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THE ANGLO-CIMBRI AND TEUTONIC RACES PROVED TO BE THE LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL.
By James Rankin
LONDON: WILLIAM MACINTOSH,
24, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1871.
Price Fourpence.
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THE ANGLO-CIMBRI AND TEUTONIC RACES PROVED TO BE THE LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL.
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“I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee, but I will not make a full end of thee.”* When Jehovah spoke these words by the prophet, many of the people to whom they were addressed had been living for more than a century on the north of Persia, or in some place bordering on the Caspian, and were, to use Jehovah’s own words, “removed out of His sight.” Their removal, too, took place at a time which by an unaccountable coincidence marks the dawn of authentic history; but from that time to this there has come down through the generations who have preceded us a belief which we have inherited, and of which it would be impossible to divest ourselves, that these people, although removed out of sight, are nevertheless in existence as a distinct people somewhere. Their sentence was a strange one – they were not to go unpunished. The nations among whom they were driven were not however to absorb them or to amalgamate with them, - as has been the common lot of the conquerors and the subjugated among all other peoples - but on the contrary, their conquerors were to perish utterly; and the same doom awaited all the nations among whom they were driven. We know that the threatened doom fell on the nations of Assyria and Chaldea; the ruins of their cities remain, but their inhabitants are extinct.
The supplement to the belief in these invisible people is that they are to be discovered; and many are the attempts
*Jeremiah xlvi. 28.
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that are made to identify them: some have scrutinized the faces of the Karens of Burmah, others have searched for them among the lawless tribes inhabiting the gorges of the Himalayas; but the general opinion is, that none of these people answer the conditions of the case, because another clause in their sentence was that they were to be sent to five different nations – the names of which are Tarshish, Pul, Lud, Tubal, and Javan, and to the isles afar off, that had not heard of the fame of Jehovah, neither had seen His glory. The first of these nations, Tarshish, is called in one instance by the LXX. χαρχηδονιοιCarthaginians; of the other nothing certain is known. But of the isles afar off, Jehovah adds, and “they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles,” from which language it obviously follows that these people are making known the glory of God among the Gentiles, and it as necessarily implies the knowledge of that glory themselves while diffusing it to others as the possession of influence morally and politically, which is nowhere found among semi-civilised tribes.
And in the endeavour to identify these people it will be necessary, from what these quotations referred to point out, to look for them among the powerful and civilized nations of the world. Neither can there be any partiality on the one hand or injustice on the other in singling out any nation or people in particular, in the endeavour to discover them, as it is by no means certain that the nation singled out would consider the comparison complimentary, or the remainder regret their exclusion.
Several passages however in the Scriptures that treat of the restoration of the Israelites seem to show that they were destined to be a great and powerful nation, possessing immense resources, both in shipping and rapidity of locomotion, such as is used in the present day, before they returned to their own land. Quoting the LXX.* of which this is a literal rendering: “And I will leave behind among them proof, I will send forth after them, I will keep them safe among the nations, among Tharsis, and Phoud, and Loud, and Mosach, and among Thobel, and among the Ellada, and among the islands the far where my name is not heard, neither shewn my glory; and proclaim they shall my glory
*Isaiah lxvi. 19, 20.
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among the nations. And they shall bring your brethren out of all the nations a gift to the Lord, on horses and carriages, covered chariots, mules with canopies, unto the holy city Jerusalem, saith the Lord: they shall bring back the children of Israel: they shall offer them to me with singing into the house of the Lord.”
Again in the authorized version: * “And I will make her that halted a remnant, and her that was cast far off a strong nation;” ¤”The remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many people as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep: who, if he go through, both treadeth down, and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver.” #”From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, even the daughter of my dispersed, shall bring mine offering.” The next is a rendering from the French version; §”In that time they shall bring a present to the Eternal of hosts, to the name of the Eternal of hosts’ habitation, to the mountain of Zion, of a people of great implements and splendor, of a people terrible since their commencement, and in their sequel of a nation who measures to the line, and a multitude of people, and of whom the rivers inundate the country.” The first verse of this chapter appears in greater force in the LXX., and is thus rendered into English: Woe land of ships swift winged beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, who hostages in sea floating vessels accompany letters of Paphyrus upon the waters travelling toward a nation in the midst of the sea, and a strange people and terrible who themselves dwell apart; a nation without hope and despised now the river of the land (now in the land of the rivers). The last part of this verse appears to have puzzled the translators of the Bible. The Ninevite inscriptions, however, throw light upon it. Babylonia is there styled “the country of the four rivers:” the passage seems to mean that the people were in Babylonia when the Prophet wrote, “without hope and despised.” The passage “beyond the rivers of Ethiopia,” is in the French version, “an delà des fleuves de Cus.” And Rawlinson says that “the most ancient Chaldean was decidedly Cushite or Ethiopian.” Now it appears that as
* Micah iv. 7.
