ifornia 
 mal 
 
 ty 
 
 RS. G
 
 Facsimile of the Coronation Chair, enclosing 
 
 "JACOB'S STONE," 
 
 in Edward the Confessor's Chapel, Westminster Abbey. 
 (Engraved from a Photograph.)
 
 THE 
 
 COEONATION STONE; 
 
 ENGLAND'S INTEEEST IN IT. 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. G. ALBERT ROGERS, 
 
 OP "THE FOLDED LAMB," "THE SHEPHEBD KING," "A WINTEB IN 
 ALGESIA," ETC., ETC. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THB REV. G. A. ROGERS, M.A., 
 Trinity College, Cambridge; Ticar of Christ Church, Dover. 
 
 SECOND THOUSAND. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JAMES NISBET & CO., 
 BEBNEBS STBEET. 
 
 AND MAY BE ORDERED OF ANY BOOKSELLER. 
 
 [All rights reserved.] 
 
 '\
 
 ILLUSTEATIONS. 
 
 I. The Coronation Stone, enclosed in the Chair which may be seen in 
 
 Edward the Confessor's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, in copper- 
 plate (drawn from a photograph), on the cover. 
 
 II. A Woodcut of the same, facing the Title-page, showing the posi- 
 tion of the Stone under the Seat.
 
 Second Thousand ; Just Published. 
 BEVIEWS AND NOTICES. 
 
 " The raison d'etre of this little book is to clear up the mystery 
 which attaches to the ungainly looking Stone which lies beneath 
 the seat of the Coronation Chair, or throne, on which Britain's 
 Monarchs are crowned in the Chapel of Edward the Confessor, 
 in Westminster Abbey. The authoress, going back to pre-historic 
 ages, and taking her Bible for her guide, traces back this Stone 
 to the memorable scene of Jacob's dream at Luz. . . . This 
 little work we can recommend as being exceedingly interesting, and 
 showing very considerable research." Western Daily Mercury. 
 
 " This is a reverent and graceful little book, tracing in brightly 
 written chapters the history of the Coronation Stone in West- 
 minster Abbey. The old legend could not be more attractively 
 told. . . . This bright book . . . gives many suggestive 
 renderings of the Scripture passages adduced in support of the 
 authoress's argument." Life and Work. 
 
 . . . " Speaks of the Stone as being that upon which Jacob 
 laid his weary head." Ecclesiastical Gazette. 
 
 " An interesting sketch is here given of the famous Coronation 
 Stone in Westminster Abbey, as bearing upon the Anglo-Israelite 
 question, the drift of the writer's remarks being indicated by her 
 question, What is this Stone in Westminster Abbey, if not the 
 God-given, God-guarded Stone of Bethel ? The subject is one of 
 great interest, and we doubt not many readers will avail them- 
 selves of the opportunity of following Mrs. Eogers' carefully- 
 arranged arguments." The Rock. 
 
 " The object of this little brochure is to prove that it is the 
 identical Stone which Jacob took for his pillow at Bethel. It was 
 wonderfully preserved from that day. . . ." Watchman. 
 
 " Mrs. Eogers believes in the Anglo -Israel theory, and considers 
 the existence of the Stone of Scone in Westminster Abbey, a re- 
 markable confirmation of it. . . ." The Eecoi-d. 
 
 " Mrs. Kogers has, in the little work just published, said all 
 that should be said, and said it exceedingly well regarding the 
 Coronation Stone. . . . She shows that the stone Jacob used 
 as his pillow at Luz, was consecrated and destined to be God's 
 House ; that a Stone was previously declared by Jacob to be 
 connected with Joseph ; and that there were valid reasons why 
 the Scriptures are silent regarding the fact that such a stone 
 accompanied the Israelites through the wilderness, and into the 
 Land of Promise. . . . We recommend this little work to our 
 readers, and to Israelites in general. We know it will be pro- 
 nounced to be deeply interesting, and its pages will be read, and 
 re-read as time goes on, and we draw nearer to the period when 
 the discoveries connected with Tea-Tiphi's opened tomb in Tara 
 may be looked for." Banner of Israel.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 'HE aspects of truth are multiform. Truth 
 itself is an ever widening circle : perfect 
 yet enlarging. Truth as seen and com-: 
 prehended by the finite, is ever in a state of 
 development. Its bounds and limits are far 
 beyond the ken of mortals. 
 Facts are truths in development the embodi- 
 ment of truths in their essentials. God's deal- 
 ings with men, evidence continuous expansion. 
 As in nature, so in providence and revelation, the 
 acorn of truth developes itself into the many 
 branches of the oak of facts, We handle the 
 acorn, but we cannot foretell its embodied develop- 
 ments. We must watch and wait, to learn its 
 destinies, until time yet future shall disclose its 
 hidden powers and influences. Is it not so with 
 certain of God's mysteries ? Mysteries purposely 
 hidden by Him, to be revealed in the fixed cycle 
 of time pre-appointed, according to the counsel of 
 His Own Will? (see Eph. iii. 9). 
 
 Children in knowledge we must ever remain, 
 if we refuse the growing lessons which Infinite
 
 Z INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Wisdom sets before us. Dwarfed must be our 
 comprehension of revealed facts, if we be content to 
 abide by the crude ideas of childhood. We must 
 aim at growth, as God's purposes grow into devel- 
 opment. Prophecy is nothing but history read 
 before the age. We now see men plainly, where 
 our forefathers saw them as trees walking. Our 
 eyes in this the latter age of the present dispensa- 
 tion, are gifted with sight of telescopic exactitude 
 of which our forefathers never dreamt. What 
 advances in discoveries in nature, and in art, has 
 this nineteenth century witnessed ! Need we 
 allude to the marvels of steam, or to the still 
 greater marvels of electricity ? Yet these occult 
 powers were in the womb of nature in all ages. 
 Steam existed before Watt tested its power, or 
 Stephenson bade it speed its civilizing influences 
 over the whole world. Electricity blessed the earth 
 ere Franklin discovered its existence, and drew it 
 down from the clouds. Many a hidden nugget of 
 gold is trodden under foot, and unknown and un- 
 thought of by the traveller. 
 
 It is with thoughts such as these, we gaze upon 
 " The Coronation Stone," whose story is told in the 
 following pages. Unheeded by the many who have 
 attached no special meaning to its singular exis- 
 tence, we venture to think that it represents a 
 mystery disclosed, worthy of the study of politicians 
 and divines. A mystery no doubt has hitherto 
 purposely enshrouded it. Call it a legend a myth
 
 INTRODUCTION. O 
 
 a superstition but nevertheless its very exis- 
 tence is one of those stern indisputable facts, which 
 must, we think, contain and represent a great truth 
 demanding the investigation of all British Chris- 
 tians. 
 
 I have no hesitation in affirming, that whatever 
 opinion may be formed as to the conclusions drawn, 
 the writer of the following pages has reverently, 
 with much painstaking care, lifted the veil which 
 drapes the subject of her theme. I cannot but 
 believe that she has been enabled to handle the 
 subject in a manner which will not fail to arrest the 
 attention, and command the calm consideration, of 
 her readers. Her aim has been not to dogmatize, 
 but to awaken the interest of Christians as to the 
 meaning and surroundings of an undoubted fact, 
 which she feels convinced is designed by the God 
 of Jacob to speak forth a marvellous and glorious 
 truth into the ears of the British Nation. May He 
 grant His richest blessing to this prayerful effort 
 to promote His glory, and the good of His people 
 Israel ! 
 
 G. A. R.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 NEW book seems to demand a preface, 
 and a preface involves an apology. Will 
 the following be deemed sufficient ? 
 "You will never induce my husband to 
 accept your theory as to our Israelitish origin. 
 There is one argument against it which he 
 feels to be unanswerable." 
 
 So said a lady with whom I was in conversation 
 upon this weighty theme. Both she and her hus- 
 band had on the previous day admitted that a deep 
 and solemn interest would attach to the subject 
 we had brought before them, if it could be proved ; 
 but they had since then talked it over alone, and 
 this was the conclusion at which they had arrived. 
 The beloved and highly esteemed friend whose 
 judgment had thus been given, was a Barrister who 
 had enjoyed an extensive practice in London ; and 
 his opinion, if wholly adverse to the view, would 
 be entitled to considerable weight. With some 
 degree of anxiety, therefore, fearing my own
 
 O PREFACE. 
 
 inability to cope in argument with so learned an 
 opponent, I inquired what the insuperable difficulty 
 might be. In reply, my friend pointed to Jeremiah 
 xxxiii. 17: "Thus saith the Lord; David shall 
 never want a man to sit upon the throne of the 
 house of Israel." She added, "This, as we all 
 know, has not been fulfilled ; and yet God cannot 
 have broken His word. My husband says, there- 
 fore, that as this passage is evidently intended to 
 be taken figuratively or spiritually, so we are bound 
 to apply the same principle of interpretation to 
 the many passages you adduced as proving the 
 promised recall of the Ten Tribes, and the pro- 
 phecies which speak of the temporal restoration of 
 the House of Israel." 
 
 " But we claim that it has been literally ful- 
 filled ! " was my rejoinder ; awakening, as may be 
 well believed^ no small amount of surprise and in- 
 credulity. And when I went on to show how that 
 Queen Victoria could prove her descent from the 
 royal line of David ; and that as such she sat upon 
 the throne of Israel, so long called " lost," but so 
 wonderfully God-guarded ; that Her Majesty's right 
 to reign was established by her being crowned 
 upon the Stone of the Covenant, 1 which, in virtue 
 
 1 Queen Mary; alone, seems to have adopted another 
 Coronation Chair, thereby rejecting the Stone of the Cove- 
 nant. 
 
 Mr. Planche says, "there is every reason to presume 
 that it has been regularly used as the Coronation Chair of
 
 PREFACE . / 
 
 of Ephraim having the Birthright, was now in the 
 possession of his heirs, the incredulity gave place 
 to thankful amazement. 
 
 At my friend's request the history of " the Stone " 
 was repeated to her husband. He listened with 
 earnest attention, giving me notice, however, that 
 being a lawyer, he should endeavour to find out 
 any possible flaw in my chain of mingled history 
 and inference. Several questions were accordingly 
 asked as the story proceeded ; but at the conclusion 
 I had the gratification of finding, that although it 
 had taken him wholly by surprise, yet he could not 
 detect any flaw, any impossibility, nor see in it any- 
 thing unworthy of God's wondrous dealings with 
 the seed of Abraham His servant. 
 
 It is then in the earnest hope of awakening at- 
 tention to a subject which, if true, must be admitted 
 to be of vital moment to our nation, that the follow- 
 ing pages are given to the public. 
 
 all our Sovereigns from the time of Edward II. Mary I., 
 however, appears to have been an exception, for in the ' Anti- 
 quarian Eepertory ' is the engraving of a Chair in which 
 she is said to have been crowned, from the original pre- 
 served in the Cathedral at Winchester. It was, as the 
 story goes, blessed and sent her by the Pope." Planches 
 " Royal Records."
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND 
 EDITION. 
 
 early call for a Second Edition of this 
 work is a cause for thankfulness, as evinc- 
 ing an awakened interest in a subject 
 which, till of late, was hidden from our eyes. 
 The book has been favourably noticed and 
 studied in quarters where the history of the 
 Stone was heretofore unknown ; and from some who 
 had for years been acquainted with all that had been 
 written upon it, the author has received the wel- 
 come assurance that it has placed the case before 
 them in a new light, and stated much of which they 
 were previously unaware. 
 
 But both before and since the appearance of this 
 little volume, ridicule has been cast on the identity 
 of the Stone, and the story of its wanderings has 
 been treated as a worthless legend. The great 
 truth which God is now bringing before His 
 Church, as though with a hammer on the anvil of an 
 expiring Age, the fact of an actual, and not only a 
 spiritual people, a literal and not a mere mythical 
 race, having been chosen by Him out of the rest 
 of mankind as His own inheritance, has to undergo
 
 10 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 a similar ordeal. Yet words cannot be plainer than 
 those in which He declares of His Israel, " This 
 people have I chosen for Myself; they shall show 
 forth My praise." 
 
 Neither the one subject nor the other will in 
 prejudiced minds obtain a serious hearing. Content 
 with her own spiritual position, the Church refuses 
 to recognise its importance, or to see how won- 
 drously it brings glory to our God. Again, there- 
 fore, the writer ventures to renew her earnest plea 
 that the arguments in the following pages may 
 meet with a dispassionate perusal, and induce a 
 search into the many passages of Holy Writ to 
 which she refers. 
 
 An argument contra its identity has been based 
 by Mr. Skene on the internal evidence afforded by 
 the geological testimony of the Stone. In his work 
 on the " Coronation Stone," he says, " At the very 
 outset there is a fatal objection to it. The Corona- 
 tion Stone proved to be a small block of red sand- 
 stone, and the rocks of lona consist of a flaggy 
 micaceous grit, or gneiss." He farther appends to 
 p. 50 the authority of Mr. Geikie, as stating that 
 the stone " cannot have come from lona. 
 There is no red sandstone on it." We never 
 believed it to be of lona origin. And just as an 
 interest is awakened in this controversy, Canon 
 Tristram's valuable discoveries, embodied in his 
 " Land of Moab," come to our aid, and tell us that 
 this very red sandstone, similar in its nature to that
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 11 
 
 with which we are familiar in England, though 
 " unlike the red sandstone of the Highlands, and 
 equally unlike the usual red sandstones of the south 
 and south-east of Scotland/' (Mr. Geikie's report), is 
 found, near the surface, on the shores of the Dead 
 Sea. And this is not far from Bethel, or Luz ! 
 Therefore, although Mr. Geikie rightly states, "there 
 is no clue in the Stone itself to fix precisely its 
 original source," we may be permitted to add, there 
 is no geological cause shown why it may not have 
 come from Bethel. Both Comine and Adomnan 
 speak of the stone on which St. Columba asked to 
 lay his dying head at lona, as having been Jacob's 
 pillow; and Dean Stanley claims that the stone 
 which may now be seen daily in Westminster 
 Abbey, has been proved to be the identical one for 
 which Columba, in that solemn hour, displayed such 
 loving reverence. 
 
 We will not here enter further into the remaining 
 objections urged by Mr. Skene against the belief of 
 the Coronation Stone having come from Bethel and 
 Jerusalem, via Tara and lona. They have been 
 fully met and answered in the " Banner of Israel," 
 vol. i. pp. 57 and 66, and all readers who desire 
 further information on this subject of deepest 
 interest to our nation, will do well to study the 
 historical evidence therein adduced.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION . . . - . . . 1 
 
 PREFACE . . . . . . . 5 
 
 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION ... 9 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. WESTMINSTER ABBEY, OR INTRODUCTORY . 13 
 II. THE BIRTHRIGHT -.-. . . .21 
 
 III. JACOB'S VISION . ,; .... 29 
 
 IV. LOST JOSEPH FOUND 37 
 
 V. THE STONE AN HEIR-LOOM .... 47 
 
 VI. THE STONE OF ISRAEL .... 55 
 
 VII. " THIS STONE SHALL BE GOD'S HOUSE " . 63 
 
 VIII. "THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED" 71 
 
 IX. THE TESTIMONY OF TRADITION ... 83 
 
 X. JEREMIAH'S COMMISSION . ... 92 
 
 XL STORY OF QUEEN TEPHI, ANCESTRESS OF 
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA 103 
 
 XII. THE LOST HEIR FOUND . . . .113 
 
 XIII. THE MYSTERY OF GOD UNFOLDED . . 119 
 
 19
 
 THE COF^ONATIO^ 
 
 AND 
 
 ENGLAND'S INTEREST IN IT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 
 
 " When a Land rejects her legends, 
 Sees but falsehood in the past; 
 And its People vievr their Sires 
 In the light of fools and liars, 
 
 'Tis a sign of its decline 
 And its glories cannot last. 
 Branches that but blight their roots 
 Yield no sap for lasting fruits." 
 
 E. G. G. 
 
 AMONGST the countless fanes which Chris- 
 tianity has reared, and dedicated to the 
 God of Heaven, none deserves a higher 
 place than our own Westminster Abbey. On 
 returning from a first visit to Italy and its 
 sumptuous churches, I well remember going 
 to revisit it with a sort of wondering curiosity, to 
 see whether one would still incline to accord to the 
 
 13 B
 
 14 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 old Abbey so high a rank. A few glances more 
 than sufficed to confirm the previous estimate. 
 There is a something about this magnificent edifice 
 which makes one involuntarily exclaim, "This is 
 none other than the House of God ! " 
 
 Yet not of the house itself am I about to write ; 
 but of a priceless treasure which it enshrines, and of 
 which Westminster Abbey is a fitting casket. In 
 the chapel of Edward the Confessor there stands 
 an antique chair. It is always used at the corona- 
 tion of our Sovereigns, and hence its name, the 
 Coronation Chair. The Verger who shows us over 
 the Abbey pauses before it, and calls our attention 
 to a strange, common-looking stone which is some- 
 how lodged in the under part of this chair ; he calls 
 it 
 
 "JACOB'S STONE." 
 
 How singular a designation ! What can it mean ? 
 How came this strange stone here ? " Is it always 
 kept here ? " you inquire. " What becomes of it 
 when the chair is required for the coronation of a 
 Sovereign ? " " It is never removed," you are told 
 in reply. Cloth of gold, and trappings of state may 
 envelop, and decorate this ancient seat at the crown- 
 ing of our kings ; but this strange STONE, though 
 hidden then from curious eyes, lies beneath, 
 silently asserting the new Sovereign's right to 
 reign. Could this STONE speak, what records might 
 it not unroll ? In this " strange" STONE, unsightly
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 15 
 
 in outward form, unpretentious in outward shape, 
 battered, scarred, and cracked unhewn, unpolished, 
 and unrecognised ; its story hid, its origin forgotten, 
 yet sooth to tell its presence there deemed indispens- 
 able in this ancient monument, at once historic 
 and pre-historic, there must be surely shrouded 
 some deep and hidden mystery, which it behoves us 
 as Britons to investigate. It has become inter- 
 woven with England's history ; rightly, or wrongly, 
 it seems held to be inseparably linked with her 
 destinies, it is considered to be of vital moment at 
 her coronations ; despite past protests l it keeps its 
 place, and has come to be viewed as an integral part 
 of the British Throne. Yet if we would closely 
 examine " Jacob's Stone," we must stoop low, and, 
 as in the case of One who was typified by the Stone 
 winch the builders rejected, 2 " when we shall see it, 
 there is no beauty that we should desire it." 
 
 1 The following will suffice as a sample : " It is still 
 preserved there [Westminster Abbey] to this day; but by 
 the name of ' Jacob's Stone,' from a notion among the 
 vulgar that it is a part of the Patriarch's Pillar. It must 
 be owned that the Coronation of the kings of England over 
 this Stone seems to confirm its title of 'the Stone of 
 Destiny ; ' but it reflects no great honour on the learning or 
 understanding of the Nation, to retain a remnant of such 
 ridiculous Pagan superstition, in so important and solemn 
 an act." "History of Ireland," by Dr. Warner, vol. i. p. 
 161, pub. A.D. 1770. 
 
 The Eev. F. R. A. Glover, in quoting the above, justly 
 adds, "But what if the 'vulgar' be right? " 
 
 2 Mark xii. 10 (marg. re/., Ps. cxviii. 22).
 
 16 THE COKONATION STONE. 
 
 How comes it, then, that in this assthetic age, such 
 a cumbrous, and apparently needless an appendage 
 to a chair, is still deemed suitable for Royalty ? 
 
 If in so strange a lodgment, a stone be really 
 requisite, why, during the manifold changes, im- 
 provements, and restorations which the old Abbey 
 has undergone, has it never yet been replaced by 
 one more in accordance with modern taste ? Granted 
 that it has antiquity whereof to boast, surely it is 
 time it were now disused ! What is its history ? 
 What its claims ? Is it pledge of aught ? If so, of 
 what ? Whence came this STONE ? Who brought 
 it hither ? 
 
 It is this legitimate curiosity which we fain would 
 satisfy. To search out, and establish its claims 
 upon incontrovertible bases, are the objects which 
 we propose to ourselves in the following pages. 
 Dean Stanley, its recent custodian, asked Professor 
 Ramsay to examine the Coronation STONE ; and his 
 report appears in the Memorials of Westminster 
 Abbey (p. 601). The Professor of Geology says, 
 " To my eye it appears as if it had been originally 
 prepared for building purposes, but had never been 
 used/' He also considers this STONE to have been 
 a great traveller, and says it bears marks of having 
 been carried about in extensive migrations. The 
 ancient iron rings inserted in the STONE confirm 
 this supposition. 
 
 But for a generation past, Art has been making 
 great strides amongst us. Of what value then can
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 17 
 
 this old STONE, lacking, as we have observed, in any 
 beauty or elegance of form, be to us ? Why then 
 guard we it so jealously ? What is the mystery 
 attached thereto ? Is there any lurking secret 
 which it enshrines ? 
 
 Again we ask, What is its history ? What its 
 claims ? And earnestly do I plead for a patient 
 hearing, nay more, a prayerful interest, in the 
 subject, from those to whom the raison d'etre of this 
 STONE is still unknown. We feel we are treading 
 on sacred ground, and not one word would we 
 advance to prove its origin, its import, or its 
 message, beyond what we believe to be fully borne 
 out, in the earlier part by Revelation, and in the 
 latter by credible records, whether written or un- 
 written, historic or pre-historic. Diamonds do not 
 usually lie on the surface of the plain. A difficult 
 problem in Euclid will be unintelligible till the 
 earlier ones have been studied and mastered. We 
 but ask for the long hidden " mystery" with which 
 we believe this STONE to be inseparably connected, 
 a search as diligent as that of the diamond digger 
 an attention as close as that which the student 
 bestows upon his Euclid. 
 
