ng's
daughter;" but before her mangled corpse could be collected, in the
general confusion, the dogs of the city had devoured all that remained
of her but the skull, the feet, and hands.

So perished the most infamous woman that ever wore a royal diadem, as
had been predicted. With her also perished the seventy sons of Ahab, all
indeed that survived of the royal house of Omri. And the work of
destruction did not end until the courtiers of the late king and all
connected with them, even the palace priests, were killed. Then followed
the massacre of the other priests of Baal, the destruction of the
idolatrous temples, and the restoration of the worship of Jehovah, not
only at Samaria, but at Jerusalem, for the revolution extended far and
wide on the death of Ahaziah as of Joram. Athaliah, the daughter of
Jezebel, who reigned over Judah, also perished in those
revolutionary times.

It is not to be supposed that the relentless and savage Jehu was
altogether moved by a zeal for Jehovah in these revolting slaughters. He
was an ambitious and successful rebel; but like all notable forces, he
may be regarded as an instrument of Providence, whose ways are
"mysterious," because men are not large enough and wise enough to trace
effects to their causes under His immutable laws. Jehu was a necessary
consequence of Ahab and Jezebel. Jehovah, as the national deity of the
Jews, was the natural and necessary rallying cry of the revolt against
Phoenician idolatry and foulness. The missionary sermons of those crude
days were preached with the sword and the strong arm. God's revelations
of himself and his purposes to man have always been through men, and by
His laws the medium always colors the light which it transmits. The
splendor of the noonday sun cannot shine clearly through rough,
imperfect glass; and so the conceptions of Deity and of the divine will,
as delivered by the prophets, in every case show the nature of the man
receiving and delivering the inspired message. And yet, through all the
turmoil of those times, and the startling contrast between the
conceptions presented by the "Jehovah" of Elijah and the "Father" of
Jesus, the one grand central truth which the seed of Abraham were chosen
to conserve stands out distinctly from first to last,--the unity and
purity of God. However obscured by human passions and interests, that
principle always retained a vital hold upon some--if only a
"remnant"--of the Hebrew race.

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