My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, That you may be no priest to me. Because you have your God's law, I will also forget your children.
Why does integrity, or morality, depend upon the knowledge and worship of God in the fullest sense of those words?  Simply because the naive notion that if men know right they will do it is a fool's nightmare.  Only the true religion of God can endow moral and ethical behavior with cosmic significance.  "There are no significant examples, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion."[21]  Will Durant held to the opinion that our own liberal society in the United States would be able to achieve what no other ever did, that is, maintain morality and integrity without regard to true religion; hence his inclusion of the phrase "before our time" in the passage quoted.  The events of the first decade following his statement, however, have already demonstrated the fantastic dimensions of his error.  Without a widespread reawakening of the national conscience and a wholesale return to the teachings of the Word of God, our own beloved America is already launched upon a collision course with disaster.  These remarkable chapters in Hosea have an urgent relevance to our entire generation.