 If this be indeed, as we venture to hope we shall 
 adduce reasonable grounds for believing it to be, 
 the identical STONE upon which the Patriarch Jacob 
 laid his head, and whereupon he received a cove- 
 nant of such transcendent value ; the STONE which 
 he, on raising, consecrated as " God's house " ; the
 
 18 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 STONE to which Jehovah specially, in after years, 
 directed His attention; the STONE which he, when 
 dying, confided to his heirs as earnest of God's 
 immutable promises, and type of Him who yet will 
 reign on David's throne, to be kept in sanctuary 
 as certain pledge of a wondrous future still in abey- 
 ance, we may not marvel if, in tracing its backward 
 history through thirty-six centuries or more, we 
 find it occasionally shrouded and obscure. But if 
 the Lord's set time has come to unveil His own 
 mysteries, and to disclose their purport, difficulties 
 will vanish, and shadows flee away. Opposition 
 cannot stay His hand. Enigmas are being daily 
 read, and riddles solved in the dawning light of 
 His near approach. Could we ere now have pene- 
 trated the secrets of His council-chamber, we should 
 perchance have learnt that a decree had gone forth 
 some 3000 years ago, as in the case of the prophet 
 Daniel " Go thy way, for the words are closed up 
 and sealed till the time of the end." 
 
 Is it not one of the many signs of the End of the 
 Age being close upon us, that the attention of so 
 large a portion of the Christian world, on both sides 
 of the Atlantic, in India, in Canada, and in Austra- 
 lia, and even on the European Continent, has been 
 arrested by the consideration of the asserted Is- 
 raelitish origin of the possessors of this i-emarkable 
 STONE ? " But how comes it/' we are constantly 
 asked, "that, if true, this subject should now be 
 a new one? Why was it hidden from our godly
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 19 
 
 fathers? our ablest commentators ?" We can but 
 reply, " Because ' the time of the end ' had not 
 come; the world was not then ripe for it." "It is 
 the glory of God to conceal a thing " l until He see 
 fit to make it clear. 
 
 One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, 
 and "at the times of our ignorance" concerning, 
 amidst other things, this STONE, " God winked ; " 
 but now, when " His purposes are ripening fast, 
 unfolding every hour," it is His hand which is up- 
 lifting the veil, and opening men's eyes to under- 
 stand the long-closed mystery. Should we not be 
 verily guilty did we refuse to examine into it, and 
 still more so if, when made clear to us, we refuse 
 to exhibit our treasure-trove ? Silent though this 
 witness has been, reposing these long years in its 
 stately fane, yet now, when its rightful owner, 
 " lost " Ephraim, claims to have been found, surely, 
 were we longer to conceal our prize, this very STONE 
 would cry out ! 
 
 It is, to say the least, remarkable that this 
 " precious relic," 2 which we assert to be JACOB'S 
 Stone, having been brought to England well-nigh 
 six centuries ago, should have been all this time 
 invested with such a halo of mingled mystery, 
 romance, and sanctity, that its removal, although 
 attempted, has never once been allowed, since first 
 
 1 Prov. xxv. 2. 
 
 " So called by Edward L, who brought it from Scone.
 
 20 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 it was committed to our guardianship ; and that it 
 should from the first have been placed in England, 
 as in Scotland (and probably, before that, in Ire- 
 land), in the " house of God," and assigned therein 
 a seat of royal dignity. 
 
 When search is being made for the missing title- 
 deeds to some disputed inheritance, that lawyer 
 would surely be reprehensible who refused to 
 examine, and give due attention to the minutest 
 clue which offered. This is all we seek for now. 
 When we would solve a hidden mystery, we do 
 not well to neglect seeming trifles. A boy of some 
 fifteen years, laughs at, and mocks his baby brother. 
 Is that a fact worth recording by the pen of in- 
 spiration ? Yes ; from that infant's sorrow, caused 
 by the contemptuous treatment of the son of an 
 Egyptian woman, dates the beginning of that pre- 
 dicted affliction of the seed of Abraham, wherewith 
 the Egyptians should afflict them 400 years. 
 
 For the web of consecutive history, then, which 
 we shall now attempt to unravel, may we not claim 
 an earnest attention, a patient investigation, and a 
 prayerful desire to fathom its long closed-up 
 secrets ? 
 
 We stand, as it were, on the banks of a mighty 
 river, and as it rushes past us with resistless force 
 we ask, Whence did it take its rise ? 
 
 Let us now trace this stream up to its source. 
 We must turn our faces Eastward.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE BIRTHRIGHT. 
 
 " Him God the Most High vouchsafed 
 To call by vision from his father's house, 
 His kindred and false gods, into a land 
 Which He did show him, and from him did raise 
 A mighty nation ; and upon him shower 
 His benedictions, so that in his seed 
 All nations shall be blest ; he straight obeyed. 
 Not knowing to what land, yet firm believed." 
 
 Milton. 
 
 f HE Coronation Stone claims to be Jacob's 
 Stone. Adequately to appreciate the na- 
 ture and importance of this claim, we must 
 fully understand the extent and value of the 
 inheritance with which that Stone is linked. 
 We must seek to learn by what right that 
 claim is made, and how the Stone and the inherit- 
 ance came to be thus inseparably united. 
 
 We think much of the title by which a great 
 estate is held. " By what right hold ye your 
 lands ? " an English king once demanded of his 
 turbulent barons, hoping to overawe them, and to 
 veil his own pusillanimity by an assumed boldness 
 
 21
 
 22 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 which he did not feel. At the question, instantly 
 a hundred swords leapt from their scabbards ; and 
 as they flashed before the eyes of the terrified 
 monarch, the proud boast rang and re-echoed 
 through the hall, " By our swords we won them, 
 and by our swords we will maintain our right." 
 
 But a title higher than any might-made-right, 
 links together the Stone of Luz and the inheritance 
 with which it is inseparably connected. Yet it was 
 no new donative which was made by God to the 
 patriarch Jacob at Luz. It did but confirm to him 
 the grant bestowed upon his grandsire. Let us 
 retrace the line from Jacob to his great ancestor, 
 the founder of his family, and rapidly review the 
 magnitude of the gift as it was gradually unfolded. 
 It was then first to Abraham that the promise had 
 been made, "I will make of thee a great nation." l 
 Later on God told him, " I will make thy seed as 
 the dust of the earth : so that if a man can number 
 the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be 
 numbered." Even this was not enough; once 
 more God brought Abraham forth, and bid him 
 gaze on the majestic splendour of a star-lit Eastern 
 sky, saying, 
 
 " Look now towards heaven, and tell the stars, 
 If thou be able to number them : " 
 
 And He said unto him, " So shall thy seed be." 3 
 
 1 Gen. xii. 2. 2 Gen. xiii. ] 6. 
 
 3 Gen. xv. 5.
 
 THE BIRTHRIGHT. 23 
 
 Still more specific were other grand assurances 
 which the Lord vouchsafed to give His " friend " : 
 
 "I will multiply thee exceedingly." 
 "My covenant is with thee, 
 Thou shalt be a father of many nations." ' 
 
 " I will make thee exceedingly fruitful, 
 And I will make nations of thee, 
 And kings shall come out of thee." 2 
 
 Likewise of Sarah, God said, when thus covenant- 
 ing with Abraham, 
 
 "I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; 
 Kings of people shall be of her." 3 
 
 Yet all this time they had no child, and Abraham 
 was now nearly one hundred years old. "Behold, to 
 me Thou hast given no heir," was Abraham's plaint. 
 But He who had ordained the end from the be- 
 ginning, and who had created the world as a plat- 
 form whereon to display His own exceeding glory 
 in and through Abraham's seed, was now about to 
 reveal His power. The set time had at length 
 arrived : 
 
 " And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed ; 
 And thou shalt call his name Isaac." 4 
 
 " My covenant will I establish with Isaac; " 5 
 
 for, 
 
 " In Isaac shall thy seed be called." 
 
 Isaac, then, was indubitably Abraham's heir, yet 
 
 1 Gen. xvii. 2, 4. 2 Hid. ver. 6. 3 Ibid. ver. 16. 
 4 Ibid. ver. 19. 5 Hid. ver. 21.
 
 24 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 his birth was but a first fulfilment of these glorious 
 predictions. How was the line to be carried on ? 
 Who should be Isaac's heir ? Through whom was 
 this magnificent birthright to be transmitted ? 
 
 At what age Jacob's youthful imagination was 
 fired by glowing tales of the glorious inheritance 
 which had been promised to his father, and to his 
 seed after him, we know not. Certain it is, how- 
 ever, that lightly as his brother Esau might esteem 
 such a birthright, Jacob's highest aspirations were 
 early excited to possess it. He longed to be Isaac's 
 acknowledged heir; but Isaac had no such thought. 
 Before his birth two sons had been assured to Isaac 
 and Rebekah; and of those twins the Sovereign 
 Ruler had decreed, "The elder shall serve the 
 younger." 1 Probably Jacob's mother had told 
 him this strange saying ; a prophecy which his 
 father apparently had not understood, or thought 
 himself at liberty to set aside. At any rate, Jacob's 
 mind was familiarized with visions of coming glory, 
 and of an inheritance of transcendent magnitude, to 
 be transmitted through his father's heirs. Had he 
 not heard again and again, with ever increasing 
 interest, amidst the profound solitude of that bliss- 
 ful tent-life, how that his own father had been 
 saved by God's direct interposition from impending 
 death, and how the Lord had called a second time 
 to Abraham out of heaven and said : 
 
 1 Gen. xxv. 23.
 
 THE BIRTHRIGHT. 25 
 
 " By Myself have I sworn, for because thou hast done this 
 
 thing, 
 
 And hast not withheld thy son, 
 Thine only son : 
 
 That in blessing I will bless thee, 
 And in multiplying I will multiply thy seed 
 As the stars of the heaven, 
 And as the sand which is upon the sea-shore; 
 And thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies ; 
 And in thy seed shall all the nations of the eaith be 
 
 blessed ; 
 Because thou hast obeyed My voice." l 
 
 Let us mark the grand distinguishing feature of 
 this covenant. It was 
 
 AN UNCONDITIONAL COVENANT. 
 
 The reason assigned, was one which no after-con- 
 duct of his descendants could contravene : 
 
 " Because thou hast obeyed My voice." 2 
 
 And the same unalterable cause was declared to 
 Isaac, in settling the birthright upon him : 
 
 " Because that Abraham obeyed My voice." 3 
 
 And upon Rebekah had no blessing descended ? 
 Had she never told her younger son how, as she 
 rode away from the home of her youth, and gave 
 up all to cast in her lot with Abraham's heir, a 
 blessing was pronounced over her head ? 
 
 1 Gen. xxii. 16-18. 2 Ibid. ver. 15-18. 
 
 3 Gen. xx vi. 4, 5.
 
 26 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 " Be them the mother of thousands of millions, 
 And let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate 
 them." l 
 
 True, it was a mere human voice which had thus 
 spoken ; but since an inspired penman has recorded 
 it, we are bound to accord it a higher place than as 
 the mere parting utterance of affectionate wishes. 
 Besides, had not Jacob heard of the unconditional 
 promise which God Himself had addressed to his 
 father Isaac ? 
 
 " I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, 
 And will give unto thy seed all these countries ; 
 And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be 
 
 blessed ; 
 Because that Abraham obeyed My voice." 2 
 
 Do we realize, as Jacob did, the magnitude of 
 these repeated assurances of both spiritual and 
 temporal blessings? Some, who are wise above 
 that which is written, affect to despise the latter. 
 But if God deigned to give them, surely we should 
 not so lightly esteem them. Jacob, at any rate, 
 believed in them, and regarded them as worth 
 having. 
 
 Let us dwell for a moment on the influence which 
 such training must have exercised upon his earliest 
 years. Can we draw no parallel while recognising 
 the effect which grand surroundings ever hold 
 upon the youthful mind ? Let the associations of 
 early life be of an elevating kind, whether at a 
 
 1 Gen. xxiv. 60. 2 Gen. xxvi. 4, 5.
 
 THE BIRTHRIGHT. 27 
 
 court, or in a quiet home ; be they regal, intel- 
 lectual, artistic, or spiritual ; be they passed in the 
 social circle, or amidst the beauties of magnificent 
 scenery where the glories of nature lead up to and 
 picture the greatness of their Maker, the result 
 will be ennobling ; more or less so according to the 
 capacity of the recipient. We loyally value any 
 tie which associates us with our earthly sovereign ; 
 but here the King of kings, and Lord of lords had 
 deigned to converse with Jacob's own father, and 
 to regard his grandsire as His "friend." Words 
 fail to paint the influence which such associations 
 must have exercised on his mind, If his habit 
 were to muse by day, and dream of them by night, 
 we cannot surely marvel. 
 
 But who ivas to inherit this promised greatness ? 
 If his mother had read aright that strange predic- 
 tion, lie and none other was destined to be Isaac's 
 heir. Yet how was this to be brought about ? 
 Time went on till Jacob was nearly eighty years 
 of age and as yet unmarried. Perhaps he had 
 kept single because he could not say, " I am the 
 recognised heir of my father Isaac." At length 
 came a day when the point must be settled. His 
 father was old, and his eyes were dim ; as he said 
 himself, " I know not the day of my death." l The 
 vital question must be settled to Jacob's satis- 
 faction now, or never. If Isaac gave the inspired 
 
 1 Gen. xxvii. 2.
 
 28 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 patriarchal blessing to Esau, Jacob's hopes had died 
 within him. If Isaac, then believed to be on the 
 point of death, had passed away without naming 
 his successor, a fratricidal war might have ensued, 
 ending only, perhaps, with Jacob's life, for Jacob 
 believed himself verily the destined heir ; yet Esau 
 was the elder. Alas ! poor Jacob ! why couldst 
 thou not trust thee to thy Lord, and place thy 
 cause in His almighty hand ? But Jacob's faith 
 failed, if indeed he had as yet become partaker of 
 a saving, energizing faith. He valued, and rightly 
 valued, the wondrous temporal estate which God 
 had covenanted to give to Isaac, and to his seed 
 after him ; but it may be that as yet he knew not 
 the salvation without which the possession of the 
 Promised Land would have profited him nothing. 
 He sought to take the matter into his own hands ; 
 and his Heavenly Father, who had yet to train and 
 fit him to be Abraham's heir, let him feel the evil 
 consequences of his sin. Ere long, indeed, we shall 
 hear from the Lord's own lips, of " the excellency 
 of Jacob whom He loved." But for the moment 
 God has a controversy with His erring servant ; 
 and the devoted mother, who, in her haste to seize 
 the birthright for him, had unwisely said, " Upon 
 me be thy curse, my -son, only obey my voice," was 
 to see his face no more. Jacob had to leave his 
 father's house and become a wanderer, to avoid 
 the peril of falling by his brother Esau's hand.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 JACOB'S VISION. 
 
 " God ! the Hope of Israel, 
 
 Thy love shall be our theme ; 
 For are not we the people 
 
 Thy Son came to redeem ? 
 We hear our Shepherd calling, 
 We know His welcome voice ; 
 The very stones would speak His praise, 
 If we did not rejoice." 
 
 John G. Shaw. 
 
 UT what has all this to do with 
 
 THE STORY OF JACOB'S STONE? 
 
 Jacob went forth from his father's house 
 unattended, without the following which had 
 beseemed his rank, probably to avoid obser- 
 vation. He bore with him, indeed, the blessing 
 of the Birthright ; but that had been obtained by 
 subtilty, would God ratify it? True, at parting, 
 his father had called him to his side, and given 
 him another blessing; Isaac had said, 
 
 " God Almighty bless th.ee, and make thee fruitful, and 
 
 multiply thee, 
 
 That thou mayest be a multitude of people ; 
 And give to thee the blessing of Abraham, 
 
 29
 
 30 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 To thee, and to thy seed with thee ; 
 
 That thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a 
 
 stranger, 
 Which God gave to Abraham." l 
 
 But what child of God has not realized, that even 
 inspired words fail to give comfort, till God the 
 Holy Spirit vitalizes, and applies them ? As yet 
 God had not spoken to him. As of Samuel in later 
 days, it might be said, Jacob " knew not the Lord." 
 We must now follow the homeless wanderer on his 
 journey. One evening he arrives at a place called 
 Luz. The sun had set. The gates were closed. 
 Admittance there was none. But Jacob was a 
 plain man, and beneath the canopy of heaven he 
 prepared his bed as best he might. He looked 
 about at the stones which had been cast out around 
 the gate, and chose the one most suited for a 
 pillow. Fatigue of travelling would soon entice 
 to slumber. And as he slept he dreamed, 
 
 ' ; And behold ! a ladder set up on the earth, 
 And the top of it reached to heaven : 
 And behold ! the angels of God 
 Ascending and descending on it." 2 
 
 Angelic ministrants were watching o'er his slum- 
 bers. But a vision of glory transcending that of 
 angels was to follow : 
 
 " Behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, 
 I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, 
 And the God of Isaac : 
 
 1 Gen. xxviii. 3, 4. 2 Ibid. ver. 12.
 
 JACOB'S VISION. 31 
 
 The land whereon thou liest, 
 
 To thee will I give it, and to thy seed." l 
 
 Like Abraham his grandfather, Jacob might have 
 said, " To me Thou hast given no heir." But he 
 was silent, and Jehovah continued, and thus en- 
 larged His gift : 
 
 " And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, 
 And thou shalt spread abroad, 
 To the west, and to the east, 
 And to the north, and to the south : 
 And in thee and in thy seed 
 Shall all the families of the earth be blessed." 2 
 
 But Jacob was a houseless, homeless, wanderer ! 
 No retinue was his, no guard attended him. 
 Travelling in those days was no easy pastime; 
 he knew not even the road that he was going, how 
 should he find his way ? how rest assured of a 
 prosperous issue to his journey ? Under that starry 
 canopy, in the midnight stillness, the Divine voice 
 spake yet further words to re-assure his fainting 
 spirit : 
 
 " And, behold ! I AM with thee, 
 
 And will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, 
 And will bring thee again into this land ; 
 For I will not leave thee, until I have done 
 That which I have spoken to thee of." 3 
 
 How grateful to Jacob was this Divine confirma- 
 tion of the blessing he so prized, but which in his 
 haste and unbelief he had sought to secure by 
 
 1 Gen. xxviii. 13. 2 Ibid. ver. 14. 3 Ibid. ver. lo.
 
 32 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 unjust means, can be well imagined. The very 
 spot whereon he lay became sacred. " Surely the 
 Lord is in this place ; and I knew it not ! " 1 was his 
 waking exclamation. How must such close con- 
 tact with Deity have brought his sin to remem- 
 brance ! The Lord, of purer eyes than to behold 
 iniquity, and who charges even His angels with 
 folly, had visited him in the night season, and 
 led him to hope that his iniquity was forgiven, his 
 sin pardoned. Every man of God who has come 
 to the Father by the new and living way which 
 God has appointed, will understand the mingled 
 feelings, of penitence and assurance, which led 
 Jacob to say, ' ' How dreadful is this place ! This 
 is none other but the house of God, and this is the 
 gate of heaven." a And the more he meditated 
 over this wondrous dream, the more he would 
 realize its meaning how that God had indeed 
 confirmed the oath which He had made with 
 Abraham, and renewed by covenant with Isaac 
 how that he himself was the recognised heir, and 
 that the birthright was now his by Divine appoint- 
 ment. And if the very spot was thus consecrated, 
 can we not see that the Stone which served as his 
 pillow, and on which he received these glorious 
 promises, would be regarded by him as partaking 
 also of a sacred character? We read that Jacob 
 rose up early in the morning, and took " the Stone," 
 
 1 Gen. xxviii. 16. 2 Ibid. ver. 17.
 
 JACOB'S VISION. 33 
 
 " and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the 
 top of it." l Jacob changed the name of the city, 
 heretofore called Luz, to Beth-el, and vowed a vow 
 concluding thus : " And THIS STONE, which I have 
 set for a pillar, shall ~be God's house : and of all that 
 Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth 
 unto Thee." 2 
 
 It is a well-known fact that memorial stones 
 so set up, are, and ever have been, regarded in the 
 East with almost a superstitious reverence. None 
 may remove or meddle with them. Guides have 
 been known to conduct a party of Europeans by 
 a long and circuitous detour, if they had reason 
 to fear that, through irreverent curiosity, a stone 
 which had thus been consecrated in Eastern eyes, 
 should be desecrated. None would, therefore, 
 remove Jacob's memorial stone during the twenty 
 yeai's' absence which ensued. At the end of that 
 period God Almighty again appeared to him, and,_ 
 specially recalling to his mind the consecrated 
 stone, said, " I am the God of Beth-el, where thou 
 anointedst the pillar : . . . return unto the land 
 of thy kindred." 3 Why this mention of the 
 stone whereon his head had lain ? Was it to 
 signify that the Lord destined that Stone to be a 
 perpetual witness of the wondrous promises made 
 at Beth-el ? The solemn reminder was reverently 
 heeded, alike by Jacob and his wives, and he 
 
 1 Gen. xxviii. 18. 2 Ibid. ver. 22. 3 Geu. xxxi. 13.
 
 04 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 prepared to obey. 1 Terror of bis brother's anger 
 nevertheless fell upon him while journeying back ; 
 but prayer was Jacob's refuge, and he pleaded the 
 promise made at Beth-el/ and prevailed. Hence- 
 forth as " ISRAEL " was Jacob known. But on the 
 way he lingered, and once more God appeared to 
 him, and said, " Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell 
 there." 3 It is worthy of remark, that the desig- 
 nation bestowed upon the spot in the awe-struck 
 exclamation of the newly- wakened sleeper as " none 
 other but the house of God," was identically that 
 which he afterwards deliberately bestowed upon 
 the stone. Having set it up, and anointed it, 
 and having changed the name of the place, the 
 wanderer had proceeded to vow a solemn vow, his 
 stone being witness. "If God will be with me, 
 and will keep me ... so that I come again 
 to my father's house in peace ; then shall . 
 this stone . be God's house.' 3 God had been 
 
 with him ; God had kept him in the way that 
 he went ; God had given him bread to eat, and 
 raiment to put on ; he was now returning " to his 
 father's house in peace ; " will he not take with him 
 the consecrated stone ? How else could he fulfil 
 his vow ? How ratify his promise ? Can it be 
 that the twenty intervening years had effaced the 
 memory of that vow ? It seems to us incredible ; 
 yet why else had God a second time to remind him 
 
 1 Gen. xxxi. 16, 17. 2 Gen. xxxii. 12. 3 Gen. xxxv. 1.
 
 JACOB'S VISION. 35 
 
 of the spot: "Arise, go up to Beth-el." No longer 
 did Israel hesitate. He came to Luz, the locale of 
 the STONE, he and all his household, having put 
 away their strange gods, and prepared themselves 
 to seek the Lord. 
 
