This was written in 1881
[The
Lost Ten Tribes of Israel: a vital part of God's purpose]
E. K. Tullidge: Does it lie in the power of any one to suggest even a plausible reason
why the Ten Tribes of Israel, who have for centuries been so completely lost to
human knowledge, should alone of all mankind, be shut out from the enjoyment of
the privileges of Christianity? For to imagine that it could have been
occasioned the mere arbitrary exercise of almighty power, is to make utter
havoc of our most necessary notions concerning the wisdom, and goodness of the
Deity.
And this we assert because, in the first
place, the ten tribes of Israel were, above all people, wonderfully qualified
to do most excellent service in the cause of Christianity. They had, for
centuries, lived under a state of things which must have wrought into the
national character elements by which they were constitutionally predisposed to
Christianity. The habitual acknowledgement of the presence of God in human
affairs must have been the basis on which their whole mental structure was
builded. To make this point more clear, we subjoin some able remarks by the
late Alexander J. Scott, formerly Professor of Logic in Owen's College,
Manchester. Speaking of the Hebrew Theocracy, he says:
"It was an extraordinary intervention,
but it was not intended to teach men to look for extraordinary interventions,
or to feel it impossible to have that recognition of God, which in this
instance is called for, at any other time than when God does so miraculously
interpose. The purpose in this case, as in the others, was to the very contrary
of all that; it was, because it was already true that God governs the social
unity, that its laws are laws of His making, that it is in the, recognition of
Him, as our Governor, and of the laws which He has established, that the
well-being of the social unit is at all attainable; that God by one
extraordinary intervention, called the attention of mankind to an abiding
truth.
"And remember that man needs to be
practically taught in such matters. God had to teach the human race, beginning
with that early and very imperfect stage of its spiritual development, not in
the manner of a lecturer, or of the author of a system. He had to teach them in
a manner which should lay hold upon their whole being, and especially upon
their practical character. And therefore it was not by words merely, even by
words of inspiration, but by such interventions and by such institutions as
those that are recorded in the Mosaic Books and the books of the Old Testament,
God, not on one single occasion, but generation after generation, and century
after century manifested Himself with this great lesson in His hand."
He speaks further of "that educational
purpose of the miraculous dispensation, the purpose of training their minds to
the habitual acknowledgment of God in a manner, which should ultimately become
a far wider, more comprehensive, more permanent acknowledgement of Him than was
contemplated in the more direct way of the original constitution."
No people ever lived under conditions more
favorable for developing a national character imbued with all those great
qualities which are calculated to lift them to the very highest rank in the
scale of nations. Chief of all was the tameless spirit of freedom, inspired by
those just and righteous laws by which they were governed. A modern jurist, a
Frenchman and an infidel, has written regarding those laws:- "Good right
had Moses to challenge his Israelites, And what nation hath statutes like yours
? a worship so exalted, laws so equitable, a code so complete? Compared with
all the legislations of antiquity, none so thoroughly embodies the principles of
everlasting and universal righteousness. Lycurgus wrote not for a people but
for an army: it was a barrack which he erected, not a commonwealth: and
sacrificing everything to the military spirit, he mutilated human nature in
order to crush it into armor. Solon, on the contrary, could not resist the
effeminate and relaxing spirit of his Athens. It is in Moses alone that we find
a regard for the right, austere and incorruptible, - a morality distinct from
policy, and rising above regard for times and peoples. The trumpet of Sinal
still finds an echo in the conscience of mankind, - the Decalogue still binds
us all."
Surely there is no need of proving in full
detail that the people possessed those other great qualities; great
intellectual vigor, the spirit of enterprise, persevering industry, and
military enthusiasm.
How then can we reconcile it with our most
necessary ideas concerning the wisdom of God that He should have made no use of
these people as instruments wherewith to accomplish those great purposes for
which they were so exactly qualified? "Among this people religious
thoughts of a most exalted nature were common to all. They were profoundly
earnest and serious with feelings of awful reverence toward the Most High, whom
they believed to be always present among them." A predisposition to
Christianity must therefore have been the grand result of the training to which
they had been subjected. They were therefore the most proper instruments to be
used in the service of Christianity, provided certain hindrances, which shall
be hereafter considered, could be removed. What right then have we to believe
otherwise than that this was the very object contemplated in the training of
the Ten Tribes of Israel?
And now are we to be confronted with the
assertion that the Ten Tribes were utterly and forever cast off on account of
their incorrigible idolatry? Such an assertion is not warranted by the least
particle of fair evidence. The wickedness of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes was
not so outrageous as generally represented. We are accustomed to believe that
the terrible sufferings which the Jews have had to undergo were all the natural
outcome of the mad wickedness of their fathers in rejecting their Messiah;
whereby were instilled those frantic prejudices so hostile to the reception of
Christianity. Of what greater enormity of wickedness could the Ten Tribes have
possibly been guilty as to deserve a so much sterner punishment? to be
completely struck out of existence as a nation? They took no part in Judah's
awful crime, and therefore could not by any possibility share in their
punishment. True it is that the Ten Tribes were sold into the hands of their
enemies on account of their incorrigible idolatry. But it is equally certain
that not more than a century and a half later, Judah became steeped in the same
sin to a far more awful extent.
"The repeated chastisements which its
ancient propensity to idolatry had drawn down upon the nation had at length
produced the desired effect; and after the Babylonish captivity the Jews appear
to have been thoroughly weaned from the favorite sin of their fore-fathers.
Simultaneously, however, with this remarkable change for the better in the
national sentiment, certain less favorable characteristics began, for the first
time to exhibit themselves, or, at least, assumed a prominence which had not
hitherto belonged to them. The Jews bad been always prone to over-value the
external privileges which, as the chosen people of God, they enjoyed ; but
after the Babylonish captivity, this feeling became more intense and gave rise
to a spiritual pride of the most virulent character." - Litton's Church of
Christ.
