therefore I go to show myself unto them. And I command you that ye shall write these sayings, after I am gone, that if it be so that my people at Jerusalem, they who have seen me, and been with me in my ministry, do not ask the Father in my name that the) may receive a knowledge of you by the Holy Ghost, and also of the other tribes that they know not of, that these sayings which ye shall write shall be kept, and shall be manifested unto the Gentiles, that through the fullness of the Gentiles the remnant of their seed who shall be scattered forth upon the face of the earth, because of their unbelief, may be brought to a knowledge of me, their Redeemer. And then will I gather them in from the four quarters of the earth; and then will I fulfill the covenant which the Father hath made unto all the people of the house of Israel." (III. Nephi, chap. xvi.)

The statement of Jesus above cited, that the Ten Tribes did not dwell in the land of Jerusalem either in any parts of that land round about, effectually disposes of the theory of Josephus and others, that they dwelt near the river Euphrates. The reason why the Jews had lost sight of their brethren of the house of Israel is explained by Jesus in the same chapter of the Book of Mormon as that from which the above quotation is taken. He states: "The other tribes hath the Father separated from them [the Jews]; and it is because of their iniquity that they knew not of them."

Some have imagined that it was unscriptural to look for Israel except in three places: The scattered Jews in all the world, the Lamanites on this continent, and the Ten Tribes in Azareth. But we claim that we have abundant reason from scripture to expect to find the seed of Joseph as well as that of Judah in every nation under heaven. The prophecies recorded in the Old Testament expressly state that Israel, especially Ephraim, was to be scattered among all people.

How completely they were to be scattered is shown by the following prophecies:

Hosea (xiii: 3) in rebuking Ephraim's idolatry in the name of the Lord, says:

"Therefore they shall be as the morning cloud and as the early dew that passeth away, as the chaff that is driven by the whirlwind out of the floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney."

Amos (ix: 8, 9) states:

"Behold the eyes of the Lord are upon the sinful kingdom [of Israel], and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord. For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth."

Could any scattering be more complete?

We are directly told that the Lord will bring His sons (Ephraim still being His first-born) from afar and His daughters from the ends of the earth. It is further said that He will gather His Israel—not from the north alone—but from the north and from the south, from the east and from the west, and bring them to Zion; and that He (the Lord) will gather them from all countries (not America nor the polar regions only, but all countries) in which He had scattered them; among other places from the coasts of the earth. How apt a description is this last sentence of the lands from which the great bulk of modern Israel have been gathered. From the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, from the coasts of the North and Baltic Seas, they have come to Zion by tens of thousands.

President Brigham Young stated in the discourse quoted in a previous chapter, that ninety-nine out of every hundred of the Elders of the Church of Jesus Christ were of the blood of Israel. The people whom he was addressing were men of various nationalities, but by far the greater portion of them were descendants of those races that in the fourth and succeeding centuries of the Christian era swarmed in myriads out of that mother of nations, Scandinavia, and filled central and western Europe with a new civilization; the people, in fact, who overthrew the great Roman empire and laid the foundation of the majority of the nations of modern Europe. It was to the descendants of the Goths, the Danes, the Jutes, the Angles, the Saxons, the Normans, the Franks, that he was talking, and in our next chapter we shall bring forward some of the historical arguments used by Gentile writers to prove the Israelitish descent of these races, more particularly of that dominant one known today as the Anglo-Saxon. We do not this because we think the word of God's servants requires proving by Gentile evidence, but because it is a satisfaction to many minds, not only to know that a thing is so, but to be able to give a reason, or advance an argument to demonstrate why it is so.

CHAPTER V.

The Origin of the Anglo-Saxons—Derivation of the Word Saxon—The Goths and Vandals—Overthrow of the Roman Empire—The Mythology of the Ancient Scandinavians—Baldur—Their Early Literature.

As the question, "What became of the Ten Tribes?" still remains to the world an unanswered historical enigma, so also is the question unanswered, "Whence originated the vast hosts of so-called barbarians who, descending from the frigid regions of Scandinavia, filled Europe with new races, new laws, new ideas, new languages and new institutions?" Some have traced a connection between the loss of the one people and the advent of the other, and one author of repute—Mr. Sharon Turner—extensively quoted in this connection, claims that the original home of the Anglo-Saxons was in the very country where Israel is historically lost, and further states that these people commenced their migration therefrom about the same time as the tribes of Jacob must have taken their journey northward.

Mr. Turner, in his valuable history of the Anglo-Saxons, while discussing the Teutonic descent of many of the nations of modern Europe, says:

"It is peculiarly interesting to us, because, from its branches, not only our own immediate ancestors, but also those of the most celebrated nations of modern Europe have unquestionably descended. The Anglo-Saxons, Lowland Scotch, Normans, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, Germans, Dutch, Belgians, Lombards and Franks have all sprung from that great fountain of the human race, which we have distinguished by the terms, Scythian, German or Gothic. The first appearance of the Scythian tribes in Europe, may be placed, according to Strabo and Homer, about the eighth, or according to Herodotus, in the seventh century before the Christian era. The first scenes of their civil existence, and of their progressive power were in Asia to the east of the Araxes. Here they multiplied and extended their territorial limits for some centuries, unknown to Europe." With regard to the Saxons, Mr. Turner writes, "They were a German or Teutonic, that is a Gothic or Scythian tribe; and of the various Scythian nations which have been recorded, the Sakai or Sacae are the people from whom the descent of the Saxons may be inferred, with the least violation of probability. They were so celebrated that the Persians called all the Scythians by the name of Sacae. * * * That some of the divisions of this people were really called Sakasuna (from which we have our word Saxon or Sacson) is obvious from Pliny; for he says that the Sakai who settled in Armenia were named Sacassani which is Saka-suna, spelt by a person who was unacquainted with the meaning of the combined words; and the name Sacasina, which they gave to that part of Armenia they occupied, is nearly the same sound as Saxonia. It is also important to remark, that Ptolemy mentions a Scythian people sprung from the Sakai, who resided near the Baltic Sea, by the name of Saxones."

Mr. Turner was not advocating the Israelitish ancestry of the Saxons, hence those who believe in that theory put the greater stress on his two most important statements: that the forefathers of this race dwelt in the region east of the Araxes, the exact spot to which Israel was carried