E6\ st. io&ywk \4 (&&& <&&m l ;ri- \ I E, \\ OF THE EXHIBITING THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM ; THE CERTAIN RESTORATION OF JUDAH AND ISRAEL ; THE PRESENT STATE OF JUDAH AND ISRAEL ; AND AN ADDRESS OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH RE LATIVE TO THEIR RESTORATION. BY ETHAN SMITH, PASTOR OE A CHURCH IN^POULTNEYi (VT.) ** These be the days of vengeance." CHRIST. * Yet a remaant shall return." ISAIAH, POULTNEY, (F/.) GRISTED AND PUBLISHED BY SMITH & SHUTE. District of Vermont, TO WIT : BE IT REMEMBERED, That on the eleventh clay of June, in the forty-seventh year of the Independence of the United States of America, SMITH & S.HUTF., of the said Dis trict, have deposited in this office, the title of a book, the right whereof they claim a? proprietors, in the words follow ing, to wit : " View of the Hebrews ; exhibiting; the destruc tion of Jerusalem ; the certain restoration of Judah and Is rael; the present state of Jutlah and Israel ; and an address of the prophet Isaiah, relative to their restoration. By ET;IAJV SMITH, Pastor of a Church in Poultney, (Vt.) 'These be the days of vengeance.' CHRIST. 'Yet a rem nant shall return.' ISAIAH." In conformity to the act. of the Congress of the United States, entitled " an act for the encouragement of learning, by securit g the copies of map< f charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such co pies, during the times therein mentioned." JESSE GOVE, Clerk of the District of Vermont. A true copy of record, examined and sealed by J. GOVE, Clerk. Xntnftuctfoit* historical events have been of such interest to the world, as the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, about forty years after the asronsion of our blessed Lord. This remark is true, if the event be contemplated simply as a piece of history. But when it is admitted that the event was a striking ful filment of denunciations of wrath uttered by Christ on his persecutors, and by ancient prophets on the same people ; also that it furnished a most brilliant type of the final destruction of Antichrist in the last d:iys ; it becomes far more interesting. This inter est must be felt at this period, when the great events of the last days connected with the restoration of the Hebrews, are in a train of incipient fulfilment. The signs of the times are important on this genera tion. For upwards of thirty years they have been assuming an aspect, with which the Christian world ought to feel deeply impressed ; and which will is sue in the battle of that great day of God Almighty., and in the millennial kingdom of Christ. The restoration of God's ancient people is to be as "life from the dead" to the Gentile world. Sor.ie have queried whether they are literally to be res tored to Palestine. It hence becomes important to examine the prophetic scriptures upon this subject. This the writer has attempted to do ; and will exhi bit the result of his enquiries, in the following p- ges. M5Q66Q3 VI To ascertain the present state of the Hebrews, must be a matter of interest : and especially the state of the ten tribes of Israel. This, in the following work is attempted. Also an explanation is given of an address from the prophet Isaiah to some Chris tian people, relative to the restoration of the ancient people of God ; and probably this people is Ameri ca. If it is ascertained that the ten tribes are to be restored with the Jews, in the last days ; they must be now in existence, and they must come to the knowledge of the Christian world about this time : for the time of their restoration must be near. And it is believed they are coming to light with ample evidence. This musCdeeply interest the Christian part of the world. It would be strange if so great a section of Chris tendom as our United States, could claim no appro priate address in the prophetic writings. And it is thought to be capable of being shown, with a satis factory degree of evidence, that such an address is indeed found ; and one of great interest at this oay. The writer acknowledges himself to be affected with this part of the subject ; and he would rejoice to be the humble instrument of exciting a corres ponding feeling in the minds of his Christian breth ren. THE AUTHOR. Poultney, July, 1823. RECOMMENDATION. ;,. that they have hoard (he cUftlly r< <( i;i:;ieuJ it to the perusal of all cius-es o*" j-eople. Voted, uua.ijinious.ly. Attest, KUFUS CUSHMAN, Scribe* CHAPTER I. THE DESTRUCTION OP The land of promise was long a land of won ders. The Hebrew nation there was, for many centuries, the cradle of the true and only church of God on earth. There glorious things were wrought for her salvation. Patriarchs had there prayed, sacrificed and praised. There Prophets had prophesied ; find the Almighty had often made bare his holy arm. There his people had too often apostatized ; had been expelled from their Canaan ; and again mercifully restor ed. There the ten tribes of Israel had renounced the house of David, and their God; and were hence banished to some unknown region of the world, to the present day; while the Jews were still retained in the covenant of their God. Tlxve God, manifest in the flesh, made his appearar.ee on earth ; performed his public ministry ; atoned for the sins of the world ; and ascended to glory. There the first heralds of the ; dispensation commenced their ministry ; and thence the wonderful scheme of grace was pro- d through the nations. 1* Jerusalem was the capital of this earthly Ca naan. Glorious things were spoken of this cjty of our God. " Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, was this Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city of the Great King.' 7 This, for many centuries, might he called God's Capital on earth. God said, alluding primarily to this city, " For the Lord hath chosen Zion to be an habitation for himself. Here will I dwell, for I have desired it." Here great things were done in divine faithfulness : which led the psalm ist to say ; " God is known in her palaces for a refuge. For lo, the Kings were assembled ; they passed by together. They saw it, and so they marvelled; they were troubled, and so they hast ed away." " The Lord of hosts is with us ; the God of Jacob is our refuge." " In Salem stood his tabernacle ; and his dwelling place in Zion. There brake he the arrows of the bow, the shield and the sword of the battle." This city of':j. mi'! wept over it." He sa>d ; "If thou .nvn, even thou, in this thy day, the thii ' :':; to thy veace ! but now they six ; 'or the : :- i; -.hall corne when i; ch ;-',u; their linal destruction. Thus the predic tion of our Saviour quoted, received in those days a striking primary fulfilment. Our Saviour added : " And great earthquakes be in divers places," These significant loo. were accomplished in those dr. NS. ;< recorded by Tacitus ; one at Rome in ^ii of Claudius ; another at Apamea, in Syria , where were many Jews. So destructive : ::i> one at the latter place, that the tribute he Romans, was for live years remitted, terrific at Crete ; one at Smyrna ; one ai ( Chios, and one at Samos; 'laces Jews dwelt. These are no- .i!ji?(ratus. Soon after, in the reign of i'acitus and Eusebius inform, that d Colosse, as well as Lacdicea, were overthrown by earthquakes* Another is noted at Rome ; one at Campania ; and others tremendous are mentioned as taking place at Je- !cm in the night, just before the commence- nu.iit of the last siege of that city. Of tlux; Jo-* sephus gives the following account : " A 1 . storm bursi on them, during the ni^Jit 17 winds arose, with most excessive rains, with con stant lightning, most tremendous thunders, and dreadful roarings of earthquakes. It seemed as if the system of the world had been confounded for the destruction of mankind. And one mudit well conjecture that these were signs of no com mon event." The famines predicted by Christ were like wise fulfilled. The one foretold by Agabus, no ted in the Acts of the Apostles, was dreadful, and of long continuance. It extended through Greece and Italy : but was most severely felt at Judea, and especially at Jerusalem. The con tributions noted as brought by Paul from abroad, to relieve the poor brethren there, were sent during this sore famine. Authors of that time mention two other famines in the empire, previ ous to the one occasioned by the siege of Jerusa lem. "Pestilences" too, the Saviour adds. Two in stances of this signal judgment took place before the last Jewish war. The one took place at Babylon, where many Jews resided ; the other at Rome, which swept off vast multitudes. Oth er lighter instances of this calamity occurred, in various parts of the empire ; as both Tacitus and Suetonius record. Our Lord also adds : " And fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven." Jose- plms (who can never be suspected of wishing to favour any prediction of Christ ; and who proba^ bly knew not of any such prediction, when he wrote,) gives accounts of events, iwhich strikingly answer to this premonition. Speaking of the in fatuation of his countrymen, in running after im postors, while they neglected the plainest admo nitions from heaven ; he gives account of the seven following events : 18 1 . He says ; " On the 8th of the month Zanthi- cus, (before the feast of unleavened bread,) at the ninth hour of the night, there shone round about the altar, and the circumjacent buildings of the temple, a light equal to the brightness of the day ; which continued for the space of half an hour." 2. " About the sixth hour of the night, (says Josephus,) the eastern gate of the temple was found to open without human assistance." This gate was of solid brass ; and so large and heavy, as to require twenty men to close it. And Jose phus says, "it was secured by iron bolts and bars, that were let down into a large threshold consisting of one entire stone." The Jews themselves con cluded, from the miraculous nature of this event, that the security of their temple had fled. When the procurator was informed of this event, he sent a band of men to close the door ; who with great difficulty executed their orders. 3. Again, the same celebrated Jewish author says : "At a subsequent feast of Pentecost, while the pivsts were going by night into the inner tem ple, to perform their customary ministrations, they first felt (as they said,) a shaking, accom panied by an indistinct murmuring ; and after wards voices as of a multitude, saying in a dis tinct and earnest manner : " Let us depart hence." How striking was this miraculous pre monition. It commenced with a shaking ; to oill and fix the attention of these Jewish priests. Then was heard an indistinct murmur. This would make them listen with all possible heed. Then they heard the distinct voices, as of a mul titude in great earnestness and haste ; " Let m depart hence /" And their last f'ytal war with the Romans commenced before the next season for celebrating this feast. 19 4i Another sign was the following. The same author says : " A meteor, resembling a sword, hung over Jerusalem, during one whole year." Tfris could not have been a comet, for it was stationary a whole year, and seems, from the words of Josephus, to have been much near er than a comet, and appeared to be appropria ted to that city. This reminds one of the sword of the destroying angel, stretched out over Jeru salem, I. Chro. 21, xvi. This stationary posi tion of the sword for a year, was a lively indica tion that the impending ruin was fatal. 5. Josephus says again : "As the high priests were leading a heifer to the altar to be sacrificed, she brought forth a lamb in the midst of the tem ple." Most striking rebuke to those infidel priests who had rejected the Lamb of God, who had shed his blood once for all, and abrogated the Levitical sacrifices ; which yet they were impiously continuing. This wonder was exhib ited in the temple, the type of the body of Christ, and at the passover, when at a preceding passo- ver Jesus was arrested and sacrificed ; and it took place before the high priests and their at tendants ; so that they could never complain fop want of evidence of the fact. 6. This author says : " Soon after the feast of the passover, in various f>arts of the country, be fore the setting of the sun, chariots and armed men were seen in the air passing round about Jerusalem." This strange sight occurring be fore sunset, and being seen in various parts of the country, must have been a miraculous por tent ; a sign from heaven. The Jews had said, '- What sign showest thou, that we may see and believe." Now they had their signs in abun- j yet they would not believe. 2(3 7. The last and most fearful sign Josephns re? lates ; that one Jesus, son of Ananus, a rustic of the lower class, appeared in the temple at the feast of tabernacles, and suddenly exclaimed, "A voice from the east a voice from the west a voice from the four winds a voice against Jerusalem and the temple a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides a voice against the whole peo ple /" These words he continued to exclaim through the streets of Jerusalem by day and by night, with no cessation (unless what was needed for the support of nature) for seven years / He commenced in the year 63, while the city was in peace and prosperity, and terminated his excla mations only in his death, amidst the horrors of the siege in the year 70. This strange thing, when it commenced, soon excited great atten tion ; and this Jesus was brought before Albinus, the Roman governor, who interrogated him, but could obtain no answer except the continuation of his woes. He commanded him to be scourg ed, but to no effect. During times of festivals, this cry of his was peculiarly loud and urgent. After the commencement of the siege, he ascen ded the walls, and in a voice still more tremen dous than ever, he exclaimed, " Wo, wo to this city, this, temple, and this people /" And he then added, (for the first time for the seven years,) " Wo, wo to myself 7" The words were no soon er uttered, than a stone from a Roman machine without the walls, struck him dead on the spot ! Such were the signs in the heavens and in the earth, which just preceded the destruction of Je rusalem. Several of them are recorded by Ta- oitus as well as by Josephus. The veracity of Jo- sephus as a historian is probably allowed by all. Scaliger affirms that he deserves more credit as 21 a writer, than all the Greek and Roman histori ans put together. From the conquest of Jerusalem by Pornpey, sixty years before Christ, the Jews repeatedly had exhibited a most rebellious spirit against the Romans. The Jews had basely said to Pilate, concerning Christ, " If thou let this man go, thoa art not a friend to Caesar." But the fact was, they persecuted Christ because he would not erect a temporal throne in opposition to Csesar. Any impostor who seemed prepared to do this, they were ready to follow ; and were ready to improve every apparent occasion to evince their decided hostility to the Romans. And they hardly needed a prophet's eye to discern that this spirit and conduct (manifested on all occa- -} would soon draw against them the Roman sword. Judas, a Caulonite, and Sadduc. a Pharisee, had rallied the Jews with the idea that their pay ing tribute to the Romans would not fail to con firm them in the most abject slavery ; in conse quence ef which, their enmity often burst forth with malignant violence. Tumults and riots ';.- creased, arid Florus, the F.oaiaii governor of Ju- dea, by his crUel exactioi amorte the Jews. Eleazei s, increased this spirit , son of the high priest, persuaded the officers of the temple to reject the offerings of foreigners, and to withhold publick prayers for them. The Roman government felt the insult ; and a basis was scon found to be laid for a Roman war! Feuds and contentions in creased in Judea, till Cestius Callus marched an army thither from Syria to restore order. His march was i^arke'- with blood arid desolation. The city of ZebuTon, Joppa. and other villages in his way, he plundered and burned. Ei^ht 22 thousand four hundred of the inhabitants of the former place, he slew. The district of Narba- tene he laid waste, and slew two thousand of the Jews in Galilee ; reduced the city of Lydda to ashes, and drove the Jews, (who made desperate sallies upon him) till he encamped within a hun dred miles of the capital. Soon after, he enter ed Jerusalem, and burned some part of the city. But through the treachery of his own officers, he made an unexpected flight. The enraged Jewt pursued him, and slew about sixty thousand of his men. Many of the rich Jews, alarmed at the Roman invasion, fled from Jerusalem, as from a foundering ship. Some suppose many of the Christians now fled to a place called Fella in the mountains of Judea. Nero being informed of the defeat of Cestius, gave the command to Vespasian to press the war a.^ainil the rebellious Jews. lie and his son Titus soon collected an army of sixty thousand men. In A. D. 67, he marched from Ptolemais to Judea, marking hi* steps with ravages and desolation. Ink r< 3 t\nd age fell before the fu rious soldiery. A>1 the strong towns of Galilee, and many of those of Judea fell before the vic torious arms of Vespasian, who slew not les than one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. Signal vengeance was taken on Joppa, which had in part been rebuilt, after it had been by Cestius reduced to ashes. Vespasian was enra ged at the frequent piracies of this people. The Jews of this place fleeing before him, betook themselves to their shipping. But a furious tempest overtook those who stood out to sea, who were lost. The others were dashed vessel against vessel, or against the rocks. Some in their distress laid violent hands on themselves. 23 Such as reached the shore were slain by the en raged Romans. The sea for some distance was stained with their blood: four thousand two hun dred were strewed along their coasts, and not one- escaped to relate their catastrophe. Truly this was " distress of their nation, with the sea and the waves thereof roaring !" Vespasian returned from Jericho to Caesarea, to prepare for a grand siege of Jerusalem. Here he received intelligence of the death of the em peror Nero. This led him to suspend for the present, the execution of his plan against the Jews. This respite to that devoted people con tinued about two years, and but encouraged them to deeds of greater enormity. A spirit of faction now appeared in Jerusalem. Two parties first, and afterwards three, raged there ; each contending with deadly animosity for the precedency. A part of one of these fac tions having been excluded from the city, enter ed it by force during the night; and to such mad ness were they abandoned, that they butchered (on that fatal night) not less than eight thousand h've hundred of men, women and children, whose mangled bodies appeared the next morning strewed in the streets of Jerusalem. These abandoned murderers plundered in the city; murdered the high priests, Ananus and Jesus, and insulted their dead bodies. They slew their brethren of Jerusalem, as though they had been wild animals. The} 7 scourged and imprisoned the nobles, in hopes to terrify them to become of their party; and many who could not be thus won, they slew. In this reign of terror, twelve thou sand of the higher orders of the people thus per ished ; and no relative dared to shed a mourning tear, lest this should bring on him a similar fate. 24 Accusation and death became the most common events. Mciny fled, who were intercepted and slain. Piles of their carr^-es Inv on publick roads ; and all pity, as v,v!l :i.- iv;.-;rd i'or human or divine authority, seemed extinguished. To add to the horrid calami Lies of the times, occasioned by the bloody factions, Judea was in fested by bands of robbers and murderers, plun dering their towns and cutting in pieces such as made any resistance, whether men, women or children. Here were exhibited thi; most horrid pictures of what fallen man is capable of perpe trating when restraints are taken olf; that they would turn their own. towns and societies into scenes of horror, like kenncJs of mad animals. One Simon became cemmandcr of one of the/ e factions; John of another. Simon entered Je rusalem at the head of forty thousand banditti. A third faction rose, and discord blazed witli ter- rifick fury. The three factions were intoxicated with rage and desperation, who went on slaying and trampling on piles of. the dead, with an in describable fury. People coining to the temple to worship, were murdered, both natives and for eigners. Their bodies lay in piles, and a collec tion of blood defiled the sacred courts. John of Gischala. heaJ of a faction, burned a store of provisions. Sisron, at the head of an other faction, burned another. Thus the .lows were wen' destroying themselves, u< :d preparing the way for "wrath to come upon them to the uttermost." In the midst of these most dismal events, an alarm was made that a Roman army was ap proaching the city ! Vespasian becoming empe ror, and learning the factious and horrid state of the Jews, determined to proseeule th;*. war asa hist them, and sent his son Thus to reduce Jerusalem and Judea. The Jews, on hearing of the approach of the Roman army, were petrified with horror. They could have no hope of peace. They had no means of flight. They had no time for counsel. They had no confidence in each other. What could he done ? Several things they possessed in abundance. They had a meas ure of iniquity filled up ; a full ripeness for des truction. All seemed wild disorder and despair. Nothing could he imagined but "the confused noise of the warrior, and garments rolled in blood." They knew nothing was their due from the Romans, but exemplary vengeance. The ceaseless cry of combatants, and the horrors of faction, had induced some to desire the interven tion of a foreign foe, to give them deliverance from their domestick horrors. Such was the state of Jerusalem when Titus appeared before it with a besieging army. But he came not to de liver it from its excruciating tortures ; but to ex ecute upon it divine vengeance ; to fulfil the fa tal predictions of our Lord Jesus Christ, that " when ye see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place when ye see Jerusa lem compassed about with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.'' " Where soever the carcass is, there shall the eagles be gathered together." Jerusalem was now the carcass to be devoured ; the Roman eagles had arrived to tear it as their prey. The day on which Titus had encompassed Jerusalem, was the feast of the passover. Here let it be remembered, that it was the time of this feast, (en a preceding occasion) that Christ was taken, condemned and executed. It was at the time of this feast, that the heifer in the hands of 3 2G the sacrificing priests, brought forth a lamb. And just after this feast at another time, that the mirac ulous besieging armies were seen over Jerusalem, just before sunset. And now at the time of the passover, the antitype of this prodigy appears in the besieging army of Titus. Multitudes of Jews had convened at Jerusalem from surround ing nations to celebrate this feast. Ah, misera ble people. going with intent to feed on the paschal lamb; but really to their own linal slaugh ter, for rejecting " the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world !" The Jews had imprecated the blood of the true Paschal Lamb, (by them wantonly shed) on themselves and on their children. God was now going in a signal manner to take them at their word. He hence providentially collected their nation, under sen tence of death, as into a great prison, for the day of execution. And as their execution of Christ was signal, low, degrading, the death of the cross ; so their execution should be signal and dreadful. The foiling city was now crowded with little short of two millions of that devoted people. The event came suddenly and unex pectedly to the Jews, as the coming of a thief, and almost like lightning. Josephus notes this; and thus without design, shows the fulfilment of these hints of Christ, that his coming should be like a thief in the night, and like lightning shin ing under the whole heavens. The furious contending factions of the Jews, on finding themselves environed with the Ro man armies, laid aside (for the moment) their party contentions, sallied out, rushed furiously on their common foe, and came near utterly de stroying the tenth legion of the Roman army. This panic among the Romans, occasioned a 27 short suspension of hostilities. Some new con- lidence hence inspired, the hopes of the Jews ; arid they now determined to defend their city. But being a little released from their terrors of the Romans, their factious resentments again re kindled, and broke out in great fury. The fac tion under Eleazer was swallowed up in the oth er two, under John and Simon. Slaughter, con flagration and plunder ensued. A portion of the centre of the city was burned, and the in habitants became as prisoners to the two furious parties. The Romans here saw their own pro verb verified : "Quos Deus vult perdere priiis elemental." "Whom God will destroy, he gives up" to madness." The invading armies knew how to profit by the madness of the Jews. They were soon found by the Jews to have possession of the two outer walls of their city : this alarm reached the heart of the factions, and once more united them against the common enemy. But they had al ready proceeded too far to retreat from the ef fects of their madness. Famine, with its ghast ly horrors, stared them in the face. It had (as might be expected) been making a silent ap proach ; and some of the more obscure had al ready fallen before it. But even this did not annihilate the fury of faction, which again re turned with redoubled fury, and presented new scenes of wo. As the famine increased, the suf ferers would snatch bread from each other's mouths, and devour their grain unprepared. To discover handfuls of food, tortures wcie inflicted. Food was violently taken by husbands from wives, and wives from husbands ; and even by mothers from their famishing infants. The breast itself was robbed from the famishing suckling, as our Lord denounced : "Wo to them that give j-uck in those days." This terror produced a new scene of righteous retribution. Multitudes of the Jews were forc ed by hunger to flee to the enemy's camp. Here instead of pitying and relieving them, the Ro mans cut off the hands of many, and sent them hack ; but most of them they crucified as fast as they could lay their hands on them ; till wood was wanting for crosses, and space on which to erect them ! Behold here thousands of those des pairing Jews suspended on crosses round the walls of Jerusalem ! Verily '"the Lord is known by the judgments that he executeth !" Yea, this did not suffice. Behold two thousand Jews, bad fled to the mercy of their invaders, rip ped open alive (two thousand in one night!) by Arabs and S v 'aiis in the Roman armies, in hopes " " *_ . . * +l*~ ae > T 2-- ' ' 01 imaing golu, wmcn n,c~v. ^^wsnaa \ortneir enemies fancied they had) swallowed to carry off with them ! Titus being a merciful general, was touched to the heart at the miseries of the Jews ; and in person he tenderly entreated the besieged to surrender. But all the answer he obtained for u-.mierncss was base revilings. He now re- oivt:d to make thorough work with this obstin ate people ; and hence surrounded the city with a. circunrvailation of 39 furlongs in length, strengthened with thirteen towers. This, by the astonishing activity of the soldiers, was effected in three days. Then was fulfilled this prediction of our blessed Lord : " Thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and keep thce in on every side." As the city was now cut ofT from all possible gup plies, famine became more dreadful. Whole 29 families fell a sacrifice to it; and the dead bodies of women, children, and the aged, were seen covering roofs of houses, and various recesses. Youth and the middle aged appeared like spec tres ; and fell many of them dead in publick pla ces. The dead became too numerous to be in terred. Many died while attempting to perform this office. So great and awful became the ca lamities, that lamentation ceased ; and an awful silence of despair overwhelmed the city. But all this failed of restraining the more abandoned from most horrid deeds. They took this oppor tunity to rob the tombs ; and with loud infernal laughter, to strip the dead of their habiliments of death; and would try the edge of their swords on dead bodies ; and on some while yet breath ing. Simon Georas now vented his rage against Matthias, the high priest, and his three sons. He caused them to be condemned, as though fa vouring the Romans. The father asked the fa vour to be first executed ; and not sec the death of his sons ; but the malicious Simon reserved him for the last execution. And as he was ex piring he put the insulting question, whether the Romans could now relieve him ? Things being thus, one Mannaeus, a Jew, es caped to Titus, and informed him of the consum mate wretchedness of the Jews : that in less than three months one hundred and fifteen thou sand and eight hundred dead bodies of Jews had been conveyed through one gate, under his care and register; and he assured him of the ravages of famine and death. Other deserters confirmed the account, and added, that not less than six- hundred thousand dead bodies of Jews had been carried out at different gates. The humane heart of Titus was deeply affected ; who, under 3* 30 those accounts, and while surveying the piles of dead bodies of Jews under the walls, and in the visible parts of the city, raised his eyes and hands to heaven in solemn protestation, that he would have prevented these dire calamities ; that the obstinate Jews had procured them upon their own heads. Josephus, the Jew, now earnestly entreated the leader John and his brethren to surrender to the Romans, and thus save the residue of the Jews. But he received in return nothing but insolent reproaches and imprecations ; John de claring his lirm persuasion that God would never suffer his own city, Jerusalem, to be taken by the enemy! Alas, had he forgotten the history of his own nation, and the denunciations of "the prophets ? Micah had foretold that in this very calamity they would presumptuously "lean upon the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us ? No evil shall come upon us." So blind and presumptuous are hypocrisy and self-confidence! " The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these." The famine in the city became (as might be expected) still more deadly. For want of food the Jews ate their belts, sandals, skins of their shields, dried grass, and even ordure of cattle. JVbav it was that a noble Jewess, urged by the in sufferable pangs of hunger, slew and prepared for food her own infant child! She had eaten half the horrible preparation, when the smell of food brought in a hoard of soldiery, who threatened her with instant death, if she did not produce to them the food she had in possession. She being thus compelled to obey, produced the remaining half of her child ! The soldiers stood aghast, : the recital petrified the hearers with horror: 31 and congratulations were poured on those whose eyes death had closed upon such horrid scenes. Humanity seems ready to sink at the recital of the woful events of that day. No words can reach the horrors of the situation of the female part of the community at that period. Such scenes force upon our recollection the tender pathetic address of our Saviour to the pious fe males, who followed him, going to the cross : " Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me; but weep for yourselves and for your children ; for behold the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the breasts that never gave suck." Moses had long predicted this verj scene. "The tender and delicate woman among you, (said he,) who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground for delicateness ; her eye shall be evil towards her young one, and toward her children, which she shall bear ; for she shall eat them, for want of all things secret ly in the siege and straitness wherewith thine en emy shall distress thee in thy gates." Probably the history of the world will not afford a paral lel to this. God prepared peculiar judgments for peculiarly horrid crimes ! " These be the days of vengeance ; that all things that are writ ten may be fullillcd.'' Josephus declares, that if there had not been many credible witnesses of that awful fact, he never would have recorded it ; for, said he, " such a shocking violation of nature never has been perpetrated by any Greek or barbarian." While famine thus spread desolation, the Ro mans finally succeeded in removing part of the inner wall, and in possessing themselves of the high and commanding tower of Antonio, which 32 seemed to overlook the temple. Titus with his council of war had formed a determination to save the temple, to grace his conquest, and re main an ornament to his empire. But God had not so determined. And "though there he ma ny devices in a man's heart ; nevertheless the counsel of the Lord that shall stand." A Ro man soldier violating the general order of Titus, succeeded in hurling a brand of fire into the golden window of the temple ; and soon (as righteous Heaven would have it !) the sacred edifice was in flames. The Jews perceiving this, rushed with horrid outcries to extinguish the fire. Titus too, flew to the spot in his char iot, with his chief officers and legions. With loud command, and every token of anxiety, he enforced the extinguishing of the fire ; but in vain. So great was the confusion, that no atten tion was paid to him. His soldiers, deaf to all cries, assiduously spread the flames far and wide; rushing at the same time on the Jews, sword in hand, slaying and trampling down, or crushing them to death against the walls. Many were plunged into the flames, and perished in the bur ning of the temple. The fury of the Roman soldiers slaughtered the poor, the unarmed, and the rich, as well as men in arms. Multitudes of dead bodies were piled round about the altar, to which they had fled for protection. The way leading to the inner court was deluged with blood. Titus finding the fire had not yet reached the inner temple, entered it with his superior offi cers, and surveyed its magnificence with silent admiration. He found it to exceed all lie had heard. This view led him to renew his efforts to save this itupcridous pile of building, though so many of the out-buildings were gone. Ifc even entreated his soldiers to extinguish the flames, and appointed an officer to punish any who should disobey. But all his renewed ef forts were still in vain. The feelings of his sol diery were utterly unmanageable, launder, re venge, and slaughter had combined to render them deaf and most furious. A soldier succeed ed in firing the door posts of the inner temple, and the conflagration soon became general. One needs almost a heart of steel to contem plate the scenes which followed. The trium phant Roman soldiers were in a most ungovern able rage and fury. They were indeed instru ments prepared for their work, to execute the most signal vengeance of Heaven ; the flame of which was now reaching its height ! The Ro- i :::;::: - : 1".V 'jfliro Jev^s ail before them ; sparing neither age, sex or rank. They seemed deter mined to annihilate the Jewish race on the spot. Priests and common people ; those who surren dered, and those who still fought ; all were alike subjects of an indiscriminate slaughter. The fire of the temple at length completely envelop ed the stupendous pile of building. The fury of the flames exceeded description. It impressed on distant spectators an idea that the whole city was in flames. The ensuing disorder and tu mult, Josephus pronounces, to have been such as to baffle description. The outcry of the Ro man legions was as great as they could make. And the Jews finding themselves a prey to the fury of both fire and sword, exerted themselves in the wildest accents of screaming. The peo ple in the city, and those on the hill, mutually responded to each other in groans and screeches. People who had seemed just expiring through 34 famine, derived new strength from unprecedent ed scenes of horror and death, to deplore their wretchedness. From mountain to mountain, and from places distant, lamentations echoed to each other. As the temple was sinking under the fury of the raging element, the mount on which it stood seemed in that part of it, (says the historian) to impress the idea of a lake of liquid fire ! The blood of the slain ran in rivulets. The earth around became covered with the slain ; and the victorious Romans trampled over those piles of the dead, in pursuit of the thousands who were fleeing from the points of their swords. In a word, the roar and crackling of fire ; the shrieks of thousands in despair ; the dying groans of ili-) isands, and the sights which met the eye wherever it was turned, were such as never be fore had any parallel on earth. They probably as much exceeded all antecedent scenes of hor ror ; as the guilt which occasioned them, in their treatment of the Lord of Glory, exceeded all guilt ever before known among men. A tragical event had transpired worthy of par ticular detail. Before the temple was wrapped in ilamos, an impostor appeared among the Jews, asserting a divine commission ; and that if the people would follow him to the temple, they would see signs, wonders and deliverance. About six: thousand (mostly women and children) fol lowed him, and were in the galleries of the tem ple, wailing for this promised deliverance, when fire wis set to tint building. Not one escaped. All wore consumed in the conflagration of the sacred edifice ! What multitudes are by false prophets plunged in eternal (ire ! 