ages of time this institution of negro slavery." Such, we are sure, is a fair statement of the argument, and one that gives it all the strength of which it is capable. If any one of the successive assumptions, exegetical, ethnological, and ethical, which make up the argument, is broken, the argument can have no possible force.

The point to be proved is that a certain institution of slavery, existing at the present day,-a well known reality which comes into the sphere of our duties and responsibilities as citizens of the United States,-and which in one way and another continually offends our moral sense, while with outrageous violence it demands that we shall not even dare to doubt its righteousness, is divinely warranted by the prediction in this passage from the book of Genesis. What then is the prediction which is to yield the materials of so momentous a conclusion? Surely we may be excused if we scrutinize with some carefulness the evidence which it not only regarded as justifying negro slavery, but may seem to make our instinctive abhorrence of that institution little less than impious.

It is to be observed then (1) that the curse pronounced by Noah, and put on record as a prophecy, relates not at all to Ham directly, nor to his posterity generally, but exclusively to Canaan—that is, to a single race or nation of those that are named by Moses as descended from the youngest of the sons of Noah. The words of the record are not, "Cursed be Ham with all the races and tribes that are to descend from him while time shall hold its course," but, "Cursed be Canaan." In regard to Canaan, the curse received an adequate fulfillment only a few years after the compilation of Genesis by Moses. Certain tribes descended from Canaan had planted themselves in the land of promise; and there they had sunk into the lowest degradation of idolatry. In that land, the posterity of Abraham claimed a right which they had asserted from generation to generation, burying there in their own ancient sepulchers the remains of their most honored dead, and soon they were to assert their claim in arms. It was for their encouragement in their expected invasion of their promised land, that Moses put this ancient malediction upon the record, and when the

Canaanites were conquered by the Israelites, under Joshua, the end for which the prophecy had been recorded was accomplished. To assume that what is said about Canaan must be equally true of all the races descended from Ham, is an attempt to be wise above what is written. Not only so, but such an assumption contradicts the most notorious facts even of Biblical history. The ethnological table preserved by Moses gives us [Gen. x, 6-20] the names of the nations and races recognized by him as descended from Ham. First in the catalogue is "Cush," or Ethiopia, as the name is commonly translated, denoting the great and ancient kingdom south of Egypt, on the Nile, and including the famed Meroe of secular history-a name covering the region from the valley of the Nile to the Red Sea, and sometimes comprehending portions of Arabia beyond. Of that race was Nimrod, the wandering conqueror who founded his empire far eastward, on the plains of the lower Euphrates and the Tigris. Next comes the still more imperial name of "Mizraim," or Egypt,-the earliest empire of which any memorials are preserved in history,-the marvelous race whose monumental structures are at this day the resort of travelers from remotest lands. Next we have a name which, like every other name in this catalogue, occurs elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures, and which, wherever it occurs, denotes evidently some warlike people of that part of Africa which was known to the Israelites. The name "Phut," here given as designating the third of the sons of Ham, is elsewhere translated "Lybia," or the "Lybians," and most probably was understood by Moses and his Hebrew readers as the name of the people who then inhabited the country now called the empire of Morocco. Last of all Canaan is mentioned. Of him it is said that Zidon was his first-born; and then follow the names of the other tribes that occupied the land afterwards conquered by the Israelites. We see then that if we interpret the curse upon Canaan as meaning that all the descendants of Ham, or even the descendants of Ham generally, should be enslaved, and should be bought and sold as property, by the more favored races descended from Shem and Japheth, we

bring the prediction into conflict with the known facts of history.

But (2) there is no adequate evidence that the negro races— the tribes of western and Central Africa-are descended from Ham at all; still less that they are descended from Canaan. It is said, indeed, by some ethnologists, that traces of resemblance may be found between the languages of the Hottentots and Bushmen in Southern Africa, and the language of the ancient Egyptians at the northern extremity of the same continent. But the Hottentots and the Bushmen, dark as they are in their complexion, and degraded as they are in their barbarism, are altogether a different sort of Africans from those that have supplied the slave-trade with its victims for so many ages. There is no evidence that any negro race or tribe is mentioned in the books of Moses. While no man is competent to affirm that those tribes are not descended from the father of Mizraim and of Canaan, he who affirms that they are so descended, affirms what never can be proved, as that proposition ought to be proved, which is to justify the African slave-trade and the institution of negro slavery as it was in the British West Indies, and as it is in Cuba and the United States.t

It is also to be observed (3) that if the prediction is to be interpreted by the light of the history which shows what its fulfillment has been, it must not be interpreted to mean that even the race of Canaan should be slaves. Look at the cata

Africa and the American Flag, by Commander Andrew H. Foote, U. S. Navy, pp. 46-51. In that part of his book to which the reference is made, Commodore Foote (now more conspicuous than ever in the service of the country) acknowledges his indebtedness to Rev. Dr. Adamson, formerly for twenty years a resi dent at the Cape of Good Hope, for frequent contributions and suggestions on scientific subjects.

