"I know it, my son, I know it: he also
shall become a people, and he also shall be great: but truly his younger
brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of
nations." - Gen. 48:18-19.
"Again will I build thee, and thou
shalt be built, 0 Virgin of Israel .. Thou shalt yet plant vines upon the
mountains of Samaria. For thus saith the Lord; Sing with gladness for Jacob,
and shout for the Head of the Nations." - Jer. 31:4, 5. 7.
"The name Sacae was applied to them
first, as simply the Tribes; perhaps adopted from themselves: but ultimately it
came to signify Bow-men, because they, like the Ephraimites (Ps. 78:9), and the
English, were so famous for the use of the bow." - Moore, p. 89.
F.R.A. Glover: How is England, Ephraim?
If, notwithstanding all that has already
been said and quoted, this admits of a doubt in the minds of candid inquirers,
who desire not to arrogate to our glorious land more than justly belongs to
her, - a thing, certainly, most.earnestly to be guarded against, - the fact
that England is Joseph, - will be brought home to the mind of every man of our
empire, who considers England's position as manifested in her Colonies [JML:
now Commonwealth], which constitute a constellation of nations. These
"nations," though they are as one with us, and so, we constitute one
people, are, in so far as concerns the administration of power, equal, at any
moment, to start, each, as an independent nation; having, all, a form of
government, and being equal to the labour of self-existence: each, in fact,
being a Nation in embryo, as having the germ of a nation in itself.
God forbid that they should ever desire to
commit suicide [JML: which just proves that God's ways and our don't align!] by
separating from the parent stem, either through false ideas of the glory of
independence, or through the gratification of some vague notion of "the
fitness of things" by any insensate doctrinaire, in temporary power,
amongst ourselves. There, however, they are, to separate if they list. Nobody
wants to keep them for our own sake. [JML: in the 1960's and still today,
England is happy to shed the burden of Empire.] It is hard to see what they
would gain by separating, beyond the chance and likelihood of being swallowed
up by any power that chose to march in upon them with 400,000 men, and occupy
their sea-board, if they had any, with iron-plated frigates, with a
Constitution for them, ready cut and framed, according to the most exact
regulation-order of some imperial wisdom. He who is one with England, be he no
bigger than the smallest atom of herself [the island of Sark, for instance,
with one man upon it], has, in union, all the strength and power of England to
defend him; and those who are bigger than Europe have found that they have not
done themselves much service by starting on their own independence [JML: USA in
1861!]. It is a great thing to be Joseph; which is, the proper title, dignity,
and eminence of all that belongs, or has ever belonged to, England. But it is
to Joseph with Judah that the blessing is. It, is Judah that has THE ABIDING
SCEPTRE!
Who can look on the present state of the
United States without anguish of soul and body? There is Joseph who was one
with Judah, but is not. They would not be. They chose to separate: and now they
are, all, in all the energy of infuriated discord, ready to plunge a knife each
into the bowels of his brother. If the price of their ill-conceived desire of
independence is a war of extermination among themselves, - not possible so long
as they were in the band of Judah, - which of them, as they give out their last
gasp and leave their unhappy widows and helpless infants to the miserable
issues that must befall, but will have cause to deplore the acts which led their
fathers to separate from "the mother that bare them," and to wish
that the grand energies that God gave them had not been turned to some other
and better account, than to create the opportunity to show to the enemies of
freedom the most miserable spectacle that mankind will ever have had to
deplore? .. unless, in God's Providence, He be mercifully pleased even yet to
cry, "Hold! enough. Repent, and do your first works of humiliation and
repentance!" .. and they do them.
Let therefore all Large Colonies take
warning and Small Ones count the cost, how they separate from that grand Mother
which is the HEART through which the life-blood of all who belong to her may
circulate. Judah is to Ephraim what the heart is to the body. Nevertheless, as
the example of the United States has shown, that, that which was with us may
become a Nation, it does not require those who are still with us to follow that
example to prove, that each separate Colony is one of "the nation of
nations of Ephraim," and to go adrift from us to give material evidence of
the great fact, which is sufficiently evident without it. [JML: it is now clear
that the formation of the USA was a long process of "sifting of
wheat" whereby a separate Manasseh came into existence.]
This Multitude of Nations, then, the
Colonies and Dependencies of Great Britain, making it palpable that England is
Ephraim, .. and, as omne majus continet omne minus, Ephraim in
multitude must be Joseph in nucleus, England must be, therefore, Joseph: and
so, whatever is promised to Joseph as well as to Ephraim, will be fulfilled in
the destinies of the land in which the multitude of Ephraim is felt, as well as
the strength and power of Joseph, is seen, to be.
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