But our business is with the living facts recorded on the page of inspired history. These are to be our study; from these we are to draw our great practical lessons. Take, for example, the weighty and admonitory fact now before us--a fact standing out in characters deep and broad on the page of Israel's history from Joshua to Isaiah--the fact of Israel's lamentable departure from that very truth which they were specially called to hold and confess--the truth of the unity of the Godhead. The very first thing they did was to let go this grand and all-important truth, this key-stone of the arch, the foundation of the whole edifice, the very heart of their national existence, the living centre of their national polity. They gave it up, and turned back to the idolatry of their fathers on the other side of the flood, and of the heathen nations around them. They abandoned that most glorious and distinctive truth on the maintenance of which their very existence as a nation depended. Had they only held fast this truth, they would have been invincible; but in surrendering it, they surrendered all, and became much worse than the nations around them, inasmuch as they sinned against light and knowledge--sinned with their eyes open--sinned in the face of the most solemn warnings and earnest entreaties, and, we may add, in the face of the most vehement and oft-repeated promises and protestations of obedience. Yes, reader, Israel gave up the worship of the one true and living God, Jehovah-Elohim, their covenant-God; not only their Creator, but their Redeemer--the One who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, conducted them through the Red Sea, led them through the wilderness, brought them across the Jordan, and planted them in triumph in the inheritance which He had promised to Abraham their father--"a land flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands." They turned their backs upon Him, and gave themselves up to the worship of false gods; "they provoked Him to anger with their high places, and moved Him to jealousy with their graven images."