35 The place of the temple now presented a vat pile of ruins. Here terminated the glory and existence of this stupendous building, this type of the hody of Christ, and of his church ; this type of the Millenium, and of heaven. Here it reached its close, after the period of one thou sand and thirty years, from the time of its dedi cation by Solomon ; and of six hundred and thir ty-nine years, from its being rebuilt in the days of Haggai, after the seventy years captivity. It is singular, that it should be reduced to ashes not only soon after the feast of the passover t which convened so many thousands of Jews to Jerusalem to meet the ruins of their city and na tion ; but that it should be consumed on the same month, and same day of the month, on which the Babylonians had before destroyed it by fire. Josephus records another strking event, which seemed a sign of the destruction of Jerusalem. He says; (addressing the Jews who survived this ruin) " The fountains flow copiously for Titus, which to you were dried up. For before he came, you know that both Siloam, and all the springs without the city, foiled ; so that water was brought by the amphora, (a vessel.) But now they are so abundant to your enemies, as to suffice for themselves and their cattle. This wonder you also formerly experienced, when the king of fiabylon laid siege to your city." The priests of the temple, after the destruc tion of their sacred edifice, betook themselves (those who had thus far escaped the general slaughter) to the top of one of its broken walls, where they set mourning and famishing. On the fifth day necessity compelled them to descend, tnd humbly to ask pardon of the Roman general* 3o But Titus at this late period rejected their peti tion, trying; "As the temple, for the sake of which 1 would have q-ared you, is destroyed; it is but lit the priests should perish also." All were put to death. The obstinate leaders of the great Jewish fac tions, beholding now the desperateness of their cause, desired a conference with Titus. One would imagine they would at least now lay down their arms. Their desiring an interview with the triumphant Roman general, appeared as though they would be glad to do this. But right eous Heaven designed their still greater destruc tion. Titus after all their rnad rebellions, kind ly offered to spare the residue of the Jew.-, if they would now submit. But strange to relate, they refused to comply. The noble general then, as must have been expected, was highly exasperated ; and issued his general order, that he would grant no further pardon to the insur gents. His legions now were ordered to " rav- 'ind destroy," With the light of the next ling, arose the tremendous ilame of the cas tle of Antonio, the council chamber, register's oflice, and the noble palace of the queen Helena. These magnificent piles were reduced to ashes. The furious legions, (executioners of divine ven geance, Ezek. ix. 5, 6 ) .then flew through the lower city, of which they soon became masters, slaughtering and burning in every street. The Jews themselves aided the slaughter. \\ t the royal palace, containing vast treasures, ei-iht thousand four hundred Jews were muidercci by their seditious brethren. Great numbers 6f de serters from the furious leaders of faction, flock ed to the Romans : but it was too late. The general order was given, all should be slain. Such therefore fell. 37 The Roman soldiers, however, being at length weary with butchery, and more than satisried with blood, fora short time sheathed their swords, and betook themselves to plunder. They col lected multitudes of Jews, husbands, wives, children, and servants ; formed a market ; and set them up at vendue for slaves. They sold them for any trifle ; while purchasers were but few. Their law-giver, Moses, had forewarned them of this ; Deut. xxviii. 68 : "And ye shall be sold for bond men, and bond women ; and no man shall buy you." Tremendous indeed must the lot of those be, who reject the Messiah, and are found fignting against the Son of God. Of ten had these Jews heard read (but little it seerns did they understand the senseof the tremendous passage) relativ o to the Jewish rejectors of C!,i'ist, " He that sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh ; the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron ; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." " Thus saith the Lord, say, A sword, a sword is sharpened, and also furbished : it is sharpened to make a sore slaughter ; it is furbished that it may glitter; (said God by the prophet, Ezek. xxi. alluding to this very event;) the sword is sharpen ed, and it is furbished to give it into the hand of the slayer. Cry and howl, son of man; smite upon thj thigh; smite thy hands together,and let the sword be doubled a third time ; the sword of the slain. I have set the point of the sword against all their gates, that their hearts may faint, and their ruins be multiplied : Ah, it is made bright! it is wrap ped up for the slaughter." Such, and much 4 38 more, were the divine denunciations of this very scene, which the infidel Jews would not escape, but would incur! And even a merciful God shrunk not from the execution ! Let antichris- tian powers, yea let all intidels and gospel des- pisers, consider this and tremble ! The whole lower city, now in the possession of the Roman legions, (after the respite noted,) was set on lire. But the insolence of the devo ted Jews in a part of the higher city, remained unabated. They even insulted and exasperated their enemies, as though afraid the work of ven geance might not be sufficiently executed. The Romans brought their engines to operate upon the walls of this higher branch of the city, still standing; which soon gave way before them. Before their demolition, Titus reconnoitred the city, and its fortifications ; and expressed his as tonishment that it should ever fall before his arms. He exclaimed, " Had not God himself aided our operations, and driven the Jews from their fortresses ; it would have been absolutely impossible to have taken them. For what could men and the force of engines have done against such towers as these ?" Yes, unless their Rock had sold them for their iniquities, no enemy could have prevailed against Jerusalem. Jose* phus, who was an eye witness of all the scene, says ; " All the calamities, which ever bcfel any nation, since the beginning of the world, were in ferior to the miseries of the Jews at this awful period." The upper city too fell before the victorious arms of the Roman conquerors. Titus would have spared all, who had not been forward in 'ing the Romans ; and gave his orders ac- ugjy. But his soldiers, callous to ail the 39 feelings of humanity, slaughtered the aged anft sick, as well as the mass of the people. The tall and most beautiful young men, however, were spared hy Titus to grace his triumph at Rome. Of the rest, many above the age of seventeen, were sent in chains to Egypt, to be disposed of as slaves. Some were reserved to be sacrificed on their amphitheatres, as gladiators; to be slain in sham tights, for the sport of their conquerors. Others were distributed through the empire. All who survived, under the age of seventeen, were exposed for sale. The triumphant general commanded what re mained of the city, to be razed to its foundation, except three of the most stately towers, Mariam- ne, Hippocos, and Phasael. These should stand as monuments of the magnificence of the place, and of his victory. A small part of the wall of the city at the west also, he commanded should be spared, as a rampart for his garrison. The oth er parts of the city he wished to have so effec tually erased, as never to be recognized to have been inhabited. The Talmud and Mamonides relate, that the foundations of the temple were so removed, that the site of it was ploughed by Terentius Rufus. Thus our Saviour predicted, that " there should not be left one stone upon another." One awful occurrence is noted, as transpiring during these scenes; that eleven thousand Jews, under the guard of one Fronto, a Roman gener al, were (owing to their own obstinacy, and to the scarcity of provisions) literally starved to death ! Josephus informs that eleven hundred thou sand Jews perished in this siege of Jerusalem; that two hundred and thirty-seven thousand per- 40 ished in that last war in other sieges and battles: besides multitudes who perished by famine and pestilence : making a total of at least fourteen hundred thousand. Some hundreds of thou sands, in sullen despair, laid violent hands on themselves. About ninety-seven thousand were captured, and dispersed. Relative to the two great leaders of the Jewish factions, Simon and John ; they were led to Rome, to grace the tri umph of Titus ; after which Simon was scourg ed and executed as a malefactor ; and John was committed for life to dungeon. Thus ended their violent factious contentions. The Roman army, before they left Jerusalem, not only demolished the buildings there, but even dug up their foundations. How fatal was the divine judgment on this devoted city. Five months before it was the wonder of the world ; and contained, at the commencement of the siege, more than a million and a half of Jews, natives and visiters ; now* it lay in total ruins, with not "one stone upon- another ;" as Christ had denounced, These ruins Eusebius informs us he beheld. And Eleazer is infestgluced by Jose- phus as exclaiming ; " Where is ''d'ttr. j-reat city, which it was believed God inhabited." The prophet Micah had predicted ; "Therefore shall Zion for your sakes be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the moun tain of the Lord's house as the high places of the forest." A captain of the army of Titus, did in fact plough where some part of the foundation of the temple had stood, as the Talmud records, and thus fulfilled this prediction. Jesus Christ had foretold of this destruction, that " there should be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world." And 41 of the event Josephus says ; " If the misfortunes of all nations from the beginning of the world, were compared with those which befel the JCWF, they would appear far less." Again ; "No oili er city ever suffered such things ; as no other generation from the beginning of the world, was ever more fruitful in wickedness." Other parts of Judea were still to be subdued. Macherus was attacked. Seventeen hundred Jews surrendered and were slain; also three thousand fugitives taken in the woods of Jardes. Titus at Caesarea celebrated in great splendour the birth day of his brother Domitian. Here a horrid scene, according to the bloody customs of those times, was presented. To grace this oc casion, more than two thousand five hundred Jews fell ; some by burning ; some by fighting with wild beasts ; and some by mutual combat with the sword. Massada was besieged. The Jewish com mander, in despair, induced the garrison first to destroy their stores, and then themselves. They (nine hundred and sixty in number) consented to the horrid proposal. Men, women, and chil dren took their seats upon the ground, and offer ed their necks to the sword. Ten men were selected to execute the fatal deed. The dread ful work was done. One of the ten was then chosen to execute the nine, and then himself. The nine being put to death, and fire being set to the place,>the last man plunged his dagger in to his own heart. Seven persons, (women and children,) found means to conceal themselves, and escape the ruin. When the Romans approached, these seven related to them these horrid events. 4* 42 Most of the remaining places now, through sullca despair, gave up all opposition, and sub mitted to the conquerors. Thus Judea became as a desolate wilderness ; and the following pas sage in Isaiah had at least a primary accomplish ment : " Until the cities be wasted without in habitant; and the houses without man ; and the land be utterly desolate ; and the Lord have re moved man far away, and there be a great for saking in the midst of the land." A line of prophecies is found in the sacred or acles, which relate to a signal temporal destruc tion of the most notorious enemies of the king dom of Jesus Christ. Those were to have a two-fold accomplishment ; first upon the Jews ; and secondly upon the great Antichrist of the last days, typified by the infidel Jews. Accord ingly those prophecies in the Old Testament are ever found in close connexion with the Milleni um. The predictions of our Saviour, in Matt, xxiv. Mark xiii. and Luke xxi. are but a new edition of these sacred prophecies. This has been noted, as " the destruction of the city and temple foretold." It is so indeed ; and more. It is also a denunciation of the destruction of the great Antichrist of the last days. The certainty of this will appear in the following things. New Testament writers decide it. The Thessaloni- ans, having heard what our Lord denounced, that all those things he had predicted should take place on that generation ; were trembling with the apprehension, that the coming of Christ pre dicted, would then very soon burst upon the world. Paul writes to them, (2 Thes. ii.) and beseeches them by this coming of Christ, not to be shaken in mind, or troubled with such an ap prehension. For that day, (that predicted conr*- 43 ing of Christ, as it related to others beside the Jews,) was not to take place on that generation. It was not to come till the Antichnstjan aposta sy come first ; that man of sin was first to be ro vealed. This long apostasy was to be accomplish ed, before the noted coming of Christ in its more important sense be fulfilled. After the Roman government, which hindered the rise of the man of sin, should be taken out of the way, Paul says, " Then shall that wicked one be revealed whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and destroy with the brightness of his comingS"* Here then is the predicted coming of Christ, in its more interesting sense, in the bat tle of that great day, which introduces the Mil lenium. Here is a full decision that these noted denunciations of Christ alluded more especially (though not primarily) to a coming which is still future. The same is decided by Christ himself, in Rev. xvi. After the sixth vial, in the drying up of the Turkish Euphrates, three unclean spirits of devils, like frogs, go forth to the kings of the earth, and of all the world, to gather them to the great battle. The awful account is interrupted by this notice from the mouth of Christ ; verse 15, "Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments ; lest he walk naked, and they see his shame." This is as though our Lord should say ; now the time is at hand, to which my predictions of coming as a thief, principally alluded. Now is the time when my people on earth shall need to watch, as I di-* rected, when predicting my coming to destroy first the type of Antiekrist, and secondly the an? titype. 44 The predictions in the prophets, which re ceived an incipient fulfilment in the destruction of Jerusalem, were to receive a more interesting fulfilment in Christ's coming to destroy his anti- christian foes. Hence it is that the seventh vial is called (Rev. xvi. 14.) "the battle of that great d iv of God Almighty ;" clearly alluding to that great day noted through the prophets. And of the same event it is said, Rev. x. 7 ; " the mysk'rr of God shall he finished, as he hath declared to his servants, the prophets. Here again the al- l-.ision clearly is to the many predictions in the prophets of the destruction of the enemies of Christ's kingdom, which were to receive an in cipient fulfilment in the destruction of Jerusa lem ; and a far more interesting one. in the sweeping from the earth the last antichristian powers, to introduce the millennial kingdom of Christ. We accordingly find those predictions through the prophets clearly alluding to the last days, and the introduction of the Millenium. Viewing the destruction of Jerusalem then, as hut a type of an event now pending upon anti- Christian nations, we peruse it with new inter est ; and it must be viewed in the light of a most impressive warning to this age of the world. The factions, madness, and self-ruin of the for mer, give but a lively practical comment upon the various predictions of the latter. Three great and noted factions intrbduced the destruc tion of Jerusalem. And of the destruction of An tichrist we read (perhaps alluding to that very circumstance) Rev. xvi. 19; "And the great city was divided into three parts." Then it fol lows; " and the cities of the nations fell; and great Babylon came in remembrance before God to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierce- j 45 ness of his wrath." In the desolation of Gog and his bands, faction draws the sword of exter mination. " I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord God ; every man's sword shall be against his brother." Ezek. xxxviii. 21. The great coalition against the Jews, in the time of Jehoshaphat, was destroyed by the sword of mutiny and faction : See 2 Chro. xx. And in allusion to this very battle whicli God fought for his church, the vast coalitions of Antichrist, in the last days, when the Jews are restored, is said to be gathered " to the valley of Jehosha phat :" See Joel iii. The various circumstan ces of the destruction of Jerusalem, afford a live ly comment on the many denunciations of the battle of that great day of God Almighty, which awaits the antichristian world ; w r hile it is fully evident, that they more especially allude to the tremendous scenes of judgment, which shall in troduce the Millenium. CHAPTER II. THE CERTAIN RESTORATION OF 3\3DAH AKD ISIIAI^L THE subject of this chapter is introduced with a concise view of the expulsion of the ten tribes of Israel from the promised land. The ten tribes revolted from the house of David, early in the reign of Ilehoboam, son and successor of kins; Solomon. They received from this young prince treatment, which was considered irnpoli- tick and rough; upon which they separated them selves from that branch of the house of Ls; < L who, from that time, have been distinguished by the name of Jews. They submitted to another king, Jeroboam. And this breach was never af ter '.ealctl. Jeroboam, to perpetuate and widen th: breach, and apprehending that if the Jews and ten tribes amicably met for pubJick worship, according to the law of God, the rupture be tween them would probably soon be healed, set , olden calves, one in Dan, and one in ! ; .''id ordered that the ten tribes of Is- -!:! meet there for their publick worship. He tli us ''made Israel to sin." And would to God 43 he had been the last who has made the professed worshippers of Jehovah " to sir,," by assigning them different places of worship, from motives not more evangelical than those of Jeroboam. The ten tribes thus weot off to idolatry. A line of kings succeeded Jeroboam ; hat none of them, to the time of the expulsion, were true worhippers of the God of Israel. By their apos tasy, folly, and idolatry, the ten tribes were pre paring themselves for a long and doleful rejec tion, an outcast state for thousands of years. This Moses had denounced ; Deut. xxviii. And this God fulfilled. Tiglah-Pilnczer, king of Assyria, captured the tribes of Reuhen and Gad, and the half tribe of Man ass ah, who lay east of Jordan, and placed them in Halah, Harah, and Hahor, by the river Gozen. 1 Chro. v. 2G. About twenty years after, (134 years before the Babylonish captivity of the Jews, and 725 years before Christ,) the rest of the ten tribes continuing impenitent. Shalmanezer, the succeeding king of Assyria, at tacked Samaria, took the remainder of the ten, tribes, in the reign of Hoshea, king of Israel, carried them to Assyria, and placed them with their brethren in Halah and Habor, by the river Gozen in Media 2 Kings, xvii. This filial ex pulsion of Israel from the promised land, was about 943 years after they came out of Egypt. The king of Assyria placed in their stead, in Sa maria, people from Babylon, Cuiha, Ava, Ila- inah, and Sapharvaim. llere was the origin of the monqre! Samaritans. From this captivity the ten tribes were never recovered. And they have long seemed to have been lost from the earth. They seem to have been indeed " outcast," from the social worid, 49 and the knowledge of civilized man. The Jews, long after, were dispersed among the nations ; but have ever been known as Jews. But not so with Israel. They have seemed strangely to disappear from the world ; and for 2500 years to have been utterly lost. What are we to believe concerning the ten tribes ? Are they ever again to be known as the natural seed of Abraham ? Are they now in ex istence as a distinct people ? If so, where are they to be found ? All parts of the world are now so well known, that one would conceive the commonwealth of Israel cannot now be found among the civilized nations. Must we look for them in a savage state ? If so, the knowledge of their descent must be derived from a variety of broken, circumstantial, traditionary evidence. Who, or where, then, are the people who furnish the greatest degree of this kind of evidence ? An answer, relative to their restoration, will be involved in this chapter ; and an answer to the other questions; may be expected in the chap ter following. That the Jews are to be restored to Palestine as Jews, seems evident from a variety of consid erations. And that the ten tribes of Israel will there be united with them, seems also to be plainly predicted in the prophets. Let the following things be considered : 1. The preservation of the Jews, as a dis tinct people, among the many nations whither they have been dispersed, now for nearly 1 800 years, affords great evidence, to say the least, that the many predictions, which seem to fore- tel such a restoration, are to have a literal ac complishment. This their preservation is a 5 f 50 most signal event of Providence. Nothing like it has ever, in any other instance, been known on earth ; except it be the case with the ten tribes of Israel. Other dispersed tribes of men have amalgamated with the people where they have dwelt, and have lost their distinct existence. And nothing but the special hand of God could have prevented this in the case of the Jews. The event then shows, that God has great things in store for them, as Jews. What can these things be, but the fulfilment of those many pro- Ehecies, which predict their restoration to the md of their fathers, as well as their conversion to the Christian faith ? 2. That people have never, as yet, possessed all the land promised to them ; nor have they possessed any part of it so long as promised. Hence their restoration to that land, is essential to the complete fulfilment of those ancient pro mises. They were to possess the land to the river Euphrates, and forever ; or to the end of the world* God promised to Abraham. Gen. xv. 18 "Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt, unto the great river, the riv er Euphrates." Exod. xxiii. 31 "And I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea, even un to the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river (Euphrates) ; for I will de liver the inhabitants of the land into your hands* and thou slialt drive them out before thee." Deut. xi. 24 ' Every place whereon the sole of thy feet shall stand, shall be yours, from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea, shall your coast be." Here, then, are the boun-f daries of this ancient divine grant to Abraham] and his natural seed. Beginning at tho river of 51 Egypt, (a river not far from the north-east cor- ner-of the Red Sea, and running into the Medi terranean.) Thence northward, on the shore of the said sea, as far as the point due west of Mount Lebanon. Thence eastward, over said mountain, away to the river Euphrates. Thence southward, as far as the south line of Syria. Thence westward, including the whole of Syria, to the first named river. The whole of this ter ritory, the natural seed of Abraham were to pos sess. " for ever." The inhabitants " should he driven out before them." But this people an ciently possessed hut a small part of this terri tory. There was indeed a kind of typical pos session of it, in the reign of Solomon ; which reign was a type of the Millennium. (See Psalrri Ixxii.) David, in his wars, which were typical of the wars that will introduce the Millennium, subdued and put under tribute the Syrians, Mo- abites, Ammonites, and most of the nations dwelling in the above named territories. And they continued in subjection in the reign of So lomon. (See 1 Kings, iv. 21.) But those na tions were not then driven out ; nor was their land possessed by the children of Abraham. They afterward threw off their yoke, and were extremely troublesome to the people of God. They were only made tributary during a part of two reigns. But God promised Exod. xxiii. 31 "I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea even to the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river (Euphrates.) For I will deli ver the inhabitants of the land into your hands, and thoit shalt drive them out before thee." The land east of Canaan, and away to the river Euphra tes, was never possessed by Israel. Their lite- 52 ral possession of that extent of territory, must be an event still future. The promised land was given to Israel " for an everlasting possession ;'' Gen. xvii. 8. Surely this must mean a longer time than they did in ages past possess it. This promise remains then to be yet fulfilled. It must mean an undisturbed possession of it, so long as the possession of it on earth may be desirable ; or to the end of the world. We accordingly find that people, at the time of the introduction of the Millennium, ex postulating with God, and pleading that ancient granf;; Isa. Ixiii. 17, 18; "O Lord, why hast thou made us to err from thy way. and hardened our heart from thy fear ? Return, for thy ser vants' sake, the tribes of thine inheritance. The people of thy holiness have possessed it (thine inheritance) but a little while : our adversaries have trodden down thy sanctuary. We are thine. Thou never bearest rule over them ; they are not called by thy name." Here is a plea, put into the mouths of the ancient people of the Lord, at the time of their restoration, not long before the battle of the great day, with a de scription of which battle this chapter begins. They expostulate, relative to the sovereignty of God, in the resting of the veil of blindness and hardness so long on their hearts, during their long infidel state. They plead that they are God's servants, according to the ancient entail of the covenant. They plead for a restoration ; - and plead that their nation had enjoyed that, their everlasting inheritance, but a little while ; but that a people not called by God's name, nor governed by his word, had trodden down the sanctuary ; a description exactly fulfilled by the Turks. This fully implies the entering again of 53 the Jews upon their ancient inheritance, in the last days. 3. 1 shall now adduce some of the numerous express predictions of this event. In the pro phecy of Ezekiel, the restoration of the Jews ajid of Israel to their own land, as well as their conversion in, the last days, is clearly predicted. In chapter xxxvi. we have their long dispersion, and their guilty cause of it. But God, in the last days, works for his own name's sake, and recovers them. God says, "And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the hea then ; and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, when 1 shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean ; from all your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give unto you, and a new spirit will I put with in you ; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. Then shall ye remember your own evil ways and shall loathe yourselves. Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord God, be it known unto you. Thus saith the Lord God ; in 'the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities, I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded. And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all the heathen that passed by. And 5* 54 they shall say, This land (hat was so desolate, is become like the garden of Eden ; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced and are inhabited. Then the heathen, who are left round about you, shall know that I the Lord build the ruined places, and plant that which was desolate. I the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it." Here is their regeneration ; having a new heart ; being cleansed from all sin. Arid beside this, we find expressly promised, their be ing reinstated in the land of their fathers, which had long lain waste. They rebuild their ancient cities. That this is in the last days, connected with the introduction of the Millennium, the connexion of the whole passage, and the follow ing chapters, fully decide. Both houses of the descendants of Abraham, (viz. Israel and Judah.) are recovered, as will be seen. Those predic tions cannot he fulfilled merely by the conver sion of that people. For over and above their express conversion, they are established in the land of their fathers. ^ The prophet proceeds further to predict and illustrate the wonderful event, by the resurrec tion of a valley of dry bones ; chap, xxxvii. : which figure God thus explains : "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Be hold, they say, our bones are dried, and our hope is lost ; we are cut off for our parts. Therefore prophecy, and say unto them ; Thus saith the Lord God ; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Is rael. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you tip out of your graves, and shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land. Then shall ye 56 know that I the Lord have spoken it, and per formed it, saith the Lord." The re-union of the two branches of that peo ple follows, by the figure of the two sticks, taken by the prophet. On the one he writes', " for Judah, and for the children of Israel his com panions." Upon the other; " For Joseph, the stifk of Ephrairn, and for all the house of Israel, In! companions." Lest any should say, the prediction which here seems to foretel the restoration of the ten tribes, as well as that of the Jews, were accom plished in the restoration of that few of the Isra elites, who clave to the Jews under the house of David, and the ten tribes are irrecoverably lost ; it is here expressed that the Jews and those Isra- > elites, their companions, were symbolized by one stick ; and Ephraim, all the house of Israel, (the whole ten tribes,) by the other stick. These sticks miraculously become one in the prophet's hand ; which is thus explained. "Thus saith the Lord God ; Behold, I will take the children of Israel (their general ancient name, including the twelve tribes) from among the heathen, whither they be gone ; and I will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land. And I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel ; and one king sh^ll 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. And they shall dwell in the land that I gave unto Jacob, my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt, and they shall dwell therein, even they and their children, and their children's children, forever." Can a doubt here rest on the subject, whether the Jews and the ten tribes shall be re-establi*hed in Palestine? 