 Localities are strangely bound up with spoken 
 words, or scenes enacted in them. To revisit Luz 
 would be to revive, and intensify the feelings, with 
 which Jacob had received that gracious revelation. 
 Nor could it be without intent that God thus called 
 attention to the stone which he had set up as a 
 memorial. " Beth-el, where ihoii anointedst 
 
 the pillar." 
 
 Will he receive a further blessing on this 
 memorable spot ? 
 
 "And God appeared unto Jacob again, 
 
 When he came out of Padan-aram, 
 
 And blessed him. 
 
 And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob : 
 Thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, 
 
 But ISRAEL shall be thy name : 
 
 And He called his name Israel. 
 And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: 
 
 Be fruitful and multiply; 
 
 A NATION AND A COMPANY OF NATIONS shall be of thee, 
 And kings shall come out of thy loins ; 
 And the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, 
 
 To thee will I give it, 
 
 And to thy seed after thee 
 
 Will I give the land." l 
 
 Could faith need further assurance? From 
 1 Gen. xxxv. 9-12.
 
 36 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 thenceforth Jacob's doubts were laid at rest. As 
 Israel he grasped the birthright, alike for himself 
 and his descendants. And this covenant, thus 
 solemnly renewed, was given at Luz, 1 again in sight 
 of that Pillar of Witness. 
 
 Thus a second time had this consecrated Stone 
 become an attesting witness to the covenant where- 
 with the God of Abraham bound Himself to give 
 the blessing of the birthright to Jacob, and his 
 seed after him. Yet well-nigh three hundred years 
 was still to elapse before the conquest of Canaan 
 would place Beth-el in the possession of Jacob's 
 heirs. And even then, for barely 730 years would 
 they hold it, ere the house of Israel would become 
 an outcast, and an exile. Since that brief tenure 
 of the land, for six-and-twenty centuries has Israel 
 been banished from it, though Ephraim is still 
 God's firstborn. 2 Of what use then, to what pur- 
 pose during these 2900 years would have been THE 
 STONE, had it remained at Luz ? That attesting 
 witness had a higher mission to fulfil. 
 
 Isaac still lived. His son had not seen him for 
 more than twenty years, and now he had much to 
 tell. He must hasten on to Mamre, 8 ere his father 
 die. Will he not take with him the consecrated 
 Stone ? 
 
 1 Gen. xxxv. 15. 
 
 2 See the Lord's declaration more than a century after 
 Israel had been exiled from the land. Jer. xxxi. 9. 
 
 3 Gen. xxxv. 27.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LOST JOSEPH FOUND. 
 
 " God ! the Hope of Israel, 
 
 Our souls now rest in Thee, 
 And none shall make us doubtful 
 
 Of our high destiny ; 
 The Empire Thou hasi given us 
 Shall own Thy blessed sway, 
 And Thou wilt lead us onward 
 Unto the perfect day." 
 
 /. G. Sliaw. 
 
 HAT of the splendid heritage thus solemnly 
 assured to Jacob's seed ? Some thirty-six 
 centuries have passed away. Where is 
 now Jacob's heir ? "Where that predicted 
 favoured nation which was to sway, and 
 encircle in her embrace, a vast " COMPANY OF 
 NATIONS " ? Surely if we can but find her out, we 
 shall discover also some trace of Jacob's Stone. We 
 do not say, as some believe, and as others affirm 
 that we say, that these temporal blessings can ever 
 supersede the spiritual ones. God forbid ! The man 
 who relies on the earthly heritage, while yet he has 
 not come to God through the blood of the. Lamb, will 
 
 37
 
 38 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 be counted by Him as a deceiver, and his claim will 
 bring down upon himself a curse, and not a blessing. 
 To such it will again be said, as by our Lord to the 
 unbelieving Jews, " If ye were Abraham's children, 
 ye would do the works of Abraham." But that 
 which God has sworn to give, we dare not lightly 
 to esteem. 
 
 But for the present we must not anticipate. We 
 must turn aside awhile, and forego our search after 
 this consecrated STONE, to trace the onward history 
 of him to whom that Stone belonged of right. 
 
 We left Jacob at Mamre, where shortly after 
 he buried his father, Isaac; but not before the 
 aged patriarch must have understood how God had 
 indeed bestowed upon this, his younger son, the 
 blessing of Abraham. 
 
 Soon too it became evident apparently to Esau 
 also. The two brothers found it impossible to dwell 
 together in the land of Canaan on account of their 
 vast possessions. Under such circumstances the 
 one who would usually give place, would be the 
 younger brother, the latest comer, the long-time 
 absentee. But to Israel God had assured the Birth- 
 right, and too well Esau knew it. So he quietly 
 took his wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and 
 his household, and his cattle, and his wealth, and 
 left the land of Canaan to his brother Jacob. 1 
 
 To Israel God had given twelve sons. Through 
 
 1 Gen. xxxvi. 6-8.
 
 LOST JOSEPH FOUND. 39 
 
 which of these will the Birthright be transmitted ? 
 Reuben was the first-born ; but in every case 
 hitherto that blessing had descended by God's ex- 
 press selection. Nor was it otherwise now. Un- 
 revealed as yet was God's purpose; and much as 
 Jacob loved the sons of his lost Rachel, it is not 
 likely that he imagined the Birthright was destined 
 for either Joseph, or Benjamin. Had he for one 
 moment dreamt of nominating Joseph as his heir, 
 the passing thought would soon have suffered an 
 eclipse no human ken had penetrated. 
 
 " And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father 
 was a stranger." * Have we ever pondered this 
 simple statement, and sought to ascertain its mean- 
 ing ? Isaac, the child of promise, was born in the 
 land of Canaan ; that land which had been cove- 
 nanted to his father Abraham ; he lived therein as 
 a great and mighty prince all his days, and finally 
 died there at the advanced age of one hundred and 
 eighty years. Yet he was but a stranger in the land ! 
 And to mark a striking contrast, we are now told 
 that Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was 
 "a stranger;" and that no misunderstanding may 
 be possible, it is added, "in the land of Canaan." 
 Apparently Jacob now thought to live and die in 
 Canaan, recognised at least as one of its largest 
 landed proprietors, an earnest of the full possession 
 which Faith assured him should one day fall to his 
 
 1 Gen. xxxvii. 1.
 
 40 THE COEONATI05T STONE. 
 
 seed. That at this time he loved Joseph more than 
 all his children we know from Holy Writ; also 
 that his other sons " saw that their father loved 
 him more than all his brethren/' in consequence of 
 which " they hated him, and could not speak peace- 
 ably unto him." But this state of things in his 
 household would have withheld his pledge, had he 
 ever thought of bestowing the Birthright on Joseph. 
 Yet God will make clear His own intent, in His 
 own time, in His own way. The hatred of the un- 
 natural brothers became the destined instrument in 
 Jehovah's hand of working out His Sovereign will. 
 There came a day when " they conspired against 
 Joseph to slay him." l God kept them, though they 
 knew it not, from accomplishing their cruel purpose. 
 Reuben, unstable as water, had yet some human 
 feeling left. ' ' Shed no blood," was his counsel ; 
 " but cast him into this pit," he added, meaning to 
 deliver him to his father again. Thus far God used 
 Reuben ; then he was put aside, for God had mighty 
 work for Joseph to do in Egypt. Reuben left him 
 in the pit till such time as in safety he could draw 
 him up and take him home again. A few hours 
 later he returned; but, " behold, Joseph was not 
 in the pit; and he rent his clothes." 
 
 Which of us has not wept over the touching 
 scene that followed; the poor father's agonizing 
 grief, the hypocritical and vain attempts of all his 
 
 1 Gen. xxxvii. 18.
 
 LOST JOSEPH FOUND. 41 
 
 sons to comfort him. " For I will go down into 
 the grave unto my son mourning/' was the fixed 
 rosolve of the stricken, broken-hearted Jacob. 
 "Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces/' was 
 seemingly a truth too evident to be gainsayed. 
 Years passed away, but the wound remained un- 
 healed. Upwards of twenty years later, from those 
 aged lips was rung the bitter cry, "Joseph is 
 not ! " l 
 
 Yet was it so ? Had God forsaken Joseph ? He 
 had shown Abraham that his seed should sojourn 
 in Egypt : how was this purpose to be brought 
 about ? 
 
 " HE called for a famine upon the land : 
 He brake the whole staff of bread. 
 He sent a man before them, even Joseph, 
 Who was sold for a servant : 
 Whose feet they hurt with fetters : 
 He was laid in iron : 
 Until the time that His word came : 
 The word of the Lord tried him. 
 The king sent and loosed him ; 
 Even the ruler of the people, 
 And let him go free. 
 He made him lord of his house, 
 And ruler of all his substance : 
 To bind his princes at his pleasure ; 
 And teach his senators wisdom. 
 Israel also came into Egypt ; 
 And Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham. 
 And He increased His people greatly ; 
 And made them stronger than their enemies." 2 
 
 1 Gen. xlii. 36. 2 Ps. cv. 16-24.
 
 42 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 We, who can see the end of the Lord, we to 
 whom the sacred story of Joseph's sojourn in 
 Egypt has been familiar from our infancy, have no 
 difficulty in recognising in the all but sovereign 
 ruler of Egypt, the unhappy youth who, by violent 
 means, was torn from his beloved home, and sold a 
 bond-slave to the Midianites. Yet not more strik- 
 ing the way by which God has led " lost Israel " 
 these six-and-twenty centuries, than that by which 
 he conducted Joseph. To his father's full belief 
 Joseph was " dead." With the cruel brothers the 
 wish was father to the thought. The outside world, 
 of course, accepted the family's statement, and 
 by the surrounding Canaanites, Joseph was written 
 down as " lost." Once and again, while thus veiled 
 from the eyes of all concerned, Joseph was nigh 
 destruction. The house of an Eastern despot, the 
 prison wherein he lay in fetters, were not what 
 we should usually deem to be places of security. 
 " But/' and herein lies the secret of his preser- 
 vation, "the Lord was with Joseph, and showed 
 him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the 
 keeper of the prison." * Yes ; God had destined 
 Joseph to have the Birthright, and to transmit it 
 through Ephraim, his son, who was to be the head 
 of the ten tribes of the house of Israel. And we 
 can now see that God has written for us their after 
 history in miniature, when He caused the story 
 
 1 Gen. xxxix. 21-23.
 
 LOST JOSEPH FOUND. 43 
 
 of Joseph in Egypt to be so graphically, so mi- 
 nutely, so exquisitely portrayed. The similarity is 
 no less touching than it is striking. Separated 
 from his brethren; carried by violence from the 
 Promised Land; cast into a pit; doomed to banish- 
 ment and exile; sold into slavery; pronounced by 
 his own family and their surroundings to be " lost ; " 
 mourned over by his father as ' ' dead ; " as years 
 rolled on, his very name forgotten by the world; 
 yet the whole time safe in another land, experi- 
 encing, in truth, tremendous vicissitudes of fortune, 
 yet watched over unremittingly by Him who had 
 pre-ordained that Joseph should have the Birth- 
 right; advanced to unparalleled honour and dignity, 
 and so completely changed that when his brethren 
 saw him they recognised him not ! Yet can this 
 tale, so passing strange, be true ? Was this indeed 
 the long-lost Joseph before whom the travellers 
 stood ? They had come into personal contact with 
 him. They had held official, commercial, and diplo- 
 matic relations with this mighty potentate. Had 
 he really been their own brother, one who had been 
 brought up amongst them, dwelling together for 
 seventeen years, is it possible that one and all of 
 them should have been so utterly oblivious of his 
 features ? 
 
 Had the clear glance of an onlooker suddenly 
 pierced the veil, and had he announced his dis- 
 covery to friends of the family, we can well imagine 
 the incredulity and ridicule with which his words
 
 44 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 would have been greeted. The sons of Jacob 
 would have been the first to disown their " new " 
 relation. And had the clear-sighted discoverer 
 still held to his idea, and sought to propagate his 
 view, we can quite imagine a priest of On, learned 
 in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, thus writing to 
 a friend who had sought his opinion : " Regard 
 it not, Rameses, this vain and groundless talk. 
 Myself, I have examined at thy request this new 
 theory as to the origin of our great ruler, and been 
 satisfied as to its delusive nature. Ethnologically 
 it is inadmissible. As to language, it so fell out 
 that the king's business required mine attendence 
 at the capital on the day which brought those 
 Hebrews. I was present at my lord's court when 
 first he gave them audience. Myself can testify he 
 spake with them alone through an interpreter. On 
 every ground this new theory is but a craze. Re- 
 gard it not, Rameses, for it is utterly untenable." 
 True, this Egyptian ruler had displayed an un- 
 wonted interest in their family concerns. He had 
 shown an accurate, almost weird-like acquaintance 
 with their degrees of family precedence ; l but who 
 would allow such minor incidents to identify him 
 with one who, as men full well knew, had long been 
 dead ? Besides, my lord Zaphnath-Paaneah was at 
 the pinnacle of earthly greatness, and Reuben had 
 last seen Joseph in a pit ! Then, too, the very 
 
 1 Gen. xliii. 33.
 
 LOST JOSEPH FOUND. 45 
 
 name was altogether different ; l so how could this 
 be Joseph ? 
 
 It is thus men reason now. Instead of gravely 
 investigating facts, and inquiring what new lessons 
 they may teach, men start with preconceived no- 
 tions, determined to reject and brand as " worth- 
 less " whatever may run counter to their own ideas 
 and previous theories. It is more than probable 
 that Joseph was in no particular haste to identify 
 himself to his unkind and now famishing relations. 
 Hatred alone had they ever borne to him. Possibly 
 small love had he now for them. But G-od's ways 
 are not our ways. 
 
 " There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, 
 Rough-hew them how we will." 
 
 The time had now come when Abraham's seed were 
 to go down for their long sojourn in Egypt. How 
 should this be brought about ? There was a 
 missing link which should re-unite the family. 
 God had preserved Jacob alive, and for the sake 
 of again beholding the face of his honoured and 
 beloved father, Joseph was constrained to make 
 himself known unto his brethren. 
 
 With only one remaining difficulty have we still 
 to grapple. Jacob was now a great lord in Canaan, 
 and this was his own promised land. He " dwelt " 
 in the land wherein his father was a stranger. He 
 wss now a hundred and thirty years of age. Worn 
 
 1 Gen. xli. 45.
 
 46 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 out by toil and suffering, with this weight of years 
 upon him, what should induce him not only to 
 undertake the length and peril of a journey down 
 into Egypt, but to consent to an utter uprooting 
 from his own homestead, and the lands he had 
 gotten him in Canaan? We have seen God's 
 sovereign purpose in the matter ; but will not this 
 clash with man's free will ? It cannot be that 
 Israel will willingly decide to leave his earthly all ? 
 
 "Your thoughts are not My thoughts/' saith 
 Jehovah. 
 
 What strange convoy is this nearing the Patri- 
 arch's dwelling ? Ten she-asses laden with corn 
 and bread and meat : ten other asses laden with 
 the good things of Egypt ! Not these the beasts 
 on which his sons had started. And wagons too ! 
 Wagons for their wives, wagons for their little ones 
 and special wagons for himself, all sent by royal 
 command what meaneth this ? And they came 
 "unto Jacob their father, and told him, saying, 
 Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor over all the 
 land of Egypt." Can we wonder that Jacob's heart 
 fainted for he believed them not. But when he 
 heard the words of Joseph, " and saw the wagons 
 which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of 
 Jacob their father revived : and Israel said, It is 
 enough; Joseph my son is yet alive; I will go and 
 see him before I die." 1 
 
 1 Gen. xlv. 26-28.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE STONE AN HEIR-LOOM. 
 
 O God ! the Hope of Israel, 
 
 To Thee at length we look, 
 Believing every promise 
 
 Writ in Thy holy Book. 
 And those Thou mad'st to Abraham, 
 
 Thy "friend," are very sure, 
 For Thou didst seal them with an oath 
 
 To make each one secure. 
 
 E must now retrace our steps, and en- 
 deavour to gain some clue to the after 
 history of the " Anointed Pillar," the 
 silent witness to that never-to-be-forgotten 
 transaction at Luz, when, in the solemn 
 stillness of the night, God had nominated 
 Jacob to be Isaac's heir. 
 
 We seem to have left it at Harare, and is there 
 not a cause ? Isaac would require some evidence 
 that God had ratified the blessing of the Birthright 
 which he had himself so unwittingly bestowed upon 
 his younger son. He would long to know if God had 
 forgiven, and surely blotted out the sin by which 
 that blessing had been obtained. From the lips of
 
 48 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 his long-lost son lie would hear the story of that 
 wondrous vision, which to Jacob had made the spot 
 on which he had lain so " dreadful." Would his 
 faith receive no confirmation when he could place 
 his own hand upon the Stone of Witness which God 
 had deigned to notice, and to which he so pointedly 
 had called Jacob's attention upon his return to the 
 Promised Land ? Would he not hear from Israel's 
 numerous sons how they had found this Memorial 
 Stone, standing to guard the spot, itself sacredly 
 guarded by Eastern customs, when their father led 
 them thither at God's express command ? 
 
 And Esau, too, did he not see this precious heir- 
 loom, this pillar of stone, his brother's title-deed 
 to the land, and to all the blessings assured to 
 Abraham's seed ? He could not indeed read the 
 sentence which, twelve centuries later, God made 
 Obadiah record ; " And the house of Jacob shall be 
 a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the 
 house of Esau for stubble ; . and there shall 
 
 not be any remaining of the house of Esau ; for the 
 Lord hath spoken it." l But he could see the Stone- 
 witness of the covenant which God had made with 
 Jacob. Did that silent monument exert no influence 
 upon Esau's mind, when he decided, as we have 
 seen, upon removing altogether from the land of 
 
 1 Obadiah 18 : uttered circa 587, or more than 130 years 
 after the House of Israel had been exiled from their land
 
 THE STONE AN HEIR-LOOM. 49 
 
 Canaan ? Nay, would anything short of such a 
 token have made him, as Isaac's firstborn, so 
 strangely quit the land wherein he had dwelt nearly 
 one hundred years, and take his sons, the future 
 fathers of a princely race thus yielding to his 
 younger brother the Birthright he had forfeited ? 
 This seems, at least to us, the line by which we 
 must regain the clue of which we are in quest. 
 
 For we have seen how Jacob took the Stone 
 which had served him for a pillow, and set it up as 
 a standing pillar to mark the sacred spot to which 
 lie might in future years repair, and show it to his 
 children after him. We have seen how, when twenty 
 years had rolled away, and a large family had been 
 bestowed upon him, he took them thither at God's 
 command, where they might see THIS STONE. Is it 
 wondrous if he and they should simultaneously 
 desire to take it henceforth to their hearths, and 
 keep it as a priceless heir-loom ? Nay more, would 
 not faith naturally appropriate it as a title-deed to 
 'their promised possessions ? Some gleam of light 
 seems to fall upon an act recorded of Israel upon 
 his return to this sacred spot. God deigned again 
 to talk with him at Bethel, and then we read, 
 
 "And Jacob set up a pillar 
 In the place where He talked with him, 
 Even a pillar of stone : 
 And he poured a drink offering thereon. 
 And he poured oil thereon." l 
 
 1 Gen. xxxv. 14
 
 50 THE COEONATION STONE. 
 
 What need of setting up a second memorial 
 stone, and of dedicating it as solemnly as he had 
 done the first, if the former one was to be still left 
 standing ? Does it not seem to intimate that the 
 former one had done its work in marking the spot 
 during his absence, and that now upon his return 
 he determined for his own sake, and for his 
 children's sake, to take it into his own especial 
 keeping ? 
 
 If this Stone were a figure or type of Christ, "the 
 chief corner Stone," no less than an evidence of 
 promised earthly greatness to his seed, what more 
 fitting witness could be given to span the distance 
 between the Vision and the Cross, and onward from 
 the Cross to the coming glory which Christ's death 
 alone could purchase, than this consecrated pillow, 
 this imperishable Stone ? More precious than the 
 priceless Koh-i-noor, yet so plain and unadorned 
 that when men saw it none should desire it ; of 
 size and weight sufficient to prevent the theft, had 
 an enemy slily sought to rob him of his jealously 
 guarded treasure, yet so easy of removal, that when 
 Jacob went down into Egyyt it could be placed 
 inside his wagon ; and in Israel's after wanderings 
 could be borne along, a silent exponent of Jehovah's 
 purposes and leadings. 
 
 No bar of improbability at least marks this early 
 stage in our researches ; and this admitted, we are 
 sure that if once Jacob so cared for it in the Land 
 of Promise, he would cling to it all the more tena-,
 
 THE STONE AN HEIR- LOOM. 51 
 
 ciously when, in his declining age, he was called to 
 go down into Egypt. 
 
