I. ATHALIAH AND HER WORK. Athaliah's life-work was a Work of destruction. She did much harm. She did no good. A daughter of Ahab and Jezebel (sometimes called a daughter of Omri, whose granddaughter she was), she had inherited all the evil propensities of her parents. She destroyed her own husband, Jehoram King of Judah. We read of him that "he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, like as did the house of Ahab: for he had the daughter of Ahab to wife: and he wrought that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord" (2 Chronicles 21:6). She destroyed also her son Ahaziah. We read of him that "he also walked in the ways of the house of Ahab: for his mother was his counselor to do wickedly. Wherefore he did evil in the sight of the Lord like the house of Ahab; for they were his counselors after the death of his father to his destruction (2 Chronicles 21:3, 4). And now she completes her destructive career by putting to death her grandchildren, the seed royal of the kingdom. There are many women like Athaliah, whose life-work is a work of destruction. What harm one wicked woman can do! Some corrupt the morals of others. Some, by their evil-speaking and slander, do what they can to destroy the reputation and good name of their neighbors. The Jezebels and Athaliahs of Scripture story have their parallels in the Queen Marys, the Pompadours, the Medicis, and the Maintenons of more modern times.

II. JEHOSHEBA AND HER WORK. Jehosheba's work was a work of preservation. She too was a king's daughter. But she had not been corrupted by the wickedness of the court. She was the wife of Jehoiada the priest - a good wife of a good man. She rescued Joash from Athaliah's massacre, and kept him hid in the priests' apartments in the temple. There he was hid for six years, until the time that, as a boy-king, he was called to the throne. If there are Athaliahs in the world still, there are also Jehoshebas. If there are women of cruelty, there are also women of sympathetic and. compassionate spirit. If there are women who are corrupters of others, how many there are who by their own pure life and conduct have been the preservers of public purity and morality! If one wicked woman can do much harm, one pure-minded Christian woman can do a vast amount of good. What an amount of quiet beneficence is being carried on by Christian women throughout the world at the present day! What a vast number of ladies who visit and minister to the poor! What a vast number of ladies who, in hospitals and in private houses, devote themselves to the noble work of nursing the sick I How many are engaged in instructing the young in our Sunday schools! How many have gone forth as missionaries to heathen lands! Woman's work in the Christian Church, and in the cause of charity and philanthropy, seems to be increasing every year.

III. JEHOIADA AND HIS WORK. Jehoiada's work was of a twofold nature. His work was both destroying and preserving. He destroyed idolatry. He put an end to Athaliah's reign and life. He did not believe in the policy of non-resistance. He believed in doing his utmost to overthrow even the power of the reigning queen, when that power was wickedly obtained, and exercised in an evil way, dishonoring to God and injurious to the interests of the nation. Like many another reformer, he incurred the charge of disloyalty and treason. But there are many things that need to be destroyed. And who can overestimate the harm done by a wicked ruler? But Jehoiada was no mere revolutionist. He did not rebel against Athaliah for revolution's sake. He did not put an end to her reign because of his antipathy to governments. He would have agreed with St. Paul that the powers that be are ordained of God." He set up another king in her place, and, in place of the idolatry which she had sanctioned, he set up the worship of the true God. We see in the whole narrative the overruling providence of God. Athaliah thought she would make her power secure by her holocaust of young princes. But man proposes, and God disposes. We see also the use of human instrumentality. God works by means. He used Jehosheba to preserve the young life which in the end was the means, in Jehoiada's hand, of overthrowing the wicked power of Athaliah. - C.H.I.

