Having traced the Ten Tribes to Media, the next question is, what has become of them, for they are not to be found in that land today. Many attempts have, at various times, been made to discover the Ten Tribes of Israel as a distinct community, but all have failed. Josephus (_Antiquities xi_) believed that in his day they dwelt in large multitudes somewhere beyond the Euphrates, in Asareth, but Asareth was an unknown land to him. Rabbinical traditions and fables, committed to writing in the middle ages, assert the same fact, with many wonderful amplifications. The imaginations of certain Christian writers have sought them in the neighborhood of their last recorded habitation. Jewish features have been traced in the Affghan tribes; statements are made occasionally of Jewish colonies in China, Thibet and Hindostan (the Beni-Israel), while the Black Jews, of Malabar, claim affinity with Israel. But none of these people would, in any but the slightest degree, fill the place accorded in the prophecies to Ephraim and his fellows. The fact that James the Apostle opens his epistle with the following words, has been adduced as an argument that the condition of the Ten Tribes was known to the early Christians: "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes who are scattered abroad, greeting." But it would rather convey the idea to our mind that the epistle was addressed to those of the houses of Israel and Judah, who, for the various reasons before cited, and which by that time had multiplied, had wandered into Egypt, Greece, Rome and other parts of the earth, and not to those whom God had hidden to fulfill more completely His promises to the Patriarchs. We have before stated that the Latter-day Saints believe that the Ten Tribes still exist, and that their home is in the far north. That they still exist is absolutely necessary to fulfill the unfailing promises of Jehovah to Israel, and to all mankind. The presence of the remnants of Judah, in every land today, is an uncontrovertable testimony that the covenant made with Abraham has not been abrogated or annulled. The vitality of the Jewish race is proverbial, and can we reasonably expect that when one branch of a tree shows such native strength, that the other branches will not be proportionately vital? Is it not more consistent to believe that, as the Jewish race under the curse of the Almighty and suffering centuries of persecution, still survives, so is it with the rest of Jacob's seed, rather than that they, ages ago, were blotted out of earthly existence?