Be it understood, that we do not accuse our Episcopalian brethren of worshipping three Gods. We are confident, especially from the observation of the few last years, that Trinitarianism is fast subsiding into the mild form of Sabellianism in all denominations, and the language of Creeds and Liturgies remains to show rather what opinions were than what they are. We close by urging all, who are accustomed to worship "God the Son" and "God the Holy Ghost," to take their Bibles, and search them once more, and see whether they can find any such expressions in them. Then, when they have satisfied themselves on that point, let them examine if the Trinitarian hypothesis can be sustained in any other way, than by continually varying the meaning of the words "God" and "Father," from the whole Deity to a first person of a Trinity.

In the October number of the Southern Review, we find an elaborate and powerfully written vindication of slavery on Scriptural and quasi religious grounds. We propose in the following article to present an outline of that argument, and, so far as we may be able, to expose the fallacies on which it is based. We feel ourselves called to do this by the startling and dangerous character of the ground assumed, a ground on which negro slavery is not excused or palliated, but legitimated as a divine institution, against which it is impious to contend. The argument in brief is this. When Noah recovered from that fit of intoxication, in which Ham, the father of Canaan, had treated him with gross indignity, he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethHe also said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. He said yet farther, God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. These blessings and curses

ren.

The Southern Quarterly Review, October, 1842. Art. 3.- Canaan identified with the Ethiopian.

were prophetically uttered by divine inspiration, and were uttered for all coming times. In fulfilment of these predictions, the posterity of Canaan have always been a servile race. They became the servants of Shem, when the Israelites subdued them, and made them hewers of wood and drawers of water. Of the Canaanites, subdued under Joshua, the modern Africans are the descendants, and lawful heirs of the patriarch's curse, the latter part of which has been and is now being fulfilled in our own land. For Japheth, that is, a nation of European extraction, here dwells in the tents of Shem, that is, where stood the wigwams of the Shem-descended North American Indians; and the said Japheth has been led in the course of divine Providence to transport Canaan, in the person of his sable descendants, to be his servant; nay more, Japheth has even made Canaan servant of servants, by putting him under the delegated authority of overseers and others." For this office of servants God has fitted the descendants of Canaan both in body and soul. They come ready made slaves from the Creator's hands; and the anatomist and psychologist are constrained to admit that they bear ineffaceable marks of their menial destination. Slavery then is of God; the slave-trade is a pious calling; and anti-slavery is infidelity.

Such is the syllabus of a chain of argument, which covers more than sixty octavo pages. The subordinate heads of proof and illustration we shall cite in the sequel, with such comments as our limits will permit.

The whole argument rests on the postulate, that Noah's blessing and curse, on the occasion above referred to, were prophetical. That he uttered the blessing and the curse, we doubt not; nor do we doubt that the Jews, in their national hatred of the Canaanites, deemed them oracular. But that the Almighty has punished Ham's gross indecency, by imprinting marks of degradation and servitude upon all his son Canaan's posterity till the end of time, or that the Almighty selected a man, just waking from the brutal sleep of intoxication, to utter a prediction the most comprehensive, the farthest reaching of any in the Old Testament, we may emphatically say, Credat JUDEUS; for surely no sober-minded Christian can seriously breathe such reproach upon the divine justice and purity.

But admitting for the moment that these curses were prophetical, let us see how far they were fulfilled. The writer in the Southern Review introduces his argument with a precious

morceau of philological criticism, in which he claims for Noah's curse a retrospective fulfilment in the names of Canaan and Ham. The verb, from which Canaan is derived, literally denotes to submit one's self, to bend the knee; and by putting these two definitions together, (though in common cases a word bears but one meaning at a time,) the very convenient signification of self-submissive knee-bender is obtained for Canaan. Now, unless the Almighty had intended that Canaan's posterity should be slaves forever, he would never have suffered Ham to have imposed upon his son a name, from which a reviewer of the nineteenth century could extract this doubledistilled meaning. We are also told that "the Hebrew verb, from which the noun Ham is derived, signifies generator or parent, also hot, and in the Coptic and other dialects hot and black, or burnt black," from which sentence we may infer, that Hebrew verbs correspond to both nouns and adjectives in other languages, as also that the Coptic is a dialect of the Hebrew, seeing that a Hebrew verb has a signification in the Coptic. The Hebrew verb, from which Ham is derived, means in Hebrew, to be or to become warm. We are not aware that this verb is used in the Coptic, though we find in our lexicons a Coptic adjective, probably of kindred derivation, which means black. But even if Ham does mean warm in the Hebrew, and Chemi black in the Coptic, what has all this to do with the question of negro slavery? No one doubts that Ham's posterity are both warm and black; but they are warmer and blacker in Guinea than in North America. If the name of their progenitor was prophetical, let then his posterity remain where they can best fulfil the prophecy.*

We come now to the alleged fulfilment of Noah's prophecy in the Canaanites, who were subdued under Joshua.

