Page 124 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

120 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.

have been dispersed among all nations, is a fact written upon
tlie face of the whole earth; but that the ten tribes, or any other
number of tribes, have been lost in a body, we have no certain
evidence that I am aware of, and it would seem, therefore, to be
a.n idle fancy to look for them.*
Another theory is, that the American Indians had an inda'ge-
nous origi~, in accordance with the newly promulgated theory
that different races of men have descended from separate and
distinct creations or evolutions. It is impossible to give this
doctrine, so revolting to all the instincts of our nature, and so at
variance with the most obvious facts, more than a very brief
notice on this occasion.
-- - -
"When I say we have no evidence that the ten tribes have ever been lost.
I do not mean to affirm that they still exist as a distinct people.
Nothing but their religion has preserved the identity of the Jews as a distinct
people. We see this illustrated among them at the present day. A Jew oen-
not marry out of his own nation without abandoning his religion, and when he
abandons Judaism, no serious obstacle remains in the way of his forming an
alliance with one of another nation. Among the ancient Jews and ten tribes,
we End a tendency to mingle with the surrounding nations just in proportion 11s
they had apostatised from their religious faith and were placed in oircum-
stances favorable to amalgamation. During the Babylonlan captivity, the
Jews had made considerable progress in this direction. Though the captivity
lasted but seventy years, on their return, many of the priesthood had lost their
genealogy and were excluded from the priest's office; and it cost the com-
mon people a cruel struggle to rid themselves of such fbreign entanglements, as
had not become irretrievable. Ses Ezra, chap. 10, andNehemiah 13.
Now we should remember that the ten tribes apostatized from the religion
of' their f~thers almost from the moment of their revolt from under the house of
David. They became more and more corrupt, and were wasted by wars, pesti-
lence and famine, until the kingdom was broken up by Shnlmanezer, king of
Assyria, and the miserable remnant of the nation carried away captive and
distributed through the kingdom of their conqueror; and this is the last we
hear of the ten tribes. This was onehundred and thirty-three years before the
cr~ptivity of the remnant of the kingdom of Judah, and over two hundred years
before the decree of Artaxerxes for their return.
When we consider the thorough apostasy of the ten tribes before their
cz~ptivity, and the circumstances in which their captivity placed them-in small!
companies, in different localities, or still more minutely distributed among a
foreign people, with all restraint upon intermarriages thrown off, nothing seems
more natural than that they should have speedily become amalgamated with
the Assyrians and all traces of them, as n distinct race, obliterated. If any
of them retained their identity as Israelites at the time of the decree of Arta-
xerxes, two hundred years after their dispersion among the Assyrians, and had
any inclination to preserve and perpetuate their nationality, they doubtless
availed themselves of the privilege granted by the decree and returned to
Palestine and became incorporated with the more modern Jews; for the decree
was that all they of the people of Israel in his realm, who were so minded,
should return See Ezra 7-13.
The ten tribes are no doubt lost, but lost :IS drops are lost in the ocean.