promote his designs and to embrace the policy which had guided the court
of Israel, she soon assumed and ever maintained that influence which the
stronger mind, the more powerful will, ever exerts over the inferior and
weaker. Through all his reign, Ahab ever deferred to her; and while she
goaded him onward in his career of crime, she stimulated and upheld him
by her daring defiance of the commands and threatenings of the prophets
of the Lord. She possessed all the energy, power, and constancy which
ever belongs to minds of a high order, and which fit them for greatness
in virtue or crime--insuring widespread usefulness or leading to
desperate wickedness. She never was turned from her course. She never
faltered, trembled, or hesitated in the pursuit of her object. She
witnessed, unawed and unmoved, miracles of judgment and of mercy. She
saw unpitying a land consumed by drought and a people perishing by
famine; and when the parched earth drank the showers of heaven, while
she rejoiced, she was neither softened nor made penitent by the
blessing.

Ahab could not entirely divest himself of every national characteristic,
or the remembrances and associations of his faith and his people. There
still clung to him some remains of the fear of the "Lord God of his
fathers," some feelings of reverence and awe for the name and worship
of Jehovah. No such compunctions troubled Jezebel. When Elijah visited
Ahab, the impious monarch quailed before him and trembled at the
denunciation of Divine wrath. Jezebel answered his reproofs by scorn and
threats, and her menaces drove the prophet from the altar where he had
triumphed.

Yet her history is replete with sad interest. While it declares the
certain ruin which follows national sins and national corruption, it
displays also much of the wonderful forbearance of Jehovah. As we