in bondage for ever in order to fulfil the inspired prophecy of Noah, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren…. Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” So scrupulous is the reverence of the Slave-owners for Scripture, so great is their zeal for God’s honour, that upon a merely conjectural interpretation of a passage in the most obscure and difficult part of the Bible, they feel bound to condemn to hopeless slavery on their plantations a whole race of mankind who, in common with the other races, have been redeemed by Christ.
To all arguments of this kind there is, in the first place, a very simple answer, which has already been given, in effect, to those who thought it their duty as Christians to fulfil inspired prophecy by denying civil rights to the Jews. Man is not charged with the fulfilment of inspired prophecy, which, whatever he may do, will certainly fulfil itself; but he is charged with the performance of his duty to his neighbour. It is not incumbent upon him to preserve Divine Foreknowledge from disappointment, but it is incumbent upon him to preserve his own soul from injustice, cruelty, and lust. If the prophecy had meant that the negroes should always be slaves, it would have been defeated already, for a great part of the negroes in Africa have never become slaves, and those in the English and French colonies, besides a good many in America itself, have ceased to be so.