¤ Micah v. 8.
# Zephaniah iii. 10.
§ Isaiah xviii. 7.
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Cush was the father of Nimrod, whose kingdom was in the land of Shinar, that the rivers of Cush would be the Euphrates or the Tigris, or more likely the Indus, as the country north of India is called Hindoo Koosh, and at the mouth of the Indus Cutch; and also the sculptures in the rock temples of Elephanta, near Bombay, have been taken from Ethiopian models; all the statues have thick lips and apparently curly hair, which evidently shew that these temples were hewn out of the solid rock by an Ethiopian or Cushite race. And a land of swift ships beyond any of these rivers would refer to India at a period very late in its history or during the last hundred and fifty years, when the destination of almost all ships leaving its shores was to a nation in the midst of the sea. The mythology of the Hindoos appears to be a distorted history of the family of Cush and Raamah given in Genesis,* and as in the case of Assyria where Nimrod was deified, and to this day a vast ruin on the site of ancient Babylon bears his name; so also in India the name of Ramah is very common among the Hindoos, and in most of their troubles and perplexities their ejaculatory prayers are addressed to the god Ramah. The present condition of India, with reference to England is fully shewn in the Scripture passages already quoted, especially by combining the translations of the French and the LXX., where the land beyond the rivers of Cush is described as sending hostages and letters in swift ships to a people in the midst of the sea, a nation of great implements and splendor, a people terrible since their commencement, and in their sequel a nation without hope and despised (when the prophet wrote) in the land of the rivers. How far the description of a people terrible since their commencement will suit England, can best be seen by referring to the history of the country as given by Macaulay:¤ “The struggle between the two fierce Teutonic breeds, lasted six generations, each was alternately paramount, provinces wasted, convents plundered, and cities razed to the ground, make up the greater part of the history of those evil days.” There is also in the history of the last two hundred and fifty years, that is from the landing of the pilgrim fathers in America down to the present time, an unaccountable resemblance to the consequences involved in the sentence of the
* Genesis x.
¤ History of England.
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Israelites on the nations among whom they were driven. “I will make a full end of all the nations among whom I have driven thee.” When the Anglo-Saxon, or more correctly the Anglo-Cimbrian tribes were forced to seeks refuge in America, that country was inhabited by numerous and powerful tribes, but on whom the presence of these exiles and their descendants acted like an epidemic; originating that expression of irony, “as the white man advances the red man disappears.”
The tribes for whom Elliot’s Indian Bible was intended are all gone, their language is dead, and not a drop of their blood flows in the vein in any human being, and the only history of the former inhabitants of that immense continent is just this – they have perished. The exact counterpart of this is taking place in Australia, and New Zealand: a recent writer observes.* “In half a century (it may be less time) the Maories will have passed away, and have given place to a more energetic race: the Maori race pur sang are fast dying out; they are subject to the same law of mortality that is sweeping away the natives of all the South Sea islands. A quarter of a century ago the population was estimated at 150,000, at the present moment it certainly does not exceed 40,000, and the mortality is rapidly on the increase. The colonists apart from emigration are increasing more rapidly than the Anglo-Saxon race in any other part of the world; it seems as if a supernatural effort were made to fill up the void of human life. There is no physical reason why the Maories should not increase at the same rate, as the climate is equally adapted to both races; for four centuries they continued to multiply and replenish the earth, till the fatal hour when the Pakeha landed on their shores.” The aboriginals of Tasmania are all extinct, and the Kaffers of the Cape of Good Hope are fast disappearing, and the same terrible doom is sweeping away the natives of Bengal.¤ “Sickness and mortality are so great from fever and cholera, that the people are scarcely able to dispose of the dead. Houses are falling down, every member of the household having been cut off. It is high time that some measures were passed and steps taken to arrest, if possible, the fearful destruction of life which threatens to leave the land without inhabitants – a wilderness within a few miles of the capital of India.”
* ”Good Words,” 1866.
¤ ”Indian Daily News,” Jan. 2, 1871.