Mark the unmistakable testimony of
Scripture:-
And the LORD said unto me. The back-sliding
Israel hath justified herself wore than treacherous Judah. - Jer. iii. 2.
And when her sister AHOLIBAH (i.e. Judah)
saw this, she was more corrupt in her inordinate love than she (AHOLAH i.e.
Israel or SAMARIA,) and in her whoredoms more than her sister in her whoredoms.
- Ezek. 23: 2.
Thine elder sister is SAMARIA, she and her
daughters that dwell at thy left hand, and thy younger sister that dwelleth at
thy right hand, is Sodom, and her daughters. Yet hast thou not walked after
their ways, nor done after their abominations, but as if that was a very little
thing, thou wast corrupted more than they in all thy ways. - Ezek. xvi. 46, 47.
Neither hath SAMARIA committed HALF of thy
sins. - Ezek. xvi. 51.
Scripture therefore, would hardly seem to
lend any countenance to the loudly expressed idea of the greater wickedness of
the kingdom of the Ten Tribes. Divine testimony is abundant to the effect that
the sins of Judah, long before they had committed their crowning act of
wickedness, were already almost beyond comparison, greater than those of
Israel. How then can any one presume to believe, that less mercy has been shown
to the Ten Tribes? For it is a most necessary idea of justice that, in the
words of Milton,
"Of worse deeds, worse sufferings must
ensue."
"The greater the sin, the greater the
punishment" - Spenser
"Doth God pervert judgment? or doth the
Almighty pervert justice?" Omnipotence has no power to alter the eternal
constitution of right and wrong. "He cannot deny Himself."
Just after the Assyrian had invaded the land
and led into captivity the Ten Tribes, the prophet Micah gave utterance to
these words:-
"Who is a God like unto thee, that
pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his
heritage? be retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy.
He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our
iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Thou
wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast
sworn unto our fathers from the days of old." - Micah vii. 18-20.
There is not the least semblance of reason
for confining this promise of mercy to the kingdom Of Judah, but very
particular reasons for supposing it to have especial reference to the kingdom
of the Ten Tribes. But that could not be a very signal act of mercy, which shut
them out, alone of all people on the face of the earth, from the only means of
obtaining mercy which God could ever extend to our fallen race; seeing that
they, moreover, were of all people the best adapted to profit by it.
Scripture does not grant the least
permission to imagine that God ever intended to strike the Ten Tribes out of
existence. That ought to be plain enough to every one without needing any array
of evidence in its support. For it is palpable that if Scripture had plainly
declared their destruction as a nation, there would never have been such an
anxious search prosecuted after them. It was because Scripture was so positive
and explicit that ALL the Tribes were one day to be restored to the land of
promise, never again to be disturbed, that any effort was made to discover
their hiding place. Out of many striking passages we select the following one
from Ezekiel as being probably the most emphatic:-
"The word of the LORD came again unto me,
saying, {16} Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it,
For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another
stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the
house of Israel his companions: {17} And join them one to another into one
stick; and they shall become one in thine hand. {18} And when the children of
thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not show us what thou
meanest by these? {19} Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will
take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of
Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah,
and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand. {20} And the
sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes. {21} And
say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the children of
Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on
every side, and bring them into their own land: {22} And I will make them one
nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to
them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided
into two kingdoms any more at all:"
- Ezekiel 37:15-22.
Nothing that can properly be called a
fulfillment of this Scripture has yet transpired. No such lasting union between
the two parts of the Hebrew commonwealth has ever yet been effected. It is most
clear therefore that in order to its being carried out the Ten Tribes must
still be in existence as a nation. To imagine that they have not been allowed
to enjoy the privileges of Christianity is altogether as unaccountable as if
they had, in the most summary manner, been completely struck out of existence.
The mysterious part of such proceedings would be that they should not have been
used for that great work, for which their long and remarkable training had so
especially qualified them.
All to no purpose has the globe been
ransacked hitherto to discover the hiding place of the lost tribes. So totally
lost to human knowledge have they been, so unsatisfactory all efforts to find
them, that it seemed justifiable to say of them in the words of the poet:-
Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
They are gone and for ever.
But was there any indication of right reason
apparent in the conducting of those researches? The anxious explorers, zealous
for the integrity of Scripture, did not see that the integrity of Scripture was
just as completely violated if the Ten Tribes had degenerated into the obscure,
good-for-nothing specimens of humanity with which they sought to identify them,
as if they had indeed been "cut off like the foam on the river." They
did not realize what bitter mockery it was, if in such a manner God's promise
of mercy were carried out. There was entirely too much haste in the matter. It
was merely noted that the Bible did not allow the supposition that the Ten
Tribes had ceased to exist. Steps must therefore be taken to find them. With
strange lack of wisdom they neglected to take with them their infallible guide
to direct their steps in the prosecution of their search. Thus did they,
With a clear and shining lamp supplied
First put it out, then took it for a guide.
If the Ten Tribes were to be kept in
existence it must haver been for some worthy purpose, and the Scriptures
disclose that purpose as plainly as they declare the continued existence of the
tribes. If the Ten Tribes are still in existence it is self evident that they
are themselves complete strangers to their illustrious origin. There is
therefore no more presumption in seeking for them among the nations of
Christendom than anywhere else. It is the only course consistent with right reason
and worthy of the assurance of Scripture - that they were never to cease their
existence as a nation (Jer. 31:35-36). It only remains then to say that they
must be identified with that nation whose history is a plain fulfillment of
what had been foretold of the Ten Tribes.
