with no virtue, but a thousand