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In the peopling of North America by the Anglo-Saxons there has been no amalgamation with the aboriginals; but wherever the Spaniards have colonized, the opposite of this has taken place. The inhabitants of Peru and Southern America are more or less half-castes: it is said their gentlemen boast of the Indian blood in their veins. In Mexico there is the same mixture of Spanish and Indian blood, and out of a population of 6,000,000, there are 5,000,000 of Indians; this contrasted with the United States and Canada is one of the most inexplicable problems of the age. In the presence of the one race the Indian perishes and dies out: in the presence of the other he holds his own, and is, as in Mexico, the most numerous section of the population. Some have tried to account for the mortality of these different races as caused by their coming in contact with a higher civilization, or by imbibing the vices of civilised men; but can it be proved that the Anglo-Saxon emigrant is more civilised than the Spanish emigrant, or that he has more civilised vices, whatever that can mean, than the other? In the absence of such proof, however, it may be stated that the Spanish emigrant is quite his equal in the former, and may be his superior in the latter qualification.
We read that the Anglo-Saxon is a mixture of several races. How can that appear possible with these facts, taken from the history of the last three centuries confronting us, and proving, as clearly as analogy can prove, that amalgamation in the mass with any other race has been a physical impossibility; and that whatever number of separate races may have existed in remote times in the British Isles, all must have been subjected to the same unaccountable law of mortality that causes the aboriginals of every land the Anglo-Saxon colonises to die out.
The ruins of a pre-historic period, leads us to this conclusion, and afford sufficient evidence that the former inhabitants of the British Isles have become extinct. On Dartmoor there are the remains of roads and bridges, so firmly though rudely constructed, that have withstood the impetuosity of the winter torrents of that wild region, which also contains villages that have for centuries stood in their wild solitude, within few miles of peopled towns, yet unknown to man. In the Scilly Islands there are the remains of fortifications and burial places, and there is a vague legend among the inhabitants that a large city has been submerged, but all records of the former inhabitants have been lost. The same mystery envelops the origin
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of the round towers in Ireland; no one can tell who built them, or what possible use they could serve. No tradition has lingered among the peasantry of any locality in which these buildings stand; and this is the more remarkable for the Irish peasantry are particularly tenacious of the traditions of the past, for a sort of unwritten history handed down from one generation to another is found among them to this day, but the commencement is always with the wars and invasions of the Danes. In Scotland there are not so many monuments of an unknown past remaining; but in examining the traditions of the north-western parts and of the islands especially, we discover nothing but the exploits of rovers and pirates. The same can be said of Kent, where we hear of the men of Kent and the Kentish men, but nothing that goes further into the past than the arrival of the Danes; and were it not that the Roman occupation of the country is recorded by their own historians, it would have remained unknown, for there is no evidence to shew or leading us in any way to suppose that the ancestors of the present inhabitants were in the British Isles when the Romans arrived.* Macaulay observes, “Concerning the other provinces of the Western Empire we have continuous information. It is only in Britain that an age of fable completely separates two ages of truth. This may appear very humiliating to our national vanity in one sense, but such appears to be the truth nevertheless. For there is a blank in our national history between the departure of the Romans and the historian Bede of about three hundred years, and the materials with which he has filled the gap are entirely at variance with tradition, and also disagree with the previous history of Tacitus, which if not the earliest is the most authentic history of the island; for although Julius Cæsar was the first historian whose works has descended to us, yet he had no means of knowing very much, as he only “made himself master of the sea-shore;” and Tacitus adds¤ “Antecedent writers adorned conjecture with all the graces of language; what I have to offer will have nothing but the plain truth to recommend it.” The received accounts therefore of the Welch or Cumri being the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, and of their ancestors living in the island for more than a thousand years before the arrival of Julius Cæsar, are manifest fables, and the wonder is how they have passed current.
* History of England.
¤ Life of Agricola.
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That the Cumbri or Cimbri have an older history than any people in Europe is certain; but it is not British history, for Tacitus makes no mention of the Cimbri whatever in the time of Agricola: and knowing his accuracy as an historian, could he be expected as a Roman to omit recording the prowess of his countrymen in having subdued their old hereditary enemies the Cimbri, if such a people were in Britain at the time; failing to recognise them was impossible; upwards of two hundred years of incessant warfare had fully established their mutual acquaintance. Nor is there any mention of German tribes among the inhabitants of South Britain; on the contrary, the latter were said to resemble the people of Gaul and Spain, some of them having an olive complexion and crisp hair. The Caledonians however were said to be of German extraction, known by their “ruddy hair and lusty limbs,” for all the Germans had a familiar likeness “the same form and feature, stern blue eyes, ruddy hair, their bodies large and robust.”* Here is clear historical proof that the Cimbri were not in South Britain in the time of Agricola; and we may infer from the description of his last campaign, that the Caledonians who were not exterminated by the Romans destroyed themselves. Tacitus relates that “after the last battle, some laid violent hands on their wives and children, determined with savage compassion to end their misery. The following day displayed a deep and melancholy silence all around; the hills deserted; houses at a distance involved in smoke and fire, and not a mortal discovered by the scouts: the whole a vast and dreary solitude.” But in a few years more the balance of life was more than restored: the Romans were attacked by barbarians from the north; it was the well known gigantic form, the same ruddy hair and stern blue eyes which they had so often encountered beyond the Rhine; and they were forced to abandon their northern line of fortifications between the Forth and Clyde, and fall back upon their southern line of defence between the Tyne and Carlisle. As years rolled on this second wall was taken and retaken, broken down and repaired, and finally abandoned by the Romans; and the Barbarians (called also in scorn, from words in the barbarian tongue, Pict and Scot) occupied the whole northern end of the island to the Humber, and the western seabord to the land’s end, the southern extreme of the island; and their descendants, the Cimbri, hold the same territory to this day.
