tbe company in which they were found), in indiscriminate slaughter, but himselr, the King of Judah, hidden-hidden in Samaria, searched for, caught, taken. He with bis mother has been run to earta in a double sense, hounded to his miserable earthly end, his bones being honoured with decent burial only out of reverence for his good grand- father Jehoshaphat. The humiliating epitaph, however, on his grave was to this effect "'l'be house of Abaziah had no power to keep still the kingdom I" Once more th~ enraged mother of the son whom she more than any OM else had driven into his sin and his grave, plots the slaughter of the entire royal seed of David; but ln vain. A f~ithful promis?, a ~ure co':enant, an u~alterable p1;1rpose, prev?nts the thing I The 1nster of the kmg Just buned was marned to Jeho1ada the priest, and she was the appointed preserver of the royal line, in the providence of God. She saves one, an fofant, her nephew, and with her husband hides him for six years where alone so many others have taken refuge, and been safely hidden till the stormy wind and tempest have been overpast-" in the house of God." The usurping and iniquitous Athaliab daughter of Ahab, wife of Jehoram once, and once mother of Ahaziah, an orphan,~ widow, and without a son, unloving and unloved, neither fearing God nor regarding man, reigns awhile, but does not rule! God rules the people, rides the storm, keeps the sleep, the infancy, the childhood, of his anointed; inspires his true priest, Jehoiada with wisdom. patience, determination, and religious courage. The royal line of Judah is not cut off in its sixth king, and, when to the most of human knowledge it seemed so, that six years' interval may well have served as a needed pause in the life of the kingdom and of its chief men. "The Word of the Lord" was no doubt "precious in those days," but it was not lost, and there was a faithful priest. The silences of nations and oft of our own individual life, the silences of Scripture and of the inscrutable God himself, all have meaning, all bear the mark of design and long-suffering providence, and if improved instead of neglected, sinned against, and defied, may be rich with future blessings.
HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. V ers. 1-4.-.A pitiable prince ; or, an unfortunate child of Jortune. The thorough pitiableness of one born to a high estate is the lesson of the text; but we must wait to learn- I. TIIAT MEN SUFFER AS THEY BIN. It appears that Ahaziah was the only son left to the house of Jehoram; all the eldest had been slain by the invaders (ver. 1). Thus we find that the man who with shameful selfishness murdered his own brothers, bad to suffer the loss, by violence, of his own sons. It was a fitting penalty-fitting that he who used the sword remorselessly should suffer from the sword; fitting that the man whose darkest crime was committed "under his own roof" should bear his penalty in his own kindred. We do 1:-ot, of course, invariably find such " poetic justice" dealt in the providence of God; but we do find that men not only suffer because they sin, but they suffer as they sin. If they sin as husbands or fathers, they suffer as such ; if they sin as sons, they suffer through their children; if they sin in the flesh, they suffer in the flesh; or if they sin in the spirit, they suffer in the spirit. There is a close, a plain, a righteous correspondence between guilt and penalty. JI. THAT PARENTAGE GOES A VERY LONG WAY TO ACCOUNT FOR HUMAN CHARA0TER A1''D FOB THE CABEEBB OF MEN. Ahaziah was the grandson on his mother's side, of .Abab and of Jezebel What may he not have inherited from them? He was the son of Athiliah. And, apart from the consideration of heredity, what evil did he not drink in from the counsels of that wicked woman? She was "his counsellor to do wickedly" (ver. 3). 1. We may well bless God for all the good we and others have derived from godly parents, especially from a holy mother, from the "counsels" received at "the mother's knee." The blessing thus conferred upon the world is quite inestimable. 2. Those who are parents may well realize the sacred burden of responsibility which rests upon them ; for it rests with them, very largely indeed, to determine what their sons and daughters shall be-whether a blessing or a bane to the world. 3. We do well to try and elevate those who are, or will be, the mothers of the future. There is no worthier Christian enterprise than the Zenana Mission, in which the aim is to reach 11.D<l. to raise the women who will be "the counsellors" of the men and women of thu dB. xxu. 1-12.] THE SECOND BOOK OF THE CIIRONICLES. 255