To the Ends of the Earth.

Calamity's Compensations.—The compensations of calamity are apparent in some of the mightiest events that history chronicles. The Fall of Man, though it brought death into the world, proved the means of peopling a planet in accordance with the Creator's design. The Crucifixion of Christ, an overwhelming calamity to His terror-stricken disciples, who were disconsolate until they looked upon the tragedy in its true light, made effectual the predestined plan for man's salvation. The Dispersion of Israel, that heavy stroke and burden of affliction under which God's people have groaned for ages, has been overruled to subserve the divine purpose, fulfilling in part the ancient promise to the Hebrew Patriarchs, that in their seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed.

A Martyred Nation.—The history of the house of Israel is the history of a martyred nation, suffering for the welfare of other nations—whatever may be said of the immediate cause of their woes, the transgressions that justified the Shepherd in bringing upon his sheep troubles that were doubtless among the "offenses" that "must needs come." Adam fell that man might be; Christ died to burst the bands of death; and the chosen people were scattered over the world, in order that Gospel truth, following the red track of their martyrdom, might make its way more readily among the peoples with whom they were mingled.

Moses Predicts the Dispersion.—Prophecies of Israel's dispersion were made as early as the time of Moses, fifteen hundred years before the advent of the Savior. When the Twelve Tribes were about to possess themselves of the Promised Land, their great leader, who was soon to depart, told them that so long as they served Jehovah and honored his statutes, they should be prospered and remain an independent nation. But if they forsook Jehovah and served other gods, He would scatter them among all people, from one end of the earth even unto the other.^[1]

A House Divided.—Joshua, succeeding Moses, conquered the land of Canaan and apportioned it among the Tribes of Israel. A season of prosperity and power was followed by decadence and ruin. As early as the days of the Judges the people began to depart from God and to invite by rebellious conduct the national calamity that had been predicted. The glory of the reigns of David and Solomon being past, the curse, long suspended, fell, and the Israelitish Empire hastened to decay. The tribes in the northern part of the land revolted and set up the Kingdom of Israel, distinct from the Kingdom of Judah, over which Solomon's son Rehoboam continued to reign. The tribe of Benjamin and the half tribe of Manasseh adhered to Judah.

Ahijah, Amos and Hosea.—Jeroboam, King of Israel, made idolatry the state religion. During his reign the dispersion was again predicted, Ahijah the prophet thus voicing the word of the Lord to his disobedient people: "The Lord shall smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water, and he shall root up Israel out of this good land, which he gave to their fathers, and shall scatter them beyond the river."^[2] Another prophet who foretold the same disaster was Hosea;^[3] still another, Amos, who declared that Israel should "surely go into captivity" and be "sifted among all nations."^[4] Hosea's prophecy substitutes past for future, thus: "Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people," referring to the event in prospect as if it had already taken place. Possibly a prophetic vision—then past—had apprised this seer of what was coming, or it may have been only a figure of rhetoric, common even at the present day.

"The Wolf on the Fold."—About the year 725 B. C. these prophecies began to have their fulfillment. The Assyrians came against the Kingdom of Israel and commenced the work of its destruction. In a series of deportations they carried away the Ten Tribes—nine and a half, to be exact—and, as customary with conquerors in those days, supplied their places with colonists from other parts.

The Lost Tribes.—Concerning the deported—the famous "Lost Tribes"—very little is now known. Josephus, the Jewish historian, who wrote during the first century after Christ, states that they were then beyond the Euphrates; and Esdras, in the Apocrypha, declares that they went a journey of a year and a half into "the north country."

Scandinavian Cairns.—Missionaries returning from Scandinavia tell of rude monuments—cairns of piles of stones—yet to be seen in that northern region, and concerning which tradition asserts that they were erected many centuries ago by a migrating people. Whether or not these were the tribes of the Assyrian captivity, it is interesting to reflect that the rearing of such monuments, in commemoration of notable events, was an Israelitish custom, particularly as to the migratory movements of the nation. The miraculous passage of the Jordan by Joshua and the host led by him into the land of Canaan, was thus commemorated.^[5]

Other Ancient Remains.—If it be objected that monuments built seven centuries before Christ's birth could not have lasted down to this day, it will be in order for the objector to explain the existence of the perfectly preserved monuments of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and other ancient empires, whose remains have been uncovered by modern archaeological enterprise. Such a theory need not stagger the faith of a Latter-day Saint, when he recalls that the ruins of Adam's altar are still to be seen in that part of the Old-New World now known as the State of Missouri, where they were identified by Joseph the Seer in 1838.

From the North Country.—At all events, it is from "the north country" that the lost tribes are to return, according to ancient and modern prophecy.^[6] It is also a fact that from Scandinavia and other nations of Northern Europe, has come much of the blood of Ephraim, now to be found within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Isaiah and Jeremiah—The Babylonian Captivity—Returning to the Kingdom of Israel. The prophecies concerning it were supplemented by other predictions foretelling the fate of the Kingdom of Judah. Those great prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, figured during this period, and both portrayed in fervid eloquence, unparalleled for pathos and sublimity, the impending doom of the Jewish nation. Their government was destroyed, and they were carried into captivity by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, B. C. 588.

