distinctive sense. head; and thus from the second son of Noah-Shem. God has been the Lord God of Shem in an altogether peculiar and The Saviour of the world descended from this son of Noah. Revealed religion has flowed through Semitic channels. This is a fact that none can deny, and a fact that must have been foreseen, and that well deserved to be foretold. We do not dwell further on it here, as it must come under consideration in our next chapter in another connection. Every psalm of David, and every Christian hymn and sacred song of later days, every authentic narrative of the earliest ages of humanity, the sublime law of Sinai, and the beatitudes and parables of Christ, the visions of prophecy, the teachings of apostles, the testimony of the martyrs, the missions of modern Christianity-all that has lifted our world from ruin and misery and darkness and death, all that has purified and ennobled it and opened to it a door of hope for the future--all has come to it through Shem. It is true that the bud of Judaism, when it blossomed into the flower of Christianity, exhaled its heavenly perfume far and wide, and knew no distinction of races. The sons of Japhet and the sons of Ham shared in the great salvation. It was to the Jew first and also to the Gentile, but the point is that it came through Shem. Religious supremacy belonged to his line. No fact in human history is clearer than this. The prediction has been fully accomplished, and the future will exhibit this even more clearly than the present; for the unspeakable blessings of the ages to come all flow to our race through Christ, who, as Son of man, is the offspring of Shem. And it is equally clear that the prediction as to Japhet has been and is abundantly accomplished. Not only were the Medo-Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires, which ruled the world in their day, Japhetic, or Aryan (meaning, in Sanskrit, lordly, or of good family), but so are the vast majority of the nations of modern Europe Teutonic, Slavonic, and Keltic alike, with all their colonies throughout the world, as well as the United States of America, and some of the leading nations of Asia, including India, Armenia, and Persia. When we remember what the dominion of Greece and Rome were, and what the dominion of the Teutonic race now is, to say nothing of the vast power of Russia and the Slavonic nations, there can be no question as to the superior dominion which has fallen to this branch of the human family. The British empire alone exceeds the old Roman empire both in area and in population. For industrial and commercial development and for wealth it has no equal in the world, and never had even in bygone ages. No previous kingdom ever extended its dominions into all parts of the world. And yet it represents only half the Anglo-Saxon race, and that race is only one out of a multitude of Japhetic kingdoms. Some 300 millions of mankind are under the government of Great Britain; and if we add to this the sixty millions governed by the United States, we may say a third of the human family is under the dominion of the Anglo-Saxons alone! The Germans and French rule another 150 millions, and the Russians 100 millions more. The Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, and other European nations rule about another 100 millions; so that probably half the human race is even now under the government of the sons of Japhet, and that in all parts of the world. Here is indeed enlargement and dominion on a vast and long-enduring scale ! The HAMITIC races lost all rule and empire twenty-five centuries ago; they now count for nothing among the powers of the world. The SEMITIC races were never greatly enlarged-never great conquerors, save for a short period in the Saracenic era. They have ruled the world by another weapon than the sword; they rule it still, and will rule it for everreligiously. The Japhetic races are, and have for over 2,000 years been, supreme among the children of men. The round globe itself is the only measure of their enlargement. They influence even China and Japan and the vast expanses of Central Asia and Central Africa. The North Pole and the South alike are visited by them. They girdle the globe with submarine cables, cross its continents with their railways, and its oceans with their steam-ships, carry their commerce to its most distant shores, and force the unwilling heathen into friendly intercourse. Moreover, they dwell in the tents of Shem both spiritually and physically; they share by faith the blessings of Abraham's covenant, and they occupy and influence lands once occupied by Semitic peoples. Is not all this fulfilled prophecy on the grandest of scales? The entire ethnological development of the posterity of Noah foreseen and foretold when as yet the patriarch himself still lived! Did he guess how all this prolonged future would turn out? Was it by chance he assigned these widely different destinies to the descendants of his three sons? How came he to make no mistake? If Moses puts these words into his lips, why did he delineate a future absolutely contrary to every indication of his times? Why did he not make Noah assign supremacy to Ham, seeing, as he did, Hamitic empires all around him? Why did he not assign enlargement to Shem, and, as he knew little of Japhet, put the servitude down to his account? It would have seemed to human foresight a much more likely outline of the future. But no. Moses had nothing to do with the prophecy save as an editor. Noah had nothing to do with it save as an utterer. God Himself was and must have been its Author; and the second father of the human race was and must have been one of the "holy men of old," who "spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." |