they would furnish substance to our hopes where now we sorely suffer loss. If the over-spiritualization of the plain statements of the Bible be an apology to disbelief, away with it! If it be an overture to Positivism in its controversy with Christianity, still more, away with it! And if, worse and finally, the teachings of the "liberal school" are that the prophets were no prophets, and the Scriptures of no absolute value, then away with all such weak apologists, for they too block the way of progress! Let us reason together, and look at this grave question more seriously, and as the patriarchs themselves were wont to answer it.

There is to be a future return of Israel unto "the promised land." It is to take place from "the north country," and from "the islands of the west." Its attendant circumstances, say the prophets, are to be so grand and world-wide with renown that afterwards it shall be no more said, "The Lord liveth which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt," but "The Lord liveth which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land."

[As I sit here this Christmas eve (1889), correcting the proof of these pages, and pausing now and then to listen to the chimes of Yale renewing the glad tidings of the Saviour's birth, my mind speeds on to days still future, when the Anglo-Saxons, not only Christians, but become acknowledged Hebrews too, shall have read all their titles clear, and shall have made this grand return unto the land of lofty origin; and while looking up the reference (Jer. xxiii. 7, 8) to the above quotation, which I had accidentally omitted, I have run across a parallel one, but one so much more remarkable, and one

in which the consecutive sequence of events is so amplified, that I cannot refrain from spreading out my type so as to find for it a welcome place.

In the sixteenth chapter of Jeremiah, the prophet, having summed up against Judah a fate similar to that which "lost" Israel was then undergoing, suddenly stops in the midst of his denunciation, and, with the flash of inspiration, moves down the ages, touching only here and there an isolated peak, and lights up these same days, still future, for they are yet to come. In the fourteenth verse he thus commences:

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Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; but, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the North, and from all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers."

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Then, in astonishing language to us, if we have ears to hear and eyes to see the subtle reference to the “fishers" of Galilee, (Matt. iv. 18, Mk. i. 16, 19) to whom the Saviour said, "I will make you fishers of men (Mark i. 17), the prophet refers to events which shall long precede the Return; and first to the fishing period, during which these "fishers" were explicitly directed to "go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Anticipating this, Jeremiah goes on as follows:

"Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish for them"! And fish they did, and caught them plenteously, "and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken" (John xxi. 1-25). It

is noticeable in this connection that the Saviour himself confined his own several missionary tours to Galilee (Benjamin's land-Obad. i. 19), and that the apostolic work was ultimately confined principally, almost entirely, to those regions of Asia Minor and Europe where the other Nine Tribes then were, resting, in their progress west.

But the prophet goes on, in equally remarkable language, and next strikes these very days in which we Anglo-Saxons live, we who more than all others have hunted for "Israel," and sought to find and identify her in all sorts of lands and places,—to wit:

"And after [that] will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt for them from every mountain, and from every hill," (scanning as it were the face of the earth to find them!) "and out of the holes of the rocks. For mine eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my face," (no, "the Lord that keepeth Israel neither slumbereth nor sleeps"!) "neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes."

The prophet then intimates a long delay,-which now is over, since the fishing and hunting periods are both well spent:

“And first I will recompense their iniquity and their sin double; because they have filled mine inheritance with the carcasses of their detestable and abominable things."

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Then, finally carried away with the dénouement of so wondrous a sequence of events, -the scattering of them as the Holy People," the fishing for them as "Christians," the hunting for them as "Hebrew children," and the finding of them as "Saxons" and themselves,the prophet raises the pæan of redemption for all other races through the so great éclat of such a discovery and return,

"O Lord, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies! VANITY! and things wherein there is no profit! Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods?

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Therefore, behold, I will this ONCE cause them to KNOW, I will cause them to know mine hand and my might; and they shall know that my name is JEHOVAH "!

Thus ends this remarkable chapter; and rejoicing to have been led to find it, and in time to add its message as another Christmas tiding to the race of Isaac, I may terminate this interpolation.]

This gathering shall be from "Yarish"* to "Australia," says the Hebrew text with strange significance to modern ears, and is to be a literal thing. Surely if so great a child as this is to be re-born in the latter days among the nations, and with such renown that its nativity shall hold a world's attention, the womb of History must give at least some indication of the possible event.

The seed of Israel and the prophecy of Israel redivivus were sown together in the Gate of the Caucasus full twenty-six centuries ago; have they not quickened yet?

The special error of Judah consisted in mistaking the character of the blessings entailed in the promise of the Messiah. They believed when Shiloh came that he would close the line of David, and that he would come to rule in might beyond magnificence in Jerusalem. They saw not that there were to be two comings, and that the first was but for suffering. They looked for purely temporal blessings, and when, in a meek and

* (Or Yarin-Erin), an ancient name of Ireland,

lowly Saviour, they found only spiritual ones they crucified him, and went out among all nations desolate.

But" blindness too has fallen upon Israel in part," for here we find the circumstances just reversed. Upon the sons of Joseph, ruling as chief among the nations of the modern world, we find the temporal blessings, literally as foretold, poured out and running over. And yet we find them blind unto the Rock whence they are hewn, proclaiming themselves everywhere as Gentiles, and as only in the possession of the purely spiritual gifts that come of Christianity alone.

The Anglo-Saxon thinks that he is only "of Israel” by spirit and by grace, and that his might and prominence among the nations of the earth are his from other reasons than inheritance from Isaac.

If haply after all he is a son of Jacob through Joseph, with the tribes his fellows, how completely his traditions have been lost! How equally with Judah has he gone astray and misconceived his blessings!

But the day of his awakening has dawned. An unprecedented feeling of unrest has fallen upon all mankind. Expectancy is more intense than it has ever been before in the history of Adam's race. All nations

feel it; and if the sure Word of God is an abiding Rock, then unto it must Christians turn for knowledge of these latter days, and, having identified not only Judah but Israel, speed their feet towards the Land of Promise.

The case is plain enough for one who runs to read; nor does it militate at all against the beauty of true Christianity to find that those who hold its tenets in their purest and most spiritual integrity are also strangely called to their election in the literal lineage of Abraham,—they are but doubly chosen, doubly blessed, and doubly taught the lesson of humility.