The enthusiasm and determination of Amaziah and her daughter also greatly influenced her mind, and she respected a firmness which she felt herself incapable of sharing. She knew not then the all-powerful effect of the Christian faith in giving courage and boldness to the weakest believer; she knew not how the contemplation of the Redeemer's love could inspire such a corresponding feeling of gratitude and devotion, as to banish all weakness and all regard for personal suffering, and make death in its most terrible form less to be dreaded than one act of unfaithfulness to Him. Had Zadok been a Christian, Salome would have found no difficulty in receiving the same doctrines: but she looked up to him as a model of wisdom, and judgment, and piety; and when she heard him laugh to scorn the "wild delusions of the Nazarenes," she was convinced that he must have good reason for the contempt he expressed, and that it was the weakness of her own mind that inclined her to favour a system to which her husband was so averse. Had she looked simply to the word of God, and studied it attentively, with prayer for the guidance of his Spirit, and cast aside all human dependence, doubtless her mind would have been speedily enlightened, and she would have been spared much of the sorrow, and doubt, and anxiety by which she was eventually tried and afflicted. Claudia had not so many prejudices to overcome. She had been brought up in the belief of the existence of a multitude of deities, and if required no great effort for her to admit the God of Israel to a share of her worship, when she was instructed by Naomi in the wonders he had performed, and the manifestations he had made of his power and goodness to his peculiar people. But her friend had found it much more difficult to persuade her that all the divinities to whom she had from her childhood been taught to pay adoration were but senseless images, helpless and powerless. Time and reflection, the perusal of the Scriptures, and the prayers of Naomi, had by degrees eradicated the errors of her youth; and the letter which she had received from her brother, declaring his renunciation of all the gods of the heathen, had gone far to convince her that they were unworthy of her worship. During the period of Naomi's absence from Jerusalem, her time had been passed in perfect retirement. The state of the city had made it necessary for females to remain as secluded as possible, and Salome and Deborah had both taken advantage of this season of comparative inactivity to improve the good impressions already made by Naomi's instructions.