A very extraordinary case of the wresting of Scripture to make it justify crime――so great a crime as the enslaving of men――is the attempt to force from this prophecy concerning Canaan a vindication of the enslaving of Africans by Americans. The wresting appears in these two broad facts:――(a.) That the Africans were not Canaanites, and therefore the prophecy said nothing about the negro race. Admitting for argument’s sake that it justified the enslaving of Canaanites, it did not in the least justify the enslaving of African negroes.――――(b.) If the passage had named the African negro instead of the Canaanite, even then a prediction _of what shall be_ might fall very far short of being a command as to what man _ought to do_. Prophetic predictions of war form not the least justification of war――fall utterly short of a divine command enjoining man’s duty. Predictions of the Savior’s death could never justify his murderers. * * * * * 3. _The genealogy of the great historic nations._ In Gen. 10 the Bible for once departs from its usual method and gives a chapter of _universal history_――the only one. Elsewhere it traces the history of the one nation which had “the oracles of God,” and in later ages, of the Christian church, touching the nations of the outside world only as they come into relations to the seed of Abraham or to the kingdom of Christ. But here we see the sons of Noah branching out to people the countries of the great Eastern Continent and to found the old historic nations of the earth.――――Japheth whom Prophecy was to “_enlarge_” (Gen. 9: 27) furnished the tribes from which grew the great nations of Northern and Eastern Asia and for the whole of Europe. At first they occupied the maritime regions bordering on the Caspian, Black and Mediterranean Seas, spoken of here as “the isles of the Gentiles”――conforming to the Hebrew usage which called all maritime countries “isles.”――――Next we have the sons of Ham, among whom were Nimrod, the builder of Babel; Mizraim with his seven sons who himself gave name to Egypt; Canaan whose posterity long held Palestine, and several names which appear either in the cities or the tribes of the valley of the Euphrates and of Arabia.――――Shem seems to have shared with Ham the possession of the great fertile basin of the Euphrates and the Tigris――the cradle of the race――together with portions of Arabia and in general of South-western Asia.