Ethan Smith

“ Whose inheritance (in the Holy Land) has been torn from them, and overrun by neighboring hostile nations, often symbolized by rivers, even as the lands by the sides of the Nile often had their boundaries swept away by the overflowings of that river. Thus the Romans first, then the Persians, the Saracens, the Egyptians, and the Turks, have overflowed and possessed the Holy Land. But the line of divine promise will restore it to the Hebrews.*
Go thou protecting people; shadow with thy wings my ancient family, as though the Most High should say. ”

“ The river Nile periodically overflowed its banks, and swept away the boundaries of every man's inheritance on its interval. Every man, then, had to depend on a noted line, to measure anew and find his land. So the Hebrews, having by their sins, and expulsion from Canaan, and from the covenant of Abraham, lost all the visible boundaries of their inheritance, have no ground of hope of regaining their standing either in Palestine, or in the covenant of grace, but the line of the mere and sovereign promise of God, for their restoration. ”

“ Give not sleep to your eyes, till a house be builded to your God, from those ancient and venerable materials.—Were not your fathers sent into that far distant world, not only to be (in their posterity) built up a great protecting nation; but also to be the instruments of gathering, or recovering the miserable remnant of my outcasts there, in the last days?* Rejoice, then, ye distinguished people in your birth-right, and engage in the work by Heaven assigned. Let not those tribes of my ancient people, whom I have borne as on eagles' wings for so many ages ”

“ What nation is better qualified to search and to discover them in their unknown retreats? Sheltered in the capacious bosom of mountains, that reach the clouds, occupying the extensive sides of rivers rapid and broad, whose waves never felt the keel, and on whose banks a highway has never been stretched ”

“ A present of this people must be brought by you, sequestered land shadowing with wings, unto the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the Mount Zion.
Ye friends of God in the land addressed; can you read this prophetic direction of the ancient prophet Isaiah, without having your hearts burn within you? Surely you cannot, if you can view it as an address of the Most High to you. God here exalts you, in the last days, the age of terror and blood, as high as the standard to be raised for the collection of the seed of Abraham; "on the mountains." ”

“ It has become evident to me, that the Lord reserves for the Christians of America the scriptural means of effectually benefitting the lost stock of Israel. Nothing can be conceived worse than the present state of religion over the continent (of Europe) in general. And nothing so subversive of that little serious impression, which a month or two of superficial teaching may have made, than their being left to the danger which abounds on every hand in what are denominated places of Christian worship. ”

“ The ten tribes, as well as the Jews, belong to the "nation scattered and peeled, and terrible from the beginning." Yes, the stick of Ephraim is to become one in the hand of the prophet, with the stick of the Jews; Ezek. xxxvii. 15 [16] .—If it is a fact, that the aborigines of this "land shadowing with wings," are the tribes of Israel; we perceive at once what can be done to fulfil the noted demand of God, as it relates to them.—And all who fear God will leap for joy, that as the Jerusalem mission is already under way; so missions to these tribes of Israel are already under way! ”

“ Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert" [Isa 43:16, 19] . In Isai. xi. is this wonderful restoration. Ephraim and Judah are both restored, the one from his "dispersed," the other from his "outcast" state; and their mutual
envies are forever healed. And the places from which they are recovered are noted; among which are "the isles of the sea;" or lands away over the sea, and "the four corners of the earth." Certainly then, from America! This surely is one of the four corners of the earth. ”

“ They could traverse the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and be able to send missionaries to Jerusalem, or to the ends of the earth, in those last days, or convey the Hebrews from one continent to another, with an expedition similar to that with which the Nile (beyond which this new world is beheld) used to be navigated with the skiffs made of the bulrush, or the rind of the papyrus.*
Verse 2, concluded. "Saying, go ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from the beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled." ”

“ If our natives be indeed from the tribes of Israel, American Christians may well feel, that one great object of their inheritance here, is, that they may have a primary agency in restoring those "lost sheep of the house of Israel." Those Hebrews first occupied the blessings of the covenant under the old and dark dispensation. Then the Christian Gentiles came into possession of the blessings of this covenant, under its last, the Christian dispensation. Noah, more than four thousand years ago, in prophetic rhapsody, uttered the following prediction. ”

“ The sour grapes of their tyranny, violence, and licentiousness, will be found to be arriving at their growth; indicating that the time for the casting of the vine of the earth into the wine press of the wrath of God, is just at hand. ”

“ The great and generous Christian people, who occupy much of the land of those natives, and who are on the ground of their continent, and hence are the best prepared to meliorate their condition, and bring them to the knowledge and order of the God of Israel, must of course be the people to whom this work is assigned. This one consideration would do much toward the decision of our question, Who is the nation addressed? ”

“ Such an one applying to a professed minister of the reformed church, was informed, "that it was not necessary to his salvation to believe in the Divinity of Christ. It would be sufficient should he persevere in the duty of being a good member of society." ”

“ If so; you need not give yourself any trouble about being saved; you are sure enough of that!" Must not these things operate as a thousand arguments on the people of our Christian land, and of our superior advantages, to aid the children of Abraham, from whom we have received the blessings of salvation, and who in their turn are in a perishing state, and are stretching out their hands, and directing their wishful eyes across the Atlantic to us, for a return of that same word of eternal life? ”

“ The reception which proselytes with the best desires and characters meet with, is truly deplorable. The Society of Frankfort, had it not been for the American Meliorating Society, would have degenerated into a mere tract society, having constantly heard of the miseries which beset those proselytes whom they sent seeking for employment among Christians. ”

“ That ye may eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh all men, both free and bond, both small and great. ”

“ There is one passage which seems to place the captivity of Israel just subsequent to the prophecy of this prophet, Isai. vii. 8, where Jerusalem was invaded by a coalition of the king of Syria and the king of Israel;—Isaiah, to show that this joint effort against the Jews should not prevail, predicted "within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken that it be not a people." ”

“ And their devout gratitude to Heaven ought to rise, for the blessing of having their existence so near the period alluded to in this sublime prediction, when this land of liberty is beginning to feel her distinguishing immunities compared with the establishments of tyranny and corruption in the old continent. We may rejoice to have our earthly lot with a people of whom such an honorable mention is made by the prophetic spirit of old ”

“ In relation to the American people having a favourable agency in meliorating the condition of the Jews, as well as the tribes of Israel, it appears the thought has struck the minds of some on the eastern continent, as well as the western. ”

“ But these obstacles oppose difficulties easily surmounted by the nation of the canoe. Bred with the paddle in their hand, and taught to construct vessels lighter than the bulrush, they can ascend every stream, wind round the foot of every mountain, and as circumstances require, they can carry their canoe, or be carried by it." Had this author been led to believe that the natives in the vast wilds of America are the ten tribes of Israel; and that it comes within the prescribed duty of the people addressed by the prophet, to recover these outcast tribes ”

“ If this characteristic allude to this people in their dispersed state, as do the other characteristics here connected with it, it must be construed, as the Hebrew well admits, as their being subjected to great terror. ”