Satan, now-a-days, has his modern temple of Gerizim.  He does not try to lead nominal Christians to throw up religion altogether, for he sees that it would be of no use to do so.  He knows we have a conscience, he knows that conscience is often busy, he knows that we fully believe that some day we must die, and that after death will come the judgment, and he sees therefore that we shall not be satisfied without some kind of religion.  So Satan tries to tempt us to the Gerizim temple.  Serve God by all means, he cries, but serve the world too.  Go to church, say your prayers, have a fair polish of Sunday religion; it is decent, it is respectable, it is what is expected of you.  But yet, at the very same time, serve the world, please yourself.  Take part in any pleasure that attracts you, live as you please, enjoy yourself to the full.  Let the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life have their share in your allegiance.  Be half for God, and half for the world.  Live partly for the world to come, and partly for this present world.  By no means throw overboard religion altogether, but let it have its proper place, let it stand side by side with self-pleasing and worldliness.

But what says the Master?

‘No man can serve two masters.  Ye cannot serve God and mammon.’

Let us then choose this day whom we will serve.  Shall it be Christ or Satan, Jerusalem or Gerizim, God or the world?

For centuries after the time of Nehemiah, these Samaritans continued a source of annoyance to the Jews, tempting all who were disaffected and lawless to come to Gerizim, and vexing and troubling the Jews in every possible way.  No one who was travelling up to the rival temple was ever made welcome in Samaria, or treated as he passed through with the slightest show of hospitality.  As our Lord and His disciples journeyed up to the feast, we read that they came to a village of the Samaritans, and our Lord sent messengers before Him to engage a lodging, where they might find refreshment and shelter on their way.  But we read,

’They did not receive Him, because His face was as though He would go to Jerusalem.’

Sometimes they carried this antagonism to such a degree that they would even waylay and murder the temple pilgrims who were on their way through their country, and the poor travellers were compelled to take a much longer route to Jerusalem, crossing the Jordan, and journeying on the eastern side until they came opposite Jericho, and then ascending by the long, winding, difficult road from Jericho to Jerusalem.

Once, in order to mortify the Jews, the Samaritans were guilty of a very dreadful insult.  The Passover was being kept in Jerusalem, and it was customary in Passover week for the priest to open the temple gates just after midnight.  Through these opened gates, in the darkness of the night, stole in some Samaritans, carrying under their robes dead men’s bones and bits of dead men’s bodies, and these they strewed up and down the cloisters of the temple, to make them defiled and unclean.