It is simply unjustifiable to demand that
they shall exhibit all those peculiarities which are supposed to constitute a
Hebrew. The more striking peculiarities of the Jews are owing to the state of
things under which they lived after their return from Babylon, by which the Ten
Tribes could be in no way effected, since they did not take advantage of the
permission granted by Cyrus to return to the land of their fathers. Call to
mind also their history while they were yet in their own land. They always
evinced the most determined jealousy of their brethren of Judah; most
conspicuously in refusing to be governed by a king from that tribe. After they
had constituted themselves a separate kingdom, they took no part in the temple
worship, manifesting therefore an ever weakening attachment to those outward
observances of their religion to which for centuries their brethren of Judah
have so desperately and tenaciously clung. There is not the slightest warrant
therefore for refusing to acknowledge a people as the Ten Tribes because they
do not exhibit all the striking peculiarities that belong to the Jew. Let it be
carried in mind that though every Jew was an Israelite, not every Israelite was
a Jew. Let us not seek to identify the objects of our search by any
peculiarities, however remarkable, which they were at perfect liberty to cast
aside at any time. Let us rather identify them by those great national
characteristics, which, having laid hold upon their whole being, could not be
put off at pleasure; and let us identify them by the results which those
characteristics would naturally tend to work out.
[The
Ten Tribes always to exist as a nation]
It is now our intention to place before the
eyes of the reader of some of the most remarkable testimonies of Scripture,
which yield the most direct and complete sanction to the truth of our
proposition that the Ten Tribes are now in existence as a nation, doing active
and efficient work in the interest of Christianity.
First, then, let us consider those passages
which give the strongest assurance that the Ten Tribes (distinguished in
Scripture by the various names, "House of Israel," " House of
Joseph." "all the House of Israel wholly," "Ephraim,"
"Samaria "), were never to pass out of existence as a distinct
nation. The mission of Hosea and Amos was expressly to the kingdom of the Ten
Tribes. In the second chapter of Hosea, after the shameful wickedness of the
people has been described and severe punishments denounced against them, there
comes a most tender promise of mercy:-
"Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. And I will
give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope:
and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when
she came up out of the land of Egypt. Hosea 2:14-15.
From the eleventh chapter we produce a
passage still more explicit:-
"How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how
shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set
thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled
together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to
destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee:
and I will not enter into the city." Hosea 11:8-9
Still another assurance is supplied by the
same prophet in the fourteenth chapter:-
"I will heal their backsliding, I will
love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him. {5} I will be as the
dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as
Lebanon. {6} His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive
tree, and his smell as Lebanon. {7} They that dwell under his shadow shall
return; they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine: the scent thereof
shall be as the wine of Lebanon. {8} Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any
more with idols? I have heard him, and observed him: I am like a green fir
tree. From me is thy fruit found." Hosea 14:4-8
For further testimony we turn to the ninth
chapter of the prophecy of Amos:-
"Behold the eyes of the Lord GOD are
upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth ;
saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob saith the LORD: For,
lo, I will command and I will sift the HOUSE of Israel among all nations, like
as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain tall upon the
earth." Amos 9:8-9
That the prophet here refers exclusively to
the Ten Tribes is established by the fact that, in the very beginning of his
prophecy, he draws a clear distinction between Israel and Judah, and declares
that his words are of the former kingdom.
Jeremiah also is careful to maintain a clear
distinction when speaking of the two kingdoms, as is evident from the following
instances:-
"In those days the house of Judah shall
walk TO (not with) the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the
land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your
fathers." - JER. iii. 18.
The whole of the thirty-first chapter of
this prophecy is a prediction of the restoration of the Ten Tribes, as the
preceding chapter is, in the same way, concerned with the house of Judah.
"At the same time saith the LORD, will
I be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. Thus
saith the LORD, the people which were left of the sword found grace in the
wilderness.
Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant
child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still:
therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him
saith the LORD.
Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun
for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light
by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; the LORD of hosts
is his name. If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then
the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me forever. Thus
saith the Lord; If heaven above can be measured and the foundations of the
earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all
that they have done, saith the LORD." - JER. 31:2, 20, 35, 37.
Nothing could be more explicit than the
testimony we subjoin from Ezekiel:-
"Again the word of the LORD came unto
me, saying, Son of man, thy brethren, even thy brethren, the men of thy
kindred, and all the house of Israel wholly, are they unto whom the inhabitants
of Jerusalem have said, Get you far from the LORD: unto us is this land given
in possession. Therefore say, thus saith the Lord: Although I have cast them
far off among the heathen, and although I have scattered them among the
countries, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where
they shall come."
- Ezek. xi., 14 16.
Ezekiel's prophecies were delivered long
after the Ten Tribes had been carried away by the Assyrians. It is not to be
disputed therefore, that those of whom he here speaks as having been "cast
far off among the heathen," and "scattered among the countries,"
were his brethren of the Ten Tribes.
Perhaps the following passage from Zechariah
is the most valuable of all, because having been written after the first and
partial restoration of the nation of Israel, it cannot refer to anything
that.has yet taken place:-
"And I will strengthen the House of
Judah, and I will save the HOUSE of Joseph, and I will bring them again to
place them; for I have mercy upon them: and they shall be as though I had not
cast them off: for I am the LORD their God, and will hear them. And they of
Ephraim shall be like a mighty man, and their hearts shall rejoice as through
wine : yea, their children shall see it, and be glad, their heart shall rejoice
in the LORD. I will hiss for them and gather them; for I have redeemed them:
and they shall increase as they have increased" - Zech. x. 6-8.
