Jezebel had resolutely crushed all those affections and sympathies of her nature which would be likely to check her progress in her career of crime and power.  She had trampled upon all that would obstruct her in the attainment of her object.  Yet some of the feelings of the woman, the tenderness of the wife, the fondness of the mother, still seem to linger in her proud heart.  Unprincipled as she was, she did not abandon herself 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 powerful will and strong passions—­but she had no affections.  There have been many Jezebels—­but few Athaliahs.  The affections compose so large a part of a woman’s nature that we disown one who is without them.  In her deepest guilt, in her lowest debasement, they still cling to her; and raised to the summit of power, they do not often wholly desert her.