begin to exercise over her degraded federal allies. Nor will they only be spared: plucked as brands out of the burning, they will likewise be converted by the mercy of God to a zealous profession of genuine Christianity. When two parts are cut off, and die, in all the land; the third part shall be left therein. And the Lord will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried. They shall call on his name, and he will hear them. He will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God.

Thus wonderfully preserved and converted, they will become proper instruments to accomplish the yet unfulfilled purposes of the Most High. Scattered over the face of the whole carth, they will carry every where the tidings of their own defeat, of the marvellous power of the Lord, and of the restoration of Judah, Meanwhile we may suppose the awful apparition of the Shechinah still to remain suspended over Jerusalem, visible from its stupendous height to an immense distance, and bearing ample attestation to the veracity of the fugitives *. Nor will they carry their message in vain. Judah is indeed restored : but the lost ten tribes of Israel are still dispersed through the extensive regions of the North and of the East. These, according to the sure word of prophecy, however they may be now concealed from mortal knowledge, will be found again, and will be brought back into the country of their fathers. All nations, and all tongues, shall come and see the glory of the Lord; for he will set among them a sign, even the sign of the Son of man, the sign of the illuminated Shechinah; and will send unto them. those that have escaped from the slaughter of the Antichristian confederacy, that they may declare his glory among the nations. Convinced by ocular demonstration that God doth indeed reign in Zion, and at once divinely impelled and enabled both to seek out from among them and to find the long-lost sheep of the house of Israel, they

*I apprehend it was from passages of this import, that Mr. Mede supposed that the Jews would be converted by a supernatural manifestation of. Christ. Had he said the ten tribes, instead of the Jews, I believe he would have approached very near to the truth.

?

Then

will bring by land, in vast caravans, all the brethren of Judah for an offering unto the Lord, as the great maritime power had already brought the converted Jews for a present unto the Lord to his holy mountain. shall the stick of Joseph be united for ever with the stick of Judah: Ephraim shall be no more a separate people : but the whole house of Jacob shall become one nation under one king, even the mystic David, Jesus the Messiah.

The various prophecies, which speak of the restoration of the ten tribes, certainly cannot relate to the restoration. of those detached individuals out of them, who returned with Judah from the Babylonian captivity. This is manifest, both because their restoration is represented as perfectly distinct from the restoration of Judah, and because it is placed at once subsequent to that event and to the overthrow of Antichrist. In fact, the converted fugitives from the army of Antichrist are described as being greatly instrumental in bringing about the restoration of the ten tribes. Hence their restoration is plainly future: and hence we cannot, with any degree of consistency, apply the predictions which foretell it to the return of a fer individuals from Babylon with Judah. "It is sur

prizing," says Bp. Horsley, when treating of one out-of the many prophecies, that explicitly declare the future restoration and union both of Judah and Israel*; "It is surprizing, that the return of Judah from the Babylonian captivity should ever have been considered, by any Christian divine, as the principal object of this prophecy, and an event in which it has received its full accomplishment. It was indeed considered as an inchoate accomplishment, but not more than inchoate, by St. Cyril of Alexandria. The expositors of antiquity, in such cases, were too apt

* Hosea i. 10, 11. "Nevertheless the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured, and cannot be counted; and it shall be, that, in the place where it was said unto them, No people of mine are ye, there it shall be said unto them, Children of the living God. And the children of Judah shall be collected, and the children of Israel shall be united, and they shall appoint themselves one head, and come up from the earth. For great shall be the day of Jezrael"-That is to say, as Bp. Horsley remarks very justly, "Great and happy shall be the day, when the holy seed of both branches of the natural Israel shall be publickly acknowledged of their God; united under one head, their king Messiah; and restored to the possession of the promised land, and to a situation of high pre-eminence among the nations of the earth."

to take up with some circumstances of general resemblance, without any critical examination of the terms of a prophecy, or of the detail of the history to which they applied it. The fact is, that this prophecy has no relation to the return from Babylon in a single circumstance. And yet the absurd interpretation, which considers it as fulfilled and finished in that event, has of late been adopted. But what was the number of the returned captives, that it should be compared to that of the sands upon the seashore? The number of the returned, in comparison with the whole captivity, was nothing. Then Judah and Is

rael shall appoint themselves one head-Zorobabel, says Grotius. But how was Zorobabel one head of the rest of Israel, as well as Judah? A later critic answers, After the return from Babylon, the distinction between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah ceased. But how was it, this distinction ceased? In this manner, I apprehend, The kingdom of Israel had been abolished above 180 years before; Judah alone existed as a body politic; and the house of Judah returned under their leader Zorobabel, with some few stragglers of the captivity of the ten tribes. And no sooner were the returning captives settled in Judea, than those of the ten tribes, joining with the mongrel race which they found in Samaria, separated themselves from Judah, and set up a leader and a schismatical worship of their own. Was this any such incorporation, as the prophecy describes, of Judah and the rest of Israel under one sovereign*? To interpret the prophecy in this manner is to make it little better than a paltry quibble; more worthy of the Delphic tripod, than of the Scripture of truth t."