If the Scriptures are to be regarded as
infallible on all questions with which they are concerned, (and we address
those only who believe them to be so), then they surely furnish us with such an
array of evidence as should force us to believe that the Maker of Israel never
had any intention of striking out of existence the work of His own hands. If
anything of explicitness and certainty seems to be wanting, it is only because
the powers of language must somewhere find a limit. There seems to have been a
determination to give assurances as strong as language could express that the
Ten Tribes were never to "cease from being a nation," as though purposely
to provide against a time when, to all appearances, there would not be a
vestige of them to be found in existence. That they have been so totally lost
to human knowledge is so far from affording any evidence against our position,
that it can easily be shown that such a state of things was absolutely
necessary, in order that they might work out their mighty destiny; that it
would have been disastrous to the spread of true Christianity to have had it
otherwise. It is in perfect harmony with God's usual method of working. As
Bishop Butler says:- "There is no manner of absurdity in supposing a veil
on purpose, drawn over some scenes of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the
sight of which might, some way or other, strike us too strongly; or, that
better ends are designed and served by their being concealed than could be by
their being exposed to our knowledge. The Almighty may cast clouds and darkness
round about Him, for reasons and purposes of which we have not the least
glimpse or conception."
[The
Ten Tribes located in England]
The tribe Of Judah was the divinely
appointed means for bringing the Messiah into the world, while the Ten Tribes
were commissioned to carry the tidings of salvation to the ends of the earth,
and to procure for the Redeemer the dominion which from eternity had been
promised to Him as His inheritance, "from sea even to sea, and from the
river even to the ends of the earth." And yet, although the Ten Tribes had
been trained to carry forward this great work, how could they be managed so that
the whole course of their national life might tend to its accomplishment? The
will of man is contrary to the will of God, and in nothing so much as in
accepting and furthering the Divine counsels for his own eternal welfare. It
was absolutely necessary therefore that the chosen people should bring about
unconsciously the grand result for which they had been set apart and trained;
that they should lose completely the knowledge of their illustrious origin.
From the considerations thus far brought forward we believe that we are
entitled to come to the conclusion that the Ten Tribes must be sought for among
the nations of Christendom. Which of these nations, therefore, has been doing
such glorious work for the Almighty, as ages ago was consigned to the tribes of
Israel? Can there be a moments hesitation [in 1881] before we hear the answer
that England alone can claim the slightest pretension to so lofty a
distinction?
"Has He not bid her and her favour'd
land
For ages safe beneath His sheltering hand,
Giv'n her His blessing on the clearest proof,
Bid nations leagued against her stand aloof
And charged hostility and hate to roar
Where else they would but not upon her shore?"
How repeatedly has attention been called to
the peculiar favor which God has extended to England above all nations of
modern times! Listen, for instance, to the grand words of Milton:-
"Lords and Commons of England! consider
what nation it is whereof ye are and whereof ye are the governors! a nation not
slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit; acute to invent,
subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point, the highest
that human capacity can soar to. Yet that which is above all this, the favor
and the love of Heaven, we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner
propitious and propending towards us. Why else was this nation chosen before
any other, that out of her, as out of SION, should be proclaimed and sounded
forth the first tidings and trumpet of reformation to all Europe? . . . Now
once again, by all concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct of holy
and devout men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts, God is
decreeing to begin some new and great period in His church, even to the
reforming of reformation itself; what does he then but reveal Himself to His
servants, and as His manner is, first to His Englishmen? I say as His manner
is, first to us, though we mark not the method of His counsels, and are
unworthy." - Areopagatica.
D'Aubigné, the celebrated historian of the Reformation,
after a visit to England, cannot refrain from giving vent to similar
impressions:-
"I have been struck with admiration at
beholding the people of those islands, encompassing the globe, bearing
everywhere civilization and Christianity, commanding the most distant seas, and
filling the earth with the power and the Word of God. At the sight of such
prosperity and greatness I said: 'Ascribe ye strength unto God: His excellency
is over Israel; and His strength is in the clouds. O God, Thou art terrible out
of thy Holy places. The God of Israel is He that giveth strength and power unto
His people. . . . Blessed be God.'"
[England's
Mental alignment with ancient Israel]
Why is it that Englishmen have always
delighted to rouse their warlike enthusiasm by calling to mind the deeds of the
heroes of ancient Israel, Joshua, Gideon, Jeptha, Samson and David; precisely
as though they considered their splendid exploits as part of the history of
their own nation? Why, in so many particulars, has the Anglo-Saxon the
characteristics of the Hebrew mind so peculiar to his own? [British Prime
Minister] Disraeli writes in his Tancred:
"As an exponent of the mysteries of the
human mind, as a soother of the troubled spirit, to whose harp do the people of
England fly for sympathy and solace? Is it to Byron or Wordsworth, or even the
myriad minded Shakespeare ? No; the most popular poet in England is the sweet
singer of Israel, and by no other race except his own have his odes been so
often sung. It was the sword of the Lord and of Gideon that won for England its
boasted liberties and the Scotch achieved their religious freedom, chanting
upon their hill sides the same canticles which cheered the heart of Judah amid
their glens." - Tancred.
Dean Stanley has somewhere remarked:-
"The sons of Israel are literally our
spiritual ancestors; their imagery, their poetry, their very name, have
descended to us; their hopes, their poetry, their psalms are ours."
