After Moses there follows a period of at least two hundred years, of which we have very imperfect accounts, and those plainly traditional and commingled with legend.  The Hebrew tribes appear to have gradually gravitated upon Canaan; slowly settling into agricultural pursuits, and winning from its previous occupants the land they coveted, inch by inch, in bloody strife.  They camped upon their hard-won fields for several generations, maintaining their claims at the point of the sword, with varying success; now mastering their foes, and again almost crushed by them.  The inter-relations of the several tribes during this period would seem to have been of a very loose character.  Each appears to have acted for itself, except at critical moments, when common danger drew them together in concerted action under leaders of commanding ability.  Tradition has preserved charming tales of some of these redoubtable champions of the Hebrews, of whom we would gladly know much more.  This was the heroic age of Israel.  Rude, rough times of constant alarm brought forth little that was memorable save feats of courage.  We have few glimpses into the state of religion in this simple society, and upon what is brought out into light the hues of later ages are reflected.  Quite clearly we may discern that the religion of the people in those days was by no means that which we know as Mosaism.  How could such a sublime conception as that of Moses have ripened in a people at this stage of their development?  Like all founders of religion, he was far in advance of his age.  If a few higher natures, here and there, recognized and appreciated the significance of the Ten Words of Jehovah, the mass of the people could not have done so.  And movement is determined toward the mass in ethics as in physics.  All that Moses could have hoped to do was to body his seminal truth in an institution, that should keep it alive in the nation until the proper conditions were found for its quickening and growth.  This he achieved in binding the tribes to the worship of Jehovah, whose law was owned in the moral standards of the people.  To this loyalty to Jehovah, as the God of Israel, Moses did securely bind the tribes.  They never wholly forswore Jehovah, and thus never lost the germ begotten in the soul of the race, which held the promise and potency of the future.

But around Jehovah, as the supreme God of the race, the people still continued to group their ancient divinities, and to worship them in the old-time manner.  The religion of a people in any stage of its history is always a composite; a succession of layers that correspond to the intellectual and moral classifications of society.  But the proportion of the true religion rises with a progressive civilization.  In these semi-civilized tribes the religion of the bulk of the people, in all probability, corresponded with the ideas and forms of worship of other peoples in the same stage of development In the lowest stratum fetichism