 Jacob died in Egypt ; but on his death-bed, by 
 God's appointment, and with prophetic vision, he 
 nominated his heir. Reuben was the firstborn, yet 
 for a sin long since committed, he was disinherited, 
 and "his Birthright was given unto the sons of 
 Joseph, the son of Israel : and the genealogy is 
 not to be reckoned after the Birthright." l " THE 
 BIRTHRIGHT WAS JOSEPH'S." 2 But Joseph was not 
 then in the land of Canaan. His sons had never 
 seen it. Had Jacob no evidence to show in proof 
 of his assertion that God had given him the land ? 
 While Joseph's brethren had counted him as " lost," 
 if not dead, God had made him fruitful in the land 
 of his affliction. Manasseh, his eldest son, had 
 " made him forget all his toil and all his father's 
 house." The name bestowed upon his second son 
 was Ephraim ; " for God," he said, " hath caused 
 me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction." 3 
 
 These two sons were brought by Joseph to his 
 dying father's bedside. The sight of these, his 
 destined heirs, recalled to the departing spirit a 
 vision of bygone days. In supreme moments, when 
 all else is forgotten, an indelible memory clings 
 around the chief transaction of our life. Luz, 
 never-to-be-forgotten Luz, with its imperishable 
 
 1 1 Chron. v. 1. 2 Hid. ver. 2. 
 
 3 Gen. xli. 51, 52.
 
 52 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 associations, arose at once before him. Joseph was 
 announced, " and Israel strengthened himself, and 
 sat upon the bed." l Not an instant did the old 
 man lose : 
 
 " And Jacob said unto Joseph, 
 God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz 
 In the land of Canaan, and blessed me, 
 And said unto me, Behold, 
 I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, 
 And I will make of thee a multitude of people ; 
 And will give this land to thy seed after thee 
 For an everlasting possession. 
 
 " And now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, 
 Which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt 
 Before I came unto thee into Egypt, 
 Are Mine ; as Reuben and Simeon, 
 They shall be Mine." 2 
 
 As yet Joseph knew not that he was to have the 
 blessing, but upon these two sons of his the eyes 
 of the dying patriarch now rested : " Bring them, I 
 pray thee, unto me, and I will bless them." 3 
 
 In glad obedience to his father's will, Joseph, first 
 bowing himself with his face to the earth, took his 
 two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, the former in his 
 right hand, and the latter in his left, and so placed 
 them that Israel's hand of blessing might fall upon 
 Manasseh, his firstborn. But the blessing of the 
 Birthright was one which God invariably reserved 
 
 1 Gen. xlviii. 1, 2. 2 Ibid. ver. 3-5. 
 
 3 Ibid. ver. 9.
 
 THE STONE AN HEIR-LOOM. 53 
 
 for His own appointment. Neither Joseph's exalted 
 station, nor Jacob's desire to gratify his favourite 
 son, must interfere with God's selection. Yet an 
 effort to secure it for his elder son was irresistible. 
 " When Joseph saw that his father laid his right 
 hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him : 
 and he held up his father's hand, to remove it from 
 Ephraim' s head unto Manasseh's head. And Joseph 
 said unto his father, Not so, my father : for this is 
 the firstborn; put thy right hand upon his head." l 
 Why such minutiae of detail ? What can it signify 
 to us upon which head those aged hands should 
 rest ? Why are we so emphatically told that 
 " Israel stretched out his right hand, and laid it 
 upon Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his 
 left hand upon Manasseh's head, guiding his hands 
 wittingly " ? 2 And this too when " the eyes of 
 Israel were dim for age, so that he could not see." 3 
 Scanning the distant future with the telescope of 
 faith, the dying Patriarch looked forward to the 
 ratification of his blessing, when he added, "In 
 thee shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as 
 Ephraim and as Manasseh : and he set Ephraim be- 
 fore Manasseh." 4 Again we ask, Why these graphic 
 details ? The word of God is not wont to gratify 
 mere curiosity. The reason is plainly given. God 
 had chosen for Himself " A NATION " ; a nation to 
 
 1 Gen. xlviii. 17, 18. 2 Ibid. ver. 14, 
 
 3 Ibid. ver. 10. Ibid. ver. 20.
 
 5-t THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 become so wondrous great, that it should in due 
 time expand into " A MULTITUDE OP NATIONS." Not 
 this the role allotted to Manasseh. He truly was to 
 become A GEEAT PEOPLE ; yet Jacob had not acted 
 by mistake. 
 
 " I know it, my son, I know it : 
 He also shall become A PEOPLE, 
 And he also shall be GKEAT : 
 But truly his younger brother 
 Shall be greater than he, 
 And his seed shall become 
 
 A MULTITUDE OF NATIONS." ' 
 
 Now it is this seed of Ephraim, if, dare we say 
 it ? if God has been faithful to His word, and the 
 still greater multitudinous seed of which Ephraim 
 was the designated head, if it can anywhere be 
 found, which alone can be expected to take an 
 interest in the discovery of " JACOB'S STONE." To 
 all others it may be a worthless, meaningless, stone. 
 But, believing as we do that this STONE was given 
 by God as inseparably united to the Covenant 
 blessing, we do also believe that it will be found in 
 the possession of the firstborn. One thousand and 
 eighty years rolled on after the Patriarch's eyes 
 had closed in death, and God rehearsed and ratified 
 the blessing he had given ; for 
 
 "Ephraim is MY firstborn," 2 
 was His declaration to Jeremiah. 
 
 1 Gen. xlviii. 19. 2 Jer. xxxi. 9.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE STONE OP ISRAEL. 
 
 " Thy purpose foreordained 
 Grant us the consummation! for, of old, 
 Didst Thou not speak by holy men, and say, 
 ' This people have I formed unto Myself ; 
 They shall show forth My praise? ' And we who now 
 Behold Thy purpose manifest, that was 
 So long unseen, unguessed of by Thy sons, 
 Do pray thee that, as even until now 
 Thou hast upheld our fathers and their sons, 
 And brought them, by strange ways they had not known, 
 To seek Thee and Thy glory, Thou wilt haste 
 The year of Thy redeemed.'' 
 
 East Anglian. 
 
 : UT in blessing his grandsons, Jacob will 
 surely not overlook their father, his own 
 beloved,long-lost,and sorely-tried Joseph? 
 No. To show God's selection of Ephraim for 
 Himself, this exquisite picture is introduced ; 
 but ere the aged Israel sleeps in death, we 
 know he will gather around him the fathers of the 
 future twelve tribes, which shall bear his name to 
 earth's remotest posterity. Then will be the time 
 
 55
 
 56 
 
 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 we shall look for some mention of his treasured 
 STONE. He would not confide it to the youth- 
 ful Ephraim's keeping, while yet his father lived, 
 through whom should pass the Birthright. 
 
 But will not allusion to the vision, and that 
 memorable night at Luz suffice ? What need they 
 any further witness ? Dreams and visions, as 
 mediums of communicating God's will to man, 
 were not unknown in those days; for, had not 
 " God, who in divers manners spake in time past 
 unto the fathers," thus given to Abraham the 
 superbly grand assurances of the future greatness 
 of his seed ? In a vision He had brought him forth 
 abroad, and said : 
 
 " Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, 
 If thou be able to number them : 
 And he said unto him, 
 So shall thy seed be." ' 
 
 Nor had Abraham harboured a doubt as to the 
 reality of this magnificent promise, on account of 
 its having merely passed in vision. The inspired 
 word goes on : 
 
 " And he believed in the Lord ; 
 And He counted it to him for righteousness." 2 
 
 Enough, indeed, for Jacob's faith, that wondrous 
 vision at Luz which renewed the covenant first 
 made with Abraham ; but his descendants, sojourn- 
 ing in a foreign land, must have some tangible 
 
 1 Gen. xv. 5. 2 Ibid. ver. 6.
 
 THE STONE OF ISRAEL. 57 
 
 witness of it in memoriam. What so fitting as 
 the memorial stone to which God Himself had so 
 pointedly directed his attention when he returned 
 from his long exile. Let us then listen to his 
 parting benedictions. 
 
 " And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, 
 Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you 
 That which shall befall you in the last days." 1 
 
 In the last days ? It was not, then, merely for 
 those surrounding him ; no, nor yet for Israel's 
 seed when in the land of Canaan, that these words 
 were spoken. Centuries of exile have banished 
 both kingdoms of Israel from the Holy Land ; yet 
 something had to be communicated concerning his 
 posterity, to which we must hearken, for it teaches 
 us what is to befall them "in the last days." It 
 has indeed a still more vivid interest from the fact 
 that ours are, by the Christian Church, considered 
 to be " the last days." If this STONE were indeed 
 in Jacob's possession, and of the value we have 
 indicated, we may expect, in that supreme moment, 
 some allusion to this his weighty Title Deed. It 
 would not be addressed to all his sons, but to the 
 one whom God designed to be his heir. This son, 
 as we have seen, was Joseph. In blessing him, will 
 he allude to any Stone, as given him by his God ? 
 
 Listen to the prophetic words, which by the 
 Patriarch were spoken : 
 
 1 Gen. xlix. 1.
 
 58 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 " Joseph is a fruitful bough, 
 Even a fruitful bough by a well; 
 Whose branches run over the wall : 
 The archers have sorely grieved him, 
 And shot at him, and hated him : 
 But his bow abode in strength, 
 And the arms of his hands were made strong 
 By the hands of the mighty God of Jacob ; 
 
 1 (FROM THENCE is the Shepherd, 
 THE STONE OF ISKAEL.") 2 
 
 What ! did he really refer to his precious STONE 
 which had served him for a pillow, when God gave 
 him that never-to-be-forgotten vision ? No wonder 
 that he claimed it as " THE STONE OP ISRAEL/' 
 and spake of it as a gift " of the mighty God of 
 Jacob ! " Temporal blesssings in every conceivable 
 form were promised to descend upon the head of 
 Joseph (as Israel's designated heir) to be realized 
 " in the Last days." Sad will it be indeed if it can 
 be proved that in these " last days " no heirs of 
 Joseph are forthcoming to enjoy them. 
 
 The inspired blessing proceeds, and augments as 
 
 1 The word here translated " thence " is rendered in 
 Hosea ii. 15, " From that time." A writer in the " Banner 
 of Israel" (Vol. V., p. 151) points out that HJH here given 
 as " the Shepherd," being the present participle (mas. sing.) 
 of a verb signifying to take care of, to keep, might be better 
 rendered " he kept." Thus a more intelligible reading of 
 this confessedly difficult passage would seem to be, " From 
 that time he (Joseph) kept the Stone of Israel." 
 
 2 Gen. xlix. 22-24-.
 
 THE STONE OP ISRAEL. 59 
 
 it unfolds what God has reserved for Joseph's house 
 in these, the latter days. 
 
 "By the God of thy father, who shall help thee; 
 And by the Almighty, who shall bless thee 
 With blessings of heaven above, 
 Blessings of the deep that lieth under, 
 Blessings of the breasts, and of the womb : 
 The blessings of thy father have prevailed 
 Above the blessings of my progenitors 
 Unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills : 
 They shall be on the head of Joseph, 
 And on the crown of the head of him 
 That was separate from his brethren." ! 
 
 Language, this, such as Omnipotence alone could 
 dictate; a future, this, such as Omniscience alone 
 could descry ! The double portion inseparable from 
 the Birthright was herein bestowed, not by impli- 
 cation alone, but given and reiterated in the ma- 
 jestic utterances of inspiration. " Had Ephraim no 
 heirs ? " we once asked a Jewish Rabbi. " Where 
 is now the double portion ? " " Unquestionably, if 
 any nation has it," was his reply, " that nation must 
 be England. Yes ! you have the double portion ! " 
 Surely, if the honour of our God is the one thing we 
 care for, if to prove His faithfulness be more to us 
 than life itself, we "shall not be in rest until we 
 have finished the thing this day." Mark well these 
 promises, which cannot be broken. Is there indeed 
 no nation which can lay claim to them ? No nation 
 
 1 Gen. xlix. 25, 26.
 
 60 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 which in these " last days " l is extending its do- 
 minion from shore to shore, "unto the utmost 
 bounds of the everlasting hills " ? If so, it belongs 
 of right to him " that was separate from his breth- 
 ren." If any such nation there be, that nation 
 must be Joseph's heir. 
 
 May it not prove that the " earth hunger" (as a 
 certain school are pleased to term it) ascribed to us 
 nationally, is a sign of a divinely implanted prin- 
 ciple, leading Anglo-Israel to accept gratefully, and 
 to retain tenaciously, the acquisitions by which God 
 is fulfilling His promises to Joseph's heirs ? May 
 it not be that the sense of imperial responsibility 
 thus to act in this matter, which some politicians 
 are for ever bringing against England as a reproach, 
 is as much an intuitive and heaven-born instinct, as 
 is the mother's love which accepts, and shields, and 
 refuses to part from, the offspring God has given ? 
 When God sends children He can supply the 
 parents' need. If He has dealt with us right 
 royally ; if, in performance of His sacred oath, He 
 has bestowed on us the promised " multitude of 
 nations," He has given us likewise the devoted 
 loyalty of our oldest colonies. The heirs of Joseph 
 may not, nay, they dare not, fling back God's 
 gifts to Jacob with a contemptuous " Oui bono ? " 2 
 That Jacob, when thus blessing Joseph, made an 
 allusion (well understood by his sons) to some re- 
 
 1 Gen. xlk. 1. 2 Gen. xxv. 32.
 
 THE STONE OP ISRAEL. bl 
 
 markable Stone connected with the Birthright it is 
 clear ; but that he also regarded this STONE as a type 
 or figure of the coming Messiah is, as we shall here- 
 after show, to say the least, equally probable. Why 
 then was the reference to "THE STONE OP ISRAEL" l 
 not made when JUDAH'S turn for blessing came ? 
 "For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of 
 Judah." Why then was not " THE STONE OP ISRAEL " 
 confided to the keeping of Messiah's honoured 
 ancestor ? 
 
 The answer cannot be other than this : Because 
 the STONE must go with the Birthright. The heir- 
 looms must go to the son and heir ; the title-deeds 
 belong of right to the estate's lawful claimant. Be- 
 cause God, who had fore-ordained the future sepa- 
 ration of the house of Israel from that of Judah, and 
 whose irrevocable decree, "Ephraim is My first- 
 born," 2 had been registered in the council chamber 
 of Heaven, designed henceforth to entrust to the 
 safe keeping of Joseph, and of Joseph's heirs, this 
 precious " corner-stone." With the STONE prob- 
 ably beside him, his dying hand resting upon it, 
 the Patriarch turns to his much loved, long lost 
 Joseph, and now we read this brief allusion, " from 
 thence . . . is THE STONE OP ISRAEL ! " No more 
 was needed. The story of his vision was an oft-told 
 tale, indelibly engraven upon the memories of his 
 
 1 See marginal reference to Isa. xxviii. 16. 
 
 2 Jer. xxxi. 9. 
 
 E
 
 62 
 
 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 children. The STONE was still standing when they 
 had all reached Luz to attest its truth. To each 
 the allusion, take it which way we will, would have 
 solemn yet simple meaning ; for, from thence (i.e., 
 from Canaan) had now been hither brought "THE 
 STONE OF ISRAEL." 
 
 From that hour Joseph would surely take it to 
 his own home, and transmit the heir-loom to his 
 son. Let us mark that it is " in the last days " that 
 we are to look for the fulfilment of the blessings 
 destined for Israel's sons; and EPHRAIM had the 
 Birthright. Is it not worth an exhaustive search, 
 to prove that promise true? If in these days of 
 wondrous discoveries, we can but light upon the 
 traces of "lost" Ephraim, we shall surely find this 
 STONE has been God-guarded; we shall also hope 
 to identify the lawful possessors of this priceless 
 
 STONE OP ISRAEL.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 K 
 
 "THIS STONE SHALL BE GODS HOU&E. 
 
 ' His worship does a thousand comforts yield, 
 God's House thy help, and He thy heavenly shield. 
 O Britain, trust the Lord ; thy foes in vain 
 Attempt thy ruin, and oppose His reign." 
 
 Watts. 
 
 iT symbol, and figure, and type, the Old 
 Testament dispensation was unquestion- 
 ably given and maintained. Yet what 
 tangible symbol, or figure, or type instructed 
 the people in Egypt ? Israel was the father 
 of the twelve tribes who bear his name. By 
 God's express appointment he and all his sons went 
 down into Egypt, where they were to increase and 
 multiply, and be hidden, as it were, for centuries, 
 forgotten by the people of their promised land, 
 and wholly unknown to fame. This strange train- 
 ing for fitting the seed of Israel for their future 
 inheritance was no oversight on Jehovah's part 
 no after-thought. Two hundred years before Pha- 
 raoh's wagons conveyed Jacob and all his house- 
 
 63
 
 64 THE COEONATION STONE. 
 
 hold into Egypt/ God had thus revealed to Abra- 
 ham His purposes regarding His promised seed : 
 
 " Know of a surety that thy seed 
 Shall be a stranger in a land 
 That is not theirs, and shall serve them ; 
 And they shall afflict them four hundred years ; 
 And also that nation, whom they shall serve, 
 Will I judge : and afterwards 
 Shall they come out with great substance." 2 
 
 To leave Egypt for but a few days, while yet Joseph 
 lived, even to bury their father, required special 
 leave of absence, and a distinct promise on the part 
 of Pharaoh's Premier that he would shortly return 
 to his duties. Already, therefore, the fetters, gilded 
 though they might be at the outset, were tighten- 
 ing around Jacob's heirs; and at length came a 
 day when another monarch sat on Pharaoh's throne 
 who " knew not Joseph." During this long period 
 of their sojourn in the house of bondage, when to 
 many it must have seemed as if Grod had forgotten 
 His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with 
 Jacob, had they nothing to assure them of their 
 national election ? 
 
 When passing through the desert, the Urim and 
 the Thummim, the Ark of the Covenant, the Tables 
 of Stone, and the Tabernacle, with its symbolic 
 furniture, were ever present with them. But what 
 remembrancer had they throughout that long weary 
 
 1 Gen. xlv. 17-21. 2 Gen. xv. 13, 14.
 
 "THIS STONE SHALL BE GOD J S HOUSE." 65 
 
 night of waiting and of watching in Egypt ? The 
 first tabernacle was not "yet standing, which was 
 a figure." Is it possible that during these two 
 centuries Jehovah would leave the people whose 
 training He had taken upon Himself, without some 
 figure, some witness, some tangible evidence of the 
 Covenant by which He had bound Himself? Some 
 token that He would yet make good His promises 
 towards them ? It cannot be ! It is not like His 
 dealings with His chosen ones. It is not like Him- 
 self! The STONE on which the wanderer laid his 
 head when he received those wondrous promises 
 alone can give the missing link, and span the chasm 
 which must else exist between the direct revelations 
 to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and the Divine 
 teaching vouchsafed some centuries later to the 
 children of Israel in the wilderness. The presump- 
 tive evidence is to my mind as clear as can be well 
 adduced. 
 
 Stones of witness to solemn transactions were 
 not unknown. Instances indeed abound. To con- 
 fine ourselves to Jacob's history, we recall another 
 occasion. When sore pressed by Laban, God had 
 appeared on his behalf, and the angry pursuer was 
 glad to make peace with the fugitive. " And Jacob 
 took a stone and set it up for a pillar." And 
 Laban said, " This pillar be witness." 1 
 
 The stone "Mizpah" had witnessed but de- 
 
 1 Gen. xxxi. 52.
 
 Ob THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 liverance from an angry kinsman's wrath; and at 
 Gilead it might well remain to tell its tale to passers 
 by. But the Stone which had witnessed the solemn 
 transactions at Luz, might not be so lightly parted 
 from. As "the Stone of the Covenant" Jacob 
 would naturally regard it, and henceforth take it into 
 his own custody. No difficulties appear to make 
 this story incredible. Far more incredible, but for 
 simple faith in the word of God, would seem the 
 story of the rescued Ark of the Covenant in after 
 days. How that, left to the untutored guidance of 
 two milch kine, whose calves were shut up at home 
 by the terror-stricken lords of the Philistines, it 
 should be conveyed by the straight way back to the 
 land of Israel : " They turned not aside to the right 
 hand, or to the left." l We judge of God's estimate 
 of the one by His preserving care of the other. 
 
 Assuming our case as proved so far, and that the 
 Witness-Stone from Bethel had accompanied Jacob 
 into Egypt, and by him been transmitted to his son 
 and heir, what next would be its history? There 
 came a day when God led His people safely forth 
 from the land of bondage by the hand of Moses and 
 Aaron, " and Moses took the bones of Joseph with 
 him," 2 nor would he leave behind the sacred Stone 
 which had witnessed to the glorious promises now 
 about to be performed. More jealously than mon- 
 arch guards the gems pertaining to his crown, 
 
 1 1 Sam. vi. 12. 2 Exod. xiii. 19.
 
 "THIS STONE SHALL BE GOD's HOUSE." 67 
 
 would Israel's leader prize and keep this appanage 
 and promise of sovereignty to come. Iron rings 
 inserted in the Stone would be required to convey 
 it in Israel's journeyings through the Desert, and 
 these will help to identify the prize when " Jacob's 
 Stone " is found. We have seen that Jacob made 
 a memorable vow on waking from his dream. Let 
 us pause, and once more examine it. 
 
 "And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, 
 If God will be with me, and will keep me 
 In this way that I go, and will give me 
 Bread to eat, and raiment to put on, 
 So that I come again to my father's house in peace ; 
 Then shall the Lord be my God : 
 AND THIS STONE, WHICH I HAVE SET FOR A. PILLAR, 
 SHALL BE GOB'S HOUSE : 
 And of all that Thou shalt give me, 
 J will surely give the tenth unto Thee" l 
 
 How could this vow, the knowledge of which 
 would assuredly be confided to his sons and to their 
 posterity, be performed ? How could " this Stone," 
 which, having first served for Jacob's pillow, and 
 had, on his rising, been set up by him for a pillar, 2 
 become God's house ? Only in one of two ways ; 
 either by building a house of God at Bethel (which 
 we know he did not do), or by prominently placing 
 it in the Sanctuary which he or his posterity would 
 dedicate to the worship of God on obtaining pos- 
 session of the Promised Land. Yet, if the latter, it 
 
 1 Gen. xxviii. 20-22. 2 Ibid. ver. 18.
 
 68 THE COEONATION STONE. 
 
 will be strange indeed, when compiling their national 
 anthems, if the sweet Psalmist of Israel ignores the 
 existence of a Stone which we claim to be so in- 
 timately connected with their national destiny. Let 
 us examine these records. We find that David was 
 no sooner established on the throne than he brought 
 up the Ark of God which had been so miraculously 
 recovered from the Philistines, and prepared to 
 build an house to receive it. But this honour was 
 denied him, and reserved for Solomon his son. 
 Nevertheless, amongst the many preparations made 
 by David, we find some reference to a Stone. Psalm 
 cxviii. is considered by commentators as written 
 to commemorate the bringing up of the Ark to 
 the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite; and 
 in counting up the mercies for which Israel should 
 be grateful, David exclaims in joyful strains, 
 
 " THE STONE which the builders refused 
 Is become the Head Stone of the corner ! 
 This is the Lord's doing ; 
 It is marvellous in our eyes." 1 
 
 We cannot surely read this Psalm without recall- 
 ing Professor Ramsay's analysis of the Coronation 
 Stone in Westminster Abbey; that it appeared to 
 have been originally prepared for building purposes, 
 but evidently had never been so used. Is not this 
 " the Stone which the builders rejected/' but which 
 the Lord claimed for His own use ? 
 