The testimony of a foreigner will be still
more to the purpose. The point which we desire to enforce is strikingly brought
out in the following rather lengthy passage from the highly-wrought rhetoric of
Monsieur Taine:
"I have before me one of those great
old folios, in black letter, in which the pages, worn by horny fingers, have
been patched together, in which an old engraving figures forth to the poor folk
the deeds and menaces of the God of Israel, in which the preface and table of
contents point out to simple people the moral which is to be drawn from each
tragic history, and the application which is to be made of each venerable
precept. Hence have sprung much of the English language, and half of the
English manners; to this day the country is biblical; it was these big books
which had transformed Shakespeare's England. To understand this great change,
try to picture these yeomen, these shopkeepers, who in the evening placed this
Bible their table, and bareheaded, with veneration, heard or read one of its
chapters. Think that they have no other books, that theirs was a virgin mind;
that every impression would make a furrow; that the monotony of mechanical
existence rendered them entirely open to new emotions, that they opened this
book not for amusement, but to discover in it their doom of life and death; in
brief, that the somber and impassioned imagination of the race raised them to
the level of the grandeurs and terrors which were to pass before their eyes.
Tyndale, the translator, wrote with such sentiments, condemned, hunted, in
concealment, his mind full of the idea of a speedy death, and of the great God
for whom at last he mounted the funeral pyre; and the spectators who had seen
the remorse of Macbeth and the murders of Shakespeare, can listen to the
despair of David. and the massacres accumulated in the books of Judges and
Kings. The short Hebrew verse style took hold upon them by its uncultivated
austerity. They have no need, like the French, to have the ideas developed,
explained in fine clear language to be modified and connected. ' The serious
and pulsating tone strikes them at once; they understand it with the
imagination and the heart. They are not, like Frenchmen, enslaved to logical
regularity; and the old text, so free, so lofty and terrible, can retain in
their language its wildness and its majesty. More than any people in Europe, by
their inner concentration and rigidity, they realize the Semitic conception of
the solitary and Almighty God; a strange conception, which we, with all our
critical methods, have hardly reconstructed within ourselves at the present day.
For the Jew, for the powerful minds who wrote the Pentateuch, for the prophets
and authors of the Psalms, life, as we conceive it, was secluded from living
things, plants, animals, firmament, sensible objects, to be carried and
concentrated entirely in the one Being, of whom they are the work and the
puppets. Earth is the footstool of this great God, heaven is His garment. He is
in the world, amongst His creatures, as an Oriental king in his tent, all
vanishes before the absorbing idea of the master; you see but him; nothing has
an individual and independent existence. These arms are but made for his hands,
these carpets for his foot; you imagine them only as spread for him and trodden
by him. The awe-inspiring face and menacing voice of the irresistible lord
appear behind his instruments. And in a similar manner, for the Jew, nature and
men are nothing of themselves; they are for the service of God; they have no
other reason for existence, no other use; they vanish before the vast and
solitary Being who extended and set high as a mountain before human thought,
occupies and covers in Himself the whole horizon. Vainly we attempt, we seed of
the Aryan [European] race, to represent to ourselves this devouring God. We
always leave some beauty, some interest, some part of free existence to nature;
we but half attain to the Creator, with difficulty, after a chain of reasoning,
like Voltaire and Kant; more readily we make Him into an architect; we
naturally believe in natural laws; we know that the order of the world is
fixed; we do not crush things and their relations under the burden of an
arbitrary sovereignty; we do not grasp the sublime sentiment of Job, who sees
the world trembling and swallowed up at the touch of the strong hand; we cannot
endure the intense emotion or repeat the marvelous accent of the psalms, in
which, amid tho silence of beings reduced to atoms, nothing remains but the
heart of man speaking to the eternal Lord. These Englishmen, in the anguish of
a troubled conscience, and the oblivion of sensible nature, renew it in part.
If the strong and harsh cheer of the Arab, which breaks forth like the blast of
a trumpet at the sight of the sun and of the bare solitudes, if the mental
trances, the short visions of a luminous and grand landscape, if the Semitic
coloring are wanting, at least the seriousness and simplicity have remained;
and the Hebraic God brought into the modern conscience, is no less a sovereign
in this narrow precinct than in the deserts and mountains from which He sprang.
His image is reduced, but His authority is entire; if He is less poetical, He
is more moral. Men read with awe and trembling the history of His works, the
tables of His law, the archives of His vengeance, the proclamation of His
promises and menaces; they are filled with them. Never has a people been seen
so deeply imbued by a foreign book, has let it penetrate so far into its
manners and writing, its imagination and language. Thenceforth they have found
their King, and will follow Him; no word, lay or ecclesiastic, shall prevail
over His word; they have submitted their conduct to Him, they will give body
and life for Him; and if need be, a day will come when, out of fidelity to Him,
they will overthrow the State."
Will the reader bear in mind how we have
already tried to bring out that these conceptions so natural to Englishmen, and
so hard of comprehension to Frenchmen, must have been the great end which God
had in view in the training to which He subjected the Israelites. Since it is
so plain that these characteristics form part of the national character of the
English people, and since God so clearly signified that a long and patient
training was necessary before a people's mind could become imbued with such qualities,
and since but one people ever received such a training, it must follow that
Englishmen and Israelites are one and the same people. The honor of the Divine
government is blasted if it is possible to draw a different conclusion from
such premises.
[prophetic
references to Israel's wanderings among the nations]
It is proper now to go somewhat more into
detail and see whether the history of the Anglo-Saxon race, in its most
prominent features, was not plainly forecast in the pages of revelation. Let us
prosecute our researches in the Sacred Volume according to the method which
Bishop Butler has laid down; "attending to, comparing, and pursuing
intimations, scattered up and down it, which are overlooked and disregarded by
the generality of the world."
And in the first place we may gather some
intimations, which, though few, are yet quite explicit, regarding the
designation of the Ten Tribes, after God had shut them out of the land of their
fathers.