56 Can such divine testimony as this be done away? But similar testimonies to the point are numer ous in the prophets. This passage has ;;ever yet received a primary, or p^.ri.Inl fuliiirnent. The whoio of it remains to he fulfilled* Some of the predictions, which are to have an ultimate accomplishment in this final restoration, had a primary one in the restoration from the seventy years captivity in Babylon. But even this can not be said of the prophecy under consideration. Noae of those written on the second stick, in the hand of the prophet, have ever yet been recov ered. The whole passage is intimately connect ed with the battle of that great day, which intro duces the Millennium; as appears in the two fol lowing chapters. Here the house of Israel enter again upon their everlasting possession of the land of promise, which God engaged to Abraham. A reiteration of these predictions is intermin gled with the predictions concerning Gog, or the powers of Antichrist, to be collected against the Jews, after their restoration, in the two chapters succeeding. " In the latter years thou (Gog) halt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and gathered out of many peo- x ple, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste, (or have lain waste for so many centuries during the dispersion of Israel ;) but it (that nation) is brought back out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them. Thou sha.lt ascend and come like a storm ; thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou and all thy bands, and many people withthee. Thus saith the Lord God ; it shall also come to pass, that at the same time, shall things come into thy janind, and thou shalt think an evil thought ; and thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwall- 57 ed villages, (the state of the Jews in Palestine, after their restoration) '; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them, dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates ; to take a spoil, and to take a prey, to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now in habited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, who have gotten cattle and goods, who dwell in the midst of the land." " Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou and all thy bands. So will I make my ho ly name known in the midst of my people Israel ; and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One of Israel. Behold, it is come, it is done, saith the Lord God. This is the day whereof I have spoken. And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and burn the weapons seven years. The whole account is thus divinely summed up. "Therefore, thus saith the Lord God; now will I bring again the captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel, and will be jealous for my holy name ; after,that they have borne their shame, and all their trespasses whereby they have trespassed against me, when they dwelt safely in their land, and none made them afraid. When I have brought them again from the people, and gathered them out of their enemies' lands, and am sanctified in them in the sight of many nations ; then shall they know that 1 am the Lord their God, who caused them to be led into captivity among the heathen; but I have gathered them into their own land, and left none of them there (among the heathen) any more ; neither will I hide my face any more from them, for I have poured out my spirit upon the house f Israel, saith the Lord God." It seems as 51 though this were enough, if nothing more were quoted from the prophets to prove our point. If this proof should be deemed insuilicierit, one would he apt to say, nothing that inspiration can assert upon the point, could be deemed suffi cient ! But that it may appear that the prophetic writings unite to exhibit this as a great object of the Christian's belief, I shall note some of the ether predictions of it. In Isaiah xi. the stem from the root of Jesse is promised. The Millennium follows, when the cow and the bear shall feed together, and the wolf and the lamb unite in love ; and nothing more shall hurt or offend. ' " And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set his hand again, the second time, to gather the rem nant of his people, who shall be left, from Assy ria and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamah, and from the isles of the sea. " And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather to gether the dispersed of Judah. from the four corners of the earth." Here just before the Millennium, the Jews and ten tribes are collected from their long dispersion, by the hand of Omni potence, set a second time for their recovery. A body of the Jews, and some of several other tribes, were recovered from ancient Babylon. God is goinf, in the last days, to make a second, and more effectual recovery from mystical Baby lon, and from the four quarters of the earth. The prophet proceeds ; # And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand overjhe river, and shall unite it in the seven streams, and 59 make men go over dry shod. And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people, which shall he left from Assyria ; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt." Mr. Scott, upon this passage, says ; " For the Lord will then remove all ob stacles hy the same powerful interposition, that he vouchsafed in behalf of Israel, when He sep arated the tongue, or bay of the Red Sea, and destroyed that hindrance to the departure of Is rael ; and with a mighty wind he will so sepa rate the waters of the river Euphrates, in all its streams, that men may pass over dry shod. Thus an highway shall be made for Israel's return, as there was for their ancestors to pass from Egypt into Canaan. This part of the chapter, contains a prophecy, which certainly remains yet to be accomplished." Bishop Lowth says, the same; and adds, as quoted by Mr. Scott, t4 This part of the chapter, foretels the glorious times of the church, which shall be ushered- in by the restora tion of the Jewish nation, when they shall em brace the gospel, and be restored to their own country. This remarkable scene of Providence is plainly foretold by most of the prophets ; and by St. Paul.' 5 We thus have the testimony of those great men in favour of a literal restoration of the Jews to their own land, being here predic ted.. And here is a drying up of a mighty river, to prepare the way for the event. A river is the symbol of a nation. When Israel were to be redeemed from Egypt, the Red Sea was to be dried before them. When they were to be redeemed from Babylon, the Euphrates was by Cyrus to be dried or turned, to accomplish the event. And in their last restoration to Pa lestine, (ere long to be accomplished,) another 60 great mystical river is to be dried up. The sixth vial dries up the mystic Euphrates, that the way of the kings of the east may be prepared. This is to-be fulfilled on the Turks. Perhaps the event is now transpiring. This river is to be smitten in its seven streams $ as stated in^this prophecy of Isaiah ; perhaps indicating, that the Turks, be they ever so powerful in provinces and resources, as seven is a number of perfec tion, they yet shall fall by the remarkable hand of God, to accommodate the return of his ancient people. These prophetic hints give an interest to the present struggles in the south-east of Eu rope. In Jeremiah, xxiii. 6, 8, is the restoration of Israel. "Li his days, (i. e. under the millennial reign of the righteous branch raised up to Da vid,) Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely : I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries, whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds. Therefore, behold the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say, The Lord liveth, who brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt ; but, The Lord liveth, who brought up, and who led the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I have driven them, and they shall dwell in their own land." As this event is under the reign of Christ; so it has never yet been fulfilled. It is an event of the last days ; and plants the ancient people of God in their own land. ** 'The same comparison of the same event, we find in Isaiah, xvi. 14, 15. After denouncing their long dispersion, for their sins ; God says, " Therefore, behold the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said, The Lord 61 liveth that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt ; hut the Lord liveth that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither I had driven them ; and I will bring them into their land, that I gave unto their fathers." In Isaiah xviii. a land shadowing with wfngs at the last days, is by the Most High addressed, and called to aid this restoration of thatpeople of God. " Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from the begin ning hitherto ; a nation meted out, and trodden down ; whose land the rivers have spoiled. In that day shall the present be brought unto the Lord of hosts, of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from the beginning hitherto ; a nation meted out and trodden under foot ; whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the Lord of hosts, the Mount Zion." The people here described, (to be brought by that land addressed, as a present to the Lord, to Mount Zion, or to Palestine,) are evidently the descendants of Abraham, and an event of the last days. A further explanation of this chapter, is to be given in the last chapter of this work. The same thing is rioted in Isaiah Ix. The Jewish church is called upon ; " Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. The gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy ris ing. Who are these that fly as clouds, and as doves to their windows ? 'Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far. their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee." Here are ships conveying 6 62 the Jews to Palestine, as clouds and as doves to their windows. Chap. Ixvi. 20 : " And they shall bring of your brethren for an offering unto the Lord, out of all nations, upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith the Lord, as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel unto the house oYthe Lord." InZephaniah, iii. 10, (connected with the battle of the great day, and the Millennium,) we read ; " From the rivers of Ethiopia my sup pliants (or worshippers) shall bring my offering, even the daughter of my dispersed ;" as the passage should be rendered. In Amos, ix. 14, 15, is a prediction of this event. " And I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them ; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; and I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land, which I have given them, saith the Lord God." This restoration is surely future. For after the res toration from the Babylonish captivity, they were again expelled from their land, now for many centuries. But after the restoration here prom ised, God says, " They shall no more be pulled up out of their land." This shows that the res toration here promised, is both future and liter al. Jer. xxx. 3 ; " For lo, the days come, saith the Lord, that 1 will bring again the captivity of my people, Israel and Judah, saith the Lord ; and 1 will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it." In the restoration from Babylon, Israel was not returned. And the Jews possessed their land but a short time. Hence this prophecy remains to be fulfilled. ^Read the whole 31st chapter of Jeremiah, and you will find the restoration of the Jews, and the ten tribes, to the land of their fa thers, in the last days ; and their continuance in it, so long as the sun, moon, and stars endure. " If those ordinances depart iivm before me, saith the Lord, (i. e. of the sun, moon and stars) then the seed of Israel shall cease from being a nation before me forever." God here promises "the city (Jerusalem) shall be built to the Lord ; it shall not be plucked up, nor thrown down any more forever." Fie re God engages that as Ephraim is God's first born ; so he will earnest ly remember him still, and surely have mercy upon him, for his bowels are pained with his long outcast slate. That he will sow the house of Is rael and tlie house of Juclah with the seed of men; and that ""like as he had watched over them, to pluck up, and to break down, to throw down, and to destroy and afflict ; so he will watch over them to build and plant. That all this shall be, when the new covenant is made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that he made with their fathers. Thus it is an event to take place under the last, the gospel dispensation ; and hence it must be now future. The prophet Joel, when foretelling the last days, and the Millennium, notes this event; chap, iii. 1. " For behold, in those days, and at that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all na tions, arid will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat." The battle of the great day of God follows ; verse 9 17. Upon which fol lows (he Millennium. In this series of events, God "brings again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem." G4 In Zecb. iii. is the same. A new preparatory scene of judgment is predicted; verse C, 7. The battle of the great day follows ; verse 8. Then the Millennium ; verse 9. To prepare the way for this, the noted restoration is promised ; verse 10 18. And the scene closes thus; verse 19, 20. " Behold, at that time 1 will undo all that afflict thee ; and I will save her that halteth, and gather her that was driven out; and I will get rne praise and fame in every land where they have been put to shame. At that time I will bring you again, even in the time that I gather you ; for I will make you a name and a praise among all the people of the earth, when I turn back your captivity before your eyes, saith the Lord." The prophet Hosea most decisively predicts this event. His first son mast be called Jezrcel ; for God would soon avenge the blood of Jezrecl; "and I will.canse to cease the house of Israel." This house did cease ; and has been banished and lost to this day. The name of his daugh ter, Lo-rtrhamah, is explained : " Ye are not my people; and I will not be your God." Here is their long dispersion. But he immediately proceeds to predict their restoration. Chap. i. 10, 11; " Yet the number of the children of Is rael shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered ; and it shall come to pass that in the place, where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people ; there shall it be said to them, Ye are the sons of the living God. Then shall the children of Israel and the chil dren of Jiidah he gathered together, and appoint themselves one head ; and they shall come up out of the land ; (earth :) for great shall be the dav of Jezreel." Iiere the ten tribes were to 65 be dispersed, and again restored, together with the Jews ; and their numbers and prosperity shall be immense. This prophet proceeds in the following chapters to predict the same event. See Hosea, 2d and 3d chapters. The account closes thus ; " For the children of Israel shall abide majiy days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without a ter- apliim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God. and David, their king ; and shall fear the Lord and his good- ness'in the latter days." Here is a description of the present dispersed state of Israel ; and a prediction of their national restoration, ?; in the latter days." This restoration is a great event in the proph ets ; and we find it in the New Testament. Paul (in his epistle to the Romans, chap, xi.) notes their being again grafted into their own olive tree^ as a notable event of the last days, which shall be the " riches of the gentiles ;" yea, "life from the dead" to them. See also Isaiah xlix. 18 23. One passage more I w r ill adduce from the writings of Moses ; Deut. xxx. The long and doleful dispersion of this people had been predicted in the preceding chapters. Here their final restoration follows. " And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto the Lord thy God; that then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, arid have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the na tions whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. And the Lord thy God will bring thee 1'iio the land, which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it, and he wili do Ihee good, and multiply thee ahfrcc Iky fathers." This has never yet been fulfilled. For the Jews, return ed from Babylon, were very far from being mul tiplied in their land above their fathers. This remains still to be accomplished. Thus the prophetic writings do clearly decide, that both Israel and the Jews shall, in the last days, before the Millennium, be literally restor ed to their own land of Palestine ; and be con verted to the Christian faith. 4. To give a mystical import to all these prophecies, and say they will be fulfilled only in the conversion of these ancient people of God to Christianity ; is to take a most unwarrantable liberty with the word of God. Some have made such pretence ; but far be it from me to follow them ! Why not as well apply a mystical sense to every prediction of future events ? To the predictions of the battle of that great day ; of the Millennium ; of the resurrection of the bodies of men ; of the final judgment ; of the conflagra tion of this world ; of heaven ; and of hell ? Why may not those as well all be fuliilled, not by a literal, but by some mystical accomplish ment ? Is not this to add and to diminish, with a witness ? Paul says, (2 Tim. ii. 16.) " But shun profane and vain babblings ; for they will in crease unto more ungodliness, and their words will eat as doth a canker; of whom is Hymeneas and Philetus ; who concerning the truth have erred, saying, that the resurrection is past alrea dy ; and overthrow the faith of some." What was the liberty taken by those arch heretics ? No doubt it was this; applying to the predictions ef a resurrection of the bodies of men from the grave, a mystical resurrection of the soul from the death of sin. But the predictions of the res urrection are far 'less numerous, and are not more express, than are the predictions of the restoration of the Jews and Israel to their own land. In various of the most remarkable of these predictions, we find it distinctly ascertained that the Jews shall be converted ; shall have a new heart* given them ; shall have their hearts cir cumcised to 'fear the Lord. And beside this, it is said that people shall (as a distinct nation.) be restored to the land of their fathers, and shall dwell in temporal prosperity there through all following ages', and be more numerous than ever were their fathers. To say then, that all those predictions of such a restoration to Palestine, are to be accomplished only in the bringing of that people (in their dispersed state,) to embrace the Messiah ; is to take a most unwarrantable liber ty with the word of God! Look at one passage ; Ezekiel, 36th, 37th, 38th, and 39th chapters. Are the new heart ^the heart of flesh,) there promised, and God's gathering them out of all lands into their own land, which had so long lain waste, one and the same event ? What can such expositors do with the predictions of Gog and his bands, gathered against them, and falling upon the mountains of Israel ? Are these (and all the predictions in Joel, Zechariah, and other proph ets, of the gathering of all nations to Jerusalem,) to be explained away, so that no " gathering of the nations and assembling of the kingdoms," must be expected ? It must be a dangerous expe dient to explain away the clear and express sen timents of revelation. The old and best exposi tors generally have believed in a literal restora- tion of Judah and Israel. And no material ob jections can be raised against it, which might not in its principle, operate as forcibly against all predicted future events. 5. That the Hebrews are to have a literal res toration, appears from the fact, that the threat- enings that God would cast them oif, had their fulfilment in a literal rejection of them from the promised land. The promises of their restora tion appear to be an exact counterpart of this ; and hence must have their effect in restoring them again to Palestine. If such promises did not design to restore them again to the land of their fathers ; why should the threatenings of their rejection of God, be designed to have their effect in expelling them literally from the land of promise ? Why should one of them receive a literal, and the other a mystical construction ? No account can be given of this. If there is no benefit in restoring them to Palestine ; why was there any calamity in expelling them from Pales tine ? Why did not God let them continue there, though he withdrew his spirit and grace from them ? But if, over and above this, they must be expelled from the land of promise ; then surely their promised restoration must (over and above giving them the heart of flesh) bring them back to the Canaan, which w.as given to them for an everlasting possession. CHAPTER III. THE PRESENT STATE AiYD THE present state of the Jews is so well un derstood in the Christian and literary world, that very little will here he said on this part of the subject. While a more particular attention will be paid to the present' state of the ten tribes of Israel,. The whole present population of the Jews has boon calculated at five millions. But the prob ability is, (as has been thought by good judges,) that they are far more numerous. One noted character says, that in Poland and part of Tur key, there are at least three millions of this peo ple ; and that among them generally, there is an unusual spirit of enquiry relative to Christianity. Mr. Noah says, that in the States of Barbary. their number exceeds seven hundred thousand. Their population in Persia, China, Tndia, and Tartary. is stated (in a report of the London So~ ciety for the conversion of the Jews.) to be more than three hundred thousand. In Western Asia 70 the Jews are numerous ; and they are found in almost every land. As in Europe this remarkable people have "been singularly depressed, and in ages past> made a laant, reproach, and by-word, trodden i, scattered and pealed ; one would hope quarter of the world would feel themselves obligated to be singularly active in bringing about their restoration. Considerable has been under taken to meliorate their condition, and prepare th^e way for their restoration. It is fourteen years since a society was formed in London to aid the Christianization of this peo ple. A chapel has been erected by this society for their benefit. The New Testament they have caused to be translated into the Hebrew language ; also many tracts written in Hebrew. These tracts and Testaments have been liberal ly distributed among tl^ Jews, and been read bv nrihit-raes of them with no small attention. .'ii * have been sent among them; schools opened, and various means used. A seminary was opened in 1322 for the instruction of the youth of (Ills people. Four students of the seed of Abraham entered it ; one of them, the celebrated Mr. WoiiF, a Jewish convert and rrvs.? : : u -, la various parts of the Umt-'d. Kingdoms, auxiliary societies have been formed; and the amount of monies received in 1822, was upwards of !0,698/. sterling, (between 40 and $50,000.) In the schools of the society are be tween seventy and eighty children of the Jews. In 1322 there were distributed. 2,459 Hebrew Testaments; 81)2 Germrvi Jewi--h do.; 2,597 Polish Judea do. ; 800 Hebrew Psalters; 42.110 Ilr^-ow Tracts; 10.000 ft . for the Jews; 13,300 Hebrew cards. The prophets are about 71 to be printed in Hebrew, on stereotype plates, for ihc benefit of the Jews. Places of deposit of book* for the Jews are established extensive ly in the four quarters of the world. Other and similar societies in favour of the Jews are becoming numerous. Only several be given in detail. One has been formed in Lciiiii under the sanction of his Prussian ma jesty. This society in an address to the public, observes; u Pious Christians in Germany stem themselves almost excluded from the work of converting the heathen ; to whom sea-fa rii:^- ra tions oi)]y have an immediate access. May they be of good cheer in turning their eyes to iLe ons of the ancient peopie of God, who live among them, or in their vicinity. There is no na tion provided with so effective means now to begin the work of their conversion, as protestant Ger many. For this country the most glorious harvest *eems to be in reserve. Let us then clear oursel ves from the blame of ieavi,^ to perish these mill ions, living among us, ;.\tes, without having ever made any vveJi regulated attempt to lead them to that cross, upon which their fathers crucified the Messiah. This field is our own, ra.d only requires labourers. According to our best information of its state, we have no doubt but the soil will readily receive ti.e seed of the divine word." The informations received from Poland too, are interesting. The Jews there seem to be convinced that some important change in their condition is preparing; aud the) seem ready to co-operate ii ! ans of such a cisu ..;;e. Count Von d( r Hecke, near Westpha- li:-?j ; :as established near Dasselsdorf. an asylum for converted Jews. A. id ruisierous societies have been formed in Europe and America, to 72 aid this great object. The American Meliorat ing Society, with its auxiliaries, might he noted in detail ; but they are well known. The his tory of the Palestine mission also ; the noted agency of Mr. Frey, and the mission of Mr. Wolff, the Jewish missionary to Palestine ; also the remarkable conversion of many of the Jews ; but this would exceed my designed limits ; and these things are well known to the Christian world. My present object is rather to attend to the present state of the ten tribes of Israel. This branch of the Hebrew family have long been u outcasts" out of sight ; or unknown as He brews. The questions arise, are they in exist ence, as a distinct people ? If so, who. or where are they ? These are queries of great moment, at this period, when the time of their restoration is drawing near. These queries may receive an answer in the following remarks : 1. It has been clearly ascertained in the pre ceding chapter, that the ten tribes, as the Israel of God, are in the last days to be recovered, and restored with the Jews. The valley of dry bones, and the two sticks becoming one in the prophet's hand, have been seen clearly to ascertain this : See Ezek. xxxix. as well as the many other passages noted in that chapter. But as this fact is essential to our inquiring after the ten tribes with confidence of their existence ; I shall here note several additional predictions of the event, found in the prophets ; and note some passages, which distinguish between the dispersed state of the Jews, and the o-nL-avi si ate of the ten tribes ; which distinction wiii aiiord some light in our inquiries. 73 When the restoration of the Hebrews is pre dicted, in Isaiah xi. that God will in the last days set up an ensign for the nations ; it is to ''assem ble the outcasts of Israel ; and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth." Mark the distinction; the Jews are " dispersed;" scattered over the nations as Jews, as they have long been known to be ; but Israel are "outcast ;" cast out from the nations ; from society ; from the social world ; from the knowl edge of men, as being Hebrews. This distinc tion is repeatedly found in the prophets. The dispersed state of the Jews, as Jews, is a most notable idea in the prophetic scriptures. But of Israel, the following language is used ; as Isaiah Ivi. 8 ; " The Lord God who gathcreth the out casts of Israel, saith," c. Accordingly, when Israel are recovered, and united with the Jews at last; the Jews express their astonishment, and inquire where they had been? They had utterly lost them, as is the fact. See Isaiah xlix. 18 22. The Jews here, while " removing to and fro" through the nations, in their dispersed state, had been "left alone," i. e. of the ten tribes. The latter being now restored to the bosom of the mother church, the Jews inquire, " Who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone j these, where had they been .?" Here we learn that the ten tribes had, during the long dispersion of the Jews, been utterly out of their sight and knowl edge, as their brethren. This implies the long outcast state of the ten tribes. Several additional passages will be noted, to show that both the branches of that ancient peo ple are to be restored. In Isaiah xi. after the promise that the dispersed Jews, and outcast Is rael shall be restored ; the prophet adds, verse 7 74 13 ; " The envy also of Ephraim shall depart ; Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim." Here the mutual jealous ies between the two branches of the house of Is rael, which before the expulsion of the ten tribes kept them in almost perpetual war, shall never again be revived ; which passage assures us of the restoration of Israel as Israel. In Jer. iii. tbose two branches arc distinguish ed by "backsliding /srr/.t7, and her treacherous sister Judah." Israel was already put away for her spiritual adulteries, (having then been re ect- ed for nearly one hundred years.) But the same backsliding Israel is there again recovered in the last days. God calls after them ; "Return, thou backsliding Israel; for I a/n married unto you, saith the Lord. And 1 will take, you, one of a city and two of a family ', and will bring you to Zion." " In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel ; and they shall come together out of the land of the north, to the land that I have given to your fathers." This has never yet had even a partial accomplish ment. Its event is manifestly future. The entail of the covenant must as surely re cover the ten tribes, as the Jews. Paul shows in Romans xi. the consistency of the rejection of the Jews, with the entail of the covenant with Abraham. And he makes their final restoration in the last days, essential to this consistency. But this inspired argument as forcibly attaches itself to the ten tribes, to ensure their recovery, as to the Jews. He accordingly there says, "and so all Israel shall he saved j"** or both branches of the Hebrews shnil be recovered. This some point is most positively decided in Jeremiah, 30th and 31st chapters, as has appeared in the preceding chapter. 2. It inevitably follows, that the ten tribes of Israel must now have, somewhere on earth, a distinct existence in an outcast state. And we justly infer, that God would, in his holy provi dence, provide some suitable place for their safe keeping, as his outcast tribes, though long un known to men as such. There is no avoiding this conclusion. If God will restore them at last as his Israel, and as having been "outcast" from the nations of the civilized world for 2500 years; he surely must have provided a place for their safe keeping, as a distinct people, in some part of the world, during that long period. They must, during that period, have been unknown to the Jews as Israelites ; and consequently un known to the world as such; or the Jews would not at least (on their heing united to them.) in quire, " These, where had they been ?" Isaiah xlix. 21. 3. We have an account of the ten tribes, after their captivity, which accords with the ideas just stated. We receive not the books of the Apoc rypha as given by Inspiration ; but much credit has been given to historical facts recorded in it; as in the wars of the Maccabees, and othci p : aces. In 2 Esdras, xiii. 40, and on, we read ; u Those are the ten tribes which were carried away pris oners out of their own land, in the time of Osea, the king, whom Salmanezer, the king of Assyria, led away captive ; and he carried them over the Waters, and so carne they into another laild." Here is the planting them over the Euphrates, in Media. The writer adds ; " But they took this counsel among themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go forth into a 7G further country, where never man dwelt ; that they might there keep their statutes which they never kept (i. e. uniformly as they ought,) in their own land. There was a great way to go, namely, of a year and a half." The writer pro ceeds to speak of the name of the region being -called Arsareth, or Ararat. He must allude here to the region to which they directed their course to go this year and a half's journey. This place where no man dwelt, must of course have been unknown by any name. But Ararat, or Arme nia lay north of the place where the ten tribes were planted .wlien carried from Palestine. Their journey then, was to the north, or north east. This writer says, "They entered into the Euphrates by the narrow passages of the river." He must mean, they repassed this river in its upper regions, or small streams, away toward Georgia; and hence must have taken their course between the Black and Caspian seas. This set them olFnorth-east of the Ararat, which he men tions. Though this chapter in Esdras be a kind of prophecy, hi which we place not confidence ; yet the allusion to facts learned by the author, . no doubt may be correct. And this seems just such an event as might be expected, had God in deed determined to separate them from the rest of the idolatrous world, and banish them by themselves, in a land where no man dwelt since the flood. 4. Let several suppositions now be made. Suppose an extensive continent had lately been discovered, away north-east from Media, and at the distance of " a year and a half's journey ;" a place probably destitute of inhabitants, since the flood, till the time of the "casting out" of Israel. Suppose a people to have been lately discovered 77 in that sequestered region, appearing as we should rationally expect the nation of Israel to appear at this period, had the account given hy the wri ter in Esdras been a fact. Suppose them to be fouad in tribes, with heads of tribes ; but desti tute of letters, and in a savage state. Suppose among their different tribes the following tradition ary fragments are by credible witnesses picked up; some particulars among one region of them, and some amoag another ; while all appear evident ly to be of the same family. Suppose them to have -escaped the polytheism of the pagan world, and to acknowledge one, and only One God ; the Great Spirit, who created all things seen and un seen. Suppose the name retained by many of them for this Great Spirit, to be Ale, the old He brew name of God ; and Yohewah, whereas the Hebrew name for Lord was Jehovah ; also they call the Great First Cause, Yah ; the Hebrew name being Jah. Suppose you find most of them professing great reverence for this great Yohe wah ; calling him "the great beneficent supreme holy spirit," and the only object of worship. Suppose the most intelligent of them to be elat ed with the idea that this God has ever been the head of their community; that their fathers were once in covenant with him ; and the rest of the world were "the accursed people," as out of covenant with God. Suppose you find them, on certain occasions, singing in religious dance, " Hallelujah," or praise to Jah ; also singing Yohewah, Shilu Yohewah, and making use of many names and phrases evidently Hebrew. You find them counting their time as did ancient Israel, and in a manner different from all other nations. They keep a variety of religious feasts, which much resemble those kept ,in ancient Is- 78 rael. You find an evening feast among them, in which a bone of the animal must not he broken ; if the provision be more than one family can eat, a -neighbour must be called in to help eat it, and if any of it be still left, it must be burned before the next rising sun. You find them eating bit ter vegetables, to cleanse themselves from sin. You find they never eat the hollow of the thigh of any animal. They inform that their fathers practised % circumcision. Some of them have been in the habit of keeping a Jubilee. .They have their places answering to the cities of re fuge, in ancient Israel. In these no blood is ever shed by any avenger. You find them with their temples, (such as they be,) their holy of holies in their temple, into which it is death for a com mon person to enter. They have their high priests, who officiate in their temples, and make their yearly atonement there in a singular pontff- ical dress, which they fancy to be in the likeness of one worn by their predecessors in ancient times ; with their breast-plate, and various holy ornaments. The high priest, when addressing to his people what they call " the old divine speech," calls them " the beloved and holy peo ple," and urges them to imitate their virtuous ancestors ; and tells them of their "beloved land flowing with milk and honey." They tell you that Yohewah once chose their nation from all the rest of mankind, to be his peculiar people. That a book which God gave, was once theirs ; and then things went well with them. But oth er people got it from them, and then they fell un der the displeasure of the Great Spirit ; but that they shall, at some time, regain it. They inform you, some of their fathers once had the spirit to foretel future events, and to work miracles. 