A knowledge of geography is sufficient to show that the ten tribes cannot be in any of the other places named by the prophet, unless it be in the "Islands of the Sea;" an idea inconsistent with their being "the outcasts of Israel," in distinction from "the dispersed of Judah,” and utterly at variance with what we have learned of their history. We shall find a similar reference to Assyria in Isaiah, xxvii., 12, 13. In former chapters we have shown that the ten tribes did not return with Judah from the Babylonish captivity. The accomplishment of what is here predicted must, therefore, be future, as its language implies: "And ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come that were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the Lord in the holy mount of Jerusalem." Again, in Hosea, xi., 11, we are told, "they shall tremble as a dove out of the land of Assyria, and I will place them in their houses, saith the Lord," which, being introduced with the affecting apostrophe, "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel?"-was evidently spoken of the ten tribes. Its accomplishment is to be ushered in by some great revolution, when the Lord "shall roar like a lion;" something like the drying up of the Euphrates, as in the preceding quotation. Again,

in Zach., x., 9, 10: "They shall remember me in far countries, and they shall live with their children and turn again.. I will bring them again out of the land of Egypt, and gather them out of Assyria." The name Assyria, which occurs so frequently in connexion with the ten tribes, should obviously be taken in the same sense as in 2 Kings, xvii., 23: "So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day." In the first passage that we quoted (Isa., xi.), it certainly cannot be taken in a wider sense, as Shinar and Elam, &c., are mentioned with it as distinct countries.*

If the view we have taken of these prophecies be correct; with our knowledge of the present population of Assyria, the inference is unavoidable, that the ten tribes must be identical with the Nestorian Christians. Let us see how it appears. The ten tribes were carried into Assyria. The time of their return is still future. They are therefore in Assyria at the present time. Now the Nestorians

are the only people in Assyria who can be identified with the ten tribes.

Leaving the subject of their conversion to Christianity for future consideration, we will now examine the internal evidence, or the proof existing among themselves of their Israelitish origin.

* This prophecy was uttered after the captivity of the ten tribes, and, consequently, subsequent to the division of the ancient Assyran empire, which occurred B. C. 747.-Diodorus Siculus, lib. ii. Athenæus, lib. xii. Herodotus, lib. i. Justin, lib. i., c. 3.

CHAPTER V.

Their Language.-The same as that spoken by the Jews in their Region.-Evidence derived from it that they came from Palestine or Syria.-That they are Descendants of Israel, and not of Judah.

I HAVE already remarked that a small portion of the descendants of the ten tribes, by a special Providence, appear to have been reserved, unconverted from Judaism, as witnesses to the identity of their converted brethren. We have heard their direct testimony that the Nestorians have a common ancestry with themselves. They have also a common language. Not that the Nestorians speak a dialect of the Hebrew; for they do not. The Jews living in the places to which the ten tribes were transplanted, speak a different language from their brethren in other parts of the world. It is a dialect of the Syriac, which indicates for them a different ancestry. This is also the language spoken by the Nestorians. They are radically the The Nestorians themselves testify to this, and say there is little or no more difference between the language of their Jewish neighbours and their own, than there is between the several dialects spoken among themselves. Of this I am satisfied, after extensive observation in all parts of their country. I have seen Nestorians from Oo

saine.

roomiah converse with Jews at Amâdieh, without knowing from their language that they were Jews; and I can now converse with the Jews of Ooroomiah in their own dialect with about the same ease that I can with some of the mountain tribes of Nestorians in theirs. Other members of this mission have noticed the striking similarity of the dialects spoken by the Jews and Nestorians of Ooroomiah; and it is worthy of remark, that one of them, on first conversing with a Jew in his own native Syriac, supposed that the Jew had been learning the language of the Nestorians for the sake of obtaining their custom in trade. The following testimony to the identity of the language spoken by the Nestorians and Jews of Ooroomiah is given by the Rev. A. L. Holladay, whose judgment in the case no one will question, when it is known that, after being for some time a professor of languages in one of the American colleges, he has prepared a grammar of the modern Syriac, the medium of communication which he has used in his intercourse with both Jews and Nestorians. "The language of the Nestorians of Ooroomiah differs so little," he remarks, "from that of the Jews in the same city, that I can consider it only as a dialect of the same. This language, and the dialects which I have heard spoken by individuals belonging to several of the mountain tribes of Nestorians, had evidently a common origin.”

Mr. Stocking, who has also become familiar with the vulgar Syriac spoken by the Nestorians, and has aided in reducing it to system, likewise testifies to its common origin with that of the Jews of this province. "I have repeatedly conversed with the Jews of Ooroomiah in the language of the Nestorians, which is so similar to their own that they both naturally use their respective languages as the common medium of communication with each other. It is evident that they are only different dialects of the same language." Some of the learned Jews acquire a sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to converse in it; and they also learn to read their Chaldee Targums. But the common people understand neither of these languages. The vulgar Syriac is their vernacular tongue, and is spoken as exclusively in their families as it is in the domestic circle of the Nestorians.

The one cannot have learned it from the other, for the Nestorians and Jews hold little or no social intercourse with each other, except for the casual transaction of business. A Nestorian will not eat with a Jew, and they rarely enter each other's dwelling. And, moreover, they have no motive for learning each other's language, as they have here a common medium of communication in Turkish, while the Koordish and Arabic affords facilities for all necessary intercourse in those parts of Assyria where there are Jews. How came the Nestorians

Q