Page:The future of Africa.djvu/336

320 copyist, by mistake, wrote only Canaan, instead of Ham, the father of Canaan, and that the whole passage was originally thus: And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, &c. &c. And he said, Cursed be Ham, the father of Canaan, &c.?" He then goes on to remark: "By this reading all the three sons of Noah are included in the prophecy, whereas otherwise Ham, who was the offender, is excluded, or is only punished in one of his children The whole continent of Africa was peopled principally by the children of Ham; and for how many ages have the better parts of that country lain under the dominion of the Romans, and then of the Saracens, and now of the Turks! In what wickedness, ignorance, barbarity, slavery, misery, live most of the inhabitants! And of the poor Negroes, how many hundreds every year are sold and bought like beasts in the market, and are conveyed from one quarter of the world to do the work of beasts in another! Nothing can be more complete than the execution of the sentence upon Ham, as well as upon Canaan."

The excellent Rev. says: "The frequent mention of Ham as the father of Canaan, suggests the thought that the latter was also criminal. . . . . . Ham must have felt it a very mortifying rebuke, when his own father was inspired, on this occasion, to predict the durable oppression and slavery of his posterity; Canaan was also rebuked by learning that the curse would especially rest on that branch of the family which would descend from him; for his posterity were no doubt principally, though not