79 pose they have their imitation of the ark of the covenant, where are deposited their most sacred things; into which it is death for any common people to look. All their males must appear at the temple at three noted feasts in a year. They inform you of the ancient flood ; of the preser vation of one family in a vessel; of this man in the ark sending out first a great bird, and then a little one, to see if the waters were gone. That the great o:ie returned no more ; but the little one returned with a branch. They tell you of the confusion of languages, once when people were building a great high place ; and of the longevity of the ancients'; that -they " lived till their feet were worn out with walking, and their throats with eating." , You find them with their traditional history that their ancient fathers once lived where peo ple were dreadfully wicked, and that nine tenths of their fathers took counsel and left that wicked place, being led by the Great Spirit into this country ; that they came through a region where it was always winter, snow and frozen. That they came to a great water, and their way hith er was thus obstructed, till God dried up that water ; (probably it froze between the islands in Beering's Straits.) Yoirfind them keeping an annual feast, at the time their ears of corn be come fit for use; and none of their corn is eaten, till a part of it is brought to this feast, and cer tain religious ceremonies performed:. You find them keeping an annual feast, in which twelve men must cut twelve saplin poles, to make a booth. Here (on an altar made of twelve stones, on which no tool may pass.) they must sacrifice. You find them with the custom of washing and anointing their dead. And when 80 in deep affliction, laying their hand on their mouth, a id tiieir mouth in the dust. Suppose you should find things like these people, without books or letters, but wholly in a savage state,- in a region of the world lately discovered away in the direction, stated by the aforenoted writer in the Apocj\ pha; and having been ever secluded from the knowl edge of the civilized world ; would you hesitate to say you had found the ten tribes of Israel ? and that God sent them to that sequestered re gion of the earth, to keep them there a distinct people, during an " outcast" state of at least 2500 years ? Weuld you not say, we have just such kind of evidence, as must at last bring that people to light among the nations ? And would you not say, here is much more evidence of this kind, of their being the people of Israel, than could rationally have been expected, after the lapse of 2500 years in a savage state ? Methinks 1 hear every person whisper his full assent, that upon the suppositions made, we have found the most essential pile of the prophet Ezekiel's val ley of dry bones ! 5. Those things are more than mere supposi tion. It is believed they are capable of being ascertained as facts, with substantial evidence. Good authorities from men, who have been eye and ear witnesses, assure us that these things are facts. But you enquire, where or who are the people thus described ? They are the aborigines of our own continent ! Their place, their lan guage, their traditions, amount to all that has been hinted. These evidences are not all found among any one tribe of Indians. Nor may all the Indians in any tribe, where various of these eTidences are found, be able to exhibit them. It 81 is enough, if what they call their beloved aged men, in one tribe, have clearly exhibited some of them ; and others exhibited others of them ; and if among their various tribes, the whole have been, by various of their beloved or wise men, exhibited. This, it is stated, has been the fact. Men have been gradually perceiving this evi dence for more than half a century ; and new light has been, from time to time, shed on the subject, as will appear,. The North American Reviewers, in review ing a sermon of Doct. Jarvis, on this subject, de livered before the New- York Historical Society, (in which he attempts to adduce much evidence to show that the natives of this continent are the tribes of Israel) remark thus ; " The history and character of the Indian tribes of North America, which have for some time been a subject of no inconsiderable curiosity and interest with the learned in Europe, have not till lately attracted much notice among ourselves. But as the Indian nations are now fast vanishing, and the in dividuals of them come less frequently under our observation ; we also, as well as our European brethren, are beginning to take a more lively in terest than ever, in the study of their character and history." In the course of their remarks they add ; "To the testimonies here adduced by Doctor Jarvis, (i. e. that the Indians are the ten tribes of Israel) might have been added several of our New-Eng land historians, from the first settlement of the country." Some they proceed to mention ; and then add, that the Rev. Messrs. Samuel Sewall, fellow of Harvard College, and Samuel Willard, vice president of the same, were, of opinion, that " the Indians are the descendants of Israel." 32 'Doct. Jarvis notes this as an hypothesis, which has been a favourite topic with European writ ers ; and as a subject, to which it is hoped the Americans may be said to be waking no at last. Manasses Ben Israel, in a work, entitled "The 'Hope of Israel," has written to show that the American Indians are the ten tribes of Israel. But as w,e have access to his authors, we may consult them for ourselves. The main pillar of hss evidence is James Adair, Esq. Mr. Adair was a man of established character, as appears from good authority. He lived a trader among the Indians, in the. south of North America, for forty years. He left them and returned to Eng land in 1774, and there published his " History of the American Indians ;" and his reasons for being persuaded that they are the ten tribes of Israel. Remarking on their descent and origin, he concludes thus ; " From the most accurate observations I could make, in the long time I traded among the Indian Americans, I was forc ed to believe them lineally descended from the Israelites. Had the nine tribes and a half of Is rael, tint were carried olf by Shalrnanexer, and settled in Me-lia, continued there long, it is very probable by intermarrying with the natives, and from their natural fickleness, and proneness to idolatry, and also from the force of example ; that they won 1 .;! have adopted and bowed before the gods of Media and Assyria ; and would have carried them along with them. But there is not a trace of this idolatry amo-ig the Indians." Mr. Adair gives his opinion, tint the tea tribes, soon after their banishment from the land of Israel, left Media, a id reached this continent from !he north-west, probably before the carrying away of the Jews to Babylon. 83 A summary will be given of tlie arguments of Mr. Adair, and of a number of other writers on this subject. As the evidence given by Mr. Adair appears in some respects the most momen.- tous and conclusive, I shall adduce a testimonial in his behalf. In the " Star in the West," pub lished by the lion. Eaas Eoudinot, LL. D. upon this subject, that venerable man sajs; < The writer oi these sheets has made a iiee use of Mr. Adair's history of the Indians ; wh ch renders it necessary that something further should be said of him. Sometime about the year 1774, Mr. Adair came to Eli^rabethtown, (where the writer lived.) with his manuscript, and appli ed to Mr. Livingstone, (afterward go\en>or of New- Jersey a correct scholar.) requesting him to correct his manuscript. lie brought ampie recommendations, and gave a good account of himself. Our political troubles with Great Bri tain then increasing (">t being the year before the comn.ei. cement of the revolutionary war,) Mr. Adair, who was on his way to Great Britain, was advised not to risk being detained from his voy age, till the work could be critically examined; but to set oil' as soon as possible. He according ly took his passage in the first vessel bound to England. As soon as the war was over, (Mr. Boudinot adds of himself,) the writer sent to London to obtain a ccpy^tf this work. After reading it with care, he strict]}' examined a gen tleman, then a member with him in congress, and of excellent character, who had acted as our agent among the Indians to the southward, dur ing the war, relative to the points of fact stated by Mr. Adair, without letting him know the de sign, aud from him found all the leading facts men- 84 tioncd in Mr. Adair's history, fully confirmed from his own personal knowledge." Here are the evidences of two great and good men most artlessly uniting in the leading facts stated by Mr. Adair. The character of Mr. Boudmot (who was for some time President of the American Bible Society.) is well known. He was satisfied with -the truth of Mr. Adair's history, and that the natives of our land are the Hebrews, the ten tribes. And he hence published his " Star in the West" on this subject ; which is most worthy of the perusal of ail men. From various authors and travellers, among the Indians, the fact that the American Indians are the ten tnbes of Israel, will be attempted to be proved by the following arguments : 1. The American natives have one origin. 2. Their language appears to have been He brew. 3. They 'have had their imitation of the ark of the covenant in ancient Israel. 4. They have been in the practice of circum cision. 5. They have acknowledged one and only one God. 6. Their variety of traditions, historical and religious, go to evince that they are the ten tribes of Israel. 7. The celebrated William Penn gives ac counts of the natives | Pennsylvania, which go to corroborate the same point. 8. Their having a tribe, answering in various respects, to the tribe of Levi, sheds furthers light on this subject. 9. Several prophetic traits of character given of the Hebrews, do accurately apply to the abo rigines of Anaerica. 15 10. The Indians being in tribes, with their heads arid names of tribes, affords further light upon this subject. 1 1 . Their having an imitation of the ancient city of refuge, evinces the truth of our subject ; and 12. Other Indian rites, and various other con siderations, go to evince the. fact, that this people are the ten tribes of Israel. 1. Tfie American, natives have one origin. Their language has a variety of dialects ; but all are believed by some good juydges to be the same radical lan^ia^e. Various noted authors a^ree in this. Charlevoix, in his history of Canada, says; " The Algonquin and the Huron langua ges, (which he says are as really the same, as the French and old Norman are the sa ne-) have be tween them the language of ail thj savage na tions we are acquainted with. Whoever should well understand b >th of these, nvght travel With out an interpreter more than fifteen hundred leagues of country, and make himself understood by an hundred diiferent natiois, who have each their peculiar tongue ;" meaning dialect. The Ai'Jm juin was the dialect of the Wolf tribe, or the Mohegan ; and most of the native tribes of New-England and of Virginia. Doctor Jonathan Edwards, son of President Edwards, lived in his youth among the Indians ; as his father was a missionary among, them, be fore he was called to Princeton College ; and he became as familiar with the Muhegan dialect, as with his mother tongue. He had also a good knowledge of the Mohawk dialect. He pro nounced the Mohegan the most extensive of all the Indian dialects of North America. He names not less than sixteen tribes, besides the original 8 86 tribes of New-England, as agreeing with the Mo- hegan. Herein the doctor agrees with the testi mony of Charlevoix just noted. Here we find a cogent argument in favour of the Indians of North America, at least as heing of one origin. And arguments will be furnished that the Indians of South America are probably of the same ori gin- Doctor Boudinot (who for more than forty years was of opinion that the Indians are the ten tribes, and who sought and obtained much evi dence on this subject, assures us, that the sylla bles which compose the word Yohewah, (Jeho vah) and Yah, (Jah) are the roots of a great num ber of Indian words, through different tribes. They make great use of these words, and of the syllables which compose the names of God; also which form the word Hallelujah, through their nations for thousands of miles ; especially in their religious songs and dances. With beating and an exact keeping of time, they begin a reli gious dance thus ; Hal, hal, hal ; then le, le, le -, next lu, lu, lu ; and then close yah, yah, yah. 'This is their traditional song of praise to the Great Spirit. This, it is asserted, is sung fh South, as well as North America. And this au thor says ; u Two Indians, who belong to far'dis- tant nations, may without the knowledge of each other's language, except from the general idiom of all their tribes, converse with each other, and make contracts without an interpreter." This shews them to have been of one origin. Du Pratz says, in his history of Louisiana, " The nations of North America derived their origin from the same country, since at bottom they all have the same manners and usages, nd ttic same manner of speaking and thinking." It 87 is ascertained that no objection arises against this, from the different shades of Complexion found among different tribes of Indians. u The colour of the Indians generally, (says Doct. Boudinot,) is red, brown, or copper, according to the cli mate, and the high or low ground." Mr. Adair expresses the same opinion ; and the Indians have their tradition, that in the nation from which they originally came, all were of one colour. - According to all accounts given of the Indians, there are certain things in which all agree. This appears in the journals of Mr. Giddings, of his exploring tour. The most distant and barbarous Indians agree in a variety of things with all oth er tribes. They have their Great Spirit ; their high priests ; their sacrificing, when going to, or returning from war ; their religious dance ; and their sacred little enclosure, containing their most sacred things, though it be but a sack, in stead of an ark. Messrs. Lack and Escarbotus both assert that they have often heard the In dians of South America sing "Hallelujah." For thousands of miles the North American Indians hav^ been abundant in this. Doctor Williams, in his History of Vermont, says ; " In whatever manner this part of the earth was peopled, the Indians appear to have been the most ancient, or the original men of America. They had spread over the whole con tinent, from the. fiftieth degree of north latitude, to the southern extremity of Cape Horn. And these men every where appeared to be the same race or kind of people. In every part of the continent, the Indians are marked with a similar ity of colour, features, and every circumstance of external appearance. Pedro de Cicca de Leon, one of the conquerors of Peru, and who had travelled through many provinces of Amer ica, says of the Indians ; u The people, men and women, although there are such a multitude of trihes or nations, in such diversities of climates, appear nevertheless, like the children of one fa ther and mother." Uiloa (rii -t.'d hy Doct. Williams.) had a great acquaintance with the Indians of South America, and some parts of North America. Speaking of the Indians of Cape Breton, in the latter, he de clared them to he " the same people with the Indians in Peru." "If we have seen one Amer ican, (said he) we may he said to have seen them all." These remarks do not apply to all the people in the northern extremities of America. The Esquimaux natives appear to be a different race of men. This race are found in Labrador; in Greenland, and round Hudson's Bay. All these appear evidently the same with the Lap landers, Zemblans, Samoyeds and Tartars in the east. They probably migrated to this western hemisphere at periods subsequent to the migra tion of the Indians. They, or some of them, might * have come from the north of Europe ; from Norway to Iceland, then to Greenland, and thence to the coasts of Labrador, and farther west. But the consideration of those diiferent people, does not affect our subject. 2. Their language appears clearly to have been Hebrew. In this, Doctor Edwards, Mr. Adair, and others were agreed. Doct. Edwards, after having a good acquaintance with their lan guage, gave his reasons for believing it to have been originally Hebrew. Both, he remarks, are found without prepositions, and are formed with prefixes and suffixes ; a thing probably known to no other language. And he. shows that not only 89 the words, but the construction of phrases, in both, have been the same. Their pronouns, as well as their nouns, Doctor Edwards remarks, are manifestly from the Hebrew. Mr. Adair is confident of the fact, that their language is He brew. And their laconic, bold arid command ing figures of speech, he notes as exactly agree ing with the genius of the Hebrew language. He says, that after living forty years among them, he obtained such knowledge of the Hebrew idi om of their language, that he viewed the event of their having for more than two millenaries, and without the aid of literature, preserved their Hebrew language so pure, to be but little short of a miracle. Relative to the Hebraism of their figures, Mr. Adair gives the following instance, from an ad dress of a captain to his warriors, going to bat tle. " I know that your guns are burning in your hands ; your tomahawks are thirsting to drink the blood of your enemies ; your trusty arrows are impatient to be upon the wing ; and lest de lay should burn your hearts any longer, I give you the cool refreshing word ; join the holy ark ; and away to cut of the devoted enemy /" A table of words and phrases, is furnished by Doct. Boudinot, from Edwards, Adair, and oth ers, to show how clearly the Indian language is from the Hebrew. Some of these Indian words are taken from one tribe, and some from another. In a long savage state, destitute of all aid from letters, a language must roll and change. It is strange that after a lapse of 2500 years, a single word should, among such a people, be preserved the same. But the hand of Providence is strik ingly seen in this, to bring that people to light. 8* 90 The following may afford a specimen of the evidence on this part of the subject. English. Jehovah God Jah Shiloh Heavens Father Man Woman Wife Thou His wife This man JVose Roof of a house Winter Canaan To pray JVote Hind part Do To blow Rushing wind Ararat, or high mount Indian. Yohewah Ale Yah Shilu Chrmim Abba Wi, Ishtc Ishto Awah Keah Liani Uwoh Nichiri Taubana-ora Kora Canaai Phale Na Kesh Jennais Phaubac Rowah Ararat PHRASES. English, Indian. Very hot Heru hara or hala Praise to the First Cause Halleluwah Give me food Natoni boman Go thy way Bayou boorkaa (rood be to you Halea tibou My necklace Yene hali / am sick Nane guaete Hebrew; Jehovah Ale, Aleim Jah Shiloh Shemiiu Abba Ish Ishto Eweh, Eve Ka Lihene Huah Noheri Debonaour Cora Canaan Phalac Na Kish Jannoa Phauhe Ruach Ararat Hebrew. Hara hara Hallelujah Natou. bamen Boua bouak Ye hali ettouboa Vongali Nance heti Who can doubt but the above Indian words and phrases were from their corresponding He brew 1 To t>e otherwise, their adoption by sav ages must be miraculous. And if they be from the Hebrew, surely these Indians must be the ten tribes of Israel. 91 Governor Hutchinson observed, 'that " many people (at the time of the first sctiU-snet.it of New England,) pleased themselves with a con.'o; "I;; re, that the Indians in America, are th< ! irf of the ten trihes of Israel." Some-' dis covered so early, which excited this \ -..- timent. This lias been noted as having been the sentiment of Rev. Samuel Sewall, of vice presi dent Willard, and others. Governor I Inu liinson expresses his doubt upon the sub'.ect, oil account of the dissimilarity of the lart^uage of the natives of Massachusetts, and the Hebrew. Any lan guage in a savage state, must, in the course of 2^00 years, have rolled and varied exceedingly. This is shown to be the case in the different dia lects, and many new words introduced among those tribes, which are acknowledged to have their language radically the same. The following facts are enough to answer eve ry objection on this ground. The Indians had no written language. Hence the English schol ar could not see the spelling or the root of an/ Indian word. And the gutteral pronunciation of the natives was such as to make even the He brew word, that might still be retained, appear wholly a .different word; especially to those who were looking for no Hebrew language among them. And the following noted idiom of the Indian language was calculated to hide the fact in perfect obscurity, even had it been originally Hebrew, viz. ; the Indian language consists of a multitude of monosyllables added together. Every properly or circumstance of a thing to be mentioned by an Indian, must be noted by a new monosyllable added to its name. Hence it was that the simple word our loves, must be express ed by the following long Indian word, Noonom* ttntammoontcanunonnash. Mr. Golden, in his history of the five nations, observes, "They have few radical words. But "they compound their words without end. The words expressive of things lately come to their knowledge (he says) are all compounds. And sometimes one word among them includes an entire definition of the thing."* These things considered of a language among savages, 2500 years after their expulsion from Canaan, must answer every objection aris ing from the fact, that the Indian language ap pears very different from the Hebrew. And they must render it little less than miraculous (as Mr. Adair says it is) that after a lapse of so long a period among savages, without a book or letters, a word or phrase properly Hebrew should still be found among them. Yet such words and phrases are found. And many more may yet be found in the compounds of Indian words. I have just now observed, in dropping my eye on a Connecticut Magazine for 1803, a writer on the Indians in Massachusetts, in its earliest days, informs, that the name of the being they wor shipped was Abamocko. Here, without any perception of the fact, he furnishes a Hebrew word in compound. Ahua-mccko ; father-mo- cho. As a tribe of Indians in the south call God, Abba-mingo-ishio ; Father-chief-man. In the latter, we have two Hebrew words ; Abba, father, and Ish, man. Could we make proper allowance for Pagan pronunciation, and find how the syllables in their words ought to be spelled, we might probably find many more of the Hebrew) roots in their language. ^See the Connecticut Magazine, Vol. HI. p. 367. 03 S. The Indians have had their imitation of the ark of the covenant in ancient Israel. Different travellers, and from different regions unite in this. Mr. Adair is full in*his account of it. It is a small square box, made convenient to carry on the back. They never se*t it on the ground, but on logs in low ground where stones are not to be had ; and on stones where they are to be found. This author gives the following account of it. " It is worthy of notice, (he says.) that they never place the ark on the ground, nor sit n the Lare earth when they are carrying it against an enemy. On hilly ground, where sto'hes are plenty, they place it on them. But in level land, upon short logs, always resting them selves (i. e. the carriers of the ark) on the same materials. They have also as strong a faith of the power and holiness of their ark, as ever the Israelites retained of theirs. The Indian ark is deemed so sacred and dangerous to touch, either by their own sanctified warriors, or the spoiling enemy, that neither of them dare meddle with it on any account. It is not to be handled by any except the chieftian and his waiter, under penal ty of incurring great evil ; nor would the most inveterate enemy dare to touch it. The leader virtually acts the part of a priest of war, pro tem- pore, in imitation of the Israelites lighting under the divine military banner." Dact. Boudinot says of this ark, " It may be called the ark of the covenant imitated." In time of peace it is the charge of their high priests. In their wars, tney make great account of it. The leader (acting as high priest on that occa sion,) and his darling waiter, carry it in turns. They deposit in the ark some of their most con secrated articles. The two" carriers of this sa- 94 symbol, before setting off with it for the war, purify themselves longer than do the rest of the warriors. The waiter bears their ark during a battle. It is strictly forbidden for any one, but the proper officer, to look into it. An enemy, if they capture it, treat it with the same reverence. Doctor Boudinot says, that a gentleman, who was at Ohio, in 1756, informed him that while, he was there, he saw among the Indians, a stran ger, who appeared very desirous to look into the ark of that tribe. The ark was then standing on a block of wood, covered with a dressed deer skin. A centinel v, as guarding it, armed with a bow and arrow. The centinel finding the intru der pressing' on, to look into the ark, drew his arrow at his head, and vrould have dropped him on the spot ; but the stranger perceiving his dan ger, fled. Who can doubt ojf the origin of this Indian custom ? And who can resist the evidence it furnishes, that here are the tribes of Israel ? See Num. x. 35, 33, and xiv. 44. 4. The American Indians have practised cir cumcision. Doct. Beat}', in his journal of a visit to the Indians in Ohic, between fifty and sixty years ago, says, that " an old Indian informed him, that an eld uncle of his. who died about the year 1728, related to him several customs of for mer times among the Indians ; and among the rest, that circumcieion was long ago practised among them, but that their young men made a mock of it, and it fell into disrepute and was discontinued." Mr. M'Kenzie informs, that in his travels among the Indians, he was led to believe the same fact, of a tribe far to the north-west ; as stated in the 'Star in the West.' Doctor Boudinot assures that the eastern Indians inform of its having been prac- 95 tised among them in times past ; but that latter ly, not being able to give any account of so strange a rite, their young men had opposed it, and it was discontinued. Jmmanuei de Moraez, in. his history of Brazil, says it was practised among the native Brazilians. What savage na tion could ever have conceived of such a rite, had they not descended from Israel. 5. The native Americans have acknowledged ne, and only one God ; and thty have generally views concerning the one Great Spirit, of which no account can be given, but that they derived them from ancient revelation in Israel. Other nations destitute of revelation, have had their many gods. But little short of three hundred thousand gods have existed in the bewildered imaginations of the pagan world. Every thing, almost, has been deified by the heathen. Not liking to retain God in their knowledge, and pro fessing themselves to be wise, they became fools ; and they changed the glory of the one living God, into images, and beasts, birds, reptiles, and creep ing things. There has been the most astonishing inclination in the world of mankind to do thus. But here is a new world of savages, chiefly, if not wholly, free from such wild idolatry. Doctor Boudinot (being assured by many good witness es,) says of the Indians who have been known in his day ; " They were never known (whate\er mercenary Spanish writers may have written to the contrary) to pay the least adoration to ima ges or dead persons, to celestial luminaries, to evil spirits, or to any created beings whatever." Mr. Adair says the same, and assures that "none of the numerous tribes and nations, from Hud- ion's LdV to the Mississippi, have ever been to attempt the formation of any image of 96 God." Du Pratz was very intimate with the chief of those Indians called " the Guardians of the Temple," near the Mississippi. He inquir ed of them of the nature of their worship. The chief informed him that they worshipped the great and most perfect Spirit; and said, " He is so great and powerful, that in comparison with him all others are as nothing. Fie made all things that we see, and all things that we cannot see." The chief went on to speak of God as having made little spirits, called free servants, who always stand before the Great Spirit ready to do his vyill. That "the air is filled with spirits ; some good, some bad ; and that the bad have a chief who is more wicked than the rest." Here it seems is their traditional notion of good a ;d bad angels ; and of Beelzebub, the chief of the latter. This chief being asked how God made man, replied, that " God kneaded some clay, made it into a little man, and finding it was well formed, he blew on his work, and the man had life and grew up !" . Being asked of the creation of the wo-nan, he said, "their ancient speech made no mention of any (inference, only that the man wjs made first." Moses' account of the formation of the woman, it seems, had been lost. Mr. Adair is very full in this, that the Indians have but one God, the Great Yohewah, whom they call the great, beneficent, supreme and holy S^rit, who dwells above the clouds, and who dwells with good people, and is the only object of worship." So different are they from all the idolatrous heathen upoa earth. He assures that they hold this great divine Spirit as the immedi ate head of their community ; which opinion he conceives they must have derived from the an- oieut theocracy in Israel. He assures that the 97 Indians are intoxicated with religious pride, and call all other people the accursed people ; and have time out of mind been accustomed to hold them in great contempt. Their ancestors they boast to have been under the immediate government of Yohewah, who was with them, and directed them by his prophets, while the rest of the world were outlaws, and strangers to the covenant of Yohewah. The Indians thus please themselves (Mr. Adair assures us) with the idea that God has chosen them from the rest of man kind as his peculiar people. This, he says, has been the occasion of their hating other people ; and of viewing themselves hated by all men. These things show that they acknowledge but one God. The Peruvians have been spoken of as pay ing adoration to the sun ; and as receiving their race of Inr-is. as children of the sun. in their sac- cession of twelve monarchies. The Indians have had much of ai apprehension that their one Great Spirit had a great affinity to lire. And the Peruvians, it seems, went so far as to embody him in the sun. Here seems a shred of mixture of the Persian idolatry, with the theocracy of Is rael. As the more ancient Israelites caught a degree of the idolatrous distemper of Egypt,, as appears in their golden calf; so the ten tribes, the time they resided in Media, and before they set off for America, may have blended some idea of fire with their or God. But the veneration the Peruvians had ior their Incas, as children of the Most High, seems but a shred of ancient tra dition from Israel, that their kings were divinely anointed ; arid is so far from being an argument against their being of Israel, that it operates rath* er in favour of the fact. 9 98 Doctor Boudinot informs of the southern IB- dians of North America, that they had a name for God, which signifies, "the great, beloved, ho ly cause." And one of their names of God, is Mingo Ishto Abba ; Great Chief Father. Me speaks of a preacher's being among the Indians at the south, before the American revolution, and beginning to inform them that there is a God who created all things. Upon which they indig nantly replied, "Go about your business, you fool: do not we know there is a God, as well as you?" In their sacred dances, these authors assure us the Indians sing "Halieluyah Yohewah; praise to Jah Jehovah. When they return victorious from their wars, they sing, Yo-he-wah ; having been by tradition taught to ascribe the praise to God. The same authors assure us, the Indians make great use of the initials of the mysterious name of God, like the tetragrammanaton of the ancient Hebrews ; or the four radical letters which form the name of Jehovah ; as the Indians pronounce thus, Y-O-He-Wah. That like the ancient Hebrews, they are cautious of mentioning these together, or at once. They sing and repeat the syllables of this name in their sacred dances thus; Yo-yo, or ho-ho-he-he-wah-wah. Mr. Adair upon the same, says ; " After this they begin again ; Hal-hal-le-le-lu-lu-yah-yah. And fre quently the whole train strike up, hallelu-hallelu halleluyah halleJuyah." They frequently sing the name of Shilu (Shiloh, Christ) with the syl*- lables of the name of God added ; thus, " Shilu yo-Shilu-yo-Shilu-he-Shilu-he Shilu-\vah-Shilu -wah." Thus adding to the name of Shilu, the of Jehovah by its sacred s)iiables. Things 99 like these have been found among Indians of dif* ferent regions of America. Syllables and letters of the name of G<3d have been so transposed in dif ferent ways; and so strange and gutteral has been, the Indian pronunciation, that it seems it took a long time to perceive that these savages were by tradition pronouncing the names of the God of Is rael. Often have people been informed, and smil ed at the fact, that an Indian, hurt or frightened, usually cries out wah ! This is a part of his tradi tional religion ; O Jah ! or O Lord ! Doctor Williams upon the Indians' belief of the being of God, observes ; " They denominate the deity the Great Spirit; the Great Man above; and seein to have some general ideas of his gov ernment and providence, universal power and dominion. The immortality of the soul was ev ery where admitted among the Indian tribes." The Rev. Ithamar Hebard, formerly minister of this place, related the following : That about fifty years ago, a number of men were sent from New-England by the government of Britain into the region of the Mississippi, to form some treaty with the Indians. That while these commission ers were there, having* tarried for some time; an Indian chief came from the distance of what he called several moons to the westward. Having heard that white men were there, he came to in quire of them where the Great Being dwelt, who made all things. And being informed, through an interpreter, of the divine omnipresence; he raised his eyes and hands to heaven with great awe and ecstacy.and looking round, and leaping, he seem ed to express the greatest reverence and delight. The head man of these commissioners had been a profane man ; but this incident cured him, so 100 that he was not heard to utter another profane word on this tour. This was related to Mr. He- bard by one Elijah Wood, who -was an eye wit ness of the scene, and who was afterward a preacher of the gospel. The son of Mr. Hebard, a settled minister, gives this relation. Let this fact of the Indians generally adhering to one, ai)d only one God, be contrasted with the polytheism of the world of pagans, and heathen besides ; with the idle and ridiculous notions of heathen gods and goddesses ; and who can doubt of the true origin of the natives of our continent? They are fatally destitute of proper views of God and religion. But they have brought down by tradition from their remote ancestors, the notion of there being bat one great and true God; which affords a most substantial argument in favour of their being the ancient Israel. It is apreed that within about eighty years, a great change has been produced among the In dians. They have, in this period much degene rated as to their traditional religion. Their con nexions with the most degenerate part of the white people, trading among them ; and their knowledge and use of ardent spirit, have pro duced the most deleterious effects. They hove felt less zeal to maintain their own religion 1 , such as it was ; and to transmit their own traditions. Remarkable indeed it is, that they did so dili gently propagate and transmit them, till so com petent a number of good testimonies should be furnished to the civilized and religious world, re lative to their origin. This must have been the great object of divine Providence in causing them so remarkably to transmit their traditions through such numbers of ages. And when the 165 carefully retained. These are instead of ic pages and religious books. Some of these Indian traditions, as furnished from good authorities, shall be given. Different writers agree that the natives have their historic traditions of the reason and manner of iheir fa thers coming into this country, which agree with the account given in Esdras, of their leaving the laud of Media, and going to a land to the north east, to the distance of a year and a half's jour ney. M'Kenzie gives the following account of the Chepewyan Indians, far to the north-west. He says, " They have also a tradition among them, that they originally came from another country, inhabited by very wicked people, and had traversed a great lake, which was in one place, narr.ow, shallow, and full of islands, where they had suffered great misery ; it being always winter, with ice, and deep snows. At the Cop per Mine River, where they made the first lai d, the ground was covered with copper, over which a body of earth has since been collected to the depth of a man's height." Doctor Boudinot speaks of this tradition among the Indians, Some of them call that obstructing water a river. and some a lake. Some give account of their getting over it ; others not. What a striking description is here found of the passing of the natives of this continent, over from the north east of Asia, to the north-west of America, at Beering's Straits. These Straits, all agree, are less than forty miles wide, at this period ; and no doubt they have been continually widening. Doctor Williams, in his history of Vermont, says they are but eighteen miles wide. Probably they were not half that width 2500 years ago. And they were full of islands, the Indian tradi- 106 t/on assures us. Many of those islands may have been washed away 5 as the Indian tradition says, *the sea is eating them up;" as in Dr. Boudinot. Oiher tribes assure us, that their remote fa thers, on their way to this country, " came to a great river which they could not pass; when God dried up the river that they might pass over." Here is a traditionary notion among the Indians, of God's anciently drying up rivers before their ancestors. Their fathers in some way got over Beering's Straits. And having a tradition of rivers being dried up before the fathers, they ap plied it to this event. Those straits, after Israel had been detained for a time there, might have been frozen over, in the narrows between the isl ands; or they might have been passed by canoes, or some craft. The natives of this land, be they who they may, did in fact arrive in this conti nent ; and they probably must have come over those straits. And this might have been done by Israel, as well as by any other people. Relative to their tradition of coming where was abundance of copper ; it is a fact, that at, or near Beer'mg's Straits, there is a place called Copper Island, from the vast quantities of this metal there found. In Grieve's history we are informed that copper there covers the shore in abundance ; so that ships might easily be loaded with it. The Gazeteer speaks of this, and that an attempt was made in 1770 to obtain this cop per, but that the ice even in July, was so abun dant, and other difficulties such, that the obiect was 'relinquished. Here, then, those natives made their way to this land ; and brought down the knowledge of this event in their tradition. Doctor Boudinot gives it as from good author ity, that the Indians have a tradition " that the 167 book which the white people have, was onee theirs. That while they had this hook, things went well with them ; they prospered exceed ingly ; but that other people got it from them ; Unit the Indians lost their credit ; ofiended the Great Spirit, and suffered exceedingly from the neighboring nations; and that the Great Spirit then took pity on them, and directed them to this country." There can be no doubt but God did, by his special providence, direct them to some sequestered region of the world, for the reasons which have been already given.