I. The first thought from this subject is, THAT THE EXTERMINATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY. Superstition rises up and says: "I will just put an end to pure religion." Domitian slew forty thousand Christians, Diocletian slew eight hundred and forty-four thousand Christians. And the scythe of persecution has been swung through all the ages, and the flames hissed, and the auto da fe rattled, and the guillotine chopped, and the Bastile groaned; but did the foes of Christianity exterminate it? Did they exterminate Alban, the first British sacrifice; or Zuinglius, the Swiss reformer; or John Oldcastle, the Christian nobleman; or Abdallah, the Arabian martyr; or Anne Askew, or Sanders, or Cranmer? Great work of extermination they made of it. Just at the time when they thought they had slain all the royal family of Jesus, some Joash would spring up and out, and take the throne of power, and wield a very sceptre of Christian dominion. Infidelity says: " I'll just exterminate the Bible," and the Scriptures were thrown into the street for the mob to trample on, and they were piled up in the public squares and set on fire, and mountains of indignant contempt were hurled on them, and learned universities decreed the Bible out of existence. "In my Age of Reason I have annihilated the Scriptures," said Thomas Paine. "Your Washington is a pusillanimous Christian, but I am the foe of Bibles and of churches." O, how many assaults upon that Word. Said one man, in his infidel desperation, to his wife: "You must not be reading that Bible," and he snatched it away from her. And though in that Bible was a lock of hair of the dead child — the only child that God had ever given them — he pitched the book with its contents into the fire, and stirred it with the tongs, and spat on it, and cursed it, and said: "Susan, never have any more of that stuff here!" How many individual and organised attempts have been made to exterminate that Bible. Have they done it? Have they exterminated the Bible Society? Have they exterminated the thousands of Christian institutions whose only object it is to multiply copies of the Scriptures, and throw them broadcast around the world? Yea, if there should come a time of persecution in which all the known Bibles of the earth should be destroyed, all these lamps of life that blaze in our pulpits and in our families extinguished — in the very day that infidelity and sin should be holding jubilee over the universal extinction there would be in some closet of a backwoods church a secreted copy of the Bible, and this Joash of eternal literature would come out and come up and take the throne, and the Athaliah of infidelity and persecution would fly out the back door of the palace, and drop her miserable carcass under the hoofs of the horses of the king's stables. You cannot exterminate Christianity! You cannot kill Joash!

II. The second thought from my subject is, THAT THERE ARE OPPORTUNITIES IN WHICH WE MAY SAVE ROYAL LIFE. You know that profane history is replete with stories of strangled monarchs and of young princes who have been put out of the way. Here is the story of a young king saved. But why should we spend our time in praising this bravery of expedition when God asks the same thing of you and me? all around us are the imperilled children of a great king. They are born of Almighty parentage, and will come to a throne or a crown, if permitted. But sin, the old Athaliah, goes forth to the massacre. Murderous temptations are out for the assassination. But sin is more terrific in its denunciation. It matters not how you spell your name, you come under its knife, under its sword, under its doom, unless there be some omnipotent relief brought to the rescue. But blessed be God, there is such a thing as delivering a royal soul. Who will snatch away Joash? This afternoon, in your Sabbathschool class, there will be a prince of God — some Cromwell to dissolve a Parliament, some Beethoven to touch the world's harp-strings, some John Howard to pour fresh air into the lazaretto, some Florence Nightingale to bandage the battle wounds, some Miss Dix to soothe the crazed brain, some John Frederick Oberlin to educate the besotted, some David Brainerd to change the Indian's war-whoop to a Sabbath song, some John Wesley to marshal three-fourths of Christendom, some John Knox to make queens turn pale, some Joash to demolish idolatry and strike for the kingdom of heaven. There are sleeping in your cradles by night, there are playing in your nurseries by day, imperial souls waiting for dominion, and whichever side the cradle they get out will decide the destiny of empires.

III. The third thought from my text is, THAT THE CHURCH OF GOD IS A GOOD HIDING-PLACE. When Jehosheba rushes into the nursery of the king and picks up Joash, what shall she do with him? Shall she take him to some room in the palace? No; for the official desperadoes will hunt through every nook and corner of that building. Would God that we were all as wise as Jehosheba, and knew that the Church of God is the best hiding-place. O, men of the world, outside there, betrayed, caricatured, and cheated of the world, why do you not come in through the broad, wide open door of Christian communion? I wish I could act the part of Jehosheba to-day, and steal you away from your perils and hide you in the temple. How few of us appreciate the fact that the Church of God is a hiding-place. More than that, you yourself will want the Church for a hiding-place when the mortgage is foreclosed; when your daughter, just blooming into womanhood, suddenly clasps her hands in a slumber that knows no waking; when gaunt trouble walks through the parlour, and the sitting-room, and the dining-hall, and the nursery, you will want some shelter from the tempest. Ah, some of you have been run upon by misfortune, and trial; why do you not come into the shelter? I said to a widowed mother after she had buried her only son — months after, I said to her: "How do you get along now-a-days?" "Oh," she replied, "I get along tolerably well, except when the sun shines." I said: "What do you mean by that?" when she said: "I can't bear to see the sun shine; my heart is so dark that all the brightness of the natural world seems a mockery to me." Oh, darkened soul, oh, broken-hearted man, broken-hearted woman, why do you not come into the shelter? I swing the door wide open. I swing it from wall to wall. Come in! Come in! You want a place where your troubles shall be interpreted, where your burdens shall be unstrapped, where your tears shall be wiped away.

(T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)