right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him; and he held up his father's hand, to remove it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head. And Joseph said to his father, Not so, my father: for this is the first-born; put thy right hand on his head. And his father refused, and said, I know, my son, I know: he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great; but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become the fulness of the nations-D. And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and Manassch: and he set Ephraim before Manasseh." (Gen. xlviii.)

The covenant God of Abraham and his seed had thus honored his great name by providing the tests whereby the lost sheep of the house of Israel were to be identified. Our work, as obedient children, is simply that of application, by faith, of the given tests, while we rest in the comforting assurance given in the prediction by YAHVEH, through the prophet Jeremiah, that “the anger of YAHVEH shall not return until he has executed, and till he has performed the thoughts of his heart: in the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly.” (Jer. xxiii. 20.)

The test-questions are simple. 1. Was the "north country" of Europe which borders on the North Sea, including the British "isles," numerously populated in A.D. 1281? 2. Had this multitude received the gospel from the south of Europe prior to that time? 3. Was this multitude composed of two clearly defined races, yet bearing the marks of a common origin? 4. Was, and is, one of these races much superior in number and power to the other? If these four questions can be answered in the affirmative, in the absence of any other race or races to whom the prophetic word applies, there is but one conclusion.

The first and second questions no student of history will hesitate to answer in the affirmative.

To the third question we respond in the affirmative. The nations referred to, now included in the appellations of Swedish, Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, Germans, Belgians, French, English, Irish, Welsh, and Scotch, came into Europe in two great divisions, one preceding the other. The first was called the Celtic or Keltic race; the second was the Teutonic or Germanic race.

Although they were plainly distinguished from each other, yet the evidence of their relationship is sufficient. "It is very remarkable that Herodotus had no distinct knowledge of the Germans as a separate race" from the Celts. (Philip Smith's History of the World, vol. 2, p. 260.) "The whole region from the western frontier of the Scyths to the Pillars of Hercules was known to Herodotus as the Land of the Celts." (Ibid.) "Tacitus says expressly that the tribes of the north and centre of Europe had in his time been but recently called Germans; and is confirmed by Strabo, who makes the name of Roman origin. They were called Germani, from germanus, brother, because they were brothers of the Gauls." (Parke Godwin's Ancient Gaul, p. 215.) Godwin, in speaking of the "descent of the Kymri and Teutones, B.C. 113-105," says, "As to who or what these Kymri were, there seems to be no longer any doubt among the ethnologists. They were Kelts, from the northeast of Gaul; but the Teutones, were they Kelts or Germans? If Germans, how came they in such close alliance with the Kelts? Niebuhr (Lectures Rom. Hist.) says, 'It is as certain that they were Germans as that the Kymri were Kelts.'" (Ibid. p. 60.)

The physical characteristics of Celt and Teuton were similar. Of the Teutons, Tacitus wrote, "I have already acceded to the opinion that the Germans have hitherto subsisted without intermarrying with other nations, a pure, unmixed, and independent race, unlike any other people, all bearing the marks of a distinct national character. Hence, what is remarkable in such prodigious numbers, a family-likeness throughout the nation,-the same form and feature, stern blue eyes, ruddy hair, their bodies large and robust." (Manners of the Germans.) The same points are made concerning the Celts. "All the Gauls are tall, fairskinned, golden-haired, and terrible for the fierceness of their eyes. They are greedy of quarrels, great braggarts, and insolent. A whole troop of strangers could scarcely resist a single one of them in a brawl, and particularly if he were assisted by his stalwart blue-eyed wife.' This description by the old soldier Ammianus, who fought in Gaul, and knew of what he wrote, is in substance confirmed by all the ancient writers. Polybius, who travelled in Gaul, speaks of the 'gigantic bodies' of the natives. Cæsar, who spent so many years among them, says they looked with contempt

on the little Romans. Pausanias calls them the tallest of the human race. How, then, are they distinguished physically from the Teutons? Or was Pelloutier (Hist. des Celtes) right in maintaining the identity of the Keltic and Teutonic races?" (Godwin, pp. 34, 35.)

To the fourth question, history, down to the present moment, presents an undeviating affirmative. The Teutons have always been much more numerous and powerful than the Celts.

Thus we are fully warranted in assuming that the lost sheep are found, and in appropriating the things belonging to the birthright people to the races thus identified. Such an appropriation is the test of tests; for the prophecies cannot be made to harmonize with the history and condition of any people but Israel.

PRESUMPTIVE EVIDENCE.

There is presumptive evidence afforded by history in confirmation of our Israelitish origin, which should not be altogether neglected.