* * We have a prediction relative to the ten tribes, which fully accords with the things exhibited of them, and of the natives of our land. In Amos viii. 11, 12, we read "Behold the days come, saith the Lord God, that 1 will send a famine in the land-; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea to sea, arid from the north even unto the east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it." This prophecy did relate to the ten tribes. Amos was a prophet to them : he lived not long before their expulsion, from which they have never yet returned. He in the context predicted this expulsion, as then just at hand. See v. 1.2, 14. The famine here predicted, was to be fulfill ed while they were in their outcast state. This is cleurly ev ident from the whole connection. The prediction implies, they should know they had been blessed with the word of God, but had Wickedly lost it ; as a man in a famine knows he has had bread or food, but now has it not. It implies, they shall feel somethmg what they have lost, and shall wander. They shall rove fn.m sea to sea; from the north even to the east. They shall set off a north cu:ir?R, and thence east ; or be led to wander in a north-east direction as far as they can wander-; from the Mediterranean, whence they set out, to the extremist sea in the opposite di rection north-east ; to the Frozen Ocean ; over its straits, to the Pacific; and to the Atlantic. They shall run to and fro, over all the vast regions, the dreary wild*, which lie between those extreme seas. They shall retain some general correct idea of God ; but shall find they have lost h;s word. This they shall not reg-ain, till their long famine shall close in the last days. How exf cliy does this prophecy accord with the ac- 108 M'Kenzie adds the following accounts of- the Chepewyan nation : " They believe also that in ancient times, their ancestors lived till their feet were worn out with walking, and their throats with eating. They describe a deluge, when the waters spread over the whole earth, except the highest mountains ; on the tops of which they preserved themselves." This tradition of the longevity of the ancients, and of the ilood, must have been from the word of God in ancient Is rael. Abbe Ciavigero assures us, that the natives of Mexico had the tradition, that u there once was a great deluge ; and Tep/i, in order to save him self from being drowned, embarked in a ship, ooai.it noted in Esdras, and with the Indian tradition, ; which meets it ; of their fathers being led iuto this country ! They have indeed wandered north-east, and from north to east, and oath ; from sea to sea, and from the river to tlv end? of the earth. They have r-in to and fro in a famine of the word; retaining some general view of God, and of their ancient blessings under him. Eat their famine and savage state have still continued. From their savage high priests they have sought the word of the Lord, and from their vague traditions; but they have not f und it. Bat the following chapter in Amos, engages they shall find aga-ii the holy oracles v. 13 15. u Behold, the days come, sa^.hthe Lord, that the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine ; and all the hills shall melt. And I will br.ng again the captivity of my people Israel ; and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land ; and they shall no more be pull ed up out of their land, which I have given them, sailh the Lord thy God." Here aro the rapid scene?, the melting mis sionary events, of our day. Here is the succeeding recovery of the tribes of I=rael. Here is thr planting of them in their own land, and their permanent residence there, to the end of the world Never ha* this restoration had even a primary a'eoutuplis foment. 109 with his wife and children, and many animals. That as the waters abated, he sent out a bird, which remained eating dead bodies. He then seat out a little bird, which returned with a small branch." Doctor Beattj says, that an Indian in Ohio in formed, that one of their traditions was, " Once the waters had overflowed all the land, and drowned all people then living, except a few, who made a great canoe and were saved." This Indian added, to Doctor Beatty, that " a long time ago, the people went to build a high place ; that while they were building, they lost their language, and could not understand each other." Doctor Bondinot assures us that two ministers of his acquaintance informed him, that they be ing among the Ind a-is away toward the Missis sippi, the Indians there (who never before saw a white man.) informed him, that one of their tra ditions was, a great while ago they had a com- m ) i father, who had the other people under him. Tnat he .had twelve soas by whom he adminis tered his government; but the sons behaving illy, they lost this government over the other people. This the two ministers conceived to be a pretty evident traditionary notion concerning Jacob and his twelve sons. Various traditions of the Indians strikingly de note their Hebrew extraction. Doctor Beatty (mentioned by Mr. Boudinot) informs of their feast, called the hunter's feast ; answering, he thinks, to the Pentecost in ancient Israel. He describes it as follows : They choose twelve men, who provide twelve deer. Each of the twelve men cuts afcaplin; with these they form a tent, covered with blankets* 10 no They then choose twelve stones for an altar of sacrifice. Some tribes, he observes, choose but ten men, ten poles and ten stones. Here seems an evident allusion to the twelve tribes; and also to some idea of the ten separate tribes of Israel. Upon the stones of their altar, they suiTcrcd no tool to pass. No tool might pass upon a certain altar in Israel. The middle joint of the thigh of their game, Doctor Beatty informs, the Indians refuse to eat. Thus did ancient Israel, after the angel had touched the hollow of Jacob's thi fc h in the sinew that shrank : Gen. xxxii. 25, 31, 32. " In short, (says Doctor Beatty,) 1 was astonish ed to find so many of the Jewish customs pre vailing among them ; and began to conclude there was some affinity between them and the Jews." Col. Smith, in his history of New-Jersey, says of another region of Indians, " They never cat of the hollow of the thigh of any thing they kill." Charlevoix speaking of Indians still further to the north, says, he met with people who con id not help thinking that the Indians were descend ed from the Hebrews, and found in even t\ some affinity between them. Some things he states; as on certain meals, neglecting the UFC of knives ; not breaking a bone of the animal they eat ; never eating the part under the lower oint of the thigh; but throwing it away. Sue: their traditions from their ancient fathers. Oth er travellers among them sr< n oi il=o ancient paschal lamb in Israel, which was eaten in the evening. Diilereikt men who had bef-n r-vo witnr speak of this, ahd other I'tu^ls, rL-rinbhng the ill feasts in Israel ; and tell us relative to this pecul iar evening feast, that if one family cannot eat all they have prepared, a neighbouring family is in vited to partake with them ; and if any of it he still left, it must be burned before the next rising sun. None who read the law of the passover, c;n doubt the origin of this. A Christian friend of mine informs me, that he '-o rue time since read in a book which he now c.rmot name, the account of a man taken at Que- b.v,, in Montgomery's defeat; of his being car ried far to the north-west by Indians ; and of a feast which they kept, iu. which each had his por tion in a bowl ; that he was charged to be very careful not to injure a bone of it; that each must cai all his bowl full, or must burn what was left on a tire, burning in the midst for this purpose. The object of the feast he knew not. Tiie Indians have their feasts of first ripe fruit?,, or of green corn ; and will eat none of their com till a part is thus given to God. The celebrated Pean, Mr. Adair, and Col. Smith, with others, unite in these testimonies. In these Indian feasts they have their sacred songs and dances ; singing Halleluyah, Yoliewah, in the syllables which compose the words. What other nation, besides the Hebrews and Indians ever, in this manner, attempted the worship of Jehovah ? The author of the " Star in the West" says ; " May we not suppose that these Indians formerly understood the psalms and divine hymns 1 Otherwise, how came it to pass, that some of all the inhabitants of the extensive regions of North and South America have, and retain, these very expressive Hebrew words, and repeat them so distinctly ; , them after the manner of the Hebrews, in their religious acclamations ?" 112 The Indian feast of harvest, and annual expi ation of sin, is described by these writers ; and in a way which enforces the conviction that they derived them from ancient Israel. Details are given in the Star in the West. My limits will permit only to hint at them. The detailed ac counts are worth perusing. An Indian daily sacrifice is described. They throw a small piece of the fattest of their meat into the fire, before they eat. They draw their newly killed venison through the fire. The blood they often burn. It is with them a horrid abom ination to eat the blood of their game. This was a Hebrew law. A particular or two of their feasts shall be no ted. Doctor Beatty gives an account of what he saw among the Indians north-west of the Ohio, lie says ; " Before they make use of any of the first fruits of the ground, twelve of their old men meet; when a deer and some of the first fruits are provided. The deer is divided into twelve parts ; and the corn beaten in a mortar, and pre pared for use by boiling or baking, under the ashes, and of course unleavened. This also is divided into twelve parts. Then these (twelve) men hold up the venision, and fruits and pray, with their faces to the east, ack nowledging (as is supposed.) the bounty of God to them. It is then eaten. After this they freely enjoy the fruits of the earth. On the evening of the same day, (the Doctor '; ; OJPV have another public feast which lool i !<. the passover. A great quantity of veniso. ded, with other things dressed in their . and distributed to all the guests ; of v* eat freely that evening. But that which \* l- tbrown into the fire and burned ; as 113 must remain till sun rise the next day ; nor must a bone of the venison be broken." Mr. Boudinot says, " It is fresh in the memory of the old traders, (among the Indians) as we are assured by those who have long lived among them, that formerly none of the numerous na tions of Indians would eat, or even handle any part of the new harvest, till some of it had been oilered up at the yearly festival by the beloved man (high priest) or those of his appointment at the plantation ; even though the light harvest oi; the past year should almost have forced them to give their women and children of the ripening fruits to sustain life." Who that reads the laws of Moses, can doubt the origin of these Indian traditions ? The Hebrews were commanded to eat their passover with bitter herbs : Exod. xii. 8. The Indians have a notable custom of purify ing them selves with bitter herbs and roots. Describing one of their feasts^ the writer says, " At the end of the notable dance, the old beloved women re turn home to hasten the feast. In the mean time every one at the temple drinks plentifully of the Cussena, and other bitter liquids, to cleanse their sinful bodies, as they suppose." The Indians have their traditionary notion clearly alluding to the death of Abel, by the mur derous hand of Cain ; as well as one alluding to the longevity of the ancients. More full accounts are given by some of these authors, of the Archi-magus of the Indians their high priest. As the high priest in Israel was in ducted into office by various ceremonies, and by anointing ; so is the Indian high priest by purifi cation, and by anointing. When the holy gar ments are put upon him, bear's oil is poured on 10* 114 his head. And it is slated that the high priests have their resemblances of the various orna ments worn by the ancient high priests ; and even a resemblance of the breast-plate. .These men have been called by the white people, igno rant of Indian customs, jugglers. But they are now ascertained by good witnesses, as a manifest though corrupt succession of the high priesthood in ancient Israel. Bartram says, those, with in ferior priests and prophets, have been maintained in most if not all the tribes. The Indian high priest makes his yearly atone ment for sin. He appears at their temple, (such as it is) arrayed in his white deer skin garments, seeming to answer to the ancient ephod. Enter ing on his duty, the waiter spreads a white seat with a white dressed buckskin, close by the holi est apartment of their temple; and puts on his white beads offered by the people. A variety of curious things are described in this dress, by Mr. Adair, as pretty evidently designed imitations of the parts of ancient pontifical dress, which it would exceed my limits to describe. This dress is left in the holy place of their temple, till the hijrh priest comes to officiate again. His breast plate is made of a white conch shell, through which two straps of otter skin pass in two perfo rations ; while white buttons of buck's horn are superadded, as though in imitation of the pre cious stones on the ancient breast-plate, skin wreath adorns his head, instead of t cient plate of gold. And for the ancient the Archi-magus, has his tuft of white ft; His holy fire he obtains by rubbing two sti gether ; and his golden bells and pomcgi are formed of the dried spurs of wild tn- strung so as to rattle on his line mocasins* / Mr. Adair assures us, when the Fndian Archi- magus (high priest) is addressing his people, and enforcing 4 * the divine speech," that he calls them " the beloved and holy people," according to the language concerning ancient Israel. He urges them %c to imitate their virtuous ancestors," asid " flourishes upoa their beloved land, flowing with milk and honey." Mr. Adair describes the Indian feasts, and speaks of them as hearing a very near resem blance of the stated feasts in ancient Israel. He gives accounts that when the Indians are about to engage in war, they have their preparatory sacrifices, purifications, and fastings. . He speaks of their daily sacrifice, their ablutions, marriages, divorces, burials, mournings for the dead, sepa rations of women, and punishment of various crimes, as being, in his opiaioa, manifestly of Hebrew origin. Their reckonings of time, Mr. Adair viewed as evidently Hebrew. They begin their year, as did Israel, at the first appearance of new moon after the vernal equinox. They reckon by the foar seasons, and by the sub-divisions of the moons. Bartram says, the Indians believe their bigfe priests have intimate communion with the world of spirits ; and that no great design is formed by the ' ' is without his counsel. Thr Wmipoils, far to the west, we learn in C'A\r- ' ' rver's travels among the western In dia^, have their high priest, who pretends to !macy with the Great Spirit, and to be etel future events ; as is the case with 1'ioes, at the Grand Portage. Certain he thus found among different Indians, 116 \vhich show them to have been of the same ori gin. Within about eighty years, men inform, that these rites of the high priests have been more neglected. The Indians inform, that in 1747, the high priest in the Natchez, was struck dead by lightning, while using his invocation for rain. They suppose the Great Spirit to have been an gry with him for some impurity ; and with the. " darting fire, and threatening voice," took him away ; arid forbid them to renew the like at tempt. Bartram gives a description of a southern In dia:! temple. It is a square of small buildings in the centre of their Indian town. The small buildings of one story cover perhaps half an acre, more or less, according to the strength of the In be. In one of these buildings they hold their councils. A part of this building is shut up as a holy of holies ; and it is death f^r any but the high priest, to enter it. Here they deposit their most sacred things ; as the physic-pot, rattles, vts, eagle's tail, and pipe of peace. To this temple u the males (as in ancient Is rael) are obliged to assemble three times a year : viz. at the feast of the first ripe fruits ; at the feast for the success of hunting, about the time of the ancient pentecost ; and the great feast for the expiation of sins, about the time of ripe corn."' No account could be given of these things, with out a complicated miracle, unless the Indians have descended from the tribes of Israel. Mr. Boudinot informs, that '-when any of their beloved people die, they soften the thought ot" death by saying, "he is gone to sleep with his be loved fathers." The ancient pious Hebrew cly- 147 ing, " fell asleep, and was gathered to his peo ple." The Indians, when one dies, wash and anoint the body. The Hebrews did the same. Some of the southern Indians hire mourners to bewail and magnify the merits of the dead. Thus did the Hebrews : Jer. ix. 1 7. And the Indians, as had the Hebrews, have their solemn gongs on such occasions. A religious procession moves round the corpse, singing, Yah, (Jah.) Ho, is then sung by the procession. The leader then says He; all follow. Then Wah is sung by all. Thus they sing the syllables which com pose Jah, Jehovah. The corpse is then buried with the face to the east. Lewis and Clark, in their tour to the Pacific, inform that they found among the natives, in those remote regions, receptacles for the dead, always lying east and west; the door of the tomb to the east, and the bodies in the tombs lying with the face to the east. The Indians, often bury with the corpse a va riety of furniture ; and their bes>t things, if the dead be a first character. The Hebrews did the same. Josephus informs that Hyrcaims, a Mac- cabee, when Jerusalem was besieged by the Syr ian tyrant, and money was wanted, took from King David's sepulchre 3000 talents, which had 1300 years before been buried with him. Another noted Hebrew custom the Indians Doctor Boudinot informs, that a worthy rnins':er informed him, that as he was preaching vi:'! irome Indians; between the exercises, ti- vvere brought to an Indian woman present, tl .-' her son was suddenly drowned. In deep s she retired to a little distance, and sat oil i ground. Female friends followed* and? *( around her. After sitting a season in solemn Siie ice, the m >urni ig mother put her hand upon her mouth, an-i then fell forward vv th her face in the dust. Tlie rest all followed the exam > f. The men we-it by thernselv r es, and did the same. It is well known that laying the hand on the mouth, and the mouth in the dust, is a distin guished Hebraism. See Micah vii. 16 ; Lam. iii. 29 ; Prov. xxx. 32. Thus the reader is presented with a few of the historical and religious traditions of the native Americans ; and will judge for himself whether they do not exhibit satisfactory evidence that these natives, are the very tribes of Israel ? So important an argument is furnished on fhi> subject, from the Indians' place of refuge from <-tr of blood, tlrat a particular head : $hall be reserved for it, in a succeeding page. Among what other people on earth can such traditional evidence be found of their being the descendants of the ten tribes ? It is believed no other nation exhibits such evidence. Whence came the natives of our continent, if they be not the tribes of Israel / And where are ri-. ;sc rrlSji.'s to be found? They are to be found. UHJ come to-light, as Israelites; and this too, about the present period. This results from the prophetic scriptures, and the signs of the times. The de- lants of Abraham are now soon to be recov- L Where shall this branch of them be found as having been providentially preserved, now for 2,500 years, if not in this sequestered land ? Tiu- tribes of Israel might have found their way hith er, as well as any other people. Some people did find their way hither, and have brought down ail these Hebraisms and traditions, which it seems 119 as though could be furnished from no other quar ter, than from the comrnomveaith of isn;t'.. 7. The celebratyd William Pd in their rivers, and on their coasts; bands, slit .!.-* ti; -\ feathers ornamenting the heads of femaies, and various strings of beads adorning several pans of the body. Mr. Peim adds to his friend, that " he consid ered this people as under a dark night ; yet they believed in God and immortality, without the help of metaphysics. For he says, they in formed him that there was a great king, who made them that the souls of the good shall go to Siim." He adds ; u Their worship consists in two parts, sacriiice and cantieo, (songs.) The first is with their first fruits ; and the first buck * Quoted by Dr. Boudiiiot. ft* they kill goes to the fire." Mr. Perm proceeds to describe their spjcndid feast oi urn ripe iruits, one of which he had attended. He informs ; Ci Ail that go to this feast must take a piece of, money, which is made of the bone of a fi?li." " None shall appear before me empty." He speaks of the agreement of their rites with those of the Hebrews. He adds ; " They reckon by moons ; they oiler their first ripe fruits ; they have a kind of feast of tabernacles ; they are said to lay their altars with twelve stones ; they mourn a year; they have their separations of women ; with many other things that do not now occur." Here is a most artless testimony, given by that notable man drawn from his own obser vations, and accounts given by him; while the thought of this people's being actually Hebrew, probably was most distant from his mind. 8. Their having a tribe, answering in -carious respects, to the tribe of Lcvi, sheds further light on this subject. The thought naturally occurs, that if these are the ten tribes, and they have preserved so many of their religious traditions ; should we not be likely to find among them some tradition of a tribe answering to the tribe of Le- vi f l If we should find something of this, the evi dence of their being the tribes of Israel would indeed be more striking. Possibly this is fur nished. The Mohawk tribe were held by the other tribes in great reverence ; and the other tr?bcs round about them had been accustomed to pay them an annual tribute. Mr. Boudiuot gives the following account of them. " Mr. Golden says, he had bee.i told by old men (Indians) in New-England, that when their Indians were ;:t war formerly with the Mohawks, as soon as one (a Mohawk) appeared, the Indians would raise a 121 cry, from hill to hill, a Mohawk ! a Mohawk ! up on which all would flee as sheep before a wolf, without attempting to make the least resistance. And that all the nations around them have for many years, entirely submitted to their advice, and paid them a yearly tribute. And the tribu tary nations dared not to make war or peace, with out the consent of the Mohawks." Mr. Coidea goes on to state an instance of their speech to the governor of Virginia, in which it appears the Mohawks were the correctors of the misdoings of the other tribes. Now, could any thing be found in their name, which might have an allusion to the superiority of the tribe of Levi ; we should think the evi dence very considerable, that here are indeed the descendants of the- part of that tribe which clave to the house of Israel. And here too evi dence seems not wholly wanting. The Hebrew word Mkhokkek, signifies an interpreter of the law, superior. We have, then, a new view of the possible origin of the Mohawks ! 9. Several prophetic traits of character given of the Hebrews, do accurately apply to the aborigines of America. Intemperance may be first noted. Isaiah, writing about the time of the expulsion of Israel from Canaan, and about to predict their restoration, says ; Isai. xxviii. 1 " Wo to the crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim ; (Ephraim was a noted name of the ten tribes of Israel.) The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet. For ail tables shall be full of vomit and filthiaess; so that there is no place clean." In the course of the descriptions of their drun kenness, that of their rejection and restoration ig ibiended ; that the Lord by a mighty one would 11 cast them down to the earth ; and their glorious beauty should be like that of a rich flower in a fer tile valley, which droops, withers and dies. But in time God would revive it. " In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty unto the residue of this people." None who know the character of the Indians in relation to intemperance, need to be informed that this picture does most singularly apply to them. Doctor Williams in his history of Vermont, on this trait of Indian character, says ; " No sooner had the Indians tasted of the spirituous liquors brought by the Europeans, than they contracted a new appetite, which they were wholly unable to govern. The old and the young, the sachem, the warrior, and the women, whenever they can obtain liquors, indulge themselves without mode ration and without decency, till universal drunk enness takes place. All the tribes appear to be under the dominion of this appetite, and unable to govern it." A writer in the Connecticut Magazine assures us of the Indians in Massachusetts, when our fa thers first arrived there ; " As soon as they had a taste of ardent spirits, they discovered a strong appetite for them ; and their thirst soon became insatiable." Another trait of Hebrew character which sin gularly applies to the Indians, is found in Isai. iii. '"The bravery of their iir.kiing oniair.cnts, about their feet ; their cauls, and round tines like the moon ; their chains, bracelets, mufflers, bonnets, ornaments of the legs ; head-bands, tablets, car- .;>, and nose-jewels ; the mantles, the ~>&s; and the crisping pins." Ore would ine the prophet was here indeed describing 123 other people on earth probably bear a resem blance to such a degree. This description was given just before the ex pulsion of Israel. And nothing would be more likely than that their taste for these fleshy orna ments should descend to posterity. For these make the earliest and deepest impressions on the rising generation. 1 0. The Indians being in tribes, with their heads find names of tribes, affords further light upon Ihis subject. The Hebrews not only had their tribes, and heads of tribes, as have the Indians; but they had their animal emblems of their tribes. Dan's emblem was a serpent; Issachar's an ass ; Benjamin's a wolf; and Judah's a lion. And this trait of character is not wanting among the na tives of this land. They have their wolf tribe ; their tiger tribe ; panther tribe ; buffalo tribe ; bear tribe ; deer tribe ; raccoon tribe ; eagle tribe, and many others. What other nation on earth bears any resemblance to this ? Here, no doubt, is Hebrew tradition. Various of the emblems given in Jacob's last blessing, have been strikingly fulfilled in the American Indians. " Dan shall be a serpent by the way ; an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that the rider shall fall back wards. Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf; in the morning he shall devour the prey; and at night he shall divide the spoil." Had the prophetic eye rested on the American aborigines, it seems as though no picture could have been more ac curate. 1 1 . Their having an imitation of the ancient city of refuge, evinces the truth of our subject. Their city of refuge has been hinted from rr r. Adair. But as this is so convincing an argument, (no nation on earth having any thing of the kind, but the ancient Hebrews and the Indians ;) the reader shall be more particularly instructed on this article. Of one of these places of refuse, Mr. Boudinot says ; " The town of. refuge called Choate, is on a large stream of the Mississippi, five miles above where Fort London formerly stood. Here, some years ago, a brave English man was protected, after killing an Indian war rior in defence of his property. He told Mr. Ad-air that after some Eioriths slay in this place of refuge, he intended to return to his house in the neighborhood ; but the chiefs told him it would prove fatal to him. So that he was obliged to continue there, till he pacified the friends of the deceased, by presents to their satisfaction. " In the upper country of Muskagee, (says Doctor Boudinot) was an old beloved town, called Koo- sah which is a place of safety for those who kill unclesignedly." u l;i almost every Indian nation (he adds) there arc several peaceable towns, which are called old beloved, holy, or white towns. It is not within the memory of the oldest people, that blood was ever frhed in them ; although'they often force persons from them, a ad put them elsewhere to death." "Who can read this, and not be satisfied of the i\ of this Indian tradition. The well known trait of Indian character, that thev will pursue one who has killed any of their friends, ever so far, and ever so long, as an aven ger of the blood shed, thus lies clearly open to view. It originated in the permission given to an avenger of blood in the commonwealth of Is rael ; and is found in such a degree, probably, in r nation. 