d Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim, from which
town they had come. And so they went on for several hundred years,
marrying with the remnant of the Israelites who were left behind,
and worshipping idols and the true God at the same time. Now these
people are the Samaritans, of whom you read so often in the New
Testament. The Jews, when they came back, hated and despised the
Samaritans, and would not speak to them, eat with them, trade with
them, because they were only half-blooded Jews, and did not observe
Moses' law rightly; and so they were left to themselves: but as
time went on, they seemed to have got rid of their old idolatry, and
built themselves a temple on Mount Gerizim, by Samaria, in Jacob's
old haunts, by Jacob's well, and there worshipped they knew not
what. But still they did their best. And their reward came at
last.

Many a hundred years had passed away. The proud Pharisees of
Jerusalem were still calling them dogs and infidels; when there came
to that half-heathen city of Samaria such a one as never came there
before or since; and yet had been very near that place, and those
poor Samaritans, for a thousand years.

And being wearied with his journey, he sat down upon the edge of
Jacob's well, by Joseph's tomb. The well is still there, choked
with rubbish to this very day; and Joseph's tomb by it, all in
ruins, among broad fields of corn. And on the edge of that well he
sat. Along the very road which was before him, Jeroboam, and Ahab,
and many a wicked king of Israel, had gone in old times, travelling
between Shechem and Samaria: along that road the terrible Assyrians
had marched back to their own land, leading strings of weeping
prisoners out of their pleasant native land, to slavery and misery
in the far North. He knew it all; and doubt not that he thought
over it all, as never man thought on earth. Doubt not that his
heart yearned over these poor ignorant Samaritans, and over the
sinful woman who came to draw water at the well. After all, half-
heathens as they were, Jacob's blood was in their veins; and if not,
were they not still human beings? They were worshipping they knew
not what: but still they were worshipping the best which they knew.

'Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye
shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the
Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for
salvation is of the Jews. But the hou