* Tacitus.
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Eventually the Romans left the island, and all written history ceased for more than three hundred years; but tradition has handed down a continuous account of the arrival of the northern tribes from Cimbrica, the modern Denmark, who in turn were all called Danes, who settled on the east and south-east coasts, and in Ireland, and built in the latter island large and well-fortified cities.
Again a written history commences; and the historian peoples the interval between the departure of the Romans and his own time with the Saxons, who, having been invited by the ancient Britons to defend them from the Picts and Scots, seized the country themselves, and drove the ancient inhabitants into the mountains of Wales and Cornwall. But this is a most improbable story, to make people settle in the most valuable parts of the whole country, in the only localities that contained the mineral wealth of the island, such as tin, silver, lead, copper, and, according to Tacitus, gold; for it happens that the Cimbri are settled on the whole of the coalfields and mines, from the Firth of Forth to the land’s end. Undoubtedly the historian would have been perplexed by the dialect of the Welch, or Cimbri, and, consequently, confounded the people with the former inhabitants who, according to tradition, made their escape into Gaul, and was unacquainted with the fact that the ancient writers called “the language of the northern tribes* indifferently Cambrian, Scandinavian, Gothic.” But tradition makes no mention of the Saxons whatever. There is no word of their speech, whatever it was, mingled with the language. Trench says that in every hundred words of English sixty are from the Scandinavian, thirty from the Latin, five from the Greek, and five from other sources; and the hypothesis which Sharon Turner advances for the origin of the Saxons, as a people distinct from the Cimbri, and descended from the Scythians, or Sakae, mentioned by Herodotus, is wholly untenable, because Tacitus mentions no such people among the Germans. He makes mention of the Angles; but a great part of the Angles are incorporated with the Cimbri, and still speak their language; and having given their name to the whole island, it is by their name that the entire people are known to the rest of Europe.
* Rapin.
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Tacitus informs us that in his time German was a new name; but whenever he mentions the people who invaded Italy, and conquered, or rather annihilated five Roman armies in the best days of the Republic, they are always spoken of under the generic name of the Cymbri or Teutons. The Romans became acquainted with them about the year B.C. 111; and Saxo Grammaticus informs us that there were invasions of Ireland in the year of the Incarnation by the Northmen, and they were then powerful in ships; but who the Saxons were, or when they arrived, or where they settled, is a subject on which tradition is entirely silent, for of a written history there is none.
There is another mythical people called the Celts, said to inhabit the British isles in common with the Saxon, with which the Cymbri are always confounded, and said to be of the same race as the Gauls; but the confounding of the Cymbri with the Gauls is making a very great mistake, for the two peoples were quite distinct. This is shewn in the speech of Cerealis, the Roman General, to the Gauls.* “You had called the Germans to your aid, and those barbarians proved the worst of tyrants: they enslaved without distinction those who invited them and those who resisted. The battles which Rome has fought with the Teutons and Cimbrians need not be mentioned.” And again, the address of Civilis, the Batavian chief, to the Germans. “The Romans,” he said, “would shrink with terror from the approach of those gallant warriors (the nations beyond the Rhine). The Gauls were of no account – a race of dastards, and the ready prey of the conqueror.” The testimony, therefore, of Tacitus is that the Cimbri were not Gauls but Germans; and as the tradition of Brittany are to the effect that their ancestors migrated from England to escape the Northmen, it remains an open question whether the two giants in Guildhall are not all that represent the mythical Saxon and Celt.
Plutarch, when describing the Cimbri, says: “They are called Cimbri, not from their manners – it is the name of their race.” Twenty-four centuries have now elapsed since they were first mentioned in history by that name. Herodotus¤ relates that nomade Scythian tribes from Massagetes crossed the river Araxis in the territory of the Cimmerians, attacked
* Tacitus.
¤ Herodoti, Lib. Iv., s. xi.
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and expelled them from the country, and adds in confirmation of it, that the territory possessed (in his time) by the Scythians was formerly called Cimmeriom; and it is among the most bewildering and apparently unimportant of merely accidental things that brings up their name again.