125 12. Other Indian rites, and various other cvn,- siderations, go to evince the fact, that this people are the ten tribes of Israel. Further details are given, and might be enlarged upon : as, religious separations of Indian females, almost exactly an swering to the law in ancient Israel; their beginn ing their year as did bra el, with the new moon after the vernal equinox ; their special attention paid to new moons, as was paid in Israel; their green- corn moon, the most lovely of all, even as Israel had their beloved month Abib, which signifies an ear of green corn ; their Jubilee declared to have been observed by some of the natives : " Melvenda and Acasta both affirm, that the na tives keep a Jubilee according to the usage in Israel." The testimony of Edwards, in his " West Indies," that the striking uniformity of the prejudices and customs of the Caribbee In dians, to the practices of the Jews, has not esca ped the notice of historians, as Gumella, Du Tertre, and others;" and the various predictions of the final restoration of Israel, bringing them from the ends of the earth, from the west, and (as one translates it) " from the going down of the sun." These things open fruitful sources of evidence. But I have more than equalled my designed limits. It is again asked, is it possible to find an other people on earth exhibiting an equal degree of evidence of their being the ten tribes of Is rael ? Can another people on earth be found ex hibiting one sixth part of the evidence adduced in favour of the American natives ? We expect no new revelation, nor miracles wrought, to in- iurm who are the ten tribes of Israel. Here is just such evidence as we should rationally look for ; but six times as much of it, as we should 126 dare to hare expected, after a lapse of 2500 years, with a people without letters. Our abo rigines are essentially distinguished from all oth er pagans on earth, in the uniform belief of most of them of one God ; and their freedom from false gods ; as well as in many other striking things, which appear in their history. How prone have been mankind, in all ages, to idolatry. Hundreds of thousands of false gods, of every foolish description, have existed in the bewildered imaginations of men destitute of rev elation. But the knowledge of the true God was renounced. "As they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them up" to almost every description of idolatry. How early did the world (in several centuries after the flood) go off to gross idolatry, even undec the in structions of the patriarchs, and so soon after the terrible admonition of the flood ! The natives of one of the greatest islands of the eastern ocean, are so depraved, that it has not been known that they had the least idea of any Supreme Being. How prone were the Jews and Israel, in ancient times, even under all their rich advantages, to unite in the idolatries of their heathen neigh bours ! But the 70 years captivity of the Jews in Ba bylon, cured them utterly of idolatry, from that day to this. While they have been dispersed, and been infidels relative to Jesus Christ ; they have been firm believers in the Old Testament, and in the one God of Abraham. It is analogous with this to expect, that the ten tribes (wherever they are) would be cured, as well as the Jews, of their gross idolatry, and would be kept during their long outcast state, in a situation somewhat resembling that of the Jews, in their speculation 127 concerning God. Such has been the case with the natives of this continent, at least to as great a degree as could be without a bible or letters ; and such has been the case with no other people on earth ! Nothing but the very special power and mercy of God, could have kept these natives in this traditional habit of acknowledging the one only living and true God, as they have done. While they have been dead to the life of religion, as a valley of dry bones ; yet they have strangely been kept from acknowledging any other God but Jehovah, the Great Spirit, who made them and all things. And light, in these last days of wonders, (when the time for the restoration of Israel and Judah is drawing near) has been breaking out and accu mulating on this subject, to exhibit this origin of the American natives. It is ascertained in the " Star in the West," that Spaniards, Portuguese, French, English, Jews, and Christians, men of learning, and the illiterate, and sea-faring men ; (til have united in the statements of facts, which go to indicate that these Indians are the descendants of Israel! Mr. M'Kenzie has travelled from the Atlantic very far to the north-west ; and some of his statements of facts go to the same point. Vari ous of the European visitants to this continent, early after it was known to the civilized world, ex pressed their surprise on finding among the natives things which bore such a resemblance to the his tory of ancient Israel. What account can be given of all this, out that here are Ihe very ten tribes ? These tribes must be somewhere on earth. Where are they ? How can they be known ? Whence came our native Americans ? W T hat other account can be given of their tradi tions, their language, Hebrew words and phrases, 128 (the radical language of their tribes) and' the broken fragments of the ancient economy of Is rael running through so many of them ? It would be far wilder and more diflicult to account for these things on any other principle, than to say we have evidence that is satisfactory, of having found at last, the very valley of the dry bones of the house of Israel! The facts stated of them, must on every other principle, appear most unac countable, not to say miraculous. Before any degree of confidence is admitted against the evidences adduced, as though other and more conclusive evidence must point out at 'last, the ten tribes ; let it be recollected, that the divine mode of affording evidence is not always such as human wisdom would dictate. The Jewi had their strong objections against the evidences of the divinity, the resurrection and ascension of Christ. These were not such as they would have chosen. In the midst of such evidences as God saw fit to afford, the Jews required more. "What sign showest thou ?" " How long dost thou make us to doubt?" "Let him descend from the cross, that we may see and believe." Naaman had formed his expectations how his cure would be effected, by the prophet in Israel. He " would come out and lay his hand on the sore, and call upon his God and heal him." And for the mor tifying reverse of this, he turned to go away in a rage. Many things may be very probably fancied concerning the kinds or degrees of evidence, which must at last exhibit the ten tribes to the world. But Providence may adopt a different method. The methods divinely adopted in eve~ ry point, have usually been such as to stain the .pride of all human glory. The Afghans in Per- 129 sia may prove to be a small part of the ten tribes. But it is doubted whether their evidence is by any means so full as that of the American na tives. The latter have, to say the least, very considerable of just such kind of evidence, as it would naturally be supposed must bring to light the ten tribes after remaining for millenaries in a savage state. May the subject be duly exam ined, and a correct decision in due time be form ed. CHAPTER IV. AN ADDRESS OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH, RELATIVE TO THE RESTORATION OF HIS PEOPLE. AN interesting address is found in the 18th chapter of Isaiah to some people of the last days; calling them to have a special agency in the recov ery and restoration of the ancient people of God. Many years ago, while writing my Dissertation on the Prophecies, I hecame much interested in this address of Isaiah ; and in that dissertation, gave a paraphrase .of it ; conceiving' then it was an address to the people of God in Great Britain. I have since become of a different opinion ; and now apprehend it to he an address to the Chris tian people of the United States of America. To prepare the way for the contemplation of this address, let several things be considered : 1. In the pi : rings, many addresses are made to nation--, or concerning them. Would it no, if iio mention were found in the j.rophec; s new western world; which was destined by propitious Heaven to make so nguishing a figure both in the political and lous world, in the last days ? It certain!/ 132 would seem unaccountable, and the thought can hardly be admitted. 2. The address in the eighteenth of Isaiah, to be contemplated, is clearly an address to some people concerning events to transpire in thej#s days ; and which are intimately connected with the " battle of that great day of God Almighty, which is still future ; and which is to introduce the Millennium. This appears in verses 5, 6, 7, of the chapter, which will by and by be noted. Hence, 3. The address cannot have been to any an cient nation or people ; as some expositors have inconsiderately supposed. But it must be to a nation of the last days ; a nation now on earth ; a nation to be peculiarly instrumental in the res toration of the Hebrews in the last days. For this is the very object of the address, as will ap pear. The demand in the address is, to go and restore that ancient people of God in the last days; or at a time intimately connected with the tremendous scenes on antic hristian Europe, and on the hostile wicked world, v which shall sweep antichristian nations from the earth, and pre pare the way for the millennial kingdom of Jesus Christ. This will clearly appear. 4. The address then, is to a nation, that may- seem to have leisure for the important business assigned, when the old and eastern parts of the world are in the effervescence of revolution, and in those struggles wh:ch precede dissolution. This consideration fixes the address to a people distinct and distant from those oM lands; and hence probably to our new world. 5. If it be a fact, as is apprehended, that the aborigines of our co-ili o:;i are indeed de scended from the ten tribe* of Israel our ua- 133 lion, no doubt, must be tbe people addressed to restore them ; to bring them to the knowledge, of the gospel, and to do with thcnl whatever the God of Abraham designs shall he done. The great and generous Christian people, who occu py much of the land of those natives, and who are on the ground of their continent, and hence are the best prepared to meliorate their condi tion, and bring them to the knowledge and order of the God of Israel, must of course be the peo ple to whom this work is assigned. This one consideration would do much toward the decis ion of our question, Who is the nation address ed? 6. Various things are found in the predictions of the restoration of God's ancient people, which strikingly accord with the idea of a great branch of them being recovered from this land, and by the agency of the people of our States. A few of these shall be noted. In the thirtieth and thirty-first chapters of Jer emiah, the prophet treats of the united restora tion of Judah and Israel. These chapters were written about one hundred and twenty years af ter the expulsion of the ten tribes. And in rela tion to the ten tribes, they have never yet had even a primary accomplishment, or any degree of fulfilment. The restoration there predicted is to be in "the latter days ;" chap. xxx. 24: and at the time near the battle of the great day ; see verse 6 8, 23, 24. Much of the substance of these chapters is appropriated to the ten tribes of Israel ; though Judah is expressly to be res tored with them. Of the former, (having then been outcast for an hundred and twenty years,) God says ; chap. xxxi. 20 ; " Is Ephraim my dear son ? Is he a pleasant child ? For since I 12 134 spake against him, (or expelled him from Ca naan,) 1 do earnestly remember him still ; there fore my bowels are troubled for him; I will sure ly have mercy upon him, sailh the Lord." The next verse invites and predicts his final restora tion. These yearnings of the divine compas sion for Ephraim (one noted name of the ten tribes) are the immediate precursor of his resto ration. " 1 will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord. Set thee up way-marks, make thee high heaps, set thine heart toward the high way turn again, O vicgin of Israel ; turn again to these thy cities." " J will again be the God of all the families of Israel ; and they shall be my people." " For lo, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Juda'h ; and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it." " Fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the Lord ; neither be dismayed, O Israel ; for lo, I will save thee from ftfar." " Behold I will bring them from the 'north country, and gather them from (he coasts of the earth." In this country "afar" off, these ki coasts of the earth," they had been in an out cast state. " Because they called thee an outcast^ saying ; " This is Zion, whom no man seekcth af ter." (For more than 2000 years none sought af ter the ten tribes.) These ideas strikingly ac cord with their having been outcasts from the known world, in America. This might with sin gular propriety be called the land afar off, and the coasts of the earth. In the same connexion, when God promises to gather them "from the coasts of the earth," and says, " they shall come with weeping and with supplication j for I am a father to Israel, and 135 Ephraim is my first born ;" he adds ; " Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar oif, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as the shep herd doth his flock." "Isles afar off!" Isles in the Hebrew language, signify any lands, ever so extensive, away over great waters. Where can these "isles afar off," (these "coasts of the earth" here addressed by God in relation to the restora tion of lils outcast yet beloved Ephraim,) where can they be so naturally found as in America ? In other prophets the same things are found. In Isai. xliii. God promises this same restoration of Israel. " But now, thus saith the Lord, that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, Israel ; Fear not, for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name ; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee. I have loved thee with an everlast ing love ; therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life. Fear not, for I am with thee. 1 will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west : I will say to the north, Give up ; and to the south, Keep not back : bring my sons from far, and ray daughters from the ends of Ike earth." " Thus saith the Lord, who muketh a way in the sea, and. a path in the mighty wa ters ; Behold I will do a new thing ; now it shall spring forth ; shall ye not know it ? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert." In Isai. xi. is this wonderful restora tion. Ephraim and Judah are both restored ; the one from his "dispersed," the other from his "outcast" state ; and their mutual envies are for ever healed. And the places from which they are recovered are noted ; among which are " the i*les of th>> sen ;" or lands away over the sea, 136 and " the four corners of the earth. ^ Certainly then, from America ! This surely is one of the four cornqrs of the earth. Of such a land away over sea, it is predicted, Isai. Ix. 9 ; " Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, (or a power expert in navigation,) to bring my sons from far."- In Zech. viii. 7, is the same event. " Thus saith the Lord of hosts ; Behold I will save my people from the east country, and from the west count, -y ; and I will bring them, and they shall dwell in Jerusalem; and they shall be my people, and I will he their God." Here they are saved from the west country ; or as it may be rendered, from the going down of the sun. The going down of the sun from Jerusalem, would be over America. In Zech. x. 8, 9, is this same restoration of Ephraim by name ; meaning the ten tribes. "1 will hiss for them, (or Caii them,) and gather them ; for I have re* deemed them. And they shall remember me from far countries; and they shall live, and their chil dren, and turn again." Such promises of the restoration of Israel from far countries, from the west, or the going down of the sun, from the coasts of the earth, from the ends of the earth, from isles afar, their being brought in ships from far,, making their way in the sea, their path in the mighty waters ; these expressions certainly well accord with the ten tribes being brought from America. And such passages imply an agency by which such a resto ration shall be effected. Where shall such an agency be so naturally found, as among a great Christian people, providentially planted on the very ground occupied by the outcast tribes of Israel in their long exilement ; and who are so happily remote from the bloody scenes of Eu- 137 rope in the last days, as to have leisure for the important business assigned ? Surely then, this business would be assigned, either tacitly or expressly, to our nation. At this conclusion we safely arrive, reasoning a priori. The circumstances of the case enforce it. And we might expect so interesting a duty, relative to an event on which the prophecies so abun dantly rest, would not be left to uncertain deduc tions, but would be expressly enjoined. We may then, open the prophetic scriptures with some good degree of confidence, that the assignment of such a task is somewhere to be found. And where so natural to be found as in the prophecy of Isaiah ? He is the most evan gelical prophet ; arid treats largely upon the res toration of his brethren. He lived to behold the expulsion of the ten tribes ; and must have been deeply affected with the event. The expulsion of the ten tribes took place 725 years before Christ. Isaiah is supposed to have begun his ministry about the year 760 before Christ ; 35 years before that expulsion ; and to have contin ued it about 27 years after that event. It is then very natural, to consider his mind as deeply af fected with this event ; with the place of the long exilement of his brethren of Israel ; and as delighted with a view of their final restoration, which he was inspired to foretel. Behold this man of God then, wrapt in the visr ions of the Almighty, casting an eye of faith down the lapse of time to the days of the final restora tion of his long rejected brethren. He finds pre sented in vision, away over the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic, far in the west^ or going down of the sun, the continent of their long banish ment. He also beholds in vision a great nation 12* rising there in the last days ; a land of freedom and religion. He hears the whisper of the Spir it of inspiration, directing him to address that far sequestered and happy land ; and call their at tention to the final restoration of his people, Isaiah xviii. verse 1. " Ho, land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethio pia." Our translators render this address, fci Wo to the land." But this is manifestly incorrect, as the best expositors agree. The Hebrew par ticle here translated Wo to, is a particle of friend ly calling, as well as of denouncing. And the connexion in any given place, must decide which rendering shall he given. In this place, the whole connexion and sense decide, that the word is here a friendly call, or address ; as in this pas sage ; " Ho every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters." The land addressed, lies " beyond the rivers of Ethiopia." It is agreed that these rivers mean the mouths of the Nile, which enter from Egypt into the south side of the Mediterranean. It is as though the prophet had said ; Thou land beheld in vision away over the mouths of the Nile. Where would such a line strike? It would glance over the northern edge of the States of Barbary. But could the friendly address to a people of the last days, light on those barbarous Mohammedan shores ? Surely not. No land " shadowing with zcings," or that would aid the restoration of the Hebrews, is found in those horrid regions. No : the point of compass and the address must have been designed for a new world, seen in that di rection. This address of Heaven must be to our western continent ; or to a hospitable people found here. Our southern boundary is not far from the latitude of the mouths of the Nile. The 139 prophetic eye glanced beyond all lands then, known ; and hence no land is named. It must have been a land over the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic. Thou land " shadowing with wings." The above direction lands the prophetic vision at the point of the western continent, where the two great wings of North and South America meet, as at the body of a great Eagle. This at first might furnish the prophetic imagery of a land " shad owing with wings." As though the inspiring Spirit had whispered; The continent of those two great wings shall be found at last most interest ing in relation to your Hebrew brethren. And those two great wings shall prove but an emblem of a great nation then on that continent; far sequestered from the seat of antichrist, and of tyranny and blood ; and whose asylum for equal rights, liberty, and religion, shall be well repre sented by such a national coat of arms. the pro tecting wings of a great Eagle ; which nation in yonder setting of the sun. (when in the last days, judgments shall be thundering through the na tions of the eastern continent,) shall be found a realm of peaceful protection to all, who fly from the abodes of despotism to its peaceful retreat ; even as an eagle protects her nest from all harm. Yea, a land that, when all other lands shall be found to have trampled on the Jews, shall be found to have protecting wings for them ; free from such cruelty, and ready to aid them. Verse 2. " Who sendeth ambassadors by the, sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the face of the waters." It is to be supposed that a great difficulty would at once present itself to the pro phet's view, when beholding in vision this west ern continent, over the mighty waters of the 140 Mediterranean, and the Atlantic, and about to be called to restore his people. What could be done across such mighty waters ? The difficulty at once vanishes, by the prophet's being ascer tained of this characteristic of the people ad dressed. They would be most expert in navi gation. They could traverse the Atlantic, and Mediterranean, and be able to send missionaries to Jerusalem, or to the ends of the earth, in those last days, or convey the Hebrews from one conti nent to another, with an expedition similar to that with which the Nile (beyond which this new world is beheld) used to be navigated with the skiifs made of the bulrush, or the rind of the pa pyrus.* Verse 2, concluded. " Saying, Go ye swift messengers- to a nation scattered and pealed, to a people terrible from the beginning hitherto ; a na tion meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled." ' Saying? before the com mand Go, is interpolated in our translation, and destroys the sense; as though the nation said this to her swift messengers ; whereas it is what God says to the nation addressed, q. d. Come thou protecting nation ; I have a great business for you. Collect and restore my ancient people ; that nation whose ancient history has been so re markable and terrible ; that nation so long dis persed, robbed, and insulted in the people of the *Our ftates may claim the characteristic of expert naviga tion, equal at least to any people on earth. Consider our steam-boat navigation, and such accounts as the following ; found in Niles' Register, of March 22, 1823. " Baltimore vessels. The brig Thessalian arrived at Baltimore on Satur day evening last, in 79 days from Lima, and 24 from the sight of the city of Pernambuco, in Brazil; a distance of 12,000 miles ; averaging six and a quarter miles every hour of her passage. This vessel was, less than eight months ago, on th stocks in this city." 141 Jews ; and so long outcast in the ten tribes;- 6 That people of line, line, (as in the Hebrew, and in the margin of the great Bible ;) or. whose on ly hope to find their ancient inheritance must be on the line of divine promise, or the entail of the covenant. As the land addressed is described as away over the mouths of the Nile; so various characteristics in the address am suggested from thoughts associated with that river, and the peo ple on its banks ; ss the bulrush vessel just not ed ; and here the measuring line. The river Nile periodically overflowed its banks, and swept away the boundaries of every man's inheritance on its interval. Every man, then, had to depend on a noted line, to measure anew and find his land. So the Hebrews, having by their sins, and expulsion from Canaan, and from the covenant of Abraham, lost all the visible boundaries of their inheritance; h::re no ground of hope of re gaining their standing either in Palestine, or in the covenant of grace, but the line of the mere and sovereign promise of God, for their restora tion. The word is doubled, line, line ; a mere Hebraism, to form a superlative. As peace, peace, means perfect peace, Isai. xxvi. 3; and as goody good, means the best ; so line, line, means super latively of line, or altogether dependent on the mere promise of God. That the allusion is to the event noted is evident from what follows : " Whose land the rivers have spoiled." Whose inheritance (in the Holy Land) has been torn from them, and overrun by neigbouring hostile nations, often symbolized by rivers, even as the lands by the sides of the Nile often had their boundaries swept away by the overflowings of that river. Thus the Romans first, then the Per sians, the Saracens, the Egyptians and the Turks, 142 have overflowed and possessed the Holy Land. But the line of divine promise will restore it to the Hebrews.* Go thou protecting people ; shadow with thy wings my ancient family, as though Ihe Most High should say ; For thus it is written ; "Sure ly the isles shall wait for me, (or lands away over sea from Palest' -e.) and the ships of Tarshish first, (a people expert in navigation;) to bring my sons from far." A far distant land over sea thai! be engaged in this work. Verse 3. "All ue. inhulita-it.^ cf the world* and dwellers on ihe earth, sec ye when he liflclh up the ensign on the mount&ins, and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear yr." After the land shadowing with wings is under way in fulfilment of the di vine requirement; an apostrophe is made by the Most High to all nations, to stand and behold the banoer of salvation now erected for his ancient people ; and to hear the great gospel trumpet, the blessed Jubilee, now to be blown for their collection and their freedom. The ancient sil ver trumpets in Israel, collected their solemn as semblies. And the same trumpets, with joyful and peculiar blasts, ushered in the Jubilee morn, and loosed every bond slave of the Hebrews. And the antitype of the event shall now be ac complished. This standard of salvation at that period, is a notable event in the prophets. See Isai. xi. 12, where God sets his hand a second time to gather his Hebrew family from all nations and regions * Much perplexity had rested on the pa a ?agf, a nation nf lintel i at; till the above solution occurred to mind. With thi'- I am fully satisfied. It is natural, us is Ihe bulrush urivi- gai ; on. It agrees with facts, and is confirmed by the clause following: "whose laud the river 8 have spoiled." 143 beyond sea ; doubtless from America, as well as other nations ; and it is promised, ''" He shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dis persed of Judah from the four corners of the earth." If from the four corners of the earth ; then surely from America ! In this passage are the descriptive situations from which the two great branches of the Hebrews are recovered : Judah from being dispersed among the nations, and Israel from being outcast from the nations ; thrown out of sight of the social world, precisely as they have been in the wilds of America for more than two thousand years. Verse 4. "For so t/ie Lord said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will consider my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest." The event and the figures in this passage are best explained by those found in synchrouical passages, or prophe cies alluding to the same event. And according to them, it is as though the Most High should say. I am now about to renew my ancient dwelling place. I will again have a fued habitation in Canaan; as Zech. i. 16 : " Thus saith the Lord, I am again returned to Jerusalem with mercies ; my house shall be built in it;" ai)d viii. 3; a Tbus saith the Lord. I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem." And the event shall be as " life from the dead" to the nations : Rom. xi. 15. Therefore, ye gentile lands, now behold. I will now be to rny ancient heritage like the genial heat of the sun to promote vege tation after the death of winter; as Isai. xxvi. 19, " Thy dew is as the dew of herbs," which in the spring shall vegetate. And I will be like the fertile, cooling cloud in the sultry heat of bar- 144 vest." The Hebrews shall now become "as the tender grass springing out of the earth, by the clear shining after rain ;" 2 Sarn. xxiii. 4. Yes, " I will be as the dew unto Israel ; he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon ; His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, aad his smell as Lebanon ; Hos. xiv. 5, 6. The nations shall behold this fulfil rne at of divine grace to Israel, and shall find instruments raised up adequate to the work. Bat a tremendous scene to the antichristian world shall be found intimately connected. Verse 5. "For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the sprigs with prun ing hooks, and take away and cut down the bran ches^ Or, near the fulfilment of this event of the last days, a vast scene is to be accomplished. Prophetic notice is ever given relative to that period, that the salvation of the friends of Zion shall be ushered in with a proportionable des truction to her enemies. The harvest and vint age of divine wrath, called " the battle of that great day of God Almighty," must be accomplish ed ; and at the time of the restoration of the Hebrews, that tremendous event shall be at the doors. As in the natural vineyard, when the blossom is succeeded by the swelled pulp, which soon reaches the size of the full grapes, indicat ing that the vintage is near; so at the time of the service here divinely demanded, wickedness shall have blossomed ; pride shall have budded in an tichristian realms. The sour grapes of their tyranny, violence, and licentiousness, will be found to be arriving at their growth ; indicating that the time for the casting of the vine of the 145 fcarth into the wine press of the wrath of God, is jii^-.t ai hand. Verse 6. " They shall be left together unto tht fowls of the mountains, and the beasts of the earth ; and the fowls shall summer upon them, and the beasts of the earth shall winter upon /Acm." Soon the most prominent branches of the antichristian vine of the earth, shall be col lected arid trodden upon the mountains of Israel, in the noted scene of Armageddon ; Rev. xvi. 16. The passage noted in Ezek. xxxix. 17 20, (at the time of the slaughter of Gog and his bands, and which is given as an illustration of the text,) shall then be accomplished. " ^nd thou son of man, thus saith the Lord God, Speak unto every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come ; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that \ do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood. Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth ; of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them failings of Bashau. And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drun ken, of my sacrifice which I sacrificed for you. Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord God." Also the further illustration of the same, Rev. xix. 17, 18 ; "And 1 saw an arigel standing in the sun ; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather your selves together unto the supper of the great God; That ye may eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and 13 146 the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great." Verse 7. " At that time shall the present be, brought unto the Lord of hosts of a people scatter ed and pealed, and from a people terrible from the beginning hitherto ; a nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the , rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the Mount Zion." Just at that period of the world, the present which I claim of you shall be brought to the Lord of hosts, of that scatter ed and outcast people; of that people so terrible in ancient times to their enemies by the presence and power of their God with them ; that people of "/me, /me," or depending solely on the meas uring line of promise, or the entail of the cove nant, found in the sacred oracles for their resto ration to their ancient inheritance in the church of God, arid in the promised land ; inasmuch as the boundaries of their inheritance in both these respects have long since been swept away. A present of this people must be brought by you, sequestered land shadowing with wings, unto the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the Mount Zion. Ye friends of God in the land addressed ; can you read this prophetic direction of the ancient prophet Isaiah, without having your hearts burn within you ? Surely you cannot, if you can view it as an address of the Most High to you. God here exalts you, in the last days, the age of terror and blood, as high as the standard to be raised for the collection of the seed of Abraham ; " on the mountains." Nor is this the only passage, in which this your exaltation is recognized. See the same honour alluded to, in Zeph. iii. 10. There, nearly connected with the battle of the 147 great day of God, in which he there asserts he " will gather the nations, and assemble the king doms, to pour upon them his indignation, even all his fierce anger, and all the earth shall be devour ed with the fire of his jealousy ;" and that he will then " turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, and serve him with one consent ;" he informs, as in the address in Isaiah ; " From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, my suppliants (or a people who are my worshippers,) shall bring mine otter ing, even the daughter of my dispersed, (as the verse should be read.) Here is the same peo ple, away in the same direction, over the mouths of the Nile, who are called God's suppliants, and who, in those days of vengeance, are to bring their offering to God, consisting of the descend ants of his ancient people. If these views be correct, Christians in our land may well bless God that it is their happy lot to live in this land shadowing with wings ; this protecting realm, an asylum of liberty and reli gion; a land so distant from the seat of antichrist and of the judgments to be thundered down on old corrupt establishments in the last days. And their devout gratitude to Heaven ought to rise, for the blessing of having their existence so near the period alluded to in this sublime prediction, when this land of liberty is beginning to feel her distinguishing immunities compared with the es tablishments of tyranny and corruption in the old continent. We may rejoice to have our earthly lot with a people of whom such honorable men tion is made by the prophetic spirit of old ; and to whom so noble a work is assigned. Our chil dren coming upon the stage may live to see the meaning and fulfilment of this prophetic chap- 143 ter, which is most rich in sentiment, and which will not fail of accomplishment. The great argument found in this sacred ad dress, to induce to a compliance with the duty demanded, is, the terrors of the days of ven geance on eastern corrupt nations ; which seems to imply some good degree of exemption in our own case, and our happy leisure for the business assigned. Heaven will show despotic nations, and old corrupt empires, the difference between them, and a land " shadowing with wings;" a happy asylum of liberty and religion, in the west. Can a motive be wanting to induce us to main tain the character implied in this address, and to obey the injunction of Heaven here urged upon us ? Should any say, what can he done ? Let this be the reply ; be devoutly disposed and pre pared to obey; and Heaven will, in due time, make the duty plain. By prayer, contributions, and your influence, be prepared to aid every at tempt for the conversion of the Jews and Israel; and God will be his own interpreter, and will make the duty plain. A leading step has already been taken in a Je rusalem mission. This may prove, in relation to a fulfilment of our text, a cloud like a man's hand, which shall afford a sound of great rain ; and shall water the hills of ancient Zion. How great effects spring from little causes ! A purling stream from the threshold of the sanctuary, soon rises to the ankles, to the knees, to the loins, to an unfordable river, which heals the Dead sea ; Ezek. xlvii. Already has the bulrush vessel slip ped from the "land shadowing with wings," across the mighty waters, over which the prophetic eye glanced; over the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, by the mouths of the "rivers of Ethiopia," and 149 has landed her " ambassadors^ for a Jerusalem mission ! Bless the Lord, O children of Abra ham, for this ray of light from the land of the going down of the sun. This may shed an incip ient lustre on the noted passage in our evangeli cal prophet. It may prove to the children of Abraham, in these days of signal phenomena, a morning rising in the west! Let us, dear coun trymen, second this attempt with our interces sions, our contributions, and our influence. May all societies formed in behalf of the Jews, and all solicitations in their favour,meet our most fervent patronage. And God will not fail of fulfilling by us his gracious designs. The blessed business will be brought within our reach, and will be ac complished. The ten tribes, as well as the Jews, belong to the " nation scattered and pealed, and terrible from the beginning." Yes, the stick of Ephraim is to become one in the hand of the prophet, with the stick of the Jews ; fizek. xxxvii. 