The generation to which Hosea belonged practised a periodical unchastity under the alleged sanctions of nature and religion. And, although their prophet told them that--like our own apostates from Christianity--they could never do so with the abandon of the Pagans, for they carried within them the conscience and the memory of a higher faith, it appears that even the fathers of Israel resorted openly and without shame to the licentious rites of the sanctuaries. In an earlier passage of his book Hosea insists that all this must impair the people's intellect. _Harlotry takes away the brains._[569] He has shown also how it confuses the family, and has exposed the old delusion that men may be impure and keep their womankind chaste.[570] But now he diagnoses another of the inevitable results of this sin. After tracing the sin, and the theory of life which permitted it, to their historical beginnings at the entry of the people into Canaan, he describes how the long practice of it, no matter how pretentious its sanctions, inevitably leads not only to exterminating strifes, but to the decay of the vigour of the nation, to barrenness and a diminishing population. _Like grapes in the wilderness I found Israel, like the first fruit on a fig-tree in her first season I saw your fathers._ So had the lusty nation appeared to God in its youth; in that dry wilderness all the sap and promise of spring were in its eyes, because it was still pure. But _they--they came to Ba'al-Peor_--the first of the shrines of Canaan which they touched--_and dedicated themselves to the Shame, and became as abominable as the object of their love_. _Ephraim_--the _Fruitful_ name is emphasised--_their glory is flown away like a bird. No more birth, no more motherhood, no more conception!_[571] _Blasted is Ephraim, withered the root of them, fruit they produce not: yea, even when they beget children I slay the darlings of their womb. Yea, though they bring up their sons I bereave them_, till they are _poor in men. Yea, woe upon themselves also, when I look away from them! Ephraim_--again the _Fruitful_ name is dragged to the front--_for prey, as I have seen, are his sons destined._[572] _Ephraim_--he _must lead his sons to the slaughter_. And the prophet interrupts with his chorus: _Give them, O LORD--what wilt Thou give them? Give them a miscarrying womb and breasts that are dry!_ _All their mischief is in Gilgal_--again the Divine voice strikes the connection between the national worship and the national sin--_yea, there do I hate them: for the evil of their doings from My house I will drive them. I will love them no more: all their nobles are rebels._[573] And again the prophet responds: _My God will cast them away, for they have not hearkened to Him, and they shall be vagabonds among the nations_.