The Holy Land and the Bible; . the Samaritans is The Holy Gak or The Tree of Grace. This name strengthens the force of the iden-tification of this site by St. Jerome with that of the Oak of Shechemor of Moreh ^ —under which Abraham pitched his tent and built bisaltar—the first sanctuary of Jehovah in the Land of Promise. It wasunder that tree, long since gone, that Jacob buried the teraphim ofRachel and the idolatrous amulets of his household, and under, or nearit, he, too, built an altar, which he dedicated to El Elohe Israel—God,the God of Israel; ^ his habitual caution being shown in his fi
The Holy Land and the Bible; . the Samaritans is The Holy Gak or The Tree of Grace. This name strengthens the force of the iden-tification of this site by St. Jerome with that of the Oak of Shechemor of Moreh ^ —under which Abraham pitched his tent and built bisaltar—the first sanctuary of Jehovah in the Land of Promise. It wasunder that tree, long since gone, that Jacob buried the teraphim ofRachel and the idolatrous amulets of his household, and under, or nearit, he, too, built an altar, which he dedicated to El Elohe Israel—God,the God of Israel; ^ his habitual caution being shown in his firstbuying the land on wdiich he spread his tent, and wdiich he conse-crated to At a later date, Joshua, also, recognized thisancient holy place of his nation, by setting up a great stone under anoak that was by the sanctuary of God, as a witness which had heardall the words of the Lord which He spake; * as if in very deed the 1 Gen. xii. 6, oak, not plain. 2 Gen. xxxiii. 20. 3 Gen. xxxiii. 19. 4 Josh. xxiv. XXXV.] TO GERIZIM. 477 great commander had thought that the stone consecrated by him toJehovah was in some sense connected with the Deity from that belief that consecrated stones become m some way habitations ofthe Being to whom they are dedicated, has been held in every age bymen at a particular stage of intellectual or religious development, aswe see in the holy stones of our own country, which have enjoyedthe superstitious reverence of the peasantry almost to the present the same spirit, Arnobius, a teacher of rhetoric in the Roman prov-ince of Africa, and after a time a Cliristian Father, confesses, in thefourth century, that before becoming a Christian, whenever he espiedan anointed stone, or one bedaubed with oil, he worshipped it asthough some person dwelt in it, and, addressing himself to it, beggedblessings from a senseless stock. Tlie oak in Joshuas narrative wasdoubtless that under which Abraham and Jacob had raised their altar
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