The writing on a slab dug out of the ruins of long-buried Nineveh is deciphered, and the inscription reads:* “Sargon came up against the city of Samarina and the tribes of Beth Khumri, and carried captive into Assyria 27,280 families.” The Cumri or Cimbri are thus shewn to be the ten tribes of Israel, and from the circumstance that the Teutons are always mentioned along with them by Tacitus, the conclusion is forced upon us that they are of Judah; for we know from Bible history that the greater part of them never returned. The total number of them given by Ezra and Nehemiah is forty-two thousand. It was also said by Jehovah, “I will remove Judah out of my sight as I have removed Israel.” And, in fact, the main land of Denmark bears their name, Juteland, to this day.
The conduct of the Caledonians in destroying their wives and children after their final defeat by the Romans, is exactly like what occurred at the taking of Massada in Judea.¤ The Jews killed their wives and children with their own hands, and then destroyed themselves. Florus relates the same of the Cimbri in Italy, when defeated by Marius. When the Cimbri women saw that all was lost, they strangled their children, and either destroyed themselves in one scene of mutual slaughter, or with the sashes that bound up their hair hung suspended by the neck on the boughs of the trees or on the tops of their wagons. And this is what Jehovah declared by the Prophet should characterise the Israelites:# “And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of this evil family which remain in all the places whither I have driven them, saith the Lord of Hosts.”
It is difficult, at this distance of time, to know the reason of the Israelites being called Khumri by the Assyrians, although analogy would lead to the conclusion that it was from the name of their idolatrous worship, and this is to some
* Ruins of Bible Lands.
¤ Josephus, Wars of the Jews.
#Jeremiah viii. 3.
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extent borne out by the Bible.* In the margin of the Hebrew name of the idolatrous priest is Chemarim, and the word in the LXX. Is spelled Χωμαριμ, Chomarim. The only one of the missing tribes that can be traced with any degree of certainty is Dan.¤ “The Danes and Jutes are Jews of the tribe of Dan;” and it is stated in Revelation# that all the other tribes were sealed – and the apparent meaning of the word “sealed” is to close, or conceal. That it has a deeper and more hidden meaning is admitted; but it is unaccountable that while the name Dan has descended to us with its pronunciation unchanged, that the other tribes should be hidden away; and as it was characteristic of that tribe, when in their own land, to call their chief town and other places by the name of their tribe, we can obviously trace their rout from the Caspian to the Baltic, by the names of the rivers Don, Dinaper, Dniester, Danube, a town in Prussia, Dantzic, and Denmark, which the Danes pronounce Dan-merk. In the British isles we have Dunmow, Dundee, Dundalk, which are evidently the broad Norwegian pronunciation, Denmark being by them pronounced Dawn-merk.
Many of the rivers in the British isles have nearly the same names as those lying between the Baltic and the Caspian, such as Dane, Don, Doon, and in addition to this some of the harbours appear to have Hebrew names, such as Sheerness, Inverness. The word “ness” as in Jehovah-nissi,§ is translated by the LXX. Καταφνυη (refuge); so that these harbours are literally Sheer-refuge, Inver-refuge; and those towns with names ending in ester, which etymologists tell us are derived from Castra, (a Roman camp) but the pronunciation in no single instance bears out such a conclusion. For instance, Doncaster: it is pronounced Donc-ester; Chichester, Leicester. Also in Ireland: Munster, Ulster. The latter is obviously El-ester, literally the goddess Ester that was worshipped by the Scandinavian tribes, and whose festival was held in the month of April, about the same time as the Pascal or Passover, and in commemoration of which the name “Easter” has been retained. The origin of this name appears to be the edict of Queen Esther, and the Jewish feast of Purim.^
*2 Kings xxiii. 5.
¤ Vetus Chronicon, Holsatise, p. 54.
#Rev. vii. 5-8.
§Exodus xvii. 15.
^ Esther ix. 32.