1. That which is found in ancient tradition. "The earliest literature of which any remains still exist in any of the native languages of the British Islands must be held to be the Irish. The Irish were probably possessed of the knowledge of letters from a very remote antiquity. It is very remarkable that the alphabet, in the number and powers of its elements, exactly corresponds with that which Cadmus is recorded to have brought from Phoenicia." (Craik's Eng. Lit. and Language, vol. i. 34.) Not only do the Irish obtain their alphabet from the very spot whence Israel was carried captive, but their traditions state that the founder of their race lived there. "Phænius, the inventor of letters, is claimed as the founder of the Irish or Milesian race. Every circumstance and every fact that can be collected unite in fixing his residence on the Syrian coast bordering the Mediterranean, and to be the ancient Phoenicia." (O'Halloran's Hist. of Ireland.) Another tradition tells of an emigration "from the shores of the Black Sea" to Ireland. (McGee's Hist. of Ireland.) This agrees with the route which Israel must have taken from the place

of their captivity into Europe. It is singular that one of the leading heroes of Irish tradition, "Gollamh," visited Egypt. "As the highest mark of approbation, Pharaoh gave him to wife his daughter Scota, by whom he had two sons born in Egypt." (O'Halloran.) How coincident with facts in the life of Joseph! O'Halloran further declares of this traditionary hero, “After him we are called Clana-Mile, or the posterity of the hero,—hence, Milesians."

"The ancient Irish worshipped the sun by the name of Bel." (O'Halloran.) Idolatrous Israel worshipped the sun-god by the name of Baal. This was the idolatry against which Elijah the Tishbite made his great assault when he gathered Israel to Mount Carmel.

The German traditions were connected with their system of worship, called by some the Odinic, from the god Odin. "On earth it told them of a holy city, a city of the Ases, Asgard, a place of bliss and sanctity, a sacred natal spot, whence the Germanic races had of old been expelled, and which they were to seek in their wanderings through the world." (Michelet's Hist. of France.) How perfectly are the banishment and future return of Israel brought to view in this sentence! In connection should be stated the fact "that these tribes did not call themselves Germans, and that, so far as they had any collective appellation, it was Teuton, from the root teut, or the people." (Godwin, p. 215.) Although YAHVEH had solemnly repudiated them, saying, “Ye are not my people," yet through all their wanderings they still preserved the title of honor: after all their vicissitudes they were still the people.

2. "The mysterious and far-reaching property of blood-of Race-is becoming more and more recognized in modern science. That power, whereby the most distant ancestor shall influence his remotest descendant, and, still more wonderful, that accumulated effect of a line of ancestors on the final progeny, so that a clear stream of inherited physical and mental peculiarities can flow unmingled through human history, is something not to be lightly weighed in the philosophy of man or in the history of his actions." (C. L. Brace, Races of the Old World.) This scientific conclusion finds a remarkable support in the reproduction of the obvious qualities of the tribes of Israel in the Teutonic an 1 Celtic

races. As the Celts constituted the inferior fragment of the northern immigration and came first into Europe, we may expect to find in them the leading qualities of Manasseh and the accompanying tribes of the first captivity. What account, then, does history give of the Celts?

"The true history of the Celts begins at the period when their migrations brought them into contact with the nations of Italy and Greece. That collision was the result, so to speak, of a great reflex movement in a direction opposite to their original migration (i.e. from the East), whether they were impelled by want arising from the increase of population, or tempted by a happier soil and climate, or moved by the mere restlessness of a people who were but slightly attached to their native country. For the Celts were a pastoral people; and so little taste had they for agriculture, that Cicero says it was esteemed disgraceful for a free Celt to till the ground with his own hands. In no branch of the human family have better and worse qualities been more strangely mingled, or the former more strikingly neutralized by the latter. 'Gaul for the most part,' said Cato the Censor, 'pursues two things most perseveringly,-war, and talking cleverly.' The great modern historian of the people, Thierry, depicts their character in the following words: 'The prominent qualities of the Celtic race were personal bravery, in which they excelled all nations; an open, impetuous temperament, accessible to every impression; much intelligence, associated with extreme volatility; want of perseverance; aversion to discipline and order; ostentation and perpetual discord,-the result of boundless vanity.' Their part in the history of the world is admirably described by Dr. Mommsen: 'Such qualities-those of good soldiers and bad citizens-explain the historical fact that the Celts have shaken all states and have founded none. Everywhere we find them ready to rove, or, in other words, to march; preferring movable property to landed estate, and gold to every thing else; following the profession of arms as a system of organized pillage, or even as a trade for hire, and with such success that even the Roman historian Sallust acknowledges that the Celts bore off the prize from the Romans in feats of arms. In this way they led, under their own or a foreign banner, a restless soldier-life; constantly occupied in fighting, and in their so-called feats of heroism, they