evil. Women more than men make the atmosphere of home--the atmosphere
which young lives breathe, and breathing never lose. The wise woman
buildeth her house--the foolish plucketh it down with her hands. What
time does a father spend in disciplining the moral and spiritual nature
of his children? That has to be done in the hours when he is toiling
in the warehouse, or resting wearily after the labours of the day, or
surely it is not done at all. From a mother the child receives all its
early religious thoughts. By her the Bible stories are taught, and
through her lips the good book comes to be loved. None can do it
except her. It is her eyes that watch every moral movement in the
young life--every sign of change--every incipient error--every
beginning of good and evil habit. No eyes can detect these things as
quickly and as surely as hers. And if she is too careless to discover
them, they will go unobserved and unchecked. Unhappy is the mother who
gives to society, or to friendship, or to pleasure the time which she
owes to her sons and daughters, for she will have to reap in vain
regrets the penalty of her neglect. How rarely do good and true women
and men go forth from a home in which a mother has been too busy with
the giddy affairs of the pleasurable world to teach and pray with her
children. Still more rarely do permanently evil and incorrigible lives
go forth from a home in which a noble and religious mother has made it
the chief business of her life to mould and train her children in paths
of pure thought and reverent purpose. There is no religious work which
a woman can do that equals this in importance, and none which secures
such sure and blessed results. That, then, is the main thought
suggested by these chapters--the measureless influence of women in
forming lives for evil or for good.

Then comes the only other thing that we are told about this
Ahaziah--that he was killed because he happened to be found in evil