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The names of villages beginning with Bally, Balla, etc., are evidently derived from Baal, the idol worshipped by the Israelites; and it is human nature to name a village or place of worship after their god or patron saint. And as to the improbability of such rovers finding their way across from Norway to Scotland, there is nothing improbable in the case, for Tacitus relates that one of the German cohorts of Agricola’s army seized one of the ships, put to sea, passed round the north end of the island, and reached some part of Germany. This, of itself, goes far to prove that these tribes had some knowledge of the route. As to the distance, it is only 357 miles from the Naze of Norway to Inverness; and a boat running five miles per hour would cross in three days. The two places lying directly east and west, we can quite understand that a boat steered right before an easterly wind, and in the direction of the setting sun, from the entrance of the Baltic, would make the land about Inverness and the Orkney Islands, coasting along them would reach Ireland in the same way. The distance appears nothing at sea, for in clear weather they would be no more than one day out of sight of land, the coast being high on both sides may be seen probably a distance of fifty miles. Therefore, agreeable with tradition, Ireland, Scotland, and the north-east of England would be peopled from the north by the Scandinavians. And after the Romans left they poured in on the east coast. In reality their attack upon the Romans from the north appears to have more of strategy than accident. They continued to keep up a constant succession of migrations from the Christian era to the final invasion of the Normans, who were also the same people. Their history since they settled in the British isles, and more especially during the last three centuries, is in too close agreement with the Bible to be accidental. There is no other nation in the world that answers to the Bible conditions, no other people are obliged to colonise in order to make room for the ever-increasing population. *”The land of thy destruction shall even be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants; and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away. The children which thou shalt bear after thou hast lost the other shall say again in thine ears, The place is too strait for me, give place to me that I may dwell.”
*Isaiah xlix. 19, 20.
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This passage has long since become history. The yearly rate of increase at home, according to the returns of the Register-General, is estimated at half a million, and probably a tenth of this number yearly leave the country.
There is another remarkable fact: that Protestantism is almost exclusively confined to them, and geographically to the north-west corner of Europe. It is true that they have carried it with them wherever they have settled; in America, Australia, and in Europe especially. The exact boundary could almost be drawn by the finger on the map: a line from (Luther’s) Wittemberg north to the Baltic, and another from the same city continued west to the land’s end (England), incloses, with a few exceptions, the whole of Protestant Europe; and when the Bible (at the Reformation) was translated into the vernacular of these people they seized hold of it with an earnestness that has never been explained – as though it had been a long-lost certificate of their birthright; but the inhabitants of Europe south and east of the boundary referred to, with few noble exceptions, have shown the greatest indifference to the Bible from the first, and continue to do so, and have at times made some strenuous and nearly successful efforts to destroy it, and Protestantism along with it. Macaulay has observed that no large society whose language is not Teutonic has ever become Protestant. There is something inexplicable in the fact that the majority of the Latin races are so opposed to it.
Mr. Bickersteth’s comments on Romans, chap. Ii. “St. Paul leads us to the idea: that through the fall of the Jews salvation came to the Gentiles; that the Gentiles, by unbelief, highmindedness, and not continuing in His goodness, may be cut off; and that the natural branches shall be grafted into their own olive-tree.” It is also stated (Isaiah lx. 2) – “For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee.” In the heading of the chapter from which this is taken it is called “the glory of the Church.” But why should this be claimed for the Church to the exclusion of the children of Israel? Is not the Bible the history of Israel; recording God’s dealings with them in the past, and recording also what He intends to do with them in the future? That the Gentiles were to participate in their privileges is certain. But it is not said that they were to supersede them.
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The language of the last quotation, therefore, forces upon us one of the two conclusions from which there is no logical escape:- Either that there is a time of darkness and ignorance yet to come on the world, in which all traces of Gospel light and knowledge are to be obliterated; or else that the world was in that predicted state of mental darkness and ignorance when Luther commenced the Reformation. The latter conclusion is fully supported by history.* “There was then through the greater part of Europe very little learning, and that little was confined to the clergy. Not one man in five hundred could have spelled his way through a psalm. Books were few and costly; the art of printing was unknown.” Also Church history from the closing part of the fifteenth century to the commencement of the sixteenth. We read that “unlettered and rude men wholly destitute of merit rise to the priesthood: no attention is paid to purity of life, a liberal education, or a good conscience: the bishops, occupied with temporal affairs, devolve the trouble of examining candidates upon persons of no experience; the study of Scripture and learning are totally neglected by the priests, why prefer occupying themselves with training of dogs and birds; they sit with tipplers in the taverns, are addicted to gaming and debauchery, and destitute of the slightest fear of God; they can neither speak nor write Latin, and scarcely know enough of German to explain the Gospel.”¤
It is the opinion of many Protestants that a severe time is in store for them, - a fiery ordeal, short and terrible, but out of which they are to emerge victorious. None seem to expect such a time as the prophet describes, “when darkness shall cover the face of the earth, and gross darkness the people:” when the Vandals shall again become paramount, and destroy all knowledge, science, literature and religion, and inaugurate another dark age similar to the one in which Europe was enveloped for centuries: but they expect and believe that the Jews will be converted; for they are to be the great missionary people, who are destined to carry the Gospel successfully to the heathen, as both these articles of their belief are stated clearly and repeatedly in the Bible; although it does not state, nor do they expect, that all the heathen will be converted, because our Lord told Hs disciples shortly before His crucifixion that
*Macaulay’s History of England.
