to utter selfishness. In her most atrocious acts she seems to have had
some regard to the aggrandizement of her family and to the gratification
of her husband. The daughter was more depraved than her mother. Athaliah
was utterly selfish, devoid even of the instinct of natural affection. A
character more revolting is not presented to us in the pages of the
historian, sacred or profane.

A woman rioting in blood that she might gratify her ambition! A mother
destroying her offspring that she might possess their inheritance!
Jezebel was a depraved woman, but Athaliah was a monster--a woman
destitute of all the feelings of humanity, working all evil, and only
evil, from the mere love of self. With selfish desires which absorbed
all consideration, and in their intensity prompted to unnatural crimes,
having no object in view beyond her personal gratification or
aggrandizement, there was not even the extenuation to be offered for
Athaliah which could be urged for Jezebel; for the policy of Judea was
opposed to idolatry, and in the family of Jehoshaphat she was surrounded
by influences most favourable to a virtuous course, and influences which
had never rested upon her mother. Under the very shadow of the Temple
she perpetrated her most flagrant crimes.

Although the depravity of Jezebel led her to adopt a corrupt religion,
to reject a pure and holy worship, and to cling to the dark and cruel
rites of heathenism, the voice of conscience was not silenced, the light
of the soul was not entirely extinguished. She felt the need of some
faith--she clung to the altars of her gods. But Athaliah seems to have
sunk into the brutishness of those who own "no God." She seems to have
trampled upon all faith, as she violated all obligation--insensible
alike to the calls of conscience and the aspirations of devotion. She
had no womanly sympathies. She had high mental endowments--she had a