 1 Ps. cxviii. 22, 23.
 
 "THIS STONE SHALL BE GOD's HOUSE/' 69 
 
 " TJtis Stone shall be God's House." 1 Thus had 
 Jacob vowed some 700 years before ; and his vow, 
 recorded by Moses, must have been well-known to 
 David. We may not treat it as the passing utter- 
 ance of a grateful heart. Between two and three 
 centuries after that eventful night, after that vow 
 had been registered by Jacob, the Holy Spirit calls 
 it to remembrance, and bade Moses record it. The 
 Holy Ghost does not so lightly treat a vow once 
 made to God. 2 Would Jacob wish, would Jacob 
 dare, to disallow that which his lips had uttered and 
 his mouth had vowed when he was in trouble ? Yet, 
 if it were not in his own safe keeping, how could 
 he confide to his heirs the fulfilment of his vow ? 
 " Holy men of God spake as they were moved by 
 the Holy Ghost." " The prophecy came not in old 
 time by the will of man/' and " all Scripture is 
 given by inspiration of God." Now, to Moses it 
 would not have been given to recall that solemn 
 vow, unless God had intended that it should be 
 kept in mind by Israel's seed. Moses records the 
 whole transaction as one on which God laid great 
 stress. It surely was not merely to expose a broken 
 vow ? a promise unredeemed, made by His honoured 
 servant ? Do we not see yet clearer than before 
 why Jacob was admonished to " go up to Bethel " ? 
 to BETHEL, " where thou anointedst the pillar ? " 3 Do 
 
 1 Gen. xxviii. 22. 2 Deut. xxiii. 21 ; Eccles. v. 4, 5. 
 3 Gen. xxxi. 13.
 
 70 
 
 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 we not see more plainly than at first why, on this his 
 second visit to Luz, another pillar was substituted 
 for THE STONE on which the wanderer's head had 
 rested ? One which should mark the spot, while the 
 original and actual witness of the Covenant then 
 granted should be bequeathed to his heirs after him ; 
 charging upon them, as he would do with his part- 
 ing breath, the fulfilment by his seed of the double 
 vow with which he had bound himself thereon : 
 
 "THIS STONE SHALL BE GOD'S HOUSE"; 
 
 and 
 
 " Of all that Thou shalt give me, 
 I WILL SURELY GIVE THE TENTH UNTO THEE." 1 
 
 1 Gen xxviii. 22.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 "THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED." 
 
 " Thy King, O Israel ! ransoms thee from death, 
 Thou shalt with rapture greet His sovereign sway; 
 Who gave the sacred STONE, gives Israel breath ; 
 And thou shalt rise to hail His triumph day." 
 
 E are constantly confronted with the asser- 
 tion that no after-mention of Jacob's 
 Stone is to be found in Scripture. Yet 
 ! > the assertion is incapable of proof. We 
 ^J x have read David's allusion to some well- 
 known and evidently greatly treasured Stone. 
 We have learnt how he assigned to it the place 
 of honour in the Temple about to be reared even 
 as Top Stone of the Corner ; how he spake of it as 
 a stone which had been " rejected by the builders," 
 and preserved apparently by Divine interposition ; l 
 and we shall notice presently how, when the Lord 
 of glory came, He recalled to His hearers this very 
 
 1 "This is the Lord's doing! it is marvellous in our 
 eyes " (Pa. cxviii. 22, 23). 
 
 71
 
 72 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 transaction, as one which was pregnant with deep 
 and significant meaning. 
 
 A type should be founded upon a basis of fact. 
 The fact itself must be real, substantial, historical, 
 or well known. The bondage in Egypt, the Paschal 
 Lamb, the Brazen Serpent, are cases in point. All 
 were great historic facts ; all were illustrative and 
 typical of great spiritual truths. But they were 
 fads; and as facts they must be first considered. 
 Just so with Jacob's Stone. We ought to take it 
 up, and handle it; look at it in all its substantial 
 circumstances and surroundings, before we put it 
 down and draw spiritual lessons from it. We 
 hold that G-od refers to a real, substantial, tangible 
 stone, when He speaks in the highest sense of 
 Messiah, under the figure of a Stone in the follow- 
 ing passage. 
 
 " Behold I lay in Zion 
 For a foundation A STONE, 
 A tried Stone : a precious Corner Stone, 
 A sure foundation : 
 He that believeth shall not make haste." l 
 
 Why should we spiritualize away this Stone ? 
 Divesting ourselves of previous impressions, let us 
 seek to learn the exact meaning of this message 
 from Jehovah, delivered just before the House of 
 Israel was taken captive by Assyria. God is at 
 pains, by reiterated expressions, to impress upon us 
 
 1 Isa. xxviii. 16.
 
 " THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED." 73 
 
 some great facts. What are these ? and what their 
 import ? 
 
 He tells us that He has laid in Zion " a Stone ; " 
 and pledges His word that this Stone shall be 
 guarded, or "sure." He tells us to view this 
 Stone as "precious." Having been so long carried 
 about, and its asserted worth tested and proved, it 
 might well, in the language of prophecy, be called 
 " a tried Stone.' 3 And looking forward to these 
 latter days, considering its strange antecedents 
 during the past twenty-four centuries, in Ireland, 
 in Scotland, and in England, the unique position it 
 has held for 600 years in Great Britain's Corona- 
 tion Chair, we are to regard it as the actual 
 "foundation Stone " of a royal dynasty. Commen- 
 tators, lacking the full light of these " last days," 
 and not having their attention drawn to this visible 
 Stone of the Covenant, have said of the passage, 
 " This can only refer to Christ ! " 
 
 While believers have justly recognised herein a 
 type of Christ, the tried foundation of His Church, 
 the ulterior destiny of the STONE itself has remained 
 through long centuries veiled and hidden. It would 
 seem as though the Holy Spirit, foreseeing this, 
 designed to sustain our faith under the long-delayed 
 recognition of the importance and significance of 
 the STONE, and to show the glory which should 
 surround it in the last days, when He adds in 
 reference thereto, "He that believeth shall not 
 make haste."
 
 74 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 No allusion, indeed, is made to " Jacob's Stone " 
 during the forty years' wandering of the children 
 of Israel in the wilderness ; but neither is mention 
 made of the bones of Joseph, which we well know 
 they brought up with them out of Egypt. 1 Still 
 more remarkable is it that, on entering Canaan, 
 under the leadership of one of the tribe of Joseph, 
 to whom Grod gave long and peaceable enjoyment 
 of the land he had won so hardly, 2 no notice is 
 taken of the honourable burial which Joshua as- 
 suredly would give to the remains of his own great 
 ancestor. We question not the ceremony having 
 been conducted with reverence due, and fitting 
 pomp, equal to that bestowed upon the remains of 
 his father Israel, 3 although no hint is given that, 
 during the lifetime of Joshua, the bones of Joseph 
 were ever laid to rest in the Promised Land. And 
 so, throughout the forty years of wandering in the 
 desert, the possession and sight of that Memorial 
 Stone, although it is not mentioned, may often have 
 -nerved the heart and strengthened the faith of 
 Moses, when sorely tried by the murmurings and 
 the discontent, by the ingratitude and selfishness, 
 the pride and stubbornness, the reproaches and the 
 calumnies of the people over whom God had set 
 him. 
 
 It would but be analogous with the pictorial 
 
 1 Vide Exod. xiii. 19 and Josh. xxiv. 32. 
 
 2 Josh, xxiii. 1. 3 Gen. 1. 7-13.
 
 "THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED." 75 
 
 teaching by which, in the infancy of the Jewish 
 Church, God's people were instructed. Look at the 
 fainting multitude in the wilderness, when God fed 
 them by the miracle of manna, " Moses said, This 
 is the thing which the Lord commandeth. Fill an 
 omer of it to be kept for your generations, that they 
 may see the bread wherewith I have fed you in the 
 wilderness." Granted that the Stone was not again 
 alluded to was there no reason for the silence ? 
 We think it is not far to find. 
 
 When journeying from Mount Hor by the way 
 of the Bed Sea, the children of Israel indulged in 
 their too frequent murmurings against their leader, 
 which God regarded as against Himself, and sent 
 fiery serpents amongst them. Upon their penitent 
 confession of their sins, God directed Moses to 
 make a serpent of brass; "And it came to pass, 
 that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he 
 beheld the serpent of brass, he lived." l This 
 brazen serpent, which our Lord tells us was given 
 as a figure or type of Himself, having done its 
 work, was never again alluded to throughout their 
 journey ings. We might have thought it had been 
 destroyed, or left standing upon the pole, or at 
 least forgotten, but for a mere incidental mention 
 of it in the days of Hezekiah. Between seven and 
 eight centuries rolled on; and then, to show the 
 idolatry of which it had become the occasion, we 
 
 1 Num. xxi. 8, 9.
 
 76 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 are told that this God-fearing king "brake in pieces 
 the brazen serpent that Moses had made : for unto 
 those days the children of Israel did burn incense 
 to it." ! 
 
 Seeing, then, that this serpent of brass had for so 
 long become a snare and a curse to the people, can 
 we wonder that comparatively so little mention was 
 made of Jacob's Stone j lest, like the serpent, that 
 too had been ground to powder to remove the 
 temptation to idolatry. 
 
 Despite these precautions, we learn from the 
 prophet Jeremiah, that some stone did actually 
 become to them a snare; that it was one of the 
 objects upon which they lavished their idolatry the 
 sin which eventually exiled them from their own 
 land. We find him upbraiding them with " saying 
 to a stock, Thou art my father; and to A STONE, 
 Thou hast brought me forth" (Jer. ii. 27). And 
 who were they who thus ascribed their deliverance 
 from some foreign land (or, it may be, their national 
 existence) to A STONE ? Even " their kings, their 
 princes, their priests, and their prophets," all united 
 in giving to A STONE the honour and glory which 
 belonged to Grod only ; " saying to A STONE, Thou 
 hast brought me forth ! " 2 We know but of one 
 
 1 2 Kings xviii. 4. 
 
 2 When Joash was crowned standing by a pillar, it is 
 expressly added, " as the manner was; " (2 Kings xi. 12, 14). 
 If we refer for a precedent to the Coronation of Abimelech 
 (Judges ix. 6), who " reigned over Israel for three years,"
 
 "THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED." 77 
 
 Stone to which they were likely, in their idolatrous 
 blindness, to yield such worship and honour. No 
 wonder JACOB'S STONE was not brought more pro- 
 minently forward ! 
 
 Yet, happily unburied amongst the countless 
 unrecorded teachings of the Master (see John xxi. 
 25), we find one containing a significant and 
 prophetical allusion to some well-known Corner 
 Stone. He had just taught His hearers by a parable, 
 that the rejection of Himself by the House of 
 Judah, 1 should be immediately followed (as Isaiah 
 had predicted) by the recalling of the other House 
 of Jacob's seed, 2 who for her idolatry had been an 
 outcast, 3 and become Gentilized 4 among the nations, 
 
 we find the pillar used on the occasion was none other than 
 the Stone which Joshua had set up on entering Canaan as 
 "a witness." May not this have been the precious pillar 
 which Jacob had carried down into Egypt, and which oil 
 entering Canaan, would be solemnly deposited by Joshua 
 "by the Sanctuary of the Lord," as "a witness," (Josh. 
 xxiv. 26, 27), to attest their right to the Promised Land? 
 A more sacred spot could not be found ; and there it would 
 remain in safety, until its resting place were prepared in 
 Solomon's magnificent Temple. 
 
 1 Isa. liii. 2 Isa. liv. 1. 3 Jer. xxx. 17, 18. 
 
 4 St. Paul frequently speaks of ten-tribed Israel under 
 the name of "Gentiles," because of their being mixed up 
 among the heathen, and too often being sunk in idolatry. 
 Rom. ix. 23-30 is a striking instance of this, and the 
 reference to Hosea ii. 23, Clearly shows him to have been 
 alluding to Gentilized Israel. When we speak of the 
 "city Arabs," or the "street Arabs " of London, we do not 
 connect with it any idea of Arabian descent. 
 
 P
 
 78 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 yet was again to sing as in the days of her youth, 
 and to receive at God's hand, " the vineyard " now 
 about to be taken from the Jews. It was in this 
 vineyard that Israel, long banished, but now as a 
 repentant, forgiven, reconciled " son," was to " go 
 and work." 1 
 
 And further to illustrate and enforce this un- 
 welcome teaching, so unutterably distasteful to 
 Judah's ears and Judah's prejudices, our Lord adds 
 a reminder as to what David their king had said 
 concerning this venerated stone : " Did ye never 
 read in the Scriptures, 
 
 " ' The Stone which the builders rejected, 
 The same is become the Head of the corner: 
 This is the Lord's doing, 
 And ifc is marvellous in our eyes ? ' 2 
 Therefore say I unto you [Judali], 
 The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, 
 And given to A NATION 
 Bringing forth the fruits thereof." 3 
 
 The allusion was well understood by His 
 audience, for they were conversant with the story 
 of the " Stone " rejected by the builders of Luz, 
 which had served their father Jacob for a pillow. 
 The chief priests and scribes among His hearers, 
 inquired not what (( Stone " He meant, for well they 
 knew that this " rejected stone " had once lain 
 as the top corner stone of their own magnificent 
 
 1 Matt. xxi. 28-32. 2 See Ps. cxviii. 22, 23. 
 
 3 Matt. xxi. 42, 43.
 
 "THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED." 79 
 
 Temple. That it had indeed been taken from them 
 was an historical fact : they cared not to ask 
 whither it had been taken; but what connection 
 could it possibly have with the subject of His dis- 
 course ? " Therefore " our Lord would make this 
 clear, and tells them that this Stone, though hidden 
 now from their eyes, was not lost; and points to 
 A NATION as in some mysterious sense connected 
 with its possession ; a nation which should hereafter 
 be recognised as its destined owner, by four distinct 
 signs. This STONE (ver. 43) which, in fact no less 
 than in type, was destined to become as it is now, 
 " a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence," x 
 should be given to : 
 
 I. A NATION ; not a scattered people, as the Jews 
 were then shortly to become. 
 
 (The Gentiles, as such, cannot be, and never were, 
 " a nation.") 
 
 II. A nation that should take the place of the 
 Jewish Church in covenanted privileges : 
 
 (God has never left Himself without witnesses.) 
 
 III. A nation that should bring forth the fruits 
 of righteousness. 
 
 (Of necessity therefore having in trust the oracles 
 of God committed to its keeping.) 
 
 IV. A nation so strangely powerful, that it shall 
 
 1 1 Pet. ii. 8.
 
 80 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 grind to powder every adversary; and, in some 
 mysterious, unexplained manner, be connected with 
 " this Stone." 
 
 Do we err when we regard our Lord's meaning 
 as prophetic, and to be literally fulfilled ? Have 
 we no ground for our assertion that the destinies 
 of the Stone, and of the Nation to whom it should 
 be given, are inseparably united, and indissolubly 
 linked ? 
 
 A twofold vow, as we have seen, Jacob made 
 standing over his anointed Stone. Two things, 
 therefore, we must expect to find connected with 
 this " Stone " : 
 
 1. That the STONE shall somehow have come 
 to be considered as an integral part of some " House 
 of God" of world- wide celebrity; and secondly, 
 that the legitimate possessors of this STONE, where- 
 ever found, shall have unwittingly, yet somehow 
 intuitively, bound themselves to the fulfilment of 
 their father's vow, " Of all that Thou shalt give me, 
 I will surely give the tenth unto Thee." l 
 
 The Church of England, as the late Prince 
 Consort justly said, is as essential to the mainte- 
 
 1 Of late years, many of God's people have awakened to 
 the conviction that in a more literal fulfilment of Jacob's vow 
 " Of all thafc Thou shalt give me, I will surely give the 
 tenth unto Thee," they have set before them a duty which 
 involves a corresponding blessing. This has been forcibly 
 urged in a small work entitled " The Rectification of our 
 Frontiers," by the Rev. G. A. Rogers. Nisbet fy Co,
 
 "THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED." 81 
 
 nance of our national greatness as the existence of 
 the Throne itself. England's National Church, it is 
 worthy of notice, has been from the first supported 
 by tithes. Few perhaps of those who paid them 
 knew that the institution of these tithes dated from 
 Bethel; and, that in yielding a willing assent to 
 this claim, they were but performing their father 
 Jacob's vow, connected with " God's House." 
 
 But let us return for a moment to the closing 
 scene in the life of him to whom that t{ STONE )r 
 unquestionably belonged : We feel tempted still to 
 linger by the Patriarch's dying bed, for we never 
 tire of listening to those inspired blessings : 
 
 " The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, 
 
 BleSS THE LADS ; 
 
 And let my name be named on them, 
 
 And the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac ; 
 
 And let them grow into a multitude 
 In the midst of the earth." 1 
 
 Has this inspired blessing been fulfilled, or has it 
 not ? The simple question is, Do we, or do we not 
 believe that God has been faithful to His word ? 
 If He has where, in these "last days" (for the 
 end is surely drawing on with rapidity enough to 
 make the stoutest heart to quail), where, we ask, 
 are the peoples which God promised should descend 
 from these two lads ? Where is now Manasseh, 
 who was destined to become " A GREAT PEOPLE " ? 2 
 
 1 Gen. xlviii. 16. 2 Ibid. ver. 19.
 
 82 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 Where now is Ephraim, the younger brother, who 
 should be yet greater than he, and " whose seed 
 should become A MULTITUDE OF NATIONS " ? Soon 
 faith will be exchanged for sight. Cannot our 
 faith even now pierce the veil, and recognise two 
 great and powerful nations, brothers in race, in 
 language, and in Christian privileges, as the pre- 
 dicted seed of the two " lads " ? 
 
 When God is waiting to bless nay, when He has 
 already so wondrously blessed these Isles of the 
 West, in which He has sheltered and shielded His 
 people, and upon whose shores no hostile foe has 
 ever gained a footing since He placed " His first- 
 born " l therein, why should our unbelief hinder 
 the full fruition of our glorious and covenanted 
 destiny, of which the " Stone " given at Bethel was 
 both a witness and an earnest ? 
 
 Would that this question would force itself upon 
 the nobles and the rulers of our land ! Would 
 that it might arrest the attention of all thoughtful 
 men of letters ! Would that my voice could reach 
 the working-men of England, asking them who now 
 enjoy in part the promised blessings of the Covenant 
 renewed at Luz ; at " Bethel, where iJiou anointedst 
 the pillar." 
 
 Believe it, Christian reader, neither the BIRTII- 
 KIGHT nor THE STONE are very far to seek. 
 
 1 Exod. iv. 22 ; Jer. xxxi. 9.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OP TRADITION. 
 
 " Unless the Fates are faithless grown, 
 
 And Prophet's voice be vain, 
 Where'er is found this Sacred Stone, 
 The Wanderer's race shall reign." 
 
 Old Irish Celtic rune, translated by Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 t 
 
 JTHERTO we have sought to trace out a 
 case which it seemed only possible to 
 establish upon presumptive and circum- 
 stantial evidence. I had written thus far when 
 it struck me that a testimony was yet awanting 
 which, if it could be obtained, would place our 
 position upon a sounder and firmer basis. What 
 was the ancient tradition held by the Jews from 
 time immemorial, respecting the Stone whereon 
 their father Jacob laid his head at Luz ? We 
 have been struck by the fact that Jacob was point- 
 edly reminded of its existence, more than twenty 
 years after he had set it up, by the Almighty 
 Himself : " Go up to BETHEL, where tliou anointedat 
 the pillar." What has ever been the received 
 
 83
 
 84 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 tradition of their nation as to the meaning which 
 Jacob himself attached to that significant reminder ? 
 Did Jacob regard the Stone as an integral part of 
 the Divine revelation vouchsafed to him at Bethel ? 
 Or, was he led to conclude that Jehovah had, in 
 some mysterious way, linked the two together ? If 
 so, not only would lie regard the possession of this 
 Stone as one of surpassing value, and to be secured 
 at any cost, but his immediate descendants must 
 well have known its worth, and have transmitted 
 their knowledge to their several tribes. 
 
