Driving Sacrificial Victims into the Fiery Mouth of Baal After the painting by Henri Motte.

It does not appear that the people had utterly abandoned the religion of their fathers, for they had not hesitated to slay the eight hundred and fifty priests of Baal at the command of Elijah.

Ranking after El in Babylon, Asshur in Assyria, and Baal in Phoenicia,all shadows of the same supreme God,we notice among these Mesopotamians a triad of the great gods, called Anu, Bel, and Hea.

At Shechem Hebrews and Canaanites also worshipped side by side in the common sanctuary, which was known as "the temple of Baal of the Covenant.

The animistic superstitions wildly based on the belief in the soul have not soiled him, and the social conditions of aristocracy, agriculture, architecture, have not made him one in a polytheistic crowd of rapacious gods, nor fettered him as a Baal to his estate, nor localised him in a temple built with hands.