Chapter XXXII. Nations shall Spring from Thee

Kings of People shall come of Thee. Israel Proving his Blood. Messiah's Kingdom Rising in America. Jehovah's Chariots. The Tumult of his Coming. The Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand.

" But ye shall be named the Priests of the Lord : men shall call you the ministers of our God : ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves. * * *

" And their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring among the people : all that see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed. * * *

" For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth ; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations." — Isaiah.

Judah has been well defined among the nations, by the curse which has scarred his brow; but here is described an Israel which shall be known for the blessing, not the curse.

Much light is thrown upon this point by the enlarged views of Joseph. According to his finding,

Jacob and his children are empires. The great Germanic race is" the seed of Ephraim, or at least the seed of Ephraim is very markedly mixed in that race. The Scandinavian peoples are also greatly of Ephraim ; and so, as matter of course, are the English and American nations.

In this view of Israel let us now read the promise made to Abraham, by Jehovah, who " keepeth covenants:"

" Behold my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. * * * I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee."

And to Sarah : " I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations ; kings of people shall be of her."

Surely this has a fulfillment beyond that of the Israel in Palestine, with the short record of his kings, — so insignificant that the mighty rulers of the heathen scorned to recognize them.

With this splendid view of Israel which Joseph has given, it can be easily imagined that some of the most potent monarchs of Europe have been of Israelitish blood, and that the mightiest spirits that have moved the world for the last thousand years were the offspring of men such as were known of old as Jehovah's prophets.

This gives new light indeed to the whole history of Christendom. Abraham is a " father of nations;" "kings of people " have come of him.

And here may be presented the singular fact that Great Britain bears the arms of Israel,— the lion of Judah and the unicorn of Ephraim.

"Judah is a lion's whelp." Messiah himself is

called the " Lion of the Tribe of Judah." Of Joseph, Moses said: " His glory is like the firstling- of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns : with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth : and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh."

The royal arms of Great Britain should therefore ethnologically signify a mixture of the blood of David and the blood of Joseph. The Welsh people show much of this Hebrew element in them. David is almost a national name amone them. The Welsh harp is also suggestive of the Psalmist King.

And now let us historically test this Israelitish subject, as enlarged by Joseph. Let the text be, "Their seed shall be known among the Gentiles."

The blood of Israel will be known by its manifestations. The Israelitish genius will speak in the peoples who are of Israel. This may be made quite a scientific problem.

And Israel will most certainly antagonize the Romish power. The genius of Judah and the genius of Rome can but be in deadly antipathy. Rome was that "nation of fierce countenance" that destroyed Jerusalem. And who destroyed the Roman Empire ? Israel ! — The Ephraimites !

In the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era the Germanic hosts poured down resistlessly upon the iron empire of the Caesars, and upon its ruins built the empires of the West. In Ephraim was Jehovah's vengeance upon that nation of fierce countenance, that destroyed his once beloved Jerusalem.

Alfred, the founder of England's greatness, was strangely Israelitish in character and method ; and his writings, which are voluminous, are peculiarly like those of David and Solomon.

But it is to the period of the Protestant Reformation,and that of the Cromwellian Revolution, that we must go for the most strictly Israelitish manifestations. In those days the God of Jacob was not confounded.

First arose John de WitclifTe. He was called "The Morning Star of the Reformation." That star rose in England then, just as in this age it could rise only in America ; for the star of both empire and reformation has crossed the Atlantic.

Wickliffe's controversy struck direct at Rome, else had he been no morning star of Israel. He it was who called the Pope "Antichrist," and spake of him as "the proud worldly priest of Rome, — the most cursed of clippers and purse-kervers (cutpurses)." He it was who translated and unsealed the Hebrew Scriptures. And thus was it England's destiny to open the seals of Judah's Book. From that hour, as from an archangel's trump, rang forth the doom of the Romish Church. But what shall the awful pronouncement be when Judah himself sends back upon Rome the curse of ages ?

A century and a half later, in Germany, Luther arose, and burned the bull of the Pope. Rome had a terrible fall over the Germanic nation. Those Ephraimites proved their blood.