15. If it is a fact, that the aborigines of this " land shad owing with wings, 55 are the tribes of Israel, we perceive at once what can be done to fulfil the noted demand of God, as it relates to them. And all who fear God will leap for joy. that as the Jerusalem mission is already under way, so missions to these tribes of Israel are already un der way ! Let us then, in view of the evidence providen tially afforded, that we have found the long ban ished tribes of Israel, seat ourselves as at the feet of Isaiah ; hear him sighing with deep affliction at the long exilement of his brethren of Israel, and in vision beholding this land of their banish ment. Hear the Spirit of Inspiration suggesting to his anxious mind ; There is the land, the long 13* 150 exilement of your brethren of Israel. There for 2500 years shall they be an outcast race, till about the time of the Messiah's kingdom, that darling object of your prophecy. Then their line of promised title to their fair inheritance shall take effect. A great nation shall there be found, at that period, whose sequestered realm and peace ful national character, shall afford a retreat for liberty and religion ; and shall entitle them to the appellation of a " land shadowing with wings/' as the form of their continent suggests. Here is the people to aid the restoration both of your dispersed, and especially your outcast brethren. Address them therefore, and from me assign them their business. Ho, thou blessed nation of the last days ; pity, instruct, and save my ancient people and breth ren ; especially that outcast branch of them, who were the natives of your soil. Pity that degrad ed remnant of a nation so terrible in ancient times, but who have been now so long wretched. Bring a present of them, ye worshippers of Je hovah, to the God of Abraham. Give not sleep to your eyes 5 till a house be builded to your God, from those ancient and venerable materials. Were not your fathers sent into that far distant world, not only to be (in their posterity) built up a great protecting nation ; but also to be the in struments of gathering, or recovering the miser able remnant of my outcasts there, in the last days ? Rejoice, then, ye distinguished people in jour birthright, arrci engage in the work by Heav en assigned. Let not those tribes of my ancient people, whom I have borne as on eagles' wings for so many a^es ; let them not become extinct before your eyes ; let them no longer roam in ravage barbarism and death ! My bowels yearn 151 for Ephraim, my first born. "For since I spakf* against him, I do earnestly remember him still." " 1 have seen his ways and will heal him. I will restore peace to him, and to his mourners; peace in the renewal of my covenant. I will again bear him on eagles" wings, and bring him to my self. For you, (my suppliants in the west,) this honour is reserved ;" Zeph. iii. 10. The wings of your continent have long borne him in his banishment. Let now the wings of your liberty, compassion, and blessed retreat, bear him from Ins dreary wilds to the temple of God. Xiook at the origin of those degraded natives of your continent, and fly to their relief. Send them the heralds of salvation. Send ihem the word, the bread of life. You receiv ed that book from the seed of Abraham. Res tore it to them, and thus double your own rich inheritance in its blessings. Learn them to read the book of grace. Learn them its history and (heir own. Teach them the story of their an cestors : the economy of Abraham, Isaac and Ja cob. Sublimate their views above the savage pursuits of the forests. Elevate them above the wilds of barbarism and death, by showing them what has been done for their nation ; and what is yet to be done by the God of their fathers, in the line of his promise. Teach them their an cient history ; their former blessings ; their be ing cast away ; the occasion of it, and the prom ises of their return. Tell them the time draws near, and they must now return to the God of their salvation. Tell them their return is to be as life from the dead to the gentile nations. Tell them what their ancient fathers, the prophets, were in spired to predict in their behalf; and the charge here given for their restoration. Assure them this talk of an ancient brother, is for them, and they must listen to it and obey it. That the Great Spirit above the clouds now calls them by you to come and receive his grace by Christ the true star from Jacob, the Shiloh who has come, and to whom the people must be gathered. In form them that by embracing this true seed oi Abraham, you and multitudes of other gentile?, have become the children of that ancient patri arch; and now they must come back as your brothers in the Lord. Unfold to them their su perlative line of the entail of the covenant ; that * ; as touching this election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes ;" that they were for their sins excluded for this long period, until the fulness of the gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be saved. Go, thou nation highly distinguished in the last days ; save the remnant of my people. Bring me a present of them " to the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the Mount Zion." NOTE. I have lately been informed that a Dr. M'DounaM has published something on this chapter similar to what I have written. What his ideas particularly are, I know not, as I have never been favoured with a sight of the book, nor seen any one who could give any particular account of his scheme. CONCLUSION. 1. IT becomes us to be deeply affected with the excommunication of the ancient people of God. In the temporary rejection of those two branches of the Hebrew nation, the truth is sol emnly enforced, that the God of Zion is a God of government ; and that he will be known by the judgments that he executeth. The casting out of the ten tribes for their impious idolatries, is full of instruction. The wonders God had done for them, and all their privileges in the land of promise, could not save, when they rejected the stated place of his worship, and united in the abominations of the open enemies of God. They should be hurled from the promised land, and abandoned to a state of savage wretchedness, for two and a half millinaries. Their sin in those dark ages of the old dispensation was no trifle. Its consequence is held up as an awful warning to the world. It impresses the following lan guage ; " Know thou arid see that it is an evil thing and bitter that thou hast forsaken the Lord," To that event people under evangelical privileges ought to turn their eyes and take the solemn warning. The God of Abraham is a God of judgment ; while blessed are all they that put their trust in him. The judgments of Heaven on the Jews were still more dreadful. The Lord of that vineyard did indeed come in a day when they looked riot for iiim, and in an hour when they were not 154 aware ; and did cut them asunder. He came and miserably destroyed those husbandmen, and burned up their cities, as he foretold. Upon their turning him off with hypocrisy and will- worship, and rejecting the Saviour, the denuncU ation, " Cut it down ; why cumbereth it the ground ?" was fulfilled with unprecedented de cision. Let all rejectors of Christ, behold and tremble. The Jews were confident in a fancied security, to the last. But an impious confidence can never save. It is but a dead calm before a fatal catastrophe. Such presumptuous leaning upon the Lord, and saying, " Is not the Lord among us ? no evil shall come upon us ;" was so far from saving, that it was a sure precursor of perdition, and of the coming of wrath upon them to the uttermost. Let gospel rejectors beware. " Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish. 5 ' " Let him that thinketh he standcth, take heed lest he fall." 2. How evident and rich is the entail of the covenant which will recover the two branches of the house of Israel! Truly they are u a nation of /me, line ;" (Isai. xviii. 2, in the Hebrew, and margin of the great Bible.) Though they be in fidels, and rejected, and as touching the gospel are enemies for our sakes ; yet as touching the election, (the entail of the covenant,) they arc beloved for the fathers' sakes ; Rom. xi. 28. This entail ensures their ingrafting again into their own olive tree, which shall be as life from the dead to the nations. This is the infallible hold upon them, which shall finally recover them again to Palestine, and to the covenant of their God. It is upon this covenant-hold upon them, that the God of Abraham promises to take away their stony heart out of their flesh, and give them 155 a heart of flesh; to sprinkle them with clean wa ter, and to make them clean ; to put his Spirit within them and cause them to walk in his stat utes, and make them keep his judgments and do them ; Ezek. xxxvi. 24 27. It is upon this en tail, that God thus engages to bring them in un der his new covenant, or the Christian dispensa tion ; that their children shall be as aforetimes, and their congregations established before him; and " that all who see them shall acknowledge they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed;" " that they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them." It will then be understood, that though blindness in part had happened to Israel, it was that the gentiles might take their place, and only till the fulness of the gentiles be come in ; and then all Israel shall be saved. The Jewish church will thence be a kind of capital and model of the Christian world; see Isai. Ix. 1 5; and many other prom ises of the same tenor. The entail of the covenant may be expected thenceforth to have its proper and perfect effect in the fulfilment of such promises as the follow ing, which relate to that period ; " I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring; and they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water cours es ; Isai. xliv. 3, 4. "As for me, this is my cov enant with them, saith the Lord. My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever;" Isai. lix. 21. This will indeed bring a season of salvation to man. 156 3. On reading the prophetic scriptures rela tive to the restoration of the Hebrews, and the calls of Heaven to aid in the event ; the ques tion becomes interesting, What is first to be done relative to this restoration ? The first object, no doubt, must be, to christianize them, and wait the leadings of Providence relative to any fur ther event. God will in due time, be (to all who are willing to wait on him) his own interpreter; and to such he will make the path of duty plain. In his own time and way, after his ancient peo ple shall be duly instructed, and taught the Chris tian religion, God will open the door for the ful filment of his designs relative to any local resto ration ; and will bring that part of them, whom he designs, to their ancient home. All the Jews did not return to Palestine from their seventy years captivity. Many chose to continue where they were planted in the east. Something of the game may be realized in the final restoration of Judah and Israel. God will take one of a fami ly, and two of a city, and bring them to Zion ' A proportion of that nation will in due time be of fered, to return to the land of their fathers, where they may form a kind of centre or capital to the cause of Christ on earth. Relative to many particulars of the event, the holy oracles have not expressed. They have strongly mark ed the outlines or leading facts of the n\>tora- tion ; and the unrevealcd particulars, the events of Providence must unfold. That great num bers will return, there seems not room U, doi bt. But the actual proposition to return, will doubt less be a free-will offering of those whose hearts God shall incline, The first duty :ii':st be to re- rover them to the visible kingdom of Christ, To 157 this our prayers, alms, and all due exertions must devoutly tend. 4. Viewing the aborigines of America as the out cast tribes of Israel ; an interesting view is given of some prophetic passages, which appear near ly connected with their restoration. In Isai. xl. 3, relative to this restoration of the ancient people of God, we read ;." The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness; Prepare ye the way of the Lord ; make straight in the desart a high way for our God." This received a prima ry and typical fulfilment in the ministry of John the Baptist, in the wilderness of Judea, to intro duce Christ. Hence the passage was applied to him. But it was to receive its ultimate and most interesting fulfilment at a period connected with the commencement of the Millennium, when "the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together ;" as the subsequent text decides. It is intimately connected with the restoration of the Hebrews ; as appears in its context. u Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jeru salem, (a name here put for all the Hebrew fam ily, as it was their capital in the days of David and Solomon,) and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned ; for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins." Here is the final Hebrew res toration, after the time of their doubly long cor rective rejection for their sins shall have expir ed. The voice in the wilderness then follows, as the great means of this restoration. A wilderness has justly been considered as a symbol of a region of moral darkness and spirit ual death. It has been considered as a symbol of the heathen world ; and it is a .striking en> 14 Mem of it. And the emblem receives strength from the consideration, that it is in a sense liter ally true. The voice, which restores Israel, is heard in the vast wilderness of America, a literal wilderness of thousands of miles, where the dry hones of the outcasts of Israel -have for thou sands of years heen scattered. The voice crying in the wilderness has a special appropriation to these Hebrews. As it had a kind of literal ful filment in the preaching of the forerunner John, for a short time in the wilderness of Judea ; so it is to have a kind of literal fulfilment, upon a much greater scale, in the missions, which shall recover the ten tribes from the vast wilderness of America. Of the same period and event, the same evan gelical prophet says, Isai. xxxv. 1. " The wil derness and the solitary place shall be glad for them ; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, and tbe excel lency of Carmel and Sharon ; they shall see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God." In such passages, while the prediction is to have its mystical and full accomplishment in the conversion of the heathen world to God ; the prophetic eye evidently rested with signal pleasure, on a literal restoration of his long lost brethren, as involved in the event, and as fur nishing the ground of the figure. They will be literally* and the fulness of the gentiles mystical ly restored and brought to Zion. As the wilderness of Judea in a small degree rejoiced and blossomed as the rose, when John the Baptist performed his ministry in it ; so the wilderness and solitary place of our vast conti 159 went, containing the lost tribes of the house of Israel, will, on a most enlarged scale, rejoice and blossom as the rose, when the long lost tribes shall be found there, and shall be gathered to Zion. The event in relation to these ancient heirs of the covenant, stated in the last verse of this chapter, will then receive a signal fulfilment; "And the redeemed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy up on their heads ; they shall obtain joy and glad ness, arid sorrow and sighing shall flee away." Upon this final restoration of his brethren, this prophet exults in lofty strains. Several of the many of these strains shall be here inserted. Isai, xlix. Listen O isles unto me ; (or ye lands away over the sea) hearken ye people from afar. I will make all my mountains away ; and my high way shall be exalted. Behold these shall come from /r; and lo, these from the north, and from the west / and these from the land of Sinim. Sing, O heavens ; and be joyful, O earth ; and break forth into singing, O mountains ; for the Lord hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted." Such texts have a special allusion to the lost tribes of the house of Israel. And their being called over mountains, arid over seas, from the west, and from afar, re ceives an emphasis from the consideration of their being gathered from the vast wilds of Amer ica. With the prophet Hosea, the rejection and re covery of the ten tribes are a great object. In chapter 2d, their rejection, and the cause of it, are stated, and also a promise of their return. God threatens to strip them naked, and make them as a wilderness?* " And I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, wherein she burned in- cense to them ;" i. e. to her false gods. This visiting upon her her idolatries, was to be done in her subsequent outcast state, in which God there says; "she is not ray wife, neither ami her husband." But he says, v. 1 4 "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." Here is Israel's restoration ; and it is from the wilderness, where long they had been planted during the period of their outcast state. In this wilderness, God eventually speaks com fortably to them, and restores them, as he restor ed from Egypt. Here God gives them "the val ley of Achor for a door of hope." The first encampment of the Hebrews in the valley of Achor, was to them a pledge of their eventual possession of the promised land, after the Lord had there turned from the fierceness of his wrath; Josh. vii. 26. Upon the same event God says; Isai. xliii. 19, 20 ; " Behold I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth ; shall ye not know it ? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. The beasts of the field shall honour me; the dragons and the owls ; because I give water in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, to my chosen." If such texts have a glorious, general, mystical ful filment in the conversion of pagan lands ; yet this does not preclude, but rather implies the fact, that the people whose restoration is in them particularly foretold, shall be recovered from a vast wilderness ; and their conversion shaJI be 161 almost like the conversion of dragons and owls of the desert. Rivers of knowledge and grace shall in such wilds be opened for God's chosen. It will then truly be fulfilled, that God in com forting Zion, will "make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord ;" Isai. li. 3. Such passages will have a degree of both literal and mystical fulfilment. A signal beauty will then be discovered in such passages as the following; Isai. xli. 14. " Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel ; I will help thee, saith the Lord Gud, thy Redeem er, the Holy One of Israel. I will open rivers in the high places, and fountains in the midst of vallies: I will make the wilderness a pool of wa ter, and the dry land springs of water. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree ; and I will set in the desert the fir tree, the pine, and the box tree together, that they may see and know and understand together, that the hand of the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it." The view given of the place of the long banishment of the ten tribes, gives a lustre to such predictions of their restoration.- These will have a striking fulfilment in the vast wilds of our continent, when the glad tidings of salvation shall be carried to the natives of these extensive dreary forests, and those regions of wretchedness and death shall become vocal with the high praises of God, sung by his ancient Is rael. 5. If it be a fact that the native Americans are the tribes of Israel, new evidence is hence furnished of the divinity of our holy scriptures. A new field of evidence is here opened from a race of men, " outcast" from all civil society for 14* 162 a long course of centuries. Impressed on these wild tenants of the forest, ^tkese children of na ture, without books or letters, or any thing but gavage tradition,) striking characters are found of the truth of ancient revelation. The intelligent vindicator of the word of God has never feared to meet the infidel on fail- ground. His triumph has not been less certain than that of David against Goliah. But in the view taken of the natives of our continent, the believer will find additional arguments, in which to triumph. He will find more than "five smooth stones taken out of the brook," (1 Sam. xvi. 40,) each one of which is sufficient to sink into the head of an impious Goliah, challenging the God of Israel. Let the unbeliever in revelations undertake lo answer the following questions. Whence have the greater part of the American natives been taught the being of one and only one God ; when all other heathen nations have lost all such knowledge, and believe in many false gods ? Whence have the Indians, or most of them, been kept from gross idolatry, which has covered the rest of the heathen world ? and to which all men have been so prone ? Whence have many of them been taught that the name of the one God, the Great Spirit above, is Yohewah, Ale., Yah, (Hebrew names of God,) who made all things, and to whom alone wor ship is due *? Who taught any of them that God, at first, made one man from earth ; formed him well :, and breathed him into life ? and that God made good and bad spirits ; the latter of whom have a prince over th^m ? 163 Whence was the idea among these untutored savages, that Yohewah was once the covenant God of their nation ; and the rest of the world were out of covenant with him, the accursed people ? Whence their ideas that their ancestors once had the book of God ; and then were happy ; but that they lost it; and then became miserable; but that they will have this book again at some time ? Whence their notion that their fathers once had the Spirit of God to work miracles, and to foretel future events ? Who taught the untutored savage to have a temple of Yohewah ; a holy of holies in it, into which no common people may enter, or look ? Who taught him a succession of high priests ? that this priest must be inducted into office by purifications, and anointing ? that he must appear in an appropriate habiliment, the form of which descended from their fathers of remote antiquity ? Whence their custom of this priest's making a yearly atonement, in or near the holy apart ment of their temple ? Whence their three annual feasts, which well accord to the three great feasts in Israel ? Whence came their peculiar feast, in which a bone of the sacrifice may not be broken ; and all that is prepared must be eaten ; or burned before the next morning sun ? Whence a custom of their males appearing thre^ times annually before God at the temple ? Who taught wild savages of the desert to main tain places of refuge from the avenger of blood ; <; old, beloved, white towns /"' Who taught them to keep and venerate a sa cred ark, containing their most sacred things ; 164 to be borne against their enemies by one purified by strict rites ? That no one but the sanctified keeper might look into this ark ; aad the enemy feeling the same reverence for it, as the friends ? Wheace came the deep and extensive impress ion among these savage tribes, that the hollow of the thigh of no animal may be eaten ? Let the infidel inform how these savages (so long excluded from all intercourse with the reli gious or civilized world) came by the rite of cir cumcision ? and some of them an idea of a Ju bilee ? Whence their idea of an old divine speech ; that they mast imitate their virtuous ancestors, enforced by u flourishing upon a land flowing with milk and honey ?" Whence their notion of the ancient flood ? and of the longevity of the ancients ? also of the con fusion of the language of man at building a high place ? evidently meaning the scene at Babel. How came these wild human herds of the de sert by various Hebrew words, and phrases ; and such phrases as accord with no other language on earth ? See the table furnished, page 90. Who taught them to sing, Halleluyah, Yohe- wah, Yah, Shilu Yohewah ; and to make the sa cred use they do of the syllables, which compose the names of God ? singing them in their reli gious dances, and in their customs ; thus ascrib ing all the praise to Yohewah ? I ask not, who taught them the spirit or holiness of such reli gious forms ? For probably they have little or no intelligent meaning. But whence have they brought down these traditional forms ? How came their reckoning of time so well to accord with that of ancient Israel? 165 Whence their tradition of twelve men, in prepar ing for a feast similar to the ancient feast of taber nacles; taking twelve poles, forming their booths; and their altar of twelve stones, on which no tool may pass ; and here offering their twelve sacri fices ? and some tribes proceeding by the number ten instead of twelve ? indicating their tradition of the twelve tribes ; and their subsequent ten, after the revolt. Whence came their tradition of purifying them selves with bitter vegetables ? also fasting, and purifying themselves, when going to war ? Who taught them that at death their beloved people sleep, and go to their fathers ? Whence their custom of washing and anoint ing their dead ; and some of them of hiring mourners to bewail them ; and of singing round the corpse (before they bury it) the syllables of Yah, Yohewah ? How came they "by their tradition answering to the ancient Jewish separations of women ? also a tradition of taking their shoes from their feet on solemn occasions ? Whence were some of them taught in deep mourning to lay their hand on their mouth, and their mouth in the dust ? And whence came their tradition of their an cient father with his twelve sons, ruling over others ? and the malconduct of these twelve sons, till they lost their pre-eminence ? Let it be remembered, it is not pretended that all the savages are in the practice of all these tra ditions. They are not. But it is contended that the whole of these things have been found among their different tribes in our continent, within a hundred years. A fragment of these Hebrew traditions has been found among one tribe ; and 160 another fragment among another; and some of tn most striking of these traditions have been found among various and very distant tribes; as has ap peared in the recital from various authors, tra ders and travellers. Let the unbeliever in revelation set himself to account for these events. No account can be given of them, but that they were derived from ancient revelation in Israel. And hence in the outcast state of the ten tribes of Israel, (in their huge valley of dry bones, in this vast new world,) we find presented a volume of new evidence of the divinity of the Old Testament ; and hence of the New ; for the latter rests on the former, as a building rests on its foundation. If the one is divine ; the other is divine ; for both form a perfect whole. We are assured by the chief apostle to the ger.iilcs. that the restoration of the ancient people of God in the last days, when " all Israel shall be saved,'*' shall be to the nations " as life from the dead;" Rom. xi. 15. Its new and demon strative evidence of the glorious truth of revela tion, will confound infidelity itself ; and fill the world with light and glory. These Indian tradi tions may be viewed as beginning to exhibit to the world their quota of this new evidence. The earthquake, at the time of our Savior's giv ing up of the ghost, which rent the rocks, may be said thus to have opened many mouths (perhaps over the face of the earth) tacitly to proclaim the event. It may be said in figure ; " The stones cried out!" (Luke xix. 40.) In our sub ject, we find a powerful corresponding evidence of the truth of revelation, extending through a wild continent, in savage traditions ; which tra dition n-!.st ti.-ive been or i.:lit do\vu from 725 iKiibi'c die Christian era. 167 The preservation of the Jews, as a distinct people, for eighteen centuries, has been justly viewed as a kind of standing miracle in support of the truth of revelation. But the arguments furnished from the preservation and traditions of the ten tribes, in the wilds of America from a much longer period, must be viewed as furnish ing, if possible, a more commanding testimony. And it is precisely such evidence as must have been expected in the long outcast tribes of Is rael, whenever they should come to light ; and just such evidence as must rationally be expected to bring them to the knowledge of the civilized world. The evidence discovered among the various tribes of Indians, of the truth of their Hebrew extraction, and of the divinity of the Old Tes tament, seems almost like finding, in the various regions of the wilds of America, various scraps of an ancient Hebrew Old Testament ; one in one wild; another in another; inscribed on some durable substance in evident Hebrew language and character, though much defaced by the lapse of ages. Surely such an event, when attended with concomitant evidence that it could be no imposition, must silence the unbeliever in ancient revelation ; and add a new and powerful item to the evidences already furnished upon so in teresting a subject. The evidence, actually fur nished in the traditions of the savages of Ame rica, suggest the suppositions just made;, but are of a far more substantial character. It is con tended that they furnish the very evidence, long desired, of the existence, and present state of the ten tribes of Israel. APPENDIX. THE Rev. Dr. Morse in his report of his tour among the Indians at the west, made under commission from ow gov ernment, in 1820, to ascertain the actual state of the Indians in our country, says ; "It is matter of surprise, that the In dians, situated, as they have been for so many successive ages and generations, without hooks or knowledge of letters, or of the art of reading or writing, should have preserved their various languages in the manner they have done. Many of them are copious, capable of regular grammatical analysis, possess great strength, gracefulness, and beauty of expression, They are highly metaphorical in their character ; and in this and other respects resemble the Hebrew. This resemblance in the language, and the similarity of many of their reli gious customs, &c. to those of the Jews, certainly give plausi bility to the ingenious theory of Dr. Boudinot, exhibited in his interesting work, entitled " The Star in the West." A faithful and thorough examination of the various languages of the Indian tribes, wjpuld probably show that there are very few of them that are throughout radically different. The differences of these languages are mostly differences of dialect." The various Indian tribes, visited by Dr. Morse, had their Great Spirit. Speaking of the manners and customs of the Sauks, Fox tribe, Pattowattamies, and others, he says : "Other feasts to the Great Spirit are frequently made by these In dians." Of one of these feasts, he says ; "They seat them selves in a circle on the ground ; when one of the guests places before each person a'wooden bowl with his portion of the feast, and they commence eating. When each man's portion is eatea; the bones are collected and put into a wood en bowl, and thrown into the river, or burnt. The whole of the feast must be eate. If any one cannot eat his part of it, he passes his dish, with a piece of tobacco to his neighbour, and he eats it ; and the guests then retire. Those who make the feast never eat any part of it themselves. They say they give their part of it to the Great Spirit." Here seems man ifestly the same feast noted by other authors among other and different tribes in the different parts of the continent, and probably answering to the passover in ancient Israel. The 15 170 different and distant tribes have their circumstantial differ ences ; while yet certain things indicate that the feast is a broken tradition of thepassover. Another tradition from a Hebrew rite the Doctor states, lie says : " The women of these nations are very particular to remove from their lodges to one erected for that particular purpose, at such seasons as were customarily obseivedby Jewish women, according to the law of Moses. No article of furniture ever used in this lodge, is ever used in any other ; Dot even the steel and the flint with which they strike fire. No man approaches this lodge, while a woman occupies it." The existence of this extensive Indian rite is fully ascertain ed. And of its origin there appears but very little room to doubt. This writer says : u The belief of these Indians relative to their creation is not very unlike our own. Masco, one of the chiefs of the Sauk, informed me, that they believed that the Great Spirit in the first place, created from the dust of the earth two men ; but finding that these alone would not answer his purpose, betook from each man a rib, and made two women." Of the descendants of these two pair, they say, " th'at they were all one nation, until they behaved so badly, that the Great Spirit came among them, and talked different languages to them ; which caused them to separate and form different nations." Here are manifest broken frag ments of Moses' history of creation, and of the confusion of language at Babel. " I asked (says Dr. M.) how they sup posed white men were made ? He replied that Indians sup posed the Great Spirit made them of the fine dust of ths earth, as they know more than Indians." Dr. M. gives an account of their holding to a future state ; and to some kinds of reward for the good, and of punishments for the wicked. He informs from a Major Cumming*, that the Indians arc very suspicious of some evil intent, when questioned by the Americans ; and that there is no way to obtain a full know ledge of their traditions and ways, but by a long residence in their country. This may account for the fact that their tra ditions (which seems manifestly Hebrew) were kept so long and to so great a degree, from the knowledge of our people. Relative t their manner of transacting their public busi ness, they informed Dr. M. " We open our council by smok ing a pipe selected for the occasion ; and we address the au dience through a speaker chosen for the purpose ; first in- \-oking the Great Spirit to inspire us with wisdom. We open our council in the name of the Great Spirit, and close with the same." He informs that the Indians " before attending on treaties, great councils, or any other important national business, 171 always sacrifice in order to obtain the good will of the G rent Spirit. And adds ; " There are no people more frequent or fervent in their acknowledgements of gratitude to God. Their belief in him is universal ; and their confidence astonishingly strong." Speaking of their feasts, he says; " The principal festival is celebrated in the month of August ; sooner or later, as the forwardness of the corn will admit. It is called the Green Corn Dance; or more properly speaking, the ceremony of thanksgiving for the first fruits of the earth" The question continually recurs, whence came things like these among the natives of our continent, or the American savages, unless these savages are the very tribes of Israel? No evidence is furnished thut such a variety of Hebrew rites is found among any other people on earth, except the Jews. And it seems morally impossible they should have derived them from any other source, than the ancient Hebrew reli gion. Mr. Schoolcvaft, a member of the New- York Historical Society, (in his journals of travels among the western Indians, round and beyond the western lakes, and to the mouth of the Mississippi, in 1820.) gives some accounts, which confirm some of the Indian traditions already exhibited. He speaks of attending a feast among the Sioux Indian? ; a feast of the first greeu com.. He says ; " Our attention was now drawn off by the sound of Indian music which proceeded from an other large cabin at no great distance ; but we found the doors closed, and were informed that they were celebrating an annual feast, at which only certain persons in the village were allowed to be present ; and that it was not customary to admit strangers. Our curiosity being excited, we applied to the governor, Cass, to intercede for us; and were by that means admitted. The first ^striking object presented was, two large kettles full of green corn, cut from the cofe and boiled. They hung over a moderate fire in the midst of the cabin ; and the Indian?, both men and women, were seated in a large circle avound them. They were singing a doleful song in a savage manner. The utmost solemnity was depic ted upon every countenance. When the music ceased, as it frequently did for a few seconds, there was a full and myste rious pause, during which certain pantomimic signs were made ; and it appeared as if they pretended to hold commun ion with invisible spirits. Suddenly the music struck up but as we did not understand their language, it is impossible to say what they uttered, or to whom their supplications or responses were addressed. When the ceremony ceased, one of the older Indians divided out all the boiled corn into sepa rate tlishes for as many heads of families as there were pres- 172 ent, putting an equal number of ladles full into each di.sh.