"Ham had more sons than Canaan, the knee-bender, but it does not appear that the duty of being servant of servants was obligatory on any other branch of Ham's family. Some of the other branches became distinguished for their arts and arms, but not the knee-bender, Canaan. We learn from the

* Our author, in defining the name of Ham, heaps upon the poor man's head all the meanings that he can find for the whole circle of cognate words. He makes Ham to denote the parent or generator of the black race of men in hot climates! The whole paragraph is a rare philological curiosity.

Bible that the Jews, the descendants of Canaan, [probably misprinted for Shem,] made slaves of the Canaanites; that some were reduced to absolute slavery, and the others made tributaries. Instead of coming to Joshua in arms to fight for liberty, the Gibeonites and some other tribes of the land of Canaan submitted without a struggle, and, like true negroes, begged Joshua to make slaves of them. They even resorted to artifice to get the boon of slavery conferred upon them. See chap. ix. Joshua. Joshua made them hewers of wood and drawers of water to this day, say the Scriptures. These hewers of wood and drawers of water correspond, no doubt, to our domestic servants of the same race of people at the present day, and to the slaves of our mechanics and small farmers.

"But the great mass of the Canaanites were reduced to another species of slavery, evidently corresponding to the kind of slavery at present existing on our large plantations. Joshua divided the land among the twelve tribes of Israel. Each tribe reduced the negroes or Canaanites, which fell to its lot, to tributaries, who dwelt among them." -pp. 324, 325.

We

tations

We are happy to learn that "the slaves on our large planare merely "tributaries; " for what else can we infer from the paragraph just quoted? A tributary is a person, who, on condition of the periodical payment of a stipulated sum, is left to dispose of his time and industry at pleasure, and to enjoy without molestation whatever property he may in any way obtain. We had supposed that the time and industry of the plantation slaves were entirely at the arbitrary disposal of their masters; but are glad to be corrected on so high authority.

It is a mistake to suppose that the Gibeonites were subjected to domestic servitude. They were simply servants in and about the sanctuary and temple. Joshua's declaration to them is, "There shall none of you be freed from being bondmen and hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God." In the subsequent portions of Jewish history, we find the Gibeonites repeatedly referred to in connexion with the priests and Levites, as attached to the ecclesiastical establishment, but never as the servants or slaves of individuals; and the passage above quoted is the first intimation, that we have ever had, that they were subject to domestic service.

But the fate of the Gibeonites, whatever it was, was not that of the posterity of Canaan generally. Canaan had eleven

sons, who became the heads of as many tribes; and the Gibeonites were but an insignificant branch of one of those tribes. Five of these tribes settled in Syria and Phoenicia, and had nothing to do with the wars of Joshua. The remaining six, with the exception of the Gibeonites, after protracted and at times successful struggles for supremacy, were made tributaries to the Israelites, some of them not however till the days of Solomon, four or five hundred years after the commencement of hostilities against them by Joshua.

It is assumed in the passage above quoted, that the Canaanites were negroes. Of this we have not the slightest proof; and, intimately as their history is interwoven with that of the Hebrews, it is surprising that the difference of color, if it existed, should not have been mentioned. Especially, if blackness had been a part of Canaan's curse, would it not have been specified as one of the grounds for subduing and enslaving his posterity? Or would not Moses and Joshua have sometimes appealed to the prejudice of color, in their efforts to procure an entire severance of sympathy between their people and the Canaanites? Would the Isrealites have been so prone to contract intermarriages with the Canaanites, as they always were from the days of Joshua to those of Ezra, had the barrier of a different skin been interposed? And in the frequent mention of such marriages in terms of reprobation by the sacred writers, must not some reference have been had to the mulatto issue of these connexions? Was Bathsheba black? Was Solomon a mulatto ? His mother was the wife of Uriah the Hittite; and the Hittites were of the posterity of Canaan. Moreover the Phoenicians were descendants of Canaan, and Carthage was founded by a Phoenician colony. Was Cadmus black? Was Hannibal black? We do not know; for there is no mention made of their whiteness by any ancient historian. But how is it to be accounted for, that in the detailed narratives, which have come down to us of the Punic wars, no mention is made of the blackness of the Carthaginians, if they were black?

"Some of the other branches [of Ham's posterity] became distinguished for their arts and arms, but not the knee-bender, Canaan." There are a few trifling exceptions to this sweeping remark, which was no doubt intended to be taken cum grano salis. In the art of navigation the Phoenician descendants of Canaan took precedence of all the nations of antiquity, and controlled the commerce of the world. In some departments VOL. XXXIV. - 3D S. VOL. XVI. NO. I.

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