At about this time, however, Charles V., of Germany and Spain, attempted to restore the universal power of Rome to more than its pristine glory,

while his brother-in-law, Henry VIII., of England, threw his migfht of character into the same scale. Fateful days for Israel ! Will Jehovah fail him ?

A woman for the sacrifice ! One in whose veins flows the sacred blood ! Anne Boleyn ! The issue lost her her head, but it cost Rome a world !

From her Elizabeth ! Born on the eve of the Virgin's nativity! Died on the eve of the Virgin's annunciation ! The " Virgin Queen," indeed !

Surely here is Hebrew mystery ! Surely here is a star of the house of David risen in the West !

And statesmen, as well as mystics, were influenced by the sign of her imperial mission. In her was the fate of the world. With might and majesty she threw herself into the trembling balance, becoming the very prophetess and saviour of Protestantism. Calling herself the Lioness of England, she became in fact the Lioness of the Lord, and fulfilled a truly divine mission as the head of the English Church. The bishops of the Romish Church refused to crown her, and in her lifetime three Popes excommunicated her, but she forced her crowning and anointing, and in three months after her ascension overturned the entire Romish hierarchy throughout her realm. When the Pope anathematized her she ordered an anathema to be hurled back in his teeth from the solemn portals of St. Paul, a proceeding without precedent, and which probably no other mortal in Christendom would have dared to do. And when finally Pope Sextus and all the Catholic princes of Europe joined in a crusade against her, a mighty storm destroyed their invincible Armada off the English Coast. In those days 'twas said, " The

Lord did it." Whatever may be said to-day, there never were such examples since the world began, till Cromwell and his Jehovah-fearing men cut off the head of their kino- in the name of the Lord of Hosts.

The England of Cromwell's day was as Israelitish as were the tribes of Jacob when David reigned in Jerusalem.

But at this date already had New England arisen. The Pilgrims had landed on Plymouth Rock, and Israel was mioratinor toward the Zion of the latter-days. The setting up of Messiah's kingdom was now a prophecy well defined ; the voice of the age was crying, "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."

And what a remarkable fact is it that Israel in the seventeenth century actually attempted to establish the Zion of the Lord in England ! That which those God-fearing men of the Commonwealth undertook was no political revolution, in the ordinary sense ; it was an Israelitish upheaval in the world, — an upheaval that was sure to repeat itself in America.

And those men of God, in the seventeenth century, called themselves " The Saints," and " The Latter-day Israel," just as do the Saints of America in the nineteenth century. Neither of them have minced their language in this regard. Indeed, they speak in the same tongue, the same words : their themes are one. The Latter-day Saints of England, under Cromwell, and thqse Latter-day Saints of America, under Joseph Smith, are the only two peoples who have strictly resembled each other durine the whole Christian era. And the crowning:

fact is that not only do both possess the same genius, but one is literally the offspring of the other.

For a full century Israel, among the nations, was actually proving his blood. Notably so in Germany, England, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia.

What then shall we say of these wondrous manifestations of an Israel among the nations, — the voice of his genius and the instincts of his blood ? Is all this but the noise of Jehovah's chariots passing by? Are not his angels turning earthward? Is there no purpose in this tumult of his coming?

And finally, let us mark the fact that the foundations of our American nationality were not laid by Godless and ambitious colonists, but by the very men who had already raised in England the standard of Messiah. Then came the Revolution under Washington, and the mighty Republic emerged upon the theatre of nations. At last a magnificent kinofdom, without a king,— the Zion of God awaiting the coming of her Lord ! Then came Joseph, crying in the ears of men, " Behold the kingdom of heaven is at hand ! "

But the churches were deaf to this prophet of glorious tidings ; therefore have they sealed their own doom. They shall pass away. Rejecting Messiah, in their rejection of his Prophet, they shall themselves be rejected of him at his coming.

Yet will Israel prevail, for outside of churches is gathering a mighty host ; and ears have they, and eyes to see, and faith, and courage true. And glorious testimony shall they give of the light that gleamed athwart the sky as Joseph rose to oracle the Zion of the Latter-days.