the majority pressed round and asked to be shown how they might be set to work to carry out the idea. About the first thing to set in order was the finances. Gathering the people around him in a group, he explained to them how they might pay their portions in smaller sums, but more frequently. He produced a package of envelopes prepared for a year's weekly payments, and explained that most of those present could easily give ten cents a Sunday, and the dated envelopes would keep them informed as to how their account stood. They consented to try the system, and one bright young man was chosen to keep the accounts. There were none before who gave over fifteen dollars by the year, after being dunned for it, and a large number who gave no more than two dollars. But now the local magnates smiled rather foolishly at the idea of giving less than fifty cents a Sunday, and most of those who had been giving two dollars a year raised the amount by ten-cent contributions to over five dollars. Many who had hitherto been unable to give anything felt a positive joy at getting a package of envelopes into which they regularly placed a nickel. The children were told that they, too, could do something for their Master's work, and many smaller coins yet were gladly acknowledged. When the subscriptions were added up, it was found that the church at X., which had hitherto been unable to raise above a half of its promised two hundred dollars, had now pledged itself, with a fair prospect of fulfillment, to raise three hundred and eighty dollars, with more to hear from. This was so gratifying a piece of news, that some of the ladies at once proposed to recarpet the church, but their visiting minister strongly insisted on turning over the balance for the present to their minister, and help make his ministrations better by diminishing his cares. They adjourned to the Sunday-school. There everything was at loose ends. A new spirit had to be aroused, and the teachers advised with. When the case was presented to them, of the importance of training up these children, who are the men and women of the future, and the church of the future, they consented to attend a weekly teachers' meeting, to prepare a lesson in a course arranged by the two ministers together. Some changes in the church service were suggested with a view to better holding the interest of tired working-people, and a promise of a repeated visit at an early day was given and gladly received. Sunday afternoon was spent by the visiting minister in going around the parish, and seeing a number of people who held aloof from the church. Some lived all alone, a man or a woman,

hardly holding any social relations at all; some were families of lowly working-people, cherishing all sorts of grudges against people generally; and not a few of these were gotten to promise to draw together "for the love of Christ," and once more become members of the one body. Such parish work could have been done by no one else. They would have resented the local minister coming to them, and only listened to one whom they had to feel was their superior. Sunday evening came, and a short, hearty service, with plenty of singing and prayer, and a brief word "to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free." Then all broke up, with a new feeling born in every heart. The next day several of the village people waited for their returning minister at the station, and his eyes filled with tears when they protested to him that they would all take a new hold. Nor could his heart be less than light, for at the Church of Christ the day before his first quarter's salary under the new arrangement had been paid into the offering as an advance, and for the first time he saw his way to discharge some long-standing obligations.

Such was the beginning of better things. The intruder on the parish committee proved to be not only wholly unobjectionable, but the very mainstay of the church. He did not attempt to force anything, but his recommendations sooner or later were seen wise. Presently they began to be proud of having a New Amsterdam banker for parish committee-man, and nothing would do but he should be chairman. This chairman got into a way of running down there on a Sunday till he was oftener seen there than in the mother church. He helped keep the finances well squared up, and taught the people to look at them frankly and look after them constantly. He had a class in the Sunday-school of the young men, and in the afternoon he also tried to do something in the way of drumming up recruits. In church, the people began to enjoy singing hymns, and had plenty of them, and to read the psalms responsively together, and always the Lord's Prayer. One and another said that somehow it did n't seem so hard to listen as before, and the butcher emeritus, aged ninety years, was able to keep awake well on into the middle of the sermon. The minister of X. felt himself almost a new man. There was such a new, strong sense in everything, and nothing did him or his wife so much good as the frequent exchange. He was able now to redouble his parish work. He could have a Bible class in the middle of the week, and also a prayer meeting, and the weekly rehearsal for the

volunteer choir grew gradually into a service of praise. He could make twice as many calls now on his people, and was twice as able to talk to them about being patient and cheerful and hopeful as when he was worried how the last flour-barrel would be paid for. One Sunday morning Deacon Towns told the committee "he'd just as lief" take care of the communion service for nothing if the stipend of twenty-five dollars might go to the minister, who had been night and day with his sick sister; and then the treasurer said there was accumulating about two hundred dollars over all expenses, and he thought they could easily raise the salary two hundred and fifty dollars. Somehow people seemed more ready than ever before to do something for the church.

But the effect of the adoption told most of all on the mother church. The mission seemed to interest everybody. Country Mission Sunday was the name given to the day when the minister of X. came up to town, and there was always an exceptional attendance. When service was ended, the whole church tried to greet their guest, there was a sort of scramble to take him home to dinner, and many a kind word and token he bore away with him. The town of X. became a sort of annex of the Church of Christ, for the city people found it a lovely place to spend a few weeks in the summer; and then they got interested in the village library, and then a new town hall was built of the country stone, and a village improvement society started. When the members of the Church of Christ of New Amsterdam think of the mission, they are in doubt which way the mission works, whether more good has been done to the little church at X., or whether the Church of Christ has reaped most of the benefit, and found how literally true it is that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

John Tunis.