Since this paragraph was written, we have looked into Bunsen's Bibelwerk, erster Theil, s. 23. He says peremptorily, on the authority of what he regarded as the latest results in ethnology and comparative philology, “The negroes are descended neither from Canaan, nor from Ham, but are, so far as their languages indicate, primitive Shemites [Ur-Semiten], or Turanians (East-Japhetites), dispersed through the torrid zone." Unfortunately, the Chevalier Bunsen is no longer alive to be refuted and humbled by the superior learning of the Chevalier Fletcher.

logue of the tribes and populations descended from Canaan, [Gen. x, 15-19], and tell us upon which of them did this curse light, if the meaning of it was that they should be enslaved, and bought and sold as property, by the more favored races of mankind. "Heth, (or the Hittite), the Jebusite, the Emorite, (or Amorite), the Girgasite and the Hivite," are the nations, or more properly the tribes of one race, that were subdued by Joshua when Israel came into possession of the promised land. Were the people of these Canaanitish tribes seized as captives, sold as slaves, reduced into the condition of property? Not at all. The commission under which Joshua marched, was a commission not to enslave, but to exterminate, to drive out and utterly destroy. [Exod. xxiii, 31-33. Numb. xxxiii, 52-57. Deut. vii, 1, 2.] Only the Gibeonites, the inhabitants of three or four towns a little north of Jerusalem, having made a treaty with Joshua under false pretenses, [Josh. ix], were spared, and were made bondmen forever, instead of being exterminated. Yet they were not bondmen in the sense of being slaves to individual owners, but only in the sense of being bound to render all necessary menial service in the formalities of the national worship-"hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation, and for the altar of the Lord." If the curse upon Canaan meant that the Canaanites should be slaves, who will tell us when and how that prediction was fulfilled? Other tribes are named in the catalogue, "the Arkite, the Sinite, the Arvadite, the Zemarite, and the Hamathite." These appear to have been inhabitants of Mount Lebanon, with its valleys and the sea-coast at its feet, and they surely never were enslaved. There remains another of the sons of Canaan,-" Zidon his first born." The Zidonians are the Phenicians-the earliest of commercial nations; whose little territory, thick-set with confederated cities, gathered into itself, by mercantile adventure and the arts of peace, riches from the remotest regions of the then known world; whose ships in those early times, sailing only by the guidance of the stars, explored all parts of the Mediterranean, and went forth into the Euxine and the Atlantic; who taught the Greeks their alphabet; and whose progress in the extension of their power "was not marked like

that of other conquerors-Medes and Assyrians-by ruined cities and devastated countries, but by flourishing colonies, by agriculture and the arts of peace." Were the Phenicians slaves? Was Noah's curse upon Canaan a warrant for seizing them as captives and holding them as property?

There is still another thought (4) which ought not to be overlooked when we are dealing with the logic (or shall we rather call it faith?) which infers the righteousness of negro slavery in this nineteenth century after Christ, from a prediction uttered by Noah against Canaan as long ago, by the lowest computation, as the twenty-fourth century before Christ. Admit the two-fold exegetical assumption, first, that the curse means literal slavery, and can have no other possible fulfillment, and, secondly, that Canaan means not Canaan only with the tribes descending from him, but Canaan's father also, with all the Hamitic tribes and races; admit the ethnological assumption that the negroes in the United States, and not the negroes only but the mulattoes, quadroons, octoroons, and all others who cannot prove the absolute purity of their descent from one or both of the two elder sons of Noah, are of the race of Ham, and are, therefore, subject to the curse; there still remains an ethical assumption which the Bible and the moral sense alike repudiate. A prediction that a thing will be, is no justification of the thing itself. It was foretold to Abraham that his posterity would be strangers and servants in a land not theirs, and would be afflicted by their oppressors four hundred years. Was that a warrant for what was done by Pharaoh and the Egyptians in strict accordance with the prediction? No, for God himself said to Abraham, "The nation whom they shall serve will I judge ;" and with terrible things in righteousness did he fulfill that promise. It was predicted that Assyrian invaders should inflict God's judgments on his favored but disobedient people; but did the prediction justify the Assyrian conqueror and robber? No; for God said, "It shall come to pass that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mount Zion, and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks." It was foretold that Christ would be betrayed