unstained. A Christian home should breathe the same atmosphere as
surrounded Joash, and it, too, should be a temple, where holy peace
rules, and where the first impressions printed on plastic little minds
are of God and His service.

We have next the disclosure and coronation of the boy king. The
narrative here has to be supplemented from that in 2 Chron. xxiii.,
which does not contradict that in this passage, as is often said, but
completes it. It informs us that before the final scene in the Temple,
Jehoiada had in Jerusalem assembled a large force of Levites and of
the 'heads of the fathers' houses' from all the kingdom. That
statement implies that the revolution was mainly religious in its
motive, and was national in its extent. Obviously Jehoiada would have
been courting destruction for Joash and himself unless he had made
sure of a strong backing before he hoisted the standard of the house
of David. There must, therefore, have been long preparation and much
stir; and all the while the foreign woman was sitting in the palace,
close by the Temple, and not a whisper reached her. Evidently she had
no party in Judah, and held her own only by her indomitable will and
by the help of foreign troops. Anybody who remembers how the Austrians
in Italy were shunned, will understand how Athaliah heard nothing of
the plot that was rapidly developing a stone's throw from her isolated
throne. Strange delusion, to covet such a seat, yet no stranger than
many another mistaking of serpents for fish, into which we fall!

Jehoiada's caution was as great as his daring. He does not appear to
have given the Levites and elders any inkling of his purpose till he
had them safe in the Temple, and then he opened his mind, swore them
to stand by him, and 'showed them the king's son.' What a scene that
would be--the seven-year-old child there among all these strange men,