~- Then while the music continued, they one by one took up their dishes, and irtiring from the cabin by a back-ward step,, so that they still iuced the kettles, they separated to their res pective lod'ges ; and thus the ceremony ceased." This writer says, "The Indians believed in the existence of a great invisible Spirit, who resides hi the regions of the clouds, and by means of inferior spirits throughout every part of the earth." Their word for spirit, he says, is manito, which he ob serves, " signifies the same thing among all the tribes extend ing from the Arkansaw to the source? ot the Mississippi ; and according to M'Kenzie, throughout the arctic regions." This word, Mr. S. remarks,with many others, strengthens the opin ion "of which (he says) there appears ample grounds, that the erratic tribes of the north-western region, and of the val- lies of the Mississippi, are all descended from one stock, which is presumed to have progressed from the north toward the south, scattering into different tribes, and falling from the pu rity of a language, which may originally have been rich and copious." Here is good testimony to some of the points, ad duced in this work, viz. that all the Indians are from one or igin ; all originally of one language ; all from the north-west, the straits of Beering, leading from the north-east of Asia to the north-west of America. These Indians, Mr. S. informs, "have their good and bad minitoes," or spirits. The Old Testament informs of holy and of fallen angels. Mr. S. speaks of the best of authors allowing that great, corruptions have crept into the Indian language ; and that the remarks of some upon the supposed poverty of the lan guage of these Americans, are very incorrect. He speaks of some of the Indians as looking to the people of our states for aid, and says, a council which he attended with the Sandy Lake Indians, thus closed ; " The Americans (meaning the United States) are a great people. Can it be possible they will allow us to suffer f " The Rev. Lemuel Haynes informs, that about 60 years ago, he was living in Granville, Mass. A minister by the name of Ashley, called on an old deacon, with whom he was living, being on his way from a mission among the Indians iu the west, where he had been a considerable time. Mr. Ash ley stated his confident belief that the Indians were the Is raelites ; for he said there were many things in their manners and customs, which were like those of ancient Israel. Vari ous of these he stated. Mr. Haynes being then a boy, does not now recollect them. But the people he mentions as be ing impressed with the accounts ; and the good old deacon long spake of them with much interest. 173 A brother minister informs meihat his father was a lieu tenant in the revolutionary war, and was long among the In dians ; and that he became a firm believer that the Indians were the ten tribes of Israel from their traditions and rites ; various of which he used to state ; but which the minister does not now remember. The most important evidence in relation to the Indians being the descendants of Israel, the reader will perceive, is James Adair, Esqr. Recollect he had lived among them as an intelligent trader, 40 years. That his character was well established ; and his accounts well authenticated by colla teral evidence, by a gentleman^ member of congress, who had resided a number of years as an agent of our government a- mong those Indians where Mr. Adair resided. Dr. Boutlinot assures us that he examined this congress member, without letting him know his design ; and that from him he found all the leading facts mentioned in Mr. Adair's history fully con firmed from his own personal knowledge. [See page 83d of this book.] I think it therefore desirable, that the reader should see more fully Mr. Adair's arguments, as found in his book ; and a few additional extracts from his work in support of them. He states his sentiment on the subject thus : " From the most exact observation that I could make in the long time I traded among the Indian Americans, I was forced to believe fhem lineally descended from the Israelites." He argues that those of the ten tribes from whom the American Indians descended, must soon have removed from that part of Assyria, where they were lodged, and probably reached this continent previous to the Babylonish captivity of the Jews. His arguments that the natives of this continent are of the ten tribes are as follows. 1. Their division into tribes. 2. Their worship of Jehovah. 3. Their notion of a theocracy. 4. Their belief in the ministration of angels. 5. Their language and dialects. 6. Their manner of counting time. 7. Their prophets and high priests. 8. Their festivals, fasts, and reli gious rites. 9. Their daily sacrifice. 10. Their ablutions and anointings. 11. Their laws of uncleanness. 12, Their abstinence from unclean things. 13. Their marriages, di vorces, and punishments of adultery. 14. Their several' pun ishments. 15. Their cities of refuge. 16. Their purifications and preparatory ceremonies. 17. Their ornaments. 18. Their manner of curing the sick. 19. Their burial of their dead. .20. Their mourning for th ir dead. 21. Their raising seed to a deceased brother; 22. Their change of names adapted to their circumstances and times. 23. Their own traditions ; the accounts of English writers ; and the testimonies given by Spanish and other writers of the primitive inhabitants of Mexico and Peru, 15* 174 Some of his illustrations of these arguments will be here subjoined in his own words. Under the 1st argument. " As the nation hath its particular symbol, so each tribe, the badge from which it is denominated. The sachem of each tribe is a necessary party in conveyances, and treaties, to which he affixes the mark of his tribe. If we go from nation to nation among them, we shall not find one, who doth not lineally dis tinguish himself by his respective family. The genealogical names, which they assume, are derived either from the name of those animals, whereof the cherubims are said in revelation to be compounded, or from such creatures as are most familiar t.o them. The Indians, however, bear no religious respect to the animals from whence they derive their names. On the contrary, they kill them when opportunity serves. "When we consider that these savages have been above twenty cen turies without the use of letters to carry down their traditions, it cannot reasonably be expected that they should still retain the identical names of their primogenial tribes. Their main customs corresponding with those of the Israelites, sufficiently clears the subject. Besides, as hath been hinted, they call some of their tribes by the names of cherubinical figures that were carried on the four principal standards of Israel. His illustrations of the second argument, blended with those of many others, have been sufficiently given in the third chapter of this work. Under the 3d argument, he says : "Agreeably to the theoe- >-acy or divine government of Israel, the Indians think the Deity to be the immediate head of their state. All the na tions of Indians are exceedingly intoxicated with religious pride, and have an inexpressible contempt of the white people.* They used to call us in their war orations, the ac- tursed people. But they flatter themselves with the name of the beloved people ; because their supposed ancestors, as they affirm, were under the immediate government of the Deity, who was present with them in a very peculiar manner, and directed them by prophets, while the rest of the world were aliens and outlaws to the covenant. When theoldArchi* magu?, or any one of their magi, is persuading the people at any one of their religious solemnities to a strict observance of the old beloved or divine speech, he always calls them the beloved or holy people, agreeably to the Hebrew epithet, Ammi (my people) during the theocracy of Israel. It is their opinion of the theocracy, that God chose them out of all the rest of man kind as his peculiar and beloved people; which alike animates both the white Jew, and the red American with that steady * Within 20 years this trait of Indian character is much meliorated. 1 73 hatred against all the world except themselves ; and renders them (in their opinion) hated and despised by all." His illustrations of the 4th and 5th arguments have been given with those of other authors. Under the 6th argument he says : " They count time after the manner of the Hebrews. They divide the year into spring, summer, autumn, and winter. They number their year from any of those four periods, for they have no name for a year, and they subdivide these, and count the year by lunar months, like the Israelites, who counted by moons. The number and regular periods of the Indians' religious feasts is a good historical proof (Mr. Adair adds) that they counted time by, and observed, a weekly Sabbath long after their ar rival on the American continent. They begin a year at the first appearance of the first new moon of the vernal equinox, according to the ecclesiastical year of Moses. Till the 70 years captivity, the Israelites had only numeral names for the solar and lunar months, except Abib and Elhamin ; the former signifying a green ear of corn ; and the latter robust or valiant. And by the first of these, the Indians (as an ex plicative) term their passover, which the trading people call the green corn dance." Mr. Adair then proceeds to show more fully the similarity between the ancient Israelites and the Indians in their counting time, as has been noted. Under the 7th argument he says : " In conformity to, or after the manner of the Jews, the Indian Americans have their prophets, high priests, and others of a religious order. As the Jews had a sanctum sanctorum, (holy of holies) so have all the Indian nations. There they deposit their con secrated vessels ; none of the laity daring to approach that sacred place.' The Indian tradition says, that their forefathers were possessed of an extraordinary divine spirit, by which they foretold things future, and controlled the common course of nature: and this they transmitted to their offspring, pro vided they obeyed the sacred laws annexed to it. Ishtoallo, (Mr. Adair says of those Indians) is the name of all their priestly order ; and their pontifical office descends by inherit ance to the eldest. There are some traces of agreement, though chiefly lost, in their pontifical dress. Before the In dian Archimagus officiates in making the supposed holy fire for the yearly atonement for sin, the sagan (waiter of the high priest) clothes him with a white ephod, which is a waist coat without sleeves. In resemblance of the Urim and Thum- inim,theAmerican Archimagus wears a breast plate made of a white conch-shell with two holes bored in the middle oi it, through which he puts the ends of an otter skin strap, and fastens a buck horn white button to the outside of each, as if ia imitation of the precious stones of the Urim." 176 In this statement Mr. Adair exhibits evidence of which he himself seem unconscious. He says the general name of all their priestly order is- Ishtoallo, And the name of the high priest's waiter is Sagan. Mr. Fabor (remarking upon this) thinks the former word is a corruption of tsh-da-eloah, a man of God ; see original of 2 Kings, iv. 21, 22, 25, 27, 40, and other places. And of the latter word he says, " Sagan is the very name by which the Hebrews called the deputy of the high priest, who supplied his office, and who performed the func tions of it in the absence of the high priest. See Calmefs Diet, vox Sagan" Here then is evidence to our purpose, that those Indians should call their order of priests, and the high priest's waiter, by those ancient Hebrew names of a man of God, and a de puty of the high priest. How could these events have oc curred, had not - those natives been Hebrew, and brought clown these names by Hebrew tradition ? Under the 8th-argumcnt Mr. Adair says ; u The ceremo nies of the Indians in their religious worship are more after the Mosaic institution?, than of pagan imitation ; which could not be, if the majority of the old nation were of heathenish descent. They are uttey strangers to all the gestures practis ed by the pagans in their religious rites. They have another appellative which with them is the mysterious essential name of God; the tetragr -ammaton, or great four lettered name, which they never name in common speech. Of the time and place, when and where they mention- it r they are very parti cular, and always with a solemn air. It is well known what sacred regard the Jews had to the four lettered divine name, so as scarcely ever to mention it, but once a year when the high priest went into the sanctuary at the expiation of sins. Might not the Indians copy from them this sacred invocation, Yo hewah ? Their method of invoking God in a solemn hymn with that reverend deportment, and spending a full breath on each of the two first syllables of the awful divine name, hath a surprising analogy to the Jewish custom, and such as no other nation or people* even with the advantage of written records, have retained. It may be worthy of no tice that they never prostrate themselves, nor bow their bo dies to each other by way of salute or homage, though usual with the eastern nations ; except when they are making or renewing peace with strangers, who come in the name of Yah." Mr. Adair proceeds to speak of the sacred adjuration of the Indiana by the great and awful name of God ; the question being asked, and the answer given, Yah, with a profound re verence in a bowing posture of body immediately before the invocation of Yo hcwah ; this he considers to be Hebrew?. 177 adjuring their witnesses to give true evidence. He says, <4 It seems exactly to coincide with the conduct of the Hebrew witnesses even now on the like occasions." Mr. Adai^s other illustrations under this argument, in va rious feasts, fastings, their ark, and their ever refusing to eat the hollow of the thigh of their game, have been sufficiently given, in connexion with the testimonies of others to the same points. Enough has also been exhibited under the 9th, 10th and llth arguments. Under the 12th he says ; " Eagles of every kind they es teem unclean food ; likewise ravens, crows, bats, buzzard?, f-wallows, and every species of owl." This he considers as pre cisely Hebrew ; as also their purifications of their priests ; and purification for having touched a dead body, or any other unclean thing. Under most of his subsequent arguments the quotations be fore given have been sufficient. Under the 16th he says : * Before the Indians go to war, they have many preparatory ceremonies of purification and fasting like what is recorded of the Israelites." Under the 21st he says; " The surviving brother by the Mosaic law was to raise seed to a deceased brother, who left a widow childless. The Indian custom looks the same way." Under the last argument he says ; " The Indian tradition says that their forefathers in very remote ages came from a far distant country, where all the people were of one colour ; and that in process of time they removed eastward to their present settlements." He notes and confutes some idle fa bulous stories which he says " sprung from the innovating superstitious ignorance of the popish priests to the south west ;" and speaks of the Indian tradition as being altogether more to be depended on. He says, " They, (the rambling tribes of northern Indians excepted,) aver that they came over the Mississippi from the westward, before they arrived at their present settlements. This we see verified in the western old towns they have left behind them, and by the situation of their old beloved towns or places of refuge lying about a west course from each different nation." "Ancient history (he adjs) is quite silent concerning Amer ica, which indicates that it has been time immemorial, rent asunder from the eastern continent. The north-east parts of Asia were also undiscovered till of late. Many geographers have stretched Asia and America so far as to join them to gether; and others have divided them into two quarters of the globe. But the Russsian?, after several dangerous attempts, have clearly convinced the world that they are now divided, and yet have a rucar communication together by a 178 strait, in which several islands are sitnatr 1, ami through which there is an easy passage from the north-east of Asia to the north-west of America. By this passage, it was very practicable to go to this new world, and afterward to have proceeded in quest of suitable climates. Those who dissent from my opinion of the Indian Ameri can origin, (he adds) ought to inform ns how the natives came here, and by what means they found the long chain of rites and customs so similar to the usage of the Hebrew na tion, and in general dissimilar to the modes of the pagan world Their religious rites, martial customs, dress, music, dances and domestic form? of life,?e 3m clearly to evince also,that they came to America in early times before sects had sprung up among the Jews ; which was soon after their prophets ceased ; also before arts and sciences had arrived at any perfection. Other wise it is likely they would have retained some knowledge of them." We learn in Dr. Robertson's history of America, that the Mexicans had their tradition that " Their ancestors came from a remote country situated to the north-west of Mexico. The Mexicans (he says) point out their various stations as they advanced from this into the interior provinces ; and it is precisely the same rout which they must have held > if they had been emigrants from Asia."* Mr. Adair says, that though some have supposed the Amer icans to be descendants from the Chinese ; yet neither their religion, laws or customs agree in the least with those of the Chinese, which sufficiently proves that they are not of this line. And he says the remaining traces of their religious ceremonies, and civil and martial customs, are different from those of the old Scythians. He thinks, therefore, that the old opinion that the Indians are descended from the Tartars or ancient Scythians, should be exploded as weak and with out foundation. Those who have advocated the affirmative, have not been able to produce much, if any evidence, that any of the religious rites found among the Indians, and re sembling those of ancient Israel, have ever been found among any people in the east of Asia. Such a thing cannot be ex pected. Those rites were arbitrary, established only in Is rael ; and designed to distinguish them from all other na tions. It is utterly inadmissible then, to suppose these Indian rites may be accounted for, froih an idea that the Indians may have learned them from other heathen nations. With very similar propriety might the unbeliever in divine revelation say, that the Jews and ancient Israel derived their religion, not from God, as the bible purports, but from the heathen nations , *B. 4, page 41-2-3, 173 *vho at that time might,for aught we know, have had just such religious customs. It the aborigines derived these rites and customs from an cient Asiatic heathen ; why have not some of those heathen themselves retained some of them, and disseminated them through some other parts of the world, besides the vast wilds f North and South America. Capt. Carver is able to find that some of the people north east of Asia once presented to some of the Russians their pipe of peace. The people of Israel, as they passed by that people in ancient days, may have caught this custom from them ; as none pretend this was a. Hebrew rite. Or these few people thus noted in Asia may have caught this custom from the Indian? over Beer ing's Straits. But this is nothing, compared with the many Hebrew rites found among the na tives of America. Captain Carver, who travelled five thousand miles among the Indians of North America, states some customs observed by some of them in relation to marriage and divorce, which seem much like those of ancient Israel. He sa^s ; u When one of their young men has fixed on a young woman he ap>* proves of, he discovers his passion to her parents, who give him an invitation to come and live with them in their tent. He accepts the offer, and engages to reside in it for a whole year in the character of a menial servant. This however is done only while they are young men, and for the;r first wife ; and not repeated like Jacob's servitude. When this period is expired, the marriage is solemnized." 44 When from any dislike (he adds) a separation takes place,for they are seldom known to quarrel,they generally give their friends a few days notice of their intention, and some times offer reasons to justify their conduct." Some little cer emonies follow; and he says, " The separation is carried on without any murmurings, or ill will between, the couple or their relations." Probably no other nation has such a resem blance in this respect to ancient Israel. Capt. Carver says of the Indians "wholly unadulterated with the superstitions of the church of Rome;" "It is cer tain they acknowledge one Supreme Being, or giver of life, who presides over all things the Great Spirit ; and they look up to him as the source of good who is infinitely good. They also believe in a bad spirit, to whom they ascribe great power. They hold also, that there are good spirits of a less degree, who have their particular departments, in which thej are constantly contributing to the happiness of mortals." " The priests of the Indians (he adds) who are at the same time their physicians while they heal their wounds, or cure their diseases, they interpret their dreams, and satisfy their 180 desires of searching into futurity." But Capt. Carver unites with other authors on the subject, in speaking of the difficul ty of strangers among them obtaining much knowledge of their religious rites. He says ; " It is very difficult to attain to a perfect knowledge of the religious principles of the In dians. They endeavour to conceal them." It is no wonder then, that Capt. Carver, passing by them on a tour of up wards of five thousand miles, discovered but few of these many rites resembling the religion of ancient Israel, stated by Mr. Adair. He says there was "w?,e particular female custom" bearing resemblance to the rites in the Mosaic law; alluding no daubt, to the well known Indian separation of women. Speaking of their " religious principles," which he says are " few and simple," he &dds, " they (the Indians) have not de viated, as many other uncivilized nations, and too many civ ilized ones have done, into idolatrous modes of worship." " On the appearance of the new moon they dance and sing ; but it is not evident that they pay that planet any adora tion." Here then, according to this author, is their one God, infi nitely good, the giver of life, and of all good, presiding over all, and who is the only object of worship ; though they some times beg of the evil spirit to avert their calamities, which, in their opinion, he brings. Here are their good angels, min istering to the good ; here their priests; and a "particular female custom" inexplicable unless by the Mosaic law. Here is their firm adherence to their " few simple doctrines," or rites, less deviating to idolatry than other uncivilized, and even many civilized nations. These facts are far from being destitute of their favorable bearing on our subject. How should such things be true of those savages, were they aot the descendants of ancient Israel ? It was observed in page 88 of this book, that the Esqimaux natives, and people round Hudson's Bay appear a different race from the American Indians, and may have come from the north of Europe. Capt. Carver notes an assertion from Grotius, that "some of the Norwegians passed into America by way of Greenland." He also notes that De Laet gives " the following passage from the history of Wales, written by David Powel, in the year 1170. This history says, that Madoc, one of the sons of prince Owen Gwynnith, being dis gusted at the civil wars which broke out between his broth ers, fitted out several vessels, and went in quest of new lands to the westward of Ireland." And he goes on to speak of of their planting a colony there. Here may be the origin of the people of Greenland, Iceland, and round Hudson's Bay. B ut it gives no satisfactory account of the origin of the nu- aerou3 Indian tribes of America. 181 Let us look at the natives in an extreme part of South America, and see if they exhibit any evidence similar to what has been adduced of the natives of North America. Don Alonzo de Ericilla, in his history of Chili, says of th natives there ; " The religious system of the Araucanians is simple. They acknowledge a Supreme Being, the author of all things, whom they call Pillan, a word derived from Pulli, or Pilli, the soul ; and signifies the Supreme Essence. They call him also, Guenu-pillan, the Spirit of Heaven ; Bula- gen, the Great Being ; Thalcove, the Thunderer ; Vilvem- voe, the Omnipotent ; Mollgelu, the Eternal ; and Avnolu, the Infinite." He adds ; " The universal government of Pil lan, (his Supreme Essence,) is a prototype of the Arauca- nian polity. He is the great Toqui of the invisible world." He goes on to speak of his having subordinate invisible be ings under him, to whom he commits the administration of affairs of less importance. These, this author sees fit to call "subaltern divinities." We may believe they are but a tra ditional notion of angels, good and bad ; such as is held by the Indians of North America. This author says of this people ; " They all agreed in the belief of the immortality of the soul. This consolatory truth is deeply rooted, and in a manner innate with them. They hold that man is composed of two substances essential ly different ; the corruptible body and the soul, incorporeal and eternal." Of their funerals, he says ; " The bier is carried by the principal relations, and is surrounded by women who bewail the deceased in the manner of the hired mourners among the Romans." He also says ; " They have among them a tradition of a great deluge, in which only a few persons were saved, who took refuge on a high mountain called Thegtheg, which pos sessed the property of moving upon the water." Here then, it seems the remote natives of Chili (a region 1260 miles south of Peru, in South America,) furnish their quota of evidence that they originated in the same family wjth the North American Indians, and hold some of their es sential traditions. Whence could arise the tradition of those natives, of one " Supreme Being, author of all things ?" That he is the "Su preme Essence ; the Spirit of Heaven ; the Thunderer ; the Omnipotent ; the Eternal ; the Infinite ?" W T hence their tradition of the flood, and of several persons being saved on a floating mountain, meaning no doubt the ark ? Whence their ideas so correct of man's immortal soul? This author says of those native Chilians, " Many suppose that they are indigenous to the country ; while others sup- 16 182 pose they derive their origin from a foreign stock, and at one time say, that their ancestors came from the north, and at an other time, from the west." Their better informed or wise men, it seems, retain some impressions of their original emigration from a foreign land, and from the north-west, or' Beering's Straits. Is it possible to give a satisfactory account of such traditions among those native Indians of Chili, short of their having received them from the Hebrew sacred scriptures ? And if from thence, surely they must be Hebrews. In Long's expedition to the Rocky Mountain, we learn that the Omawhaw tribe of Indians (who inhabit the west side of the Missouri River, fifty miles above Engineer Can tonment,) believe in one God. They call him Wahconda ; and believe him " to be the greatest and best of beings ; the Creator and Preserver of till things ; the Fountain of mystic medicine. Omniscience, omnipresence, and vast power are attributed to him. And he is supposed to afflict them with sickness, poverty, or misfortune, for their evil deeds. In con versation he is frequently appealed to as an evidence of the truth of their asseverations "Wahconda hears what Isay" These Indians have many wild pagan notions of this one God. But they have brought down by tradition, it seem?, the above essentially correct view of him, in opposition to the poly the istical world. Their name of God is remarkable Wahconda. It has been shown in the body of this work, that various of the In dians call God Yohewah, Ale, Yah, and Wah. doubtless from the Hebrew names Jehovah, Ale, and Jah. And it has been shown that these syllables which compose the name of God, are compounded in many Indian words, or form the roots from which they are formed. Here we find the fact ; while the author from whom the account is taken, it is presumed, had no perception of any such thing. Wah-conda ; the last syllable of the Indian Yohewah, compounded with conda. Or Jah, Wah, their monosyllable name of God thus com pounded. Here is evidence among those children of the des ert, both as to the nature and the name of their one God, corresponding with what has been exhibited of other tribes ; and very unaccountable, if they are not of the tribes of Is rael. A religious custom, related by Mr. Long, goes to corrobor ate the opinion that th j ;se people are of Israel. He relates that from the age of between five and ten years, their little sons are obliged \o ascend a hill tasting, once or twice a week during the months of ?laich and April, to pray aloud to Wahronda. When this season of the year arrl'-c?, the moth er iaionua the little son, that the "ice is breaking up in the 183 liver ; the ducks and geese are migrating, and it is time for you to prepare to go in clay" The little worshipper then rubs himself over with whitish clay, and at sun rise sets off lor the top of a hill, instructed by the mother what to say to the Master of Life. From his elevated position he cries aloud to Wahconda, humming a melancholy tune, and calling on him to have pity on him, and make him a great hunter, war rior, &c. This has more the appearance of descending from Hebrew tradition, than from any other nation on earth : teaching their children to fast in clay, as " in dust and ashes ;" and to cry to Jah for pity and protection. Such are the shreds of evidence furnished, one here and another there, through the wilds of America, suggesting what is the most probable, if not evident origin, of the natives of this continent. In the Percy Anecdotes, we have an account that the Shavr- ano Indians in an excursion captured the Indian warrior call ed Old Scranny, of the Muskhoge tribe, and condemned him to a fiery torture. He told them the occasion of his falling into their hands, was, he had "forfeited the protection of the Divine Power by some impurity or other, when carrying the holy ark of war against his devoted enemy. Here he recogniz ed the one God, his providence, speaks of his holy ark borne against enemies, alludes to the purity of those who bear it, and if they become impure, the Divine Being will forsake them. The bearing which ideas like these have our ; ject, ueecls no explanation, CHAPTER I. Page. Destruction of Jerusalem, Description of Jerusalem, - " of the Temple, 9 Christ foretels their destruction, - 10 Various signs of the event, ----- 12 Seven miraculous portents of it, - - - 17 Causes of the war, ------- 2l Factions of the Jews, - The Roman army under Titus approaching, - -24 A primary fulfilment of prophecies, 42 CHAPTER II. The certain restoration of Judah and Israel, 47 The expulsion of the ten tribes, - - - - 47 Arguments in favour of a restoration. 1. The distinct existence of the Jews, 49 2. Their past partial and short possession of Canaan, - 50 3. Express predictions of the event, 53 4. A mystical import given to these, inadmissible, - 66 5. Their expulsion was literal, and their restoration must be thus, -.___. 68 CHAPTER III. The present state of Judah and Israel, - - - 69 State of the Jews, ------ 69 State of the ten tribes, 72 Jews dispersed, Israel outcast, - 72 Israel as such, is to be restored,. - - - 72 Hence they must now have somewhere a distinct ex istence; and God must have provided some place for them for 2500 years. 75 An account in Esdras of their going to such a place, - 75 Some suppositions in relation to them, 76 These suppositions are true, - 80 16* 186 Arguments to show that the American natives are the tribes of Israel 1. They all appear to have had one origin, 2. Their language appears a corruption of Hebrew, 3. They have their holy ark, - 4. They have practised circumcision, 5. They have one, and only one, God, - 6. Their variety of traditions evince they are the de scendants of Israel, .-.-"'". 7. A prediction relative to their famine of the word, 8. Testimony of William Penn, 9. The tribe ofLevi, 10. Several appropriate traits of character, 11. Their being in tribes, with heads of tribes, 12. Their places answering to the cities of refuge, 13. Other evidences and considerations, A hint to objectors, __---. CHAPTER IV. An address of the prophet Isaiah, ... 131 Preparatory consideration, ----- 131 The 18th Chapter of Isaiah considered, - - 183 An Address to America, 146 CONCLUSION. 1. The excommunication of the Hebrews deeply af fecting, '- 153 2. The Entail of the Covenant rich, ... - - 154 3. What is first to be done for the Hebrews, - 156 4. A new view given of some prophetic passages, - 157 5. New evidence furnished of the Divinity of the Bible, 161 APPENDIX, 169 187 NAMES OF AUTHORS AND MEN QUOTED AND ALLUDED TO IN THE THIRD CHAP TER OF THIS WORK. Charlevoix, page 85. Dr. Edwards, 85, 88. Boudmot, 86, 93, 94, 98, 106, 109, 113, 116,117,124. Du Pratz, 86, 96. Dr. Williams, 87, 99, 122. Pedro, 87. Ulloa, 88. Adair, 89, 93, 96, 115, 123, 173, 178. Hutchinson,91. Beatty, 94, 109, 112. M'Kenzie, 94, 108. Morez, 95. Hebard, 99. Giddings, 101, 102. Lewis arid Clark, 103, 107. Hecherwelder, page 103, Gookin, 104. R. Williams, 104. Clavigero, 108, Col. Smith, 110. Bartram, 115, 116. Carver, 115, 179, Penn, 119. Colden, 120. Morse, 169. Schoolcraft, 171. Long, 182. Robertson, 178. Powel, 180. N. A. Review, 81. Don Alonzo de Ericilla, 18 1, Esdras, 75. ERRATA. Page 58, line 1st from bottom, for unite read smite. Page 64, line 1st from top, for Zech. read Zeph. Page 72, line 10th from bottom, for xxxix* read xxxvii. Page 75, line 19th from bottom, for least read last. Page 1<22, line 7th from bottom, for lines read tire*, Page 123, ine 5 from top, for fleshy read flashy, Page 162| line 13 from top, for xvi. read xvii\