Hosea prophesied of them:
"My God will cast them away, because
they did not hearken unto him: and they shall be wanderers among the
nations." Hosea 9:17
But Isaiah seems plainly to indicate where
they were to cease from their wanderings and " renew their strength:"
"Keep silence before me, O Islands, and
let the people renew their strength." Isa. 41:1
There are many other passages which seem
plainly to imply that God had provided an island home for His people, a place
where enemies could not molest them, altogether the most suitable situation for
that nation which was destined to "blossom and bud and fill the face of
the world with fruit." Isa. 27:6
Isaiah's language indicates an insular
position when he says:
"For thou shalt break forth on the
right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make
the desolate cities to be inhabited." Isaiah 54:3
And so it is in the prophecy of Balaam:
"Lo, the People shall dwell alone, and
shall not be reckoned among nations." - Num. 23:9.
Mark now how well this description is suited
to England. Shakespeare says:
"I' the world's volume
Our Britain seems as of it but not in 't." - Cym. iii. 4.
Virgil [Vergilius] says the same:
"Penitus toto diviscis orbe
Britannos." - Ecl. i. 66.
"The Britons, A race of men from all
the world disjoined." - Dryden.
There is another remarkable passage which
gives further testimony on this point, and has an important bearing on another
part of our subject. It reads as follows :
"For thy waste and thy desolate places,
and the land of thy destruction, shall even now be too narrow, by reason of the
inhabitants, and they that swallow thee up shall be far away. The children
which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other, shall say again in thine
cars, The place is too strait for me give place to me that I may dwell." -
Isa. 49:19-20.
Surely some peculiar significance lies in
the words "after thou bast lost the other." Their proper meaning will
become manifest, I believe, if we bring them into connection with certain
remarkable prophecies uttered when as yet the sons of Jacob were a nation only
by promise; prophecies familiar enough to every reader of Scripture; but never
properly understood. No commentator that I know of seems to have realized the
difficulties connected with them, and attempted a solution. The first which I
desire to notice here is the blessing, pronounced by Jacob, upon the two sons
of Joseph:-
"And Israel stretched out his right
hand, and laid it upon Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his left hand
upon Manasseh's head, guiding his hands wittingly; for Manasseh was the
firstborn. {15} And he blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers
Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this
day, {16} The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my
name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let
them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. [Properly, " let
them increase as fishes increase."] {17} And when Joseph saw that his
father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him: and he
held up his father's hand, to remove it from Ephraim's head unto Manasseh's
head. {18} And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father: for this is the
firstborn; put thy right hand upon his head. {19} And his father refused, and
said, 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. {20} And he blessed them that day,
saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and as
Manasseh: and he set Ephraim before Manasseh." - Genesis 48:14-20
It is here as plainly declared that the
descendants of Ephraim should form a MULTITUDE of NATIONS, and that the
descendants of Manasseh should form a separate, independent NATION by
themselves, as in the next chapter it is foretold that the Messiah should be
born of the tribe of Judah. Note also that when Moses pronounces, his blessings
upon the several tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh are again brought Into especial
notice:
"Let the blessing come upon the head of
Joseph, and upon the top of the head of him that was separated from his
brother. His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like
the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends
of the earth : and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the
thousands of Manasseh." - Deut. 33:17.
[Finding
the fulfillment of prophecy in history]
The true meaning of any prophecy is to be
understood from its fulfillment. Prophecy is history told before it has come to
pass. But there is nothing in the records of Hebrew history which is at all
commensurate with the promises of future greatness delivered in such a rapture
of prophetic Inspiration. Consider the end held in view and it will be manifest
at once how impossible it was that such a history as is there foretold could be
transacted on the narrow strip of land at the end of the Mediterranean Sea. God
was hereby providing means for carrying His message of salvation to all places
of the earth, surely the greatest of all human agencies employed for restoring
the world to its true allegiance. That this was the work for which the children
of Israel were set apart and trained, we have already maintained to be plain
both from the nature of the case and from the most express testimony of the
inspired writers. Since this is the meaning of these predictions how manifest
is it that we can expect to find them realized only in history which has transpired
since the great salvation was wrought out. Therefore when we read that the Ten
Tribes went away into captivity and never returned to the land of their
fathers, is it in any sense a proper conclusion to draw that God had cast them
aside as utterly worthless for performing the great work He had once determined
to place in their hands? What is this but affirming that God had been taken by
surprise, that He had not foreseen that they would become so firmly joined to
their idols? Shall we thus do violence to one of His everlasting attributes and
forget that it is His wondrous prerogative to bring good out of evil ? If the
Israelites were not to perform the great work, by whom else could it be
effected? Was that long training of centuries a mere farce? It is iniquitous to
imagine so. It is most strenuously insisted upon in the pages of inspiration
that God foresaw all their wickedness from the beginning, but that
notwithstanding they should still remain His especial servants. Read the words
once more:
"For I knew that thou wouldst deal very
treacherously and wast called a transgressor from the womb. For my name's sake
will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain for thee, that I cut
thee not off. For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it: for how
should my name be polluted? and I will not give my glory unto another."
Isa. 47:8, 9, 11.
We have already maintained and insist upon
it again, as being the very keynote of our whole treatment of the subject, that
it was an essential part of the whole plan that the people should completely
lose the knowledge of their own origin. There needs but one consideration to
make this good. Think how woefully the significance of their position has been
misunderstood by those sons of Israel who have never lost their identity. They
have imagined that God's favor was for them alone, to the exclusion of all the
rest of mankind; whereas we know that God's intention to extend favor and mercy
to all the world, through their instrumentality, was the true reason of their
being so distinguished by Him.
From all considerations of right reason
therefore, we are to consult the history of the past eighteen hundred years for
the fulfillment of the predictions made by Jacob and Moses. That the people
whose history was to be a realization of these predictions should have been
utterly unconscious that they were carrying them out, was, as we have seen, an
indispensable condition of their fulfillment.