¤ ”Reformers before the Reformation.”
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*“the Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness to all nations; and then shall the end come.”
But in addition to this Protestants also believe that all this is to happen in the future. “The time has yet to come” was the argument the Jews made use of to excuse themselves when commanded to build the Temple after their return from Babylon; and Protestants have either inherited or acquired very much from the Jewish unbelief in reference to similar matters. The Jews maintain that the Messiah has not come, and the Protestants are equally certain that the conversion of the Jew has not taken place. But their inference is about as logical on this point as the Jew’s on the other; because the Bible states distinctly that the conversion of the Jews should be preceded by a night or time of mental darkness; and Paul writing to the Romans, in a passage already quoted, intimates that if the Gentiles fall away the Gospel will return to Israel; and we know from the history of the period that the world was in a state of mental ignorance answering to the prophetic description when the Reformation commenced, and the people who received the light in the first place were those inhabiting the north-west of Europe, whose descendants are still Protestants. To the Jew were committed the oracles of God, and they were destined to make known the glory of God to the nations: and when we find the people of one nationality carrying out the mission that was decreed for Israel, and on a scale unprecedented in Apostolic times, which, from the want of the facilities of travelling, could not then be carried out, and without the most remote idea that they are the people destined for such a work, but from some unknown irresistible impetus that has gathered force in the face of difficulties and obstructions, often on the part of their national Government, have come to the belief in their inner hearts that they are under the obligation of making known the Gospel to the world. It is true that the Jewish denomination, so-called, are not doing this, as they are conservatives still, and from the language made use of by St. Paul they are destined to remain so until the remainder of their nation are brought in: ¤-“For I wish you were not to mistake this mystery, brethren, lest you become proud of yourselves; that induration
* Matt. Xxiv. 14.
¤ Rom. Xi – translation from the Greek.
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for part of Israel is decreed until the complement of His nations come in.” The translation in the authorised version is “the fulness of the Gentiles.”
It must also be admitted that the propagators of Roman Catholicism have fearlessly and successfully spread their doctrines among the heathen in Europe and elsewhere throughout their entire history. But their principal aim has always been to establish the authority of the Church; and whether they connected these two things in their mind, that the glory of God and the glory of the Church had the same meaning, is best known to themselves; but they have fully succeeded in spreading the glory of the latter superstructure instead of the glory of God. And in contrast to this, the great aim of Protestantism has been to give the heathen of all lands, in their own tongues, the Word of God without curtail or comment. An anonymous writer who published a work on prophecy in 1860 accuses England of going with the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other, and demands in words to this effect, “What right have they [the English] to spread the Bible everywhere, unless they are the Israelites? But the idea is too preposterous to be entertained.” The general public have probably no idea that the world is girt with missionary stations, all of them proclaiming the glory of God and appearing as so many outposts of Zion, each more advanced towards the sun-rising. Among the African tribes and the tribes inhabiting the islands of the Southern tropics great changes have taken place for the better. None of them had a written language until the missionaries went there; and generally the first book printed in each has been the Bible. The missions of India and its dependencies are on a large scale, and there are numerous villages of native Christians with their unpretending little church and schools on the outlets of the Ganges and Irrawaddy, and in the Straits settlements, to show that something has been achieved. And the same is true of China: the people who are carrying on this work, it may be said, are exclusively inhabitants of the British Isles, the United States, and Germany; that is, those who are proclaiming Bible Christianity. There are Roman Catholic missionaries, it is true; but they do not give the Bible; and no disparagement is here thrown upon their sincerity, but it should be obvious to themselves, as it is to others, that in reality they only succeed in changing the name of one idol for another.
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It is stated in several places in the Bible that there would be a sign or a standard set among the Israelites by which they should be recognised; and in another passage Jesus is called that sign, and that He is set for the falling and rising again of many in Israel. And what is the standard of Protestantism? Is it not Jesus? He is the sole and only representative at the Court of Heaven.
Of the future we know nothing; but, apparently, politically France has a footing in Egypt, and any misunderstanding with her rulers will at any moment stop the Overland route. And if India is to be held, then England must gain possession of Palestine, make Acre a port, fortify it, and run a railway from there to the Persian Gulf, and so colonise those vast lands between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates. The general belief is that the territory through which the Suez Canal is cut has been ceded to France by the Egyptian government, so that any rapture between this country and France would stop the Overland route, and compel us to return to the old route round the Cape, of three months instead of the present one of three weeks. As long as we are at peace with France it is all very well, but one thing is very certain, that she (France) has got the entire control of the canal, and let the property belong to whomsoever it may, possession is nine points of the law, and France must have changed very materially if she does not keep possession and find a plausible pretext for so doing. It is well known that the rest of Europe, with the single exception of England, are perfectly indifferent in the matter; regrets are now of little use, a remedy should be found, for disguise the matter as we may France is in possession of that narrow neck of land that connects the two seas; and there is at this present time an opportunity of making an amicable arrangement by giving Turkey a province, somewhere between India and Persia, in exchange for Syria and the Euphrates Valley, in order to run a railway from the Persian Gulf to the Meditarranean.