THE LOST TRIBES.

I BEGIN this paper on the Lost Tribes with a chapter like that on snakes in the history of Ireland. There are no lost tribes.

The popular notion of the lost tribes of Israel is this: There were in the Holy Land twelve tribes dwelling in separate territories, aside from the tribe of Levi, including the Aaronitic priest

hood, which lived in single cities distributed among all the tribes. After the death of Solomon, ten of these tribes rebelled against the house of David, and set up a kingdom of their own. This kingdom lived on under various dynasties, amid a good deal of strife and civil war, for about two hundred and fifty or sixty years, until it was fully conquered by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, and its inhabitants carried off into some far off land. The kingdom of Judah lived on for about one hundred and twenty years longer. The small remnant to which its people had dwindled was carried off to Babylon; but their descendants returned to the Holy Land by the permission of the kings of Persia, and from them the Jews of the present time are descended. The kingdom of Judah consisted only of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and a part of the Levites and priests; and to these tribes the Jews of the present day ought to belong. This is the commonly received opinion.

The ignorance and superstition of the Middle Ages located the other tribes in various quarters, far away in the vast unknown regions of Asia or Africa; the fancy of modern times has sought their descendants anywhere and everywhere. Major M. M. Noah of New York, some seventy years ago, on the strength of some words in the Iroquois language that seemed to him akin to equivalent Hebrew words, found the ten lost tribes in the North American Indians; George Barnes does greater honor to Ephraim and the sons of Israel, his companions, by identifying them with the British race; the people of Ireland, with their many Dennises, standing for the tribe of Dan. Others have found the lost tribes of Israel in Afghan; others, I know not where. Some Jews in India, in China, and half-Jews in Abyssinia have also been claimed as the true representatives of the kingdom of Israel.

The intensely religious world, both among Jews and Christians, have always looked forward to the reappearance and recognition of the ten lost tribes as coincident with the advent, or second advent of the Messiah. An old legend places them on the shores of the river Sambatyon, that river which vomits forth hot stones on six days of the week, but flows along in tranquillity on the Sabbath. As Sambat is the Abyssinian or Ethiopic form of the word Sabbath, the Sambatyon must be sought for in the interior of Africa. Both the miraculous stream and the mysterious tribes were located by the fancy of our forefathers in the interior of Africa; because this was the least accessible, and most thoroughly unknown part of the old world.

In the folklore of the Hebrews, these dwellers on the Sambatyon were known as the Red Jews, and were at the proper time to come marching on, under the lead of the prophet Elijah, preceded by a golden standard, and escorting the Messiah on his way to Jerusalem.

Christian legends somewhat more consistently located the ten tribes somewhere in the interior of Asia, where Prester John ruled over them.

Only when in modern times the progress of exploration in Asia made it certain that no nation preserving its Hebrew character could live anywhere within its limits, and the growth of reasoning habits excluded the ten tribes from Africa, because they never could have crossed over into it without being seen on their march by all Syria and Egypt, the idea of a secret Hebrew commonwealth waiting for the advent of the Messiah was given up, and the wild theories of Noah and Barnes found a soil in which to sprout. It is enough to say that there is just as little reason or truth in these theories as in the crude beliefs about the dwellers on the Sambatyon, or the subjects of Prester John.

Before referring to the disappearance of the ten tribes, let me recall their original location. On the east of Jordan, on the grassy plains of Gilead and Bashan, are the two tribes of Gad and Reuben, and north of them half of the tribe of Manasseh. The people east of the Jordan lived mainly off their herds and flocks; hence they required, in proportion to their numbers, a much larger territory than their brethren west of the Jordan, who tilled the ground and raised grain and fruit crops.

On the west side of the Jordan, in the true land of promise, the northern region afterwards known as Galilee (G’lil Haggoyim, the circle of the nations) contained the former tribes of Issachar, Zebulun, Naphtali, and Asher; south of these, in the central region which was afterwards known as Samaria, the royal tribe of Ephraim lived, and next to it half of Manasseh. South of Samaria are the four tribes of Dan, Benjamin, Judah, and Simeon, the last named being the most southern. In Roman times the territory which in the Book of Joshua is ascribed to these four tribes is known as Judea.

Now, it is obvious that at least one of the ten tribes, besides Judah and Benjamin, could never have joined in the secession of the northern and eastern tribes, who, under the leadership of the Ephraimite Jeroboam, set up the kingdom of Israel. That one tribe is the tribe of Simeon, whose position in the southeast,