 Tradition, in matters of faith, is worthless. For 
 these we have but one sure guide the written 
 Word of God. But in matters of fact, the case is 
 altered. Reliable traditions have ever been the 
 sole original authorities for all uninspired histories. 
 Second, therefore, in weight to Revelation alone, 
 would be the testimony of our brethren of the 
 House of Judah, as to the after-history of the Stone 
 when Jacob had returned from Padan-aram, and 
 was in a position to possess himself of this price- 
 less heir-loom, this witness to God's spoken word. 
 Can they, or can they not, unite for us Jerusalem 
 and Bethel ? These thoughts were being con- 
 stantly revolved in my mind, when my eye fell upon 
 the following passage : 
 
 "Few Englishmen know, but Jews and Ma- 
 homedans are well aware, that the Stone on which 
 Jacob dreamed, was preserved as most holy : carried 
 with him into Egypt, and accompanied his Children
 
 THE TESTIMONY OP TRADITION. 85 
 
 in their wanderings ; was placed in the temple on 
 the threshing floor of Araunah, and remained there 
 until the Captivity, and was called by them the 
 Foundation Pillar. Since then it has never been 
 heard of." ] 
 
 This was the very information of which I was in 
 quest ! But the writer was a Christian, not a Jew; 
 and I wanted direct Jewish testimony as to their 
 ancient traditions. Accordingly I sought the 
 opinion of a learned Rabbi, and was gratified to find 
 that in its most important particular he was able 
 to confirm the above. He did not seem to have 
 studied the subsequent history of the " Stone," nor 
 to have tracked its previous wanderings ; but on one 
 point he was clear, viz., that the top corner-stone 
 of Solomon's Temple was always called " Jacob's 
 Stone/' and claimed to be the Stone whereon Jacob 
 laid his head at Luz. When I remarked, " Then it 
 must have gone down into Egypt with him, and 
 have been carried up thence by its descendants ? " 
 he simply said, " Of course." He totally disre- 
 garded all Jewish legends concerning it, as imagin- 
 ary and worthless ; and though he owned there was 
 no doubt as to Jewish belief having been always 
 as stated above, he seemed rather afraid of allowing 
 that this Stone might have been given as a figure 
 and type of the promised Messiah, the Chief Corner 
 Stone. 
 
 1 The " Anglo-Saxon Riddle," by Antiquary. Partridge fy Co.
 
 86 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 Admitting, then, our case to be so far proven to 
 the satisfaction of all who are willing to be con- 
 vinced ; and that Jerusalem has thus been linked 
 with Luz, how are we to bridge over the interven- 
 ing spaces between Solomon's magnificent Temple 
 and our own proud fane of Westminster Abbey ? 
 
 As long as the temple remained intact, as long 
 as the royal line of David sat on the throne of 
 Judah, this STONE would unquestionably be sacredly 
 guarded. But when Judah was led captive, when 
 all the heirs male of Zedekiah were put to death 
 before his face, when those eyes which had wit- 
 nessed this death-blow to his hopes were put out, 
 and he himself carried into captivity, what would 
 become of THE STONE ? Not more minute the list 
 furnished to the keeper of the Crown Jewels in 
 England on his appointment to his office, than that 
 which Scripture history gives of the articles of 
 gold, of silver, and of brass, which were taken 
 from the Temple, and carried away to Babylon by 
 Nebuchadnezzar. 1 But in the list no Stone ap- 
 pears. Can we marvel ? Of what good would a 
 time-worn, ugly, ponderous Stone be to the king 
 of Babylon ? For him that pillow had no charm, 
 in him it woke no memories, to him it bore 
 no promise. 2 No ! in this figure or emblem of 
 a coming Saviour, Babylon's monarch saw no 
 
 1 2 Kings xxv. 13-17 ; and Jer. Hi. 17-23. 
 
 2 For "ye have no portion in Jerusalem" (Neh. ii. 20).
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF TRADITION. 87 
 
 beauty that he should desire it. The top Stone 
 of the corner remained untouched, awaiting the 
 Divine intimation for its removal. 
 
 But was not the royal line extinct ? Not so ; 
 Zedekiah the king had daughters, who escaped the 
 wreck of their House. For them an asylum had 
 been provided, and a guardian had been appointed. 
 Jehovah, who had ordained this seventy years' 
 Captivity, had not forgotten His oath to David, 
 " Thus saith the Lord, David shall never want a 
 man to sit upon the throne of the house of . . ." 
 What ? Judah ? Nay ; but, " of the House of 
 Israel/' 1 We have seen David's royal House led 
 into captivity, never since to sit upon the throne 
 of Judah j let us now trace the Lord's dealings 
 with the House of Israel the other branch of 
 Jacob's line. Yet we must be brief, for we are 
 now telling the story, not of lost Israel's wander- 
 ings, but of Jacob's Stone; and only in as far as 
 the history of the former is needed to explain its 
 connection with the latter, must we touch upon it. 
 
 The captivity of Israel, which preceded that of 
 the seventy years Captivity of Judah by 133 years, 
 had utterly banished them out of the Holy Land. 
 But long prior to this, the tribe of Dan, being 
 located on the sea coast, had established for itself 
 a name and renown in nautical matters. Deborah 
 taunts Dan (about the year 1285 B.C.) with having 
 
 1 Jer. xxxiii. 17.
 
 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 escaped on board their ships, when an invasion by 
 Jabin threatened ; " l and the inference is tolerably 
 certain, that when darker days drew on, and the 
 victories of the Assyrian kings had depopulated 
 so much of the land of Israel, the Danites would 
 hardly await the last blow, the subjugation of their 
 country by Sargon, ere taking their final departure. 
 Several writers, quoted by Alford on Rev. vii., 
 wrote them down as having so wholly disappeared 
 from Palestine, that by many the tribe of Dan was 
 regarded as extinct. But no tribe of Israel was 
 doomed to extinction ! 2 Jacob, as we have seen, 
 called his sons around his dying bed, that by 
 Divine inspiration he might tell them what should 
 befall each separate tribe ' ' in the last days. 33 3 
 And, to guard against so false an impression, of 
 Dan it is distinctly foretold, " Dan shall judge his 
 people as one of the tribes of Israel." * Wherever, 
 therefore, the House of ten-tribed Israel is found, 
 the predicted characteristic of this tribe, viz., great 
 ruling power, will surely prove in these " last days " 
 a conspicuous element in a nation, the whole of 
 which is destined to have dominion. " The right of 
 a people to self-government, consists in their power 
 to defend themselves/' 5 
 
 Taking into consideration then the governing gift 
 thus specially bestowed upon this tribe, and uniting 
 
 1 Jud. v. 17. 2 Ezek. xlviii. 19. 3 Gen. xlix. 1. 
 
 4 Ibid. ver. 16, and Ezek. xlviii. 32. 5 J. A. Froude.
 
 THE TESTIMONY OP TRADITION. 89 
 
 with it the glimpses incidentally given us in Scrip- 
 ture of Dan's roving, sea-faring, mercantile pre- 
 dilections, 1 we should naturally expect to find this 
 people foremost in seeking out the isles and lands 
 of the West, and establishing themselves therein. 
 We should regard them in fact, as the probable 
 pioneers of their inland brethren, preparing for 
 them, in the purposes of Jehovah, a home in the 
 far West, what time by reason of their sins they 
 were finally led into captivity by Assyria, and 
 deported to the borders of the Caspian Sea. Traces 
 of this tribe are accordingly found more widely 
 scattered than that of any other, if we may track 
 their wanderings by the frequent recurrence of their 
 patronymic in different parts of Europe. That this 
 is no unfair or strained inference, we gather from 
 the early history of the tribe, as recorded in Judges 
 xviii. When in search of an extension of territory 
 they attacked Laish, which they smote with the 
 edge of the sword, and in an adjacent valley they 
 built them a city and dwelt therein. "And they 
 called the name of the city Dan, after the name of 
 Dan their father." The river Danube, the Dan- 
 astris (now Dniester), the Dan-apris (now Dnieper), 
 and the Don, are at least highly suggestive of the 
 presence of this roving, ruling tribe. Ztawnemerk 
 (now Denmark) claims to have been at one time in 
 their possession, and to owe its national existence 
 
 1 e.g. Ezek. xxvii. 19.
 
 90 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 to a renowned Gothic warrior, by name Dan. 
 From the Irish Chronicles we learn, that the north 
 of Ireland was peopled, centuries before the Baby- 
 lonish Captivity, by the Tuatha de Dannan, or tribe 
 of Dan. 1 " Old Irish manuscripts, many of which 
 are, I believe, still untranslated," says Colonel 
 Gawler, "seem to possess a vast amount of in- 
 formation regarding the Dannans, or Tuatha de 
 Dannan." 2 Irish traditions state that the colony 
 of Danites who established themselves in Ireland, 
 had first visited Denmark, and had there found 
 large settlements of their own tribe who had pre- 
 ceded them. In Denmark, as subsequently in 
 Ireland, we find them establishing schools, and 
 giving evidence of a high mental and moral cul- 
 ture. Hence, by the unlettered natives they were 
 regarded with astonishment, not unmingled with 
 awe ; and it is probably to this we may attribute 
 the origin of the Scandinavian and Norse legends, 
 and the mythological Wodin or Odin, with whose 
 name we are all familiar. 
 
 But in what way does all this concern the 
 princesses of Judah, scions of the Royal House of 
 
 1 The Veins Chronicon Holsatice says, " The Danes and 
 Jutes are Jews of the tribe of Dan." 
 
 2 " Of all the Irish races unquestionably the most remark- 
 able," standing " out pre-eminently as the intellectual 
 people of that country." The Tuatha de Dannans, " known 
 as the Divine folk." " Who are the Irish ? " by J. Berwick, 
 F.B.G.S.
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF TRADITION. 91 
 
 David, the sole survivors of Zedekiah/s fall ? True, 
 another Jewish king survived him, Jehoiachin had 
 succeeded his father Jehoiakim; but after a short 
 and evil reign of three months he had been carried 
 captive to Babylon, while Zedekiah was raised to 
 his throne. Jehoiachin languished in a Babylonish 
 prison long years after Zedekiah had shared his 
 fate ; but for him the fiat had gone forth, " Write 
 ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper 
 in his days ; for no man of his seed shall prosper, 
 sitting upon the throne of David and ruling any 
 more in Judah." What became then of Zedekiah' s 
 daughters ? What of the heiress apparent the 
 Princess Royal of Judah ?
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 JEREMIAH'S COMMISSION. 
 
 " Not to oui' names, Thou only Just and True, 
 Not to our worthless name is glory due. 
 ****** 
 
 O Israel ! trust the Lord ; He hears and sees, 
 He knows thy sorrows, and restores thy peace." 
 
 Watts. 
 
 :F there be one truth more than another 
 indelibly impressed and stamped upon 
 every page of God's Word, it is this, that 
 " He abideth faithful ; He cannot deny Him- 
 self." " An oath for confirmation is," even 
 among men, " an end of all strife." With an 
 oath the Lord had sworn unto David, " Of the fruit 
 of thy body will I set upon thy throne ; " and 
 David's faith appropriated this promise, and said, 
 " He will not turn from it ! " But what if his 
 seed did not tread in the footsteps of David ? will 
 not this annul the covenant ? Let us hearken to 
 Jehovah on this matter. 
 
 " And when thy days be fulfilled, 
 And thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, 
 
 92
 
 JEREMIAH'S COMMISSION. 93 
 
 I will set up thy seed after thee, 
 
 Which shall proceed out of thy bowels, 
 
 And I will establish his kingdom. 
 
 He shall build an house for My name, 
 
 And I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever. 
 
 I will be his Father, and he shall be My sou. 
 
 If he commit iniquity, 
 
 I will chasten him with the rod of men, 
 
 And with the stripes of the children of men : 
 
 But My mercy shall not depart away from him, 
 As I took it from Saul, 
 Whom I put away before thee. 
 And thine house and thy kingdom 
 Shall be established for ever before thee : 
 Thy throne shall be established for ever." ] 
 
 Where had been the fulfilment of God's oath, had 
 the Royal Line of David become extinct at the 
 time of the Babylonish Captivity ? Again and again 
 was the promise confirmed. Jeremiah was sent to 
 foretell the destruction of Jerusalem and the over- 
 throw of Zedekiah. Will he not also be commis- 
 sioned to say that the cup of their iniquity was full 
 that God would now cast them off for ever? 
 Listen : 
 
 "And the word of the Lord came unto Jeremiah, saying, 
 Thus saith the Lord ; 
 If ye can break My covenant of the day, 
 And My covenant of the night, 
 And that there should not be 
 Day and night in their season ; 
 
 1 2 Sam. vii. 12-16; comp. Ps. Ixxxix. 20-36. 
 
 G
 
 94 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 Then may also My covenant be broken with David My 
 
 servant, 
 
 That he should not have a son 
 To reign upon his throne." l 
 
 " True/' say some ; " but this refers to David's 
 Son and David's Lord. This promise can only be 
 taken spiritually." Is it so ? then bid us spirit- 
 ualize away the Babylonish Captivity, and the siege 
 and destruction of Jerusalem. Tell us that the 
 Arch of Titus, still standing at Koine, is a myth, or 
 commemorates a fiction ; that the curses were but 
 figurative, and not to be taken literally ! 
 
 Prove us this, and we will believe it ! But we 
 will not believe, that when God compares His cove- 
 nant dealings with Israel to " His covenant of the 
 day and to His covenant of the night," He is 
 speaking in language purposely adapted to mislead 
 and deceive. We shall continue to regard this 
 world as a platform reared to show forth the glory 
 of our adorable Redeemer; and v.e shall expect to 
 find in the histories of " the two families which the 
 Lord hath chosen," 2 a supernatural character, which 
 will distinguish them from the rest of mankind; 
 for such should surely mark the people whom God 
 has chosen for His own inheritance. 
 
 Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, perished miser- 
 ably all his sons slain before his eyes ; 3 yet God 
 
 1 Jer. xxxiii. 19-21. 2 Ibid. ver. 24-26. 
 
 3 Jer. xxxix. 6, 7.
 
 JEREMIAH'S COMMISSION. 95 
 
 had not forgotten His oath unto David. The hand 
 of the enemy was the rod of the Lord, yet another 
 enemy shall work out also the gracious purpose of 
 the Lord. In Judea's captive land the lives of the 
 princesses bad been endangered, for all the princes, 
 and also all the nobility had been put to death by 
 the conqueror. 1 But the Prophet Jeremiah had 
 not only been spared, but honoured by the special 
 notice of the king of Babylon, who had given charge 
 to the captain of the guard concerning him, saying, 
 " Take him, and look well to him, and do him no 
 harm ; but do unto him even as he shall say unto 
 thee." 3 Surely the hand of the Lord was manifest 
 in this ; for no love had Nebuchadnezzar for Jeho- 
 vah, or for His prophets. But Jeremiah had yet a 
 great work to perform, and man is immortal till his 
 work is done. 
 
 In remarkable and unique terms Jeremiah's com- 
 mission had been concluded, differing widely from 
 that given to any other prophet. He was " set over 
 the nations, and over the kingdoms," the use of 
 the plural nouns denoting that his work was not to 
 be confined merely to the nation and kingdom of 
 Judah. His mission was " to root out, and to pull 
 down, and to destroy, and to throw down ; " 3 and 
 we have now reached the period of Judah/s history 
 at which his mission to them was being 1 fulfilled 
 
 1 Jer. xxxix. 6 ; Hi. 10. 2 Jer. xxxix. 11, 12. 
 
 3 Jer. i. 10.
 
 96 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 before their eyes, and his prophecies receiving their 
 accomplishment. But the word of the Lord did not 
 stop here. "I ordained thee a prophet unto the 
 nations," God had said. Whither then shall he turn 
 now that both the house of Israel and of Judah are 
 in captivity ? Have we yet aught remaining of his 
 commission to unfold ? Yea, verily, " See, I have 
 this day set thee over the nations and over the 
 kingdoms, . to build and to plant." 
 
 Wherewithal shall he build ? What, and where 
 shall he plant? This is now what we have to 
 inquire. 
 
 Before proceeding to the fulfilment of the am- 
 bassador's commission, we need to have these 
 " nations " more fully defined. On one remarkable 
 occasion, when Jehovah enlarged His previous in- 
 structions, and more specifically named the king- 
 doms whereunto He would send him, after charging 
 him to go to " the kings of Tyrus, and the kings of 
 Zidon/' situated on the sea (the Mediterranean), on 
 its eastern coast, it is significantly added, ' ' and to 
 the kings of the isles which are beyond the sea." And 
 again, Jeremiah was commanded to speak "to all 
 that are in the utmost corners" And once more, 
 to "all the kings of the north, far and near, one 
 with another, and to all the kingdoms of the world, 
 which are upon the face of the earth." 3 Wide 
 indeed was his commission. Yet will not the 
 
 1 Jer. i. 10. 2 Jer. xxv. 15-26.
 
 JEREMIAH'S COMMISSION. 97 
 
 Prophet shrink from it. For what purpose was it 
 given ? How, and by what means could it be 
 accomplished ? 
 
 Not long was Jeremiah left in doubt. At Je- 
 rusalem his credentials were to be first displayed, 
 " for thus saith the Lord God of Israel unto me ; 
 Take the wine cup of this fury at My hand, and 
 cause all the nations to whom I send thee to drink 
 it ... Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah, and 
 the kings thereof, and the princes thereof. And 
 he did so." l 
 
 No easy task had been committed to the Prophet. 
 It is no pleasant work to brave the wrath of man, 
 and be the bearer of unwelcome tidings. Hoping 
 to falsify the message by slandering the faithful 
 messenger, the princes of Judah had represented to 
 the king that Jeremiah sought "not the welfare of 
 this people, but their hurt." 2 Judgment had gone 
 forth in accordance with this false witness ; and the 
 Prophet had been cast into a loathsome dungeon, 
 where " he was like to die of hunger." 3 It was 
 from thence that Nebuchadnezzar had delivered 
 him. 4 Yet mere deliverance from prison would not 
 have enabled him to " build up " another kingdom, 
 nor have put him in a position " to plant " a nation 
 elsewhere. The Lord had already given him favour 
 in the sight of the conqueror; now step by step his 
 
 1 Jer. xxv. 17. 2 Jer. xxxviii. 4. 3 Ibid. ver. 9. 
 
 4 Ibid. ver. 28; xxxix. 11-14.
 
 98 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 path shall be marked out. The captain of the guard 
 " took Jeremiah, and said unto him, . . . Behold, 
 I loose thee this day from the chains which were 
 upon thine hand. If it seem good unto thee to 
 come with me into Babylon, come ; and I will look 
 well unto thee : but if it seem ill unto thee to come 
 with me into Babylon, forbear : behold, all the land 
 is before thee : whither it seemeth good and con- 
 venient unto thee to go, thither go." l Here was 
 freedom and unexpected enlargement. But the hang- 
 ing gardens of Babylon would have no charms for 
 Jeremiah, for as yet the word of the Lord had said, 
 "Abide in this land." Apparently he clung to the 
 hope that it was in Judea that he was " to build and 
 to plant." When Johanan, the son of Kareah, and 
 all the people from the least even unto the greatest 
 of those remaining in the land, came with humble 
 supplications to Jeremiah, beseeching to be shown 
 the way wherein they should walk, and vowing to 
 obey the voice of the Lord, the promise was given, 
 " If ye will still abide in this land, then will I build 
 you, and not pull you down, and I will plant you, 
 and not pluck you up." 2 
 
 Furthest of all from Jeremiah's thoughts would 
 it have been to go down into Egypt. In addressing 
 Johanan he plainly tells him, " Thus saith the Lord 
 of Hosts, the God of Israel ; If ye wholly set your 
 faces to enter into Egypt, and go to sojourn there; 
 
 1 Jer. xl. 2-4. 2 Jer. xlii. 10.
 
 JEREMIAH'S COMMISSION. 99 
 
 . . . there ye shall die. So shall it be with all the 
 men that set their faces to go unto Egypt to sojourn 
 there ; ... so shall My fury be poured forth 
 unto you, when ye shall enter into Egypt. 
 O ye remnant of Judah ; go ye not into Egypt : 
 know certainly that I have admonished you this 
 day." x Evidently, therefore, Jeremiah had no idea 
 of befriending the princesses of Judah by taking 
 them into Egypt. But " it came to pass, when he 
 had made an end of speaking unto all the people all 
 the words of the Lord their God/' that the pride of 
 his listeners revolted against the prophet's message; 
 and Johanan the son of Kareah, and the captains of 
 the forces, rose up and took the king's daughters, 
 and Jeremiah the prophet, and Baruch the scribe, 
 and many more beside ; and, in wilful disobedience 
 to the word of the Lord, carried them down into 
 Egypt. 2 
 
 The forty-fourth chapter of the prophecy of Jere- 
 miah deserves an attentive perusal, if we would 
 understand the subsequent course of events. We 
 see that, while some went down to Egypt in bold 
 defiance of God's threats, others were forcibly 
 carried down thither. God denounced His wrath, 
 against such as "set their faces to go down into 
 the land of Egypt to sojourn there." Such should 
 be punished, and even consumed, "by the sword, 
 and by the famine, and by the pestilence." 3 But 
 
 1 Jer. xlii. 15-19. 2 Jer. xliii. 1-7. 
 
 3 Jer. xliv. 12, 13.
 
 100 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 the king's daughters, and Jeremiah, with Baruch 
 the Scribe, were in Egypt against their own con- 
 sent, and for such there was a word of encourage- 
 ment implied in the fourteenth verse : " None shall 
 return but such as shall escape." Have we grounds 
 for believing that these whom we have named did 
 escape ? This is the point which next demands 
 our investigation. 
 