Of the Jews, who were carried away captive to Babylon, only a very small part, according to Houbigant ‡ not more than a hundredth part, returned to their own country. Those, who were left behind, will doubtless, at the time of the second advent, be brought back along with their brethren of the ten tribes; just as those individuals of the ten tribes, who returned with Judah from Babylon,

*

This two-fold return and incorporation of Judah and Israel is yet more definitely predicted by Ezekiel than by Hosea. See Ezek. xxxvii. 15-28. † Bp. Horsley's Hosea, p. 59, 60. Cited by Bp. Horsley.

and (adhering to him notwithstanding the Samaritan schism) were afterwards scattered with him by th Romans, will be brought back with their brethren the Jews. So far, but no further, the otherwise distinct restorations of Judah and Joseph will in some measure be mingled together. This circumstance is very accurately noted by Ezekiel, even when predicting the two-fold restoration of Judah and Joseph, and their subsequent union under one king. He speaks neither of Judah nor Joseph simply; but styles the one division Judah and the children of Israel his companions, and the other division Joseph and all the house of Israel his companions * : thus plainly intimating, that some of the children of Israel shall return with Judah; but that members of all the tribes, not of the kingdom of the ten tribes only, but of all the tribes, shall return with Joseph.

And here we cannot but observe the strict justice of God in arranging the manner of this two-fold restoration. Judah, with many more advantages than Israel, sinned nevertheless yet deeper than he did. They were both equally guilty of idolatry: but Judah, that is to say, that part of Judah which returned from Babylon, added to all his former iniquities the deep guilt of rejecting and crucifying the Lord of life. Hence we find, that, while he is restored, partly in a converted and partly in an unconverted state, through many wars, perils and afflictions, and during a time of unexampled trouble: Israel, and his companions of Judah, to whom the Saviour had never been offered, return after the destruction of Antichrist, wholly in a converted state †, escorted honourably and joyfully by all nations, free from all dangers, exempt from all difficulties, during the earliest dawnings of the peaceful day of millennian blessedness.

It

may probably be asked, How can the ten tribes ever be discovered and restored after the lapse of so many

* Ezek. xxxvii. 16.

This is manifest from Isaiah's declaration, that they should be brought an offering to the Lord, as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord. See Chap. lxvi. 18, 19, 20. The Phraseology is perfectly parallel to that of the two passages, wherein the restoration of the converted division of Judah, by the great maritime power, is predicted See Isaiah xviii. 7. and Zephan. iii. 9, 10.

centuries, during which they have been completely lost and mingled among the nations of the east? The Jews indeed tell us many marvellous stories of their yet existing as a distinct body politic in a large and spacious country with fine cities: but no one knows to this day, where it is situated *.

To such a question it would be sufficient simply to answer, I know not. The restoration of the ten tribes is expressly foretold, and is therefore an article of faith. With the manner of their discovery I presume not to concern myself. I know that all things are possible with God: and therefore I know, that he, who at the last day will collect our scattered members and raise our longdissolved bodies from the dust, can with equal ease collect the scattered members of Israel, and discover them however lost among the nations whither they have been led away captive. Indeed it is worthy of notice, that the resurrection of the body is repeatedly used by the prophets to typify the political revival of Judah and Israel, and by none of them with more minute particularity of circumstance than Ezekiel insomuch that I know not a better commentary upon the manner of their discovery and restoration, than the elaborate parable, with which he ushers in a literal prediction of those wonderful events †.

:

But it is a very remarkable circumstance, that, precisely at the present era, an era marked so strongly by the signs of the times, as to give us every reason to believe, that we are living in the predicted last days of Antichristian blasphemy, and that the 1260 years are rapidly drawing near to their termination: it is, I say, a remarkable circumstance that, at this very era, a people should begin to attract our notice in the East Indies, which appear to be a fragment either of the lost ten tribes, or of the Jews that never returned from the Babylonian captivity. In my former more general work on prophecy, I thought it sufficient barely to mention this people +: in my present, which exclusively treats of the restoration

Dissert. on the 1260 years, Vol. 11. p. 350. (2d. Edit. p. 387.)