[The
stature of England in 1881]
We have already decided that the history of
the English race is the only one in which we can for a moment hope to find
anything answering to them. What can be gathered, therefore, from this history
which can be said to afford a fair explanation of the passages set before the
reader as having never yet received a proper solution?
Place alongside the language of prophecy the
splendid eulogy of Daniel Webster, on England's greatness, and who will deny
that the one is in every way worthy of being regarded as a most striking and
satisfactory fulfillment of the other?. In his words then, England is " a
power to which for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the
height of her glory, is not to be compared; a power which has dotted over the
surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose
morning drumbeat following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles
the earth daily with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England."
[The
United States as Manasseh]
If the position of England may be fairly
held to correspond with the high destiny assigned to the descendants of Joseph,
then must the history of these United States of America be taken as the
fulfillment of what was predicted of the descendants of Manasseh; "he also
shall become a people, and he also shall be great" (Gen. 48:19). If it is
not here intimated that the descendants of Manasseh were to form a great and
independent nation, then the words imply nothing more than might be equally
asserted of all the sons of Jacob. "The ten thousands of Ephraim, and the
thousands of Manasseh," (Deut. 33:17) in the blessings pronounced by Moses
agrees readily with such an interpretation. Who will not realize at once how
strikingly apposite the expression of Isaiah, "the children which then
shalt have after thou hast LOST the other," (Isa. 49:20) is to the
separation of the American colonies from the mother country? Many a prophecy
whose import has been of the vaguest kind discloses at once its true and
natural meaning when this new light is thrown upon it. Isaiah uttered the
following prediction after the Ten Tribes had been carried away by their
conquerors :
"They shall eat every, man the flesh of
his own arm : Manasseh Ephraim and Ephraim Manasseh: and they together shall be
against Judah." -Isa. 9:20, 31.
Now this is certainly a prophecy of civil
war to take place among the tribes after their departure. But there is no means
of ascertaining whether it has ever fulfilled or not, unless we look upon
English history as the fulfillment of the destiny assigned to the Hebrew
people. Then indeed all perplexity vanishes.
It was but natural, from the very different
destiny assigned to them, that the tribe of Manasseh should form a sort of
republican element among a people, with this exception, devoted to monarchy.
The words which Jacob and Moses had spoken concerning them must have dwelt in
the minds of every member of that tribe, and rendered them comparatively but
slightly attached to the government by which their brethren were content to be
ruled. Now it is certainly a wonderful strengthening of our position that the
Anglo-Saxon race should be thus divided into the two most powerful nations of
the earth, according as Jacob foretold of the two sons of Joseph.
[Fulfillment
of Prophetic Details]
It was one of the earliest promises made to
the seed of Abraham, that they should possess "the gates " of their
enemies (Gen. 22: 17). We cite the testimony of an admiring Frenchman to show
to what an extent England's history realizes this prediction. M. Dupin, in his
Force Commerciale de la Grande Bretagne, (1826) writes:
"In Europe the British Empire borders
at once towards the north upon Germany, upon Holland, upon France; towards the
south upon Spain, upon Sicily, upon Italy, upon Western Turkey. It holds the
keys of the Adriatic and Mediterranean; it commands the mouth of the Black Sea
as well as the Baltic. In America it boundaries to Russia, towards the Pole;
and to the United States towards the temperate regions. Under the torrid zone
it reigns in the midst of the Antilles, encircles the Gulf of Mexico, till, at
last, it meets those new States, which it was the first to free from their
dependence on their mother country, to make them more surely dependent on their
own commercial industry, and, at the same time, to scare, in either hemisphere,
any mortal who, might endeavor to snatch the heavenly fire of genius, or the
secrets of its conquests, it holds, midway between Africa and America, and on
the road which connects Europe with Asia, that rock to which it chained the
Prometheus of the modern world [Spain?]. In Africa, from the center of that
island devoted of yore, under the symbol of the cross, to the safety of every
Christian flag, the British Empire enforces from the Barbary States [North
Africa] that respect which they pay to no other power. From the foot of the
Pillars of Hercules, it carries dread into the remotest provinces of Morocco.
On the shores of the Atlantic it has built the forts of the Gold Coast and of
the Lion's Mountain [Sierra Leone]. It is from thence that it strikes the prey
which the Black furnishes to the European races of men: and it is, there that
it attaches to the soil the freed men whom it snatches from the trade in
slaves. [In the early 1800's, Christian activists turned England strongly
anti-slavery]. On the same continent, beyond the tropics, at the point nearest
to the Austral Pole, it has possessed shelter under the very Cape of Storms
[South Africa and Cape of Good Hope]. Where the Spaniard and the Portuguese
thought only of securing a port for their ships to touch at, where the Dutch
saw no capabilities beyond those of a plantation, it is now establishing the
colony of a second British people, and, uniting English activity with Batavian
[Boer] patience, at this moment it is extending around the Cape the boundaries
of a settlement which will increase in the south of Africa to the size of the
States it has founded in the North of America [the unfulfilled vision of Cecil
Rhodes]. From this new focus of action and of conquest, it casts its eyes
towards India; it discovers, it seizes the stations of most importance to its
commercial progress, and thus renders itself the exclusive ruler over the
passes of Africa from the East of another hemisphere. Finally, as much dread in
the Persian Gulf and the Erythrean [Aegean] Sea as in the Pacific ocean and the
Indian Archipelago [Indonesia], the British Empire, the Possessor of the finest
countries of the East, beholds its factors reign over eighty millions of
subjects. The conquests of its merchants in Asia begin where those of Alexander
ceased, and where the terminus of the Romans could not reach. At this moment,
from the banks of the Indus to the frontier of China, from the mouths of the
Ganges to the mountains of Tibet, all acknowledge the sway of a mercantile
company [East India Company] shut up in a narrow street in the city of
London."
