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Rh them? Look at this people I am speaking of. Forty days had not elapsed from the utterance from Sinai of this fundamental precept, 'Thou shalt have no other Gods before me,' when the very people to whom this command was given made for themselves a golden calf, after the manner of the idolatrous Egyptians, and danced before it with great joy. To secure this one grand and fundamental point (that is, the worship of the only living and true God), the whole Mosaic economy was modelled. For this purpose we were forbidden to marry foreigners; for this purpose our sacrifices were all to be offered in one place, and by one family of priests, lest we should wander away and become corrupt by association with idolaters. For this purpose we were forbidden certain kinds of food, such as were offered in sacrifices to heathen deities. We were not to be present at idolatrous feasts, nor to become accustomed to those moral abominations with which heathen worship was invariably accompanied. More effectually to secure this point. Divine Providence so arranged it that our national existence and prosperity depended on our fidelity to the great purpose for which we were set apart. Whenever we worshipped the true God and obeyed His laws, temporal prosperity was the natural consequence; then were union and peace and industry and prosperity. But whenever we forsook God and worshipped idols, a corresponding degeneracy of morals and manners took place. This was followed by discord, weakness, poverty, and subjection to foreign nations.