 When God gives a promise His believing people 
 will stretch out the hand to receive it. After 
 Jeremiah had, at God's command, denounced the 
 hypocrisy and guilt of those who had sought the 
 word of the Lord only to disobey it, he turns from 
 the awful judgments which he was commanded to 
 predict, to a more welcome theme. To the trans- 
 gressors he had said, "Hear ye the word of the 
 Lord, all Judah that dwell in the land of Egypt; 
 Behold, I have sworn by My great Name, saith the 
 Lord. ... I will watch over them for evil, and 
 not for good : and all the men of Judah that are in 
 the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the sword 
 and by the famine, until there be an end of them." l 
 But for the faithful few who clung to the word of 
 the living God, and had only been brought thither 
 by the strong arm of force, a promise was reserved, 
 " Yet a small number that escape the sword shall 
 return out of the land of Egypt into the land of 
 Judah." 2 
 
 1 Jer. xlir. 26, 27. 2 Ibid. ver. 28.
 
 JEREMIAH'S COMMISSION. 101 
 
 Surely the faith of Jeremiah will not fail to ap- 
 propriate this, as at once a command and a promise. 
 Surely he will seize the first opportunity to escape 
 from the land of Egypt. If all other hearts fail 
 them, that of the Prophet of the Lord, the long- 
 tried and faithful Jeremiah, will be equal to brave 
 any risk which it may involve. The Lord not only 
 tells us plainly that it will be so, but that he would 
 raise up amongst the Jews witnesses of the same, 
 " And all the remnant of Judah, that are gone into 
 the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall know whose 
 word shall stand, Mine or theirs." l Jeremiah had 
 been, as the terms of his commission imply, ap- 
 pointed " to plant " the line of Judah in a foreign 
 laud, therefore he will not leave behind him in 
 Egypt the royal stem committed to his keeping. 
 Yet how shall we know aught of his after move- 
 ments ? for Scripture simply intimates the Lord's 
 will in the matter, and there the sacred history 
 abruptly terminates. We believe nevertheless that 
 God has provided for such as would make diligent 
 search a credible, if not an inspired, narrative of 
 the Prophet's after history. Amongst those who 
 went down with him into Egypt was his private 
 secretary, Baruch, the son of Neriah. Baruch had 
 been, as we may remember, overwhelmed with 
 sorrow twenty years before, at the calamities he 
 
 1 Jer. xliv. 28.
 
 102 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 foresaw too surely coming upon his country. His 
 complaint had been, 
 
 " Woe is me now ! for the Lord 
 Hath added grief to my sorrow ; 
 I fainted in my sighing, 
 And I find no rest." 
 
 Now to this mourner in Zion a responsive word of 
 comfort had been given. "Thus saith the Lord, 
 the God of Israel, unto thee, O Baruch : 
 
 " Behold, that which I have built 
 Will I break down, 
 And that which I have planted 
 Will I pluck up, even this whole land ; 
 
 * * # # * 
 
 But thy life will I give unto thee for a prey 
 In all places whither thou goest." l 
 
 "In all places whither thou goest" We have 
 seen that Baruch was not to remain in Egypt. 
 From this passage we learn that he was to be a 
 wanderer. Whither will he bend his steps ? 
 Surely he will follow his master's fortunes. Surely 
 then it is in Baruch the Scribe that we may expect 
 to find the historian who will describe for us Jere- 
 miah's future movements. 
 
 1 Jer. xlv. 3-5.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 TEPHI, PRINCESS ROYAL OF JUDAH ; ANCESTRESS OF 
 H.M. QUEEN VICTORIA. 
 
 " TEPHI l was her name ; she excelled all virgins ! 
 Wretched for him who had to entomb her. 
 Sixty feet of correct admeasurement 
 Were marked as a sepulchre to enshrine her." 
 
 Translation from ancient Irish Poem. 
 
 '0 Abraham and his seed were the promises 
 made." 3 We have examined these one 
 by one as we have found them given 
 to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We have 
 sought to learn the mind of the Lord con- 
 cerning Jacob's seed. We have seen that, 
 although from Judah should spring the Chief Ruler, 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, yet to Joseph was assigned 
 the Birthright* We have traced the gradual fulfil- 
 ment of these promised blessings, and have seen 
 David seated on the throne which one day Messiah 
 
 1 It is worthy of special notice, that this name is not 
 given in Irish, but only in Hebrew, plainly denoting the 
 nationality of the Princess. 
 
 2 Gal. iii. 26. 3 1 Chron. v. 1, 2. 
 
 103
 
 104 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 will occupy; while Joseph had suddenly, in one 
 day, become a mighty kingdom, formed of a ten- 
 tribed people ; and " this thing," we are distinctly 
 told, " was of the Lord." l 
 
 We have now reached a crisis in the histories of 
 both branches of that remarkable people. Israel, 
 for her sins, had been finally carried captive by 
 Assyria, B.C. 721 ; Judah is languishing in Babylon, 
 her day of grace having lasted 133 years longer. 
 We have followed the royal line from David to 
 Zedekiah. Heirs male he had none. Can we suc- 
 ceed in tracing his posterity through his daughter, 
 the Princess Royal of Judah ? No mention of her, 
 beyond the bare fact we have indicated, appears in 
 Scripture, unless it be in some incidental and ob- 
 scure allusion, such as that in the word of the Lord 
 which came to Jeremiah, " thou daughter, dwell- 
 ing in Egypt, furnish thyself to go into captivity." 
 But if we seek for this royal line of David with half 
 the zeal which we daily see bestowed on a mere 
 earthly research, it will not be hard to find, for 
 " Thus saith the Lord, DAVID SHALL NEVER WANT A 
 
 MAN TO SIT UPON THE THEONE OP THE HOUSE OP 
 
 ISRAEL." 2 In scientific pursuits, men are found 
 willing to risk their lives. The Royal Geographical 
 Society can count its martyrs. And here, where 
 
 1 Comp. 1 Kings xi. 11, 28, 35, with ibid. xii. 15, and 
 2 Chron. xi. 4. 
 
 2 Jer. xxxiii. 17.
 
 TEPHI, PRINCESS EOYAL OP JUDAH. 105 
 
 the honour and faithfulness of our God is involved, 
 shall we not bestir ourselves, at least to make 
 inquiry ? 
 
 We must not be deterred by the fact, only too 
 patent, that many of God's most honoured servants 
 do not receive this truth. Can we not call to mind 
 how that the great Teacher Himself spake, and 
 His disciples owned, " We cannot tell what He 
 saith ? " l Is it a new thing for the religious world 
 not to " understand His speech," 2 when God speaks 
 never so plainly ? Nay, did not the Lord appear 
 in person on the road to Bmmaus, and even Apos- 
 tolic " eyes were holden that they should not know 
 Him ? " 3 
 
 Ancient chronicles ; history, written and un- 
 written ; the traditions upon which the best 
 authenticated histories rest, must be our guides. 
 From this moment the story of Jacob's Stone, and 
 that of the Princess Tephi, Princess Royal of Judah, 
 are inseparably interwoven; and the allusions to 
 them by the ancient chroniclers of Ireland, of Scot- 
 land, and of England, are far too numerous to be 
 quoted here. Mixed up with more or less of 
 romance and myth, we must expect to find them, 
 from the ages through which these tales were 
 handed down before the era of printing had arrived. 
 But the pearl-diver does not cast aside his prize 
 
 1 John xvi. 17, 18. 2 John viii. 43. 
 
 3 Luke xxiv. 15, 16.
 
 106 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 because the shell is encumbered with seaweed and 
 slime; nor does he reject it without examination, 
 because too often an oyster-shell is found which 
 contains no pearl. 
 
 Stripped, then, of the weeds which have clung 
 around so many versions of this wondrous tale, and 
 accepting only what seems to have been sifted and 
 proved, let us simply give the following narrative : 
 
 The Prophet Jeremiah, escaping from Egypt, did 
 not return alone. Whether the other daughters of 
 Zedekiah married or died in Egypt, we are not told. 
 Only one is supposed to have accompanied him 
 back. On arriving at Jerusalem, the state of things 
 there made him fear to remain in the land of 
 Judea. But, though for the safety of his royal 
 ward he determined not to abide there, he yet 
 would not leave until he had possessed himself of 
 such precious things as should of right be in the 
 keeping of the Princess Royal, to mark her rank, 
 and as title-deeds which might one day avail to 
 secure to herself or her descendants the land which 
 God had sworn should be theirs. Yet from the 
 pillage of Jerusalem what still remained to take ? 
 Gold and silver, wherever found, had been carried 
 away to Babylon ; none even of the vessels of brass 
 had been left. But the pledges and love-tokens 
 which God had given to His covenant people, worth- 
 less to others,, would become now doubly precious 
 to them. Neither the Prophet nor the Princess 
 would willingly depart and leave these behind.
 
 TEPHI, PRINCESS ROYAL OP JUDAH. 107 
 
 Upon tradition we must base our knowledge of 
 their wanderings; but accompanied, as they un- 
 questionably were, by Baruch the Scribe, it must 
 have been upon authentic history that these Irish 
 traditions were originally founded. We glean then 
 that Jeremiah availed himself of the ships of Dan 
 to transport his precious freight. That, guided by 
 the traders of that tribe, who for long centuries had 
 made acquaintance with the West, he visited some 
 of the many settlements of Dan. 1 That towards 
 Spain they first bent their steps, but did not long 
 remain ; Jeremiah's purpose being rather to estab- 
 lish himself in Denmark. Such, however, was not 
 the Lord's purpose ; and He who holds the winds 
 in the hollow of His fist, sent a great tempest which 
 drove the vessel in a contrary direction, and even- 
 tually wrecked it on the north-east coast of Ireland. 
 
 It was at a peculiar crisis in Ulster's history, that 
 the announcement reached its king, a prince of the 
 tribe of Dan, that a ship had foundered upon his 
 shores, having on board a Jewish Princess of match- 
 less beauty, attended by a Prophet of the Lord, 
 and one named Baruch the Scribe. The youthful 
 sovereign, Eochaid II., had just been elected Here- 
 ruonn, or " crowned horseman " of all Ireland, and 
 was awaiting his coronation when these tidings 
 
 1 A valuable guide to the early wanderings of this tribe 
 will be found in a work by Col. Gawler, Keeper of the 
 Crown Jewels, entitled, " DAN, the Pioneer of Israel," pp. 40, 
 Guest, 20, Warwick Court.
 
 108 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 came. Ireland was then, as now, divided into four 
 provinces, but each province owned its sovereign 
 lord, and only for purposes of mutual defence and 
 war did they unite themselves under one head. This 
 head was chosen by election, as were the ancient 
 Emperors of Germany. Their choice had just fallen 
 upon the valiant king of Ullad, or Dalriada, now 
 known as Ulster; and he was then awaiting his 
 coronation. But one source of disquiet marred his 
 brilliant prospects. The sin for which Israel had 
 been so bitterly punished, the idolatry by which she 
 had provoked the Lord to wrath, had been carried 
 with her in her wanderings, and had marked her 
 settlements in Europe. At the time of Jeremiah's 
 arrival, the young king was smarting under the 
 thraldom of the priests of Baal, and longing to free 
 himself from their yoke. Prepared, therefore, to 
 listen to the counsels of a Prophet of the Lord, he 
 lent a willing ear while Jeremiah unfolded to him 
 his mission. The Prophet's proposal to bestow on 
 the king the hand of his royal ward was condition- 
 ally made. He told him that there must be no 
 compromise with Baal; that idolatry must be at 
 once suppressed, and the worship of the true God 
 established in his kingdom ; that he must found a 
 college of Ollams, or school of the prophets as we 
 should term it now, a University. Finally, armed 
 with the commission " to build, and to plant/' l with 
 
 1 Jer. i. 10.
 
 TEPHI, PKINCESS EOYAL OF JUDAH. 109 
 
 which God had invested him, he solemnly promised,, 
 that if upon his marriage with Judah's princess, the 
 king and his consort were crowned upon Jacob's 
 Stone, which he would then confide to his keeping, 
 their union should not only be fruitful, but the 
 sovereignty should be confirmed to his heirs, and 
 be for ever linked with this mystic Stone. He 
 assured him the sceptre should descend to his latest 
 posterity, so long as they were crowned upon this 
 sacred Stone. Need it be told that upon such terms 
 as these, King Eochaid was only too willing to sign 
 the marriage treaty, and to secure for himself the 
 most beautiful princess, if we may credit Irish 
 traditions, upon whom the sun had ever shone. 
 
 The presence and assistance of the prophet Jere- 
 miah at this juncture were invaluable. Like Elijah 
 on Mount Carmel, he carried the nation with him, 
 as he performed his part in the extirpation of the 
 idolatry which was then ruining Ulster. Faithful 
 to his promise, the king established schools of 
 learning, which in later centuries made North Ire- 
 land famous throughout Europe. Kings and nobles 
 from all parts of the Continent sent their sons to 
 Dalriada in Ireland, as, at one time, the solitary 
 spot whence the lamp of learning sent forth its rays. 
 Yet such a reformation was no light work ; and as 
 in Judah, so in Dalriada, it doubtless brought down 
 a storm of vengeance upon his head. Those who 
 would be faithful must encounter enmity in such a 
 crisis; and this alone would make the Prophet 
 
 E
 
 110 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 Jeremiah's name long to be remembered there. 
 Even thus had the Lord forwarned him, "The 
 nations to whom I send thee . . . shall drink, 
 and be moved, and be mad because of the sword 
 that I will send among them." l True, he leaned 
 on the faithful promise, "Be not afraid of their 
 faces : for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the 
 Lord." 2 But the contest this implies would leave 
 its scars; and Jeremiah's name came, probably in 
 consequence, to be as much bound up in the tradi- 
 tions of Ulster, as was Luther's, some two thousand 
 years later, in the folk-lore of Germany. Yet the 
 Stone which promised sovereignty, and predicted 
 untold blessings, at least was warmly welcomed, 
 and received with reverence due. The Irish called 
 it the " Lia Fail," or Stone of Destiny. Some of 
 the poems composed in its honour have been handed 
 down from generation to generation. 
 
 The devoted love which King Eochaid bore to 
 his Queen Tephi survived her death. She was 
 carried to an early grave, leaving him a young 
 family to mourn her loss. The grief-stricken hus- 
 band determined to rear for her a mausoleum which 
 might for ever mark his estimation of her worth, 
 and of his own bereavement. At his capital, Tara, 
 they had plighted their troth ; Tara had witnessed 
 their happy union ; at Tara he would erect a mound 
 of such gigantic proportions over her remains that 
 
 1 Jer. xxv. 15, 16. 2 Jer. i. 8.
 
 TEPHI, PEINCESS EOYAL OF JUDAH. Ill 
 
 ifc might fitly be termed a hill the Sacred Hill of 
 Tara. 1 The kingdom mourned for her ; in prose, in 
 song, in chronicles, her loss was said or sung ; the 
 fame of her beauty, her goodness, and her worth 
 still survives in Irish manuscripts. The Princess 
 of Judah was evidently enshrined in the warm 
 hearts of her Irish subjects. 
 
 The Stone on which the royal pair were crowned 
 was not the only treasure which had accompanied 
 the princess in her flight, when she " furnished 
 herself" to go into exile. A tradition exists, that 
 under this sacred mound, beside the royal tomb, 
 certain consecrated things were laid which she had 
 brought from Judea. It was the safest, fittest, 
 store-house for them which could be well devised. 
 If this be true, Jeremiah would surely avail himself 
 of this guarded, and perhaps Divinely-selected re- 
 pository to deposit therein the title-deeds of his 
 
 1 In a letter which I received from the late Rev. F. R. 
 Glover (Author of " England the Remnant of Judah "), he 
 says, " I don't know if you are aware that the tomb is called 
 the great Mergecb, which is not a Celtic word or name, 
 but is a Hebrew one." In answer to my query why Queen 
 Tephi was not buried in Ulster, he writes, "A portion cut 
 out of Leinster, which ultimately became ' the English 
 Pale,' was assigned to the Crowned Horseman, or chief 
 ruler, as an imperial appanage, and for the transaction of 
 the business of the united kingdom. Tara was the capital 
 of this little kingdom (of Bregia), and here the Heremonn 
 resided. The queen was therefore buried in a great 
 national repository not a mere local or provincial affair."
 
 112 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 own recently acquired property in Anathotk. There 
 was something very remarkable in this transaction. 
 By God's express command he had bought the 
 field, 1 and under Divine direction he had confided 
 to Baruch, his secretary, the evidences of the pur- 
 chase. He was specially desired to "put them in 
 an earthen, vessel, that they may continue many 
 days." Once before, under Almighty guidance, 
 Jeremiah had bought him a new linen girdle, 2 and 
 this, as a sign, he was commanded to hide away 
 in a hole of the rock by Euphrates. But no such 
 concealment was now enjoined. " This evidence of 
 the purchase, both which is sealed, and this evidence 
 which is open/' were together to be placed " in an 
 earthen vessel " which it would be easy to keep in 
 his own possession. And it was to be so kept, as A 
 SIGN of the Lord's promise that " houses and vine- 
 yards should yet be possessed in that land." 3 And 
 not only so, but that the Lord would then " make 
 an everlasting covenant with them," and would 
 " not again turn away from them." 
 That time is yet future. 
 
 1 Jer. xxxii. 6-16. 2 Jer. xiii. 1-5. 
 
 3 Jer. xxxii. 37-44.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE LOST HEIR FOUND. 
 
 " Israel's Banner, uplifted, unfolds to the wind, 
 
 And gathers around it the true and the brave ; 
 The chains of the tyrant beneath it unbind, 
 
 Britain's folds are a haven of rest to the slave. 
 When Peace shall descend like the dew on thy shore, 
 
 And a halo of beauty shall circle thee round, 
 The Trumpet of Israel shall swell as of yore, 
 
 And proclaim to the world that the lost Heir is found" 
 
 "Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for He hath 
 torn, and He will heal us." HOSEA vi. 1. 
 
 " I am a Father to Israel, and Ephraim is My firstborn." 
 JEK. xxxi. 9. 
 
 AMONGST the visible links which bound the 
 Children of Israel to worship the God of 
 their fathers, when passing through the 
 wilderness, there was one at least of para- 
 mount sanctity. The ARK OP THE COVENANT 
 was a token never to be given up. 1 David 
 calls it, " The Ark of Thy strength." 2 What be- 
 came of this most holy thing ? Nebuchadnezzar did 
 
 1 See 1 Chron. xv., xvi., xvii. 
 
 113 
 
 2 Ps. cxxxii. 8.
 
 114 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 not carry it with him to Babylon. Had he done 
 so, it might have fared with him as ill as with 
 Philistia's lords. Had he taken it away, it would 
 have been mentioned in the list of captured trea- 
 sures, which enumerates even " the shovels, and the 
 snuffers, and the bowls, and the spoons." l Had it 
 gone to Babylon, it would have appeared in the 
 inventory of consecrated things which, having been 
 taken from the Temple, were returned by Cyrus at 
 the close of the seventy years' Captivity. 2 
 
 But it did not return with Judah's exiles ; neither 
 did they find it awaiting their return to Jerusalem. 
 Who then had captured this sacred trophy ? With 
 Uzzah's fate before their eyes, what Jew would 
 dare to lay hands upon it ? 3 Who else would care 
 for its possession ? Two stone Tables of tho Law, 
 perchance Aaron's rod that budded. These were 
 then its sole contents; say, who would care for 
 these ? 
 
 Had any hint been given to the House of Judah 
 that this most sacred symbol, this God-given Ark 
 of the Covenant, so long, so jealously guarded, 
 should one day disappear ? that it should vanish 
 from their sight, be silently withdrawn, none would 
 know how, or why, nor that any should even in- 
 quire concerning it ? Undoubtedly ; such had been 
 the warning prophecy. Let us look at it. 
 
 1 2 Kings xxv. 14-18 ; Jer. lii. 18, 19. 
 2 Ezra i. 7-11. 3 2 Sam. vi. 6, 7.
 
 THE LOST HEIR POUND. 115 
 
 " In those days, saith the Lord, 
 They shall say no more, 
 ' The Ark of the Covenant of the Lord ! ' 
 Neither shall it come to mind : 
 Neither shall they remember it : 
 Neither shall they visit it ; 
 Neither shall that be done any more." ' 
 
 Did any in Judah believe this ? That the Ark of 
 the Covenant of the Lord should thus mysteriously 
 disappear ; that none should know of its abduction ; 
 that it should be conveyed away, none could say 
 whither; that its loss should be unnoticed, and 
 awaken no inquiry; must have rendered this pre- 
 diction, in the estimation of those who heard it, 
 one incapable of realization. Bound up as it were 
 with their national existence, the Prophet's words 
 were doubtless received by some with ridicule, by 
 others with ill-concealed scorn and contempt. " We 
 have examined this new craze," perchance some 
 would say, "and are satisfied as to its fallacy." 
 God's people are accustomed to be met with 
 weapons such as these. " Which way went the 
 Spirit of the Lord from me to speak unto thee ? " 
 asked one who thought thus to silence the man of 
 God. "Behold, thou shalt see in that day when 
 thou shalt go into an inner chamber to hide thy- 
 self," was Micaiah's calm reply; and "treacherous 
 Judah" often forced a similar answer from Jere- 
 miah's lips. Only indeed at such a moment, when 
 
 1 Jer. iii. 16.
 
 110 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 the guardians of the Temple were withdrawn, and 
 Judah's nobles languishing in exile, could Jeremiah 
 have fulfilled his own prediction, and, without 
 attracting notice, have taken away the ARK. Then 
 too, and only then, could he also have gained pos- 
 session of THE TEMPLE'S CORNER STONE. 
 
 The Traditions of Tara are, that the Ark of the 
 Covenant, with its sacred contents, the Tables of 
 the Law given on Sinai, Aaron's rod, and every 
 consecrated thing brought with the Judean princess, 
 were buried in her tomb. THE STONE alone was 
 kept to fulfil its sacred mission. THE STONE OF 
 WITNESS, which should proclaim " the mystery of 
 God," 1 and typify the union between Jehovah and 
 His chosen Israel, had already fittingly inaugurated 
 this new starting-point in its destiny. Henceforth 
 it should, as God's ambassador, grace with its 
 presence the coronation of each of Judah's royal 
 heirs. But the Ark of the Covenant, more liable to 
 be destroyed by the ravages of time, more perish- 
 able, and less enduring, was (if we may credit Irish 
 legends) enshrined beside that royal dust, per- 
 chance to wait till God shall call it forth. 2 
 
 1 Col. ii. 2; i. 26, 27; Eph. i. 9 ; iii. 3-9 ; Rev. x. 7. 
 
 2 Application was made a few years since to the noble 
 owner, the late Earl Russell, to allow of excavations being 
 made under Tara's Hill ; when, if the Tomb could be dis- 
 covered, the question might be set at rest. But difficulties 
 supervened, and no such attempt has been made. The 
 time has not yet arrived.
 
 THE LOST HEIR FOUND. 
 