It is surely not hard to recognize all this
a worthy fulfillment of the prophecy: "Thou shall reign over many nations,
but they shall not reign over thee." - Deut. xv. 16.
It was a most extraordinary prophetic
blessing when Moses declared before the assembled tribes: "For the Lord
thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee; and thou shalt lend unto many
nations, but thou shalt not borrow. [cf. the Marshall Plan]" - Deut. xv
16.
It has been well remarked by an able writer
upon our subject, William Carpenter in "The Israelites Found", that
this was
"a thing so unlikely to come to pass in
the history of a people not then formed into a nation, whose views of
territorial occupation were confined within very narrow limits, and who, as a
nation, were to have but little intercourse with other people - that no
impostor would have ventured to utter it. Put there it stands recorded, in two
several places, amongst the especial blessings that were predicted of His
people by the great and inspired Lawgiver. It obviously implies that the people
of whom it was spoken, though then just escaping from slavery, poor, despised,
and opposed by all the nations whose path they crossed, should exceed all
others in accumulated wealth. Other nations would require monetary assistance
from without, but these never. On the contrary, they were to lend to all
others. They were not only to possess abundance, but of their superfluity, were
to lend to all others. That this was said of them as a nation, and not as
individuals, is clear, for all the blessings and curses pronounced in these two
chapters (Deut. 15, 28) were addressed to them in their collective or national
character; is also clear from the terms in which the borrowers are spoken of
'nations.'"
In all that has heretofore been received as
Hebrew history, there, is nothing in the least answering to this prophecy, but
who does not know how remarkably true it is of England? The immense sum of
nearly £ 2,800,000,000 is now owing to England from foreign nations, and they
are continually coming for more. "A loan is announced for some state in
the Old World, or the New, and the subscriptions so pour into the banks,
appointed to receive them, that the usual thing is for many millions more than
are required to be offered in a week, sometimes in a day; the applications for
permission to lend to the borrower being so numerous that an applicant is not
permitted to contribute more than a-half, or a-third, or less than that of what
he offers. So enormous are the loans, that the amount of interest paid upon
them, in England alone, sometimes exceeds five or six million, sterling in a single
month. And while they have thus lent and are still lending, the amount of
unemployed capital is often so great, that, though offered on loan, at from 2
to 3 per cent. [!], borrowers cannot be found."
Consider now another of the declarations
which Moses was inspired to make to his Israelites. In regard to the grand code
of laws which had been bestowed upon them, he said:
"Keep therefore and do them; for this
is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall
hear of all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and
understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh
unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon Him for? And
what nation is there so great that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as
all this law which I set before you this day." - Deut. iv 6-8.
But were the people so regarded while they
dwelt in the land of Canaan? We surely cannot esteem it so from anything
recorded in Sacred History. But how suitable are these words to the admiration
which has been so frequently, and loudly bestowed by foreigners upon the
English [and more recently American] constitution. Will not the following
passage from Edmund Burke then furnish a splendid commentary on the passage we
have quoted? In his "Appeal from the to New to the Old Whigs," he
writes:
"Place, for instance, before your eyes
such a man as Montesquieu. Think of a genius not born in every country, or
every time; a man gifted by nature with a penetrating aquiline eye, with a
judgment prepared with the most extensive erudition, with an herculean
robustness of mind, and nerves not to be broken with labor; a man who could
spend twenty years in one pursuit. Think of a man like the universal patriarch
in Milton, (who had drawn up before him in his prophetic vision, the whole
series of the generations which were to issue from his loins), a man capable of
placing in review, after having brought together from the east, the west, the
north, and the south, from the coarseness of the rudest barbarism to the most
refined and subtle civilization, all the schemes of government which had ever
prevailed amongst mankind, weighing, measuring, collating and comparing them
all, joining fact with theory, and calling into council, upon all this infinite
assemblage of things, all the speculations which have fatigued the
understandings of profound reasoners in all times! Let us then consider, that
all these were but so many preparatory steps to qualify a man, and such a man
tinctured with no national prejudice, with no domestic affection, to admire and
to hold out to the admiration of mankind, the constitution of England."
He speaks of it again as "the
admiration and the envy of the world; the pattern for politicians; the theme of
the eloquent; the meditation of the philosopher in every part of the
world."
Now it is a well recognized fact that the
Great British constitution developed step by step, out of the meager system of
government introduced by the early settlers of England, is founded on the very
code of law delivered amid the thunders of Sinai. Read the following remarkable
testimony from a most unexpected witness. The Osservatore Romano, the official
organ of tho Pope, under date May 19, 1876, (as quoted by the London Times),
writes as follows of the English Constitution and England's Christianity:
"She has however retained all the
remainder of Christianity, and above all the ten commandments. These she has
always maintained in her customs, her laws, and her government. Her customs are
in perfect accord with the spirit of Christianity. Her institutions perpetuate
the same spirit, her laws watch over and maintain it with inflexible constancy.
The whole nation in a word is religious and christian. If it is true that
customs, laws, and government especially constitute a nation, and the condition
of English legislation is to be particularly noted, it may be said that to be
not nothing else than the faithful echo of that of Sinai received through
Christianity. You see it the guardian of that great law, and publicly
maintaining the adoration of the true God, author of the Decalogue, placing in
His name the social sanction upon all those divine and natural commands;
wherefore in His name, it may be said to punish the delinquencies and crimes committed
against Him, not less than against society, homicide, theft, false witness,
offenses against good manners [!], parents and country. In a word the laws of
God are the laws of the State - the one takes its force from the other."
Part 1 of
The Lost Tribes of Israel in England and America
The Throne of David
The Kingdom of Stone
The British Empire
Their identity maintained
by E.K. Tullidge
New York: Office of the Heir of the World, 1881