The perversion of the passage is the more noteworthy from the fact, that while Ham was the offender, on account of whose conduct the curse was pronounced—so that the reader is naturally looking for some manifestation towards him personally—his name does not appear. The curse, though three times repeated, falls steadily upon Canaan, one of the four sons. When the three sons of Noah came forth with their father out of the ark, the historian simply says, "And Ham is the father of Canaan." True, so he was, and was also the father of Misraim, and Cush, and Phut. Shem, too, was the father of five sons, and Japheth of seven; but nothing is said at that time about all these, only, "Ham is the father of Canaan." And so also when Ham's irreverent wickedness is mentioned, it is "Ham the father of Canaan."
What is perhaps still more noticeable, when the curse is passed, and the historian in the next chapter takes up the genealogy of the race after the flood, and shows us the first founders of kingdoms and nations, the only instance in all that long list, when he stops to give us the boundaries of any people, is in this case of Canaan. It seems as if God took especial pains to set the people who were to be cursed, apart from the rest, that there need be no doubt who they were, and where they lived.
But if we take the race of Ham generally, we shall find that for two thousand years after the flood it continued by far the most noticeable and conspicuous of the three branches. For some reason the early developments of civilization were almost entirely in this race. Egypt and Assyria, by far the grandest empires of antiquity, were both of this Hametic order. Misraim, the son of Ham, is the reputed father of the one, and Nimrod, the grandson, of the other. So obvious was this fact, at least as respects Egypt, that it is familiarly called in the Scriptures "the land of Ham." "Israel also came into Egypt, and Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham." And again, "He sent Moses His servant, and Aaron whom He had chosen. They showed His signs among them, and wonders in the land of Ham."
OLD DINAH.
Dinah was a slave. Her mistress was an Indian woman, into whose dark mind not a single ray of gospel light had ever penetrated. She lived among a small tribe on the borders of Tennessee, and although at the age of forty, or a little over, she was called Old Dinah. The Indian mistress and all her servants had been baptized by a Roman priest; but why, or wherefore, none of them knew. Dinah said, in relating the circumstance, "I allers thought the white folks had something to tell that we did not know about, and I used to think what could it be. When the missionaries come here with the Bible, then I know what it is."
Her veneration for the "Good Book," as she always called it, was remarkable. Getting on a stool in her little cabin one day, I noticed on a shelf, far above the reach of her little ones, a pile of torn, dingy bits of paper. I said, "What have you here, Dinah?"
"Oh, missus, don't mind them now. I picks 'em up when I come from the meeting. I spose the children throws 'em out of the school-house, but I thinks it may be they are pieces of the Good Book, and when I learns to read I can find 'em out."
Dinah did learn to read. She had a family to provide for, and Saturday was the only day in the week allotted to her in which to look after her little patch of corn and potatoes, cook their food, and prepare her children for the Sabbath. The morning she gave to her farming in summer, then the washing and mending, and at night after the children were washed and stowed away for sleep, she would take the youngest on her back, and, tired as she often was, trudge away two miles to the mission station; and favored indeed was the teacher who could get rid of the earnest appeal, "Let me learn just a little more," before the morning dawned. Every Sabbath morning a little time was spent in imparting to her Daniel the lesson of the previous evening—his master living in a village some miles distant, so that he could not secure any other instruction; but Daniel soon outran his teacher, and having a warm Christian heart, learned to expound as well as read the Good Book, much to the edification of his colored friends. This was also an unfailing source of comfort and grateful recollection to Dinah. Once when listening to his fervent appeals, she said to me, while the big tears chased each other joyously down her cheeks, "Oh, missus, look at Daniel! I taught that man his a, b, c, and now he knows so much, and I can only pick out a little of the Good Book yet."