It has often been admitted that if India is to be held this must be done; but why not do it now, and send the emigrants there who are now being sent to Australia, and who become bankrupt in consequence? they are misled by promises of land from government, and when they get there they find it a worthless desert which they cannot cultivate for want of water, having to go in many places five and six miles to procure a can of
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brackish water; whereas there is a magnificent country, well watered, of great extent, and through which could be made the high road between India and the Mediterranean, - at the present time an untenanted waste. France could then keep Egypt, and with her consent, or without it, give Turkey an equivalent for Syria and Mesopotamia; for it is obvious to every one that the object of Russia in making the present demonstration on the Indian frontier is to compel England to keep a large army in India, so as to prevent her from interfering in Europe. Then why not meet the views of Russia? if not by a compromise, at least by establishing a neighbouring Anglo-Saxon State as a nucleus to support that army. It may be said that such a step would be the means of embroiling this country with the rest of Europe, but the probabilities are that it would not. Prussia has incorporated a part of Denmark, France, and the German States; so a slight concession to Russia, that as a simple hint she will not be interfered with within reasonable limits, and the same to France in Egypt; and it is wonderful how smooth the adjustment could be arranged. Besides, there is this at stake, viz., self-preservation, as no doubt the matter could be settled with Turkey alone, who would be but too glad to close with the offer, and by that means obtain a powerful friendly State on her frontier, who could and would make security to the native moneyed classes in India, who have been taught by the sad experience of generations that whoever wins they must lose, and who know as well as anyone that if the States are so placed, physically or geographically, that they must be under the protection of a more powerful State: it is better to remain under their present protectors, the extent of whose exactions they know to a “cowery,” than go through the ordeal of a change of protectors, the limits of whose cupidity they do not know; consequently the present attitude of their would-be protectors causes them a great deal of uneasiness. They ask, Will the English fight the Russians if they invade India? Are they able to do so? Now the latter query has no doubt been caused by the injudicious tone of the Indian press, forgetting the difference between an Indian and an English public; the latter perfectly understand the irony of pretended national weakness when made the theme of the newspapers for party purposes, and the former do not. It is unfair to tell the Indian public, as many of the Indian
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papers do, that if Russia made a descent on the country we have no means of withstanding them, we are without an army, the country is little better than bankrupt, without money or credit. There is a vast difference between telling them this, and telling the same story to the British public.
Independent of all other considerations there is a great amount of English capital invested in India, in works public and private, such as canals, roads, coal-mines, railways, factories, and telegraphs, which, considering the extent of country, are second to none in the world, and which is bringing about a social revolution among the natives that would put the social progress of some districts at home to the blush; but one thing is wanting, England must be brought nearer, - in other words, it is absolutely necessary to establish an Anglo-Saxon colony on the continent of Asia, and within sixty hours’ run of India, not in India itself, which is too hot and deteriorates the race.
It is unnecessary to recapitulate the causes that led to the conquest of India; no one pretends to say that they were in themselves strictly right, and as a nation we can no more justify the conduct of our Scandinavian forefathers for taking possession of England and exterminating the former inhabitants; but here we are, and the natives with whom we have coquetted in times of prosperity, have no wish to be abandoned in the days of adversity: there are mutual interests at stake, ours and theirs, and the great desire of both is, that British statesmen should take early and effectual to provide for the security of the country. It is too late to think of the Red Sea route now, we must have another; it is also too late to tell us we should have remained at home, and thereby have escaped this tremendous responsibility: how can we remain at home, when that home is throwing off year by year its half million of new life for which room must be provided elsewhere! No other people are under the necessity of making these incessant migrations but ourselves.
Australia has already as many inhabitants as it can sustain; and the cry is, We want more room! and we want it in such a geographical position as to be able to defend what we have already; let us have that neck of land lying between the head of the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean: all know that France has got the other one: we shall dispossess no one; the climate is more suitable for us than having to go and endure the extremes of heat and cold in North America. We must
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hold India, and in order to hold it we must have Syria and the Euphrates valley, and in order to hold them we must colonise them. Who knows? God’s ways are inscrutable: He may make Israel’s return a political necessity.
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