Lehi and His Colony.—Just prior to that catastrophe, and while the Prophet Jeremiah was delivering his fateful message to king, princes, priests and people, Lehi and his companions, ancestors of the Nephites and Lamanites,^[7] warned of God, left Jerusalem and crossed over to this land—America—which, by them and by Mulek's company that came later, was thus peopled with descendants of Joseph and of Judah, both represented, though in a degenerate state, by the savage red men whom Columbus, in A. D. 1492, discovered and named Indians.^[8]

Jerusalem Rebuilt—Ezekiel and Zechariah.—The Babylonian captivity lasted for seventy years. At the expiration of that period, some of the Jews, under the permissive edict of Cyrus the Great, who had conquered Babylon, returned and rebuilt their City and Temple. These, however, were only a remnant, numbering fifty thousand, led by Zerubbabel and Joshua. The bulk of the nation remained in a scattered condition. The Jews who rebuilt Jerusalem were those to whose descendants the Christ came, and predicted, after their rejection of him, that their "House" should be "left unto them desolate."^[9] Meanwhile Ezekiel and Zechariah—the former in exile among the Babylonians, the latter at Jerusalem after the restoration—had added their predictions to those already uttered relating to Israel's dispersion.

The Roman Conquest.—Centuries later, in Apostolic times, went forth the Epistle of James, with its greeting: "To the Twelve Tribes which are scattered abroad." But the dispersion, even then, was not complete. There were yet to be other painful experiences of the same kind. One of the most notable occurred in A. D. 70, when Titus the Roman came against Jerusalem, captured the city, and sold the inhabitants—such as had survived the horrors of the siege—into slavery, or scattered them through different parts of the Empire. To follow the fortunes of this branch of the fated nation in all its subsequent migrations and wanderings, would fill volumes.

What of the Benefits?—Let us now consider the question: In what way did these calamities upon Israel prove a blessing to the human race? How, by the scattering of the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was God's promise to those patriarchs in any degree fulfilled, that in their seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed? Already I have answered these questions in part, and will now answer them more fully.

The Blood That Believes.—Through these acts of deportation, enforced exile, and voluntary wandering, the blood of Israel, the blood that believes, with choice spirits answering to that blood, and no doubt selected for the purpose, were sent into those nations where the Gospel has since been preached—spirits capable of recognizing and appreciating the Truth, and brave enough to embrace it, regardless of consequences; thus setting an example of heroism, of obedience to the dictates of conscience, that would naturally appeal to the noble and upright surrounding them, and influence them in the same direction. Manifestly, that was of far greater consequence than the carrying by the captive Israelites of their laws, traditions and customs into those nations; though this also would help to prepare the way for the wonderful developments that were to follow.

Rapid Spread of Christianity.—And such things told in after years. One of the marvels of history is the rapid spread of Christianity in the days of the Apostles, who, unlettered as most of them were, and in the midst of the fiercest persecution, planted the Gospel standard in all the principal cities of the Roman Empire. From Jerusalem, the tidings of "Christ and him crucified" radiated to Britain on the west, to India on the east, to Scythia on the north, and to Ethiopia on the south—all within the short space of fifty years.^[10]

Many Nations Sprinkled.—How could such things be, if Divine Providence had not prepared the way by sending the blood and genius of Israel into all nations, prior to pouring out upon those nations the Spirit of the Gospel and the Gathering? Others before Abraham had shown their faith by their works; but this does not disprove his claim to the title—"Father of the Faithful." Nor does it prove that the blood of faith, wherever found, is not his blood. The Moabite maiden Ruth, ancestor of Jesus of Nazareth; the Roman centurion, whose faith caused even the Savior to marvel; Cornelius and the Woman of Canaan—these were not of Israel, by recognized earthly descent; yet their spirits were well worthy of such a lineage, and in their veins was the believing blood with which God has "sprinkled many nations."

Footnotes

1. Deut. 28:64.2. I Kings 14:15.3. Hos. 7:8.4. Amos 7:11; 9:9.5. Joshua 4:1-9.6. Jer. 31:8; D. and C. 110:11; 133:26.7. See Article Five.8. Mark the features of the American Indian. Are they not Jewish? Quite as strikingly so, as that many of his traditions and customs are Israelitish. Who than the savage Lamanite, better understands the Mosaic law of retaliation—"an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?" Nor cares he to whom the eye or the tooth belongs, whether to the person who injured him, or to one of the latter's tribe or nation. He is too much of an Israelite to object to proxies and substitutes.9. Matt. 23:37, 38.10. Dean Farrar, in his "Life and Work of St. Paul," contributes this luminous passage as explanatory of the rapid spread of Christianity:

"(I) The immense field covered by the conquests of Alexander gave to the civilized world a unity of language, without which it would have been, humanly speaking, impossible for the earliest preachers to have made known the good tidings in every land which they traversed. (II) The rise of the Roman Empire created a political unity which reflected in every direction the doctrines of the new faith. (III) The dispersion of the Jews prepared vast multitudes of Greeks and Romans for the unity of a pure morality and a monotheistic faith. The Gospel emanated from the capital of Judea; it was preached in the tongue of Athens; it was diffused through the empire of Rome; the feet of its earliest missionaries traversed the solid structure of undeviating roads by which the Roman legionaries—'those massive hammers of the whole earth'—had made straight in the desert a highway for our God. Semite and Aryan had been unconscious instruments in the hands of God for the spread of a religion which, in its first beginnings, both alike detested and despised."

A similar marvel is the spread of the restored Gospel through the Gentile nations of modern times, a work yet in its infancy. The proselyting success of the Latter-day Saints on both hemispheres, their great pilgrimage from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, the redemption of a wilderness, the founding of a State, and the extraordinary attention attracted by the "Mormon" people—altogether out of proportion to their numbers—these combined facts constitute a striking fulfillment of the prophetic picture drawn by the Savior: "Ye are as a city set upon a hill which cannot be hid."