pay the tribute to which the god has a right on his own territory,
lest he should make it the worse for them if they neglect it. 'The
mild tolerance of heathendom' simply means the utter absence of
religion and an altogether inadequate notion of deity.

So the settlers have sent to them one of these schismatic priests who
had belonged to the extinct sanctuary at Beth-el, and he, apparently,
not having any truer notions of God or of worship than they had,
nothing loth, teaches them the rites of the Israelite worship, which
was not like that of Judah, as is distinctly stated in the context.
This worship of Jehovah was, however, blended by them with their own
national idolatry. How contemptuously the historian enumerates the
hard names of their gods and the rabble rout of them which each nation
made! 'The men of Babylon _made_ Succoth-benoth' (probably a
deity, though the name may mean booths for purposes of prostitution)
and the others '_made_ Nergal and Ashima and Nibhaz and Tartak.'
What names, and what a pantheon! 'They feared the Lord and served
their own gods.'

This was the beginning of the Samaritan people, whom we find through
the rest of Scripture even down to the Acts of the Apostles, retaining
some trace of their heathen origin. Simon Magus bewitched them in his
sorceries. They began as heathen, though in lapse of years they came
to be pure monotheists, even more rigid than the Jews themselves, and
today, if you went to Nablus, you would find the small remnant of
their descendants adhering to Moses and the law, guarding their sacred
copy of the Pentateuch with unintelligent awe, and eating the Paschal
Lamb with wild rites. They have changed the object of their worship,
but one fears that it is little more real and deep than in old days,
2500 years ago, when their forefathers 'feared the Lord and served