 117 
 
 To trace the subsequent history of JACOB'S STONE 
 is a light task, for its wanderings are well-nigh 
 over. Regarded by the children's children of 
 Queen Tephi with reverential awe, as the "Lia 
 Fail/' or Stone of Destiny, it kept its official place 
 in Ireland until the beginning of the sixth cen- 
 tury, when one of her descendants, Fergus I., the 
 son of Ere, sailed from Dalriada 1 at the head of an 
 army of Scoti. He landed at lona, A.D. 503, and 
 conquered the part now called Argyleshire. Hav- 
 ing defeated the North Brythons (or Britons), and 
 slain their king Coilus, the kingdom of the Scots 
 was established upon him and his posterity for 
 ever. Desirous as he was of being immediately 
 crowned, he refused to allow the ceremony to take 
 place until he had sent to Ireland for the precious 
 " Lia Fail." Upon its arrival at lona, he repaired 
 thither to be anointed king, and upon the " Stone 
 of Destiny" he sat, while the crown was placed 
 upon his head. Henceforth we take our stand 
 upon historic ground. However cautious may 
 heretofore have been our tread, while threading 
 our way through the long ages lit up only by the 
 glimmer emitted from tradition and ancient chroni- 
 cles, we have now at last emerged into the light 
 of day. Fergus I. undoubtedly believed the sacred 
 history of the STONE. 
 
 1 " Dalriada was the name applied alike to the South 
 "West of Scotland, and the North East of Ireland." Ber- 
 wick's " Who are the Irish ? "
 
 118 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 Some two centuries later, his great-grandson, 
 Conal, is said to have granted lona to St. Columba 
 for the purposes of the Mission. So deep was the 
 veneration with which Jacob's Stone was regarded 
 by Columba, that when dying he caused himself to 
 be carried from his bed to the chapel where the 
 stone was kept, that he might breathe his last with 
 his head laid thereupon. 
 
 Scone is not mentioned earlier than the 10th 
 century, when a monastery, with an abbey church, 
 was built there ; and to this grander resting-place 
 the Coronation Stone was transferred. Never from 
 that moment did Scotland's monarchs permit this 
 sacred treasure to leave the realm, until Scotland 
 had to yield to the o'er-mastering arms of Eng- 
 land. The battle of Dunbar was the first of a 
 sei'ies of victorious engagements which virtually 
 laid Scotland at the feet of Edward I. His con- 
 quests changed the destination of " Jacob's Stone/' 
 but not the veneration with which it was regarded. 
 Its sacred story and its fame, had reached the ears 
 of the English king, and he determined to trans- 
 port it to England. He knew not, though we now 
 know, that the king of England " with the people 
 of Israel were gathered together, For to do whatso- 
 ever Thy hand and Thy counsel determined before 
 to be done." Jehovah, by this Stone of Witness, 
 had as it were claimed Ireland and Scotland for His 
 Israel, and now the Stone was finally to take posses- 
 sion of England, and rest in her most honoured fane.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE MYSTEEY OF GOD UNFOLDED. 
 
 " The day of freedom dawns ; 
 Rise ! Israel, from thy tomb." Croly. 
 
 1ET not without a mighty pang did Scotia 
 yield her priceless treasure. From the 
 strong arm of Edward I. it was hopeless 
 to attempt to wrest their Coronation Stone; 
 but when his sceptre fell into the nerveless 
 hands of Edward II., and the fortunes of war 
 enabled the Scots to dictate their own terms, one 
 of the primary conditions of the Treaty of Northamp- 
 ton, 1 was the restoration to Scotland of JACOB'S STONE. 
 Isabella and Mortimer, fain to make peace on any 
 terms, consented. The Londoners saw the Regalia 
 of Scotland taken from the Tower of London without 
 a murmur ; they witnessed the cession and restora- 
 tion of Scotland's crown jewels, and lifted not a 
 voice to stop them; but when the Commissioners 
 proceeded towards Westminster Abbey, where lay 
 
 1 Immediately upon the accession of his son, then a minor 
 of the age of fourteen. 
 
 119
 
 120 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 in simple state THE STONE which God had given, all 
 London rose en masse, while the soldiers present 
 (the 3rd and 31st Eegts. of Foot) showed deter- 
 mination to resist ; and the excitement and tumult 
 were such, that the Queen, quailing before the 
 people who had constituted themselves its guard- 
 ians, 1 feared to surrender the precious Stone. The 
 British lion, thus aroused, took measures to prevent 
 any recurrence of a like panic ; and never since has 
 friend or foe attempted its removal from Westmin- 
 ster Abbey. 
 
 When James VI. of Scotland, the ancestor of 
 our most gracious sovereign, ascended the throne 
 of England, he is said to have expressed his satis- 
 faction in the thought that " Jacob's Stone " would 
 ratify his title to the Crown. He certainly alluded 
 to his descent from those who had in past ages 
 been crowned thereon ; for at the Whitehall Coun- 
 cil, held April 21st, 1613, the king said, speaking 
 of Ireland, " There is a double cause why I should 
 be careful of the welfare of that people : first as 
 King of England, . . . and also as King of 
 Scotland, for the ancient kings of Scotland are 
 descended from the kings of Ireland." 2 
 
 James I. of England is not usually deemed the 
 most interesting of sovereigns, and is chiefly re- 
 membered as a pedant. But as the connecting 
 
 1 Chronicles of Lannercost, p. 361. 
 
 2 Cox's Hibernia Anglicana.
 
 THE MYSTERY OF GOD UNFOLDED. 121 
 
 link which first placed a descendant of Princess 
 Tephi on the English throne, we cannot regard 
 without some degree of interest the circumstances 
 which marked his coming amongst us. When he 
 came to take possession of the crown, he entered 
 the City of London through the Aldersgate, or 
 Gate of the Elders, one of the four ancient gates of 
 the City, but taken down in 1761. In form like 
 that till lately standing at Temple Bar, it had over 
 the centre arch a figure in high relief of James L, 
 surmounted by the Imperial arms. On the eastern 
 side was an effigy of the Prophet Jeremiah, with these 
 words engraved : " Then shall enter into the gates 
 of the city kings and princes sitting upon the 
 throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses ; 
 they and their princes, the men of Judah, and the 
 inhabitants of Jerusalem : and this city shall remain 
 for ever" (Jer. xvii. 25) - 1 
 
 Taken in connection with the fact (which James 
 I. of all men was most likely to recall, and record) 
 that Jeremiah had been appointed to bring over the 
 
 1 The above is given in " Old and New London," chap, 
 xxvii., and quoted in the " leading journal " of Anglo-Israel 
 news and politics the Banner of Israel (April 6th, 1881). 
 This weekly paper (Id.) is an invaluable vade mecum for 
 the countless facts of interest, and the ever-increasing iden- 
 tities which come to the surface from time to time; but 
 which, in these days of running to and fro, might be hur- 
 ried down the stream of forgetfulness, if they were not 
 constantly chronicled for us by the painstaking and devoted 
 labours of the Editor of the Banner.
 
 122 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 Princess Tephi, his ancestress, to a land where the 
 line of David might, through her, be perpetuated, 
 this cannot have other than a marked significance 
 for us. 
 
 As in the earliest records of this chosen people, 
 the Birthright did not now go by ordinary suc- 
 cession, but by God's appointment. Again and 
 again it was transmitted through the female line. 
 Through the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James 
 I., and the Electress Sophia of Protestant Hanover, 
 our own glorious Queen traces her descent from the 
 first of the Stuarts, as he claimed his from Kenneth 
 II., who was crowned king of the Scots and Picts, 
 at Scone, A.D. 787, as the descendant of Fergus I., 
 son of Ere, the lineal representative of Eochaid II. 
 and Queen Tephi. The STONE which Fergus brought 
 from Tara, attested Queen Victoria's right to reign. 
 
 Few things in creation are so inanimate as stones ; 
 yet even stones can, in God's wisdom, be made 
 vocal. 1 Nay, more, we read of one which He hath 
 gifted with symbolic sight, " Behold/' He saith, 
 " THE STONE which I have laid before Joshua; upon 
 one stone shall be SEVEN EYES." 2 
 
 Surely "seven eyes," twice told, have watched 
 o'er Britain's weal, since first this priceless STONE 
 was embedded in her Coronation Chair? With a 
 secret magic, hidden like the loadstone's power, it 
 has attracted and bound to itself interests of irre- 
 
 1 Luke xix. 40 ; Hab. ii. 11. 2 Zech. iii. 8.
 
 THE MYSTERY OF GOD UNFOLDED. 123 
 
 sistible influence, felt by all, yet understood by few 
 of Britain's favoured sons. 
 
 One thing at least is clear, that the Stone on 
 which Eochaid was crowned could not have reached 
 Ireland without being carried thither. It rests with 
 our opponents to prove how it came there. It is 
 equally clear that there must have been some first 
 cause for the name it bears " Jacob's Stone." If 
 our version of its origin (supported as it is by the 
 testimony of long ages) is incorrect, the onus of 
 proof lies with our adversaries. 
 
 And now we have told the plain unvarnished tale 
 of " JACOB'S STONE/' and shown cause for our belief 
 respecting it. We believe that God, in His good- 
 ness, has caused the preservation alike of the STONE 
 and of its name, to mark the fact of its having been 
 originally set up, and subsequently subpoenaed as 
 a witness of God's faithful promises to Israel at 
 Luz. We have shown how Judah's Princess Royal 
 brought it with her to Ireland, and how it has been 
 transmitted as a priceless heir-loom to her de- 
 scendants. We have shown how the blood of the 
 Princess Tephi runs in the veins of our own beloved 
 Queen, the present occupant of the British (Israel's) 
 Throne. And now what more remains to tell con- 
 cerning Jacob's Stone ? 
 
 It has surely removed at least one stumbling- 
 block from the path of those who are honestly in- 
 quiring whether, as Anglo-Saxons, they may indeed 
 lay claim to the stupendous honour of being God's
 
 124 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 first-born/ long "lost" Israel, under a new name. 2 
 It has enabled us, who are satisfied that we possess 
 the Birthright, to verify the literal fulfilment of a 
 solemn promise one which in our former blindness 
 we believed ourselves bound to apply figuratively, 
 or, in other words, to spiritualize away. This "pre- 
 cious relic/' this Stone of the Covenant, this Lia 
 Fail, this Stone of Destiny, this Stone from Tara, as 
 of yore from Bethel, is enshrined in Israel's midst ; 
 it reposes in her English capital ; it has been 
 assigned its predicted seat in her holiest place, 
 in " none other but the House of God " ; 3 it lies 
 undisturbed in her national sanctuary ; it welcomes 
 each sovereign of Judah's line upon the new mon- 
 arch's accession to Israel's throne ; it guards the 
 tombs of her kings ; it watches over the dust of her 
 noblest dead. To the Abbey's countless visitors 
 the announcement has been made, "This is Jacob's 
 Stone ! " Yet, strange to tell, those words, so 
 pregnant with significance, have heretofore attracted 
 scant notice from the passers-by. The time was 
 not yet come ! They have sounded as an idle tale, 
 and men passed on unheeding. 
 
 Yet it was surely by no mere accident that it first 
 attained, and has so long retained, its distinguished 
 position in that magnificent fane ? If we allow the 
 Jewish Rabbis to link for us Jerusalem and Bethel, 
 as undoubtedly they can, and having traced it our- 
 
 1 Jer. xxxi. 9. Isa. Ixii. 2. 3 Geu. xxviii. 22.
 
 THE MYSTERY OF GOD UNFOLDED. 125 
 
 selves, as we believe we have, from Jerusalem to 
 Tara, and from Tara to lona, shall we not avail our- 
 selves of the aid of Dean Stanley, the late custodian 
 of the Coronation Stone, to complete the chain 
 which unites for us Bethel and Westminster Abbey; 
 and in his glowing words to add, " It is the one 
 primeval monument which binds together the whole 
 Empire. The Iron Rings, the battered surface, the 
 crack which has all but rent 'its solid mass 
 asunder, bear witness to its long migrations. It is 
 thus imbedded in the heart of the English mon- 
 archy; an element of poetic, patriarchal, heathen 
 times, which, like Araunah's rocky threshing-floor 
 in the midst of the Temple of Solomon, carries back 
 our thoughts to races and customs now almost 
 extinct ; a link which unites the Throne of England 
 with the traditions of Tara and lona, and connects 
 the charm of our complex civilization with the forces 
 of our mother earth, the stocks and stones of savage 
 nature/' 
 
 It may yet prove that the Lia Fail is destined to 
 await in its Gothic shrine the coming of Messiah, 
 when from its sacred hiding-place shall be drawn 
 forth THE STONE, first given to Jacob as pledge and 
 witness of His immutable promises, and known to 
 all Israel as having been the Headstone of Solomon's 
 Temple. May it not be, that we have here the true 
 interpretation of 
 
 THE PREDICTED SIGN 
 
 given by Zedekiah; and that when He comes as 
 
 i
 
 126 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 the true Zerubbabel, He shall speak the word, 
 
 lo ! from our great National Sanctuary " He shall 
 
 bring forth 
 
 THE HEAD STONE, l 
 with shoutings, crying, Grace ! grace unto it " ? 
 
 Surely the subject is worthy of our study ! If 
 true, is it not of unutterable moment to our nation ? 
 For, to what does it amount ? Briefly, this, that 
 the heirs can show their Title-deed ; that the long 
 missing Heir is found ! What then was the promise 
 to our father Abraham ? Just that for which Alex- 
 ander vainly sighed that he should be THE HEIR 
 OF THE WORLD." 2 
 
 God confirmed His promise with an oath. He 
 renewed the same to Isaac and to Jacob. 
 
 To Jacob He further gave A STONE as an attesting 
 Witness. Else, why, twenty years later, did God 
 recall that STONE to mind ? Israel assembled his 
 twelve sons around his dying bed, and showed them 
 what should befall their seed "in the last days." 
 Were not his utterances inspired ? Did God not 
 speak through Jacob ? Those " last days " are 
 come. If we are not Israel, if we do not enjoy the 
 double portion, show us the great nation which 
 does ! " Let God be true, though every man a 
 liar." 3 Where else is Ephraim, Israel's heir ? 
 Where else shall we seek for the attesting STONE ? 
 
 1 Zech. iv. 7. Note, that the marginal reference is to 
 Ps. cxviii. 22 "The stone which the builders rejected." 
 2 Rom. iv. 13. 3 Eom. iii. 4.
 
 THE MYSTERY OF GOD UNFOLDED. 127 
 
 What is this stone in Westminster Abbey, if 
 not the God-given, God-guarded STONE of Bethel ? 
 
 The possession of "Jacob's Stone," the " Stone 
 which the builders rejected/' will avail us nothing 
 unless we ourselves are founded upon the true 
 " Corner Stone." No believing soul will rest satis- 
 fied with the mere temporal blessings which we 
 claim to be linked with the possession of this 
 STONE; but neither will he dare to utter Esau's 
 profane Cui bano ? l nor lightly to esteem the Birth- 
 right which God assigned to Israel ; for " I am a 
 Father to Israel, and Ephraim is My firstborn." 2 
 saith the Lord God Almighty. 
 
 He hath dealt with us for the fathers' sakes, as 
 He hath not dealt with any other nation. 3 Can we 
 not read His purpose ? Can England not hear His 
 voice ? Beware that we " refuse not Him that 
 speaketh." 4 Is He not saying, " This people have 
 I formed for Myself; they shall show forth My 
 praise " ? 5 YE ARE MY WITNESSES, saith the Lord. 6 
 Let us reverently watch the rapid unfolding of 
 events as they now unroll themselves before our 
 very eyes. Soon, very soon, it may be, " the Lord 
 whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His Temple, 
 even the Messenger of the Covenant. 7 Will He 
 not say, " THE MYSTERY OF GOD is FINISHED ! 8 re- 
 
 1 Heb. xii. 6. 2 Jer. xxxi. 9. 3 Ps. cxlvii. 20. 
 Heb. xii. 25. 8 Isa. xliii. 21. 6 Ibid. ver. 10. 
 
 7 Mai. iii. 1. 8 Rev. x. 7.
 
 128 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 store to Me My Pledge the STONE, the token and 
 seal of the Covenant which I gave to your father 
 Jacob at Bethel ; this has been the Ring, this the 
 Link, wherewith I bound you to Myself " ? Aroused 
 as by electric shock, to a consciousness of her for- 
 gotten Birthright, will not " lost " Israel with holy 
 rapture cry, "Here is the Stone which the Builders 
 rejected ! This is the Lord's doing ! It is marvel- 
 lous in our eyes ! " 
 
 Then shall we learn, if not before, why God com- 
 mitted to Great Britain's keeping, 
 
 THE CORONATION STONE. 
 
 Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works. Frome, and London.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 In Fcap. 8vo, cloth, with Frontispiece, and Vignette. Price 3s. 6d. 
 
 THE SHEPHERD KING; 
 
 Or, Jesus seen in the Life of David. 
 Designed for the Young. 
 
 " It is in all respects our very idea of what such a book should be. ... 
 There is an indescribable charm about the book, which intelligent, pious, 
 and loving-hearted parents will instantly feel. It is a book, for children 
 certainly ; but many a sire will read it, and thank the fair writer for the 
 treat she has given him." Christian. Weekly News. 
 
 " It is indeed a model for compositions of this class." Dublin Christian 
 Examiner. 
 
 " The ablest expositors among learned divines could hardly have turned 
 the history of the Shepherd King to better account. The Authoress has a 
 facility of placing before her readers in an attractive form the instruction 
 and admonition which the words and actions, the inward experience and 
 the outward deportment of David, are adapted to afford. None but one 
 who is an experimental Christian could have written it." Morning Adver. 
 User. 
 
 " Eminently adapted to answer its important purpose." British Banner. 
 
 LONDON: J. NISBET & CO., BEENEBS STREET. 
 And to be had of all Booksellers. 
 
 Works by the Rey. GEORGE ALBERT ROGERS, M.A., 
 
 TBINITT COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ; VICAR OF CHRIST CHUBCH, DOVES ; AUTHOR 
 OF "JACOB'S WELL," "BETHANY," "Tus FOOTPBINTS OF JESUS," ETC., ETC. 
 
 Just Published, square 12mo, on superior paper, with View of Dover: 
 
 DOVER TRACTS; 
 
 Or, Personal Reminiscences. 
 
 Suitable for all Classes. 
 
 Now READY. One Penny Each. 
 
 1. 5. 
 
 THE CONVERTED PUBLICAN ; 
 
 Now a Clergyman and Canon 
 of the Church of England. 
 
 2. 
 
 THE HAPPY SCHOOLMASTER; 
 or, The Bad Temper Cured. 
 
 3. 
 
 THE ENLIGHTENED SURGEON; 
 or, The Way of Justification 
 Seen. 
 
 4. 
 
 THE TERRIFIED LAWYER; or, 
 Convictions not Conversion. 
 
 THE DYING BARRISTER ; or, The 
 Terrors of Conscience. 
 
 THE MEDICAL STUDENT; or, 
 The Disapproved Sermon. 
 
 7. 
 
 THE MISSIONARY'S WIFE; or, 
 Encouragement to Readers. 
 
 THE MIDNIGHT SUMMONS; or, 
 God Must Have Sent You. 
 
 To be followed by others. 
 1
 
 Works by the Rey. George Albert Rogers, ILL continued. 
 
 PERFECT REDEMPTION. Price 3d. 
 
 , .. Crotrn 8vo. cloih, price 2s. 6d. 
 THE VALOUR OF FAITH; 
 Or, The Gospel in the Life of Gideon. 
 
 " This beautiful volume bears the strong impress of genius. The subject 
 of Gideon, to a creative mind, was a very fertile one, and such a mind is 
 found in Mr. Rogers." Christian Witness. 
 
 " A volume pregnant with Gospel truths, eloquently and forcibly applied 
 to the heart and conscience." The Fireside. 
 
 Fifth Thousand. One Shilling per dozen. 
 
 HOLINESS; 
 Or, What does the Prayer Book Teach about it? 
 
 Price Threepence. 
 
 JESUS WATCHING THE TEMPLE TREASURY; 
 A Fact, An Argument, and A Suggestion. 
 
 Croten SBO, wrapper, price 6d. 
 A RECTIFICATION OF OUR FRONTIERS; 
 
 Or, The Divine Challenge Accepted. 
 
 " We have much pleasure in drawing the attention of ' all Israelite ' 
 readers to the above capital and clever pamphlet. ... It gives a new 
 and identity reading of Mai. iii., and throws some striking ethnological and 
 historical proofs of our identity into the foreground." Banner of Israel. 
 
 Cheap Edition, 2s. per dozen, Sixth Thousand: also an Illustrated Edition, 
 
 with Six Illustrations, price 4d. each. 
 THE STORY OF "THE NORTHFLEET;" 
 
 Or, A Voice from Dungeness. 
 
 ' ' The thrilling interest of your present ' story ' will, I hope, secure wide 
 circulation. In early days I was much impressed by the loss of the Kent, 
 and the Rothesay Castle; your Korthfleet is a sequel to them." Dean Law. 
 "Interesting and instructive." The &ock. 
 " Earnest and searching. A valuable giftfor emigrants." Our (hen Fireside. 
 
 Third Edition, price 6d. 
 THE -4- AND THE CROSS. 
 
 t 
 
 "Clear and courageous; . . . very timely." Church Association 
 Monthly Intelligencer. 
 
 "We heartily commend it." The Bock. 
 
 " In language of considerable force and power, he points out wherein the 
 danger lies." Dover Standard. 
 
 Sveth Edition, price 2d. 
 
 THE REAL PRESENCE, THE BASIS OF 
 RITUALISM. 
 
 "Multum in pareo. It is most seasonable. Its main value, in my humble 
 judgment, consists in its being so brief, terse, distinct, intelligible. The 
 time is come when Protestants must give battle again for their dearest 
 truths." Dean of Gloucester. 
 
 LONDON: J. NISBET & CO., BERNERS STREET. 
 
 And to be had of all Booksellers. 
 
 2
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed.
 
 A 000088415 5
 
 Univers 
 Soutt 
 Libr