THE EISENHOWER LIBRARY
3 1151 02743 6793
LIBRARY
' JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.
:>F
William cwfcteY, Esq.
.
"T£
THE
GUILT OF SLAVERY
AND THE
CRIME OF SLAVEHOLDING.
DEMONSTRATED FROM THE
HEBREW AND GREEK SCRIPTURES
BY
REV. GEORGE B. CHEEVER, D.D.,
PASTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE PURITANS.
AUTHOR OF " LECTURES ON THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS," " WANDERINGS OF A PILGRIM,'
" WINDINGS OF THE RIVER OF THE WATER OF LIFE," " VOICES OF NATURE,"
"POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME," "GOD AGAINST SLAVERY," ETC.
BOSTON:
JOHN P. JEWETT & COMPANY,
No. 20 WASHINGTON STREET.
18 6 0.
.C n
' lob
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by
GEORGE B. CHEEVER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.
STEBEOTYPED BY
SMITH & McDOUGAL,
84Beekman-st.,N.Y.
DEDICATION AND PREFACE
I dedicate this volume to Eev. ¥m. G-. Schauffler, D. D., of Con-
stantinople, who expressed to me, in his last visit to this country, his
conviction of the truth and accuracy of the views on the subject of
slavery, presented by me in the Bibliotheca Sacra, and now embodied
in the present work. I know the feelings of abhorrence and of anguish
in the hearts of some of our missionaries abroad, in regard to the prev-
alence of this gigantic sin. . They dare not let the heathen know that
such an iniquity is tolerated by Christians ; much less, that the very
Missionary Boards that send the gospel abroad maintain and sanction,
in any of the churches at home, such a violation of all its precepts.
May the Lord God bring speedily the time when the churches and
the ministry, at home and abroad, shall unite in the condemnation and
removal of this monstrous abomination !
The slaveholding tyranny established in this country over the blacks
has rapidly ripened into a despotism full blown, with all the arts and
terrors of proscription against even the free whites, who prefer liberty
to slavery, and dare express an independent opinion, or maintain an in-
dependent spirit. The masters and managers of this despotism, defy-
ing all the fundamental principles of jurisprudence, as well as of revealed
IV DEDICATION AND PREFACE.
religion, have set up slavery even on the throne of Justice, confounding
and concentrating, out of the maxims and prejudices of past wicked-
ness and darkness, the present rule of slaveholding piety and policy,
that black men have no rights thatiohite men are bound to respect. They
are, as Mr. Coleridge did not hesitate to designate them, a legalized
banditti of siEN-STEALERS, and they are ready to hang at the nearest
lamp-post all ■who resist or even disavow the laws of their brotherhood.
But, as Edmund Burke said of the leaders of the French Beign of
Terror, " Their tyranny is complete in their justice, and their lanterne
is not half so dreadful as their court."
Their religion is still worse than either, being a perversion of the
gospel of love into a law of malignity and cruelty, so that every virtu-
ous and honest man must, by the necessity of truth and conscience, be
an unbeliever, and only a depraved heart could receive such a pre-
tended revelation. It is the conviction of the impossibility of a divine
revelation sanctioning so diabolical a cruelty and crime as that of human
slavery, that has led to the preparation of this volume, in every part of
which I have adhered to the logic of God's word, and while dealing
with the original have made the argument plain and simple to the Eng-
lish reader.
The ground studies of the work, so far as the Old Testament is con-
cerned, were published in several successive numbers of the Biblio-
theca Sacra, in the years 185-5 and 1856. Out of the intolerable
pressure of the accusation that the Old Testament sanctioned slavery,
the investigation was begun, and has been continued ; the result is the
demonstration in this volume, which, being drawn from God's word,
we fear not to challenge the overthrow of it by the defenders of slavery
as an impossibility. A similar survey of the teachings of the Bible on
this subject had been admirably presented, in part, in a tract on the
Mosaic system of servitude, by the late venerated and lamented Judge
Jay, whose services to his country as a Christian jurist, statesman, phi-
lanthropist and patriot, the bitter enemies of his abolitionism have
vainly attempted to depreciate or conceal.
I have demonstrated the power and duty of the church and ministry
DEDICATION AND PEEFACE. V
with the "Word of God against this sin. Indifference and neutrality in
this conflict are treason. " He who supports the system of slavery,"
said the Abbe Raynal, " is the enemy of the whole human race, and
whoever justifies it deserves the utmost contempt from the philosopher,
and from the negro a stab with his dagger." Raynal here states a
principle of desert, not a rule of action. But again he says, " If there
existed a religion which tolerated or authorized, though only by its si-
lence, such horrors ; if, occupied with idle questions, it did not thunder
without ceasing against the authors and instruments of this tyranny ;
if it made it a crime for the slave to break his chains ; if it endured in
its bosom the unjust judge who would condemn the fugitive ; if such a
religion existed, would it not be necessary to bury its ministers under
the ruin of their own altars?"*
The Abbe Raynal was a Roman Catholic, but he wrote like a prophet,
and he describes the religion of Protestants, if they sanction this in-
iquity. The right of slavery, he justly declares, is the right to commit
every species of crime ; so that a church defending this right is no more
a church of Christ, but a synagogue of Satan.
Let those who have affirmed that American slavery could not exist
out of the church, were it not protected in it, themselves preach
against it ; let the churches and the ministry not merely denounce it
in Confessions and General Assemblies, but proclaim the word of God
against it from the pulpit, and apply the law of Christ in its excommu-
nication, and our whole country would speedily be redeemed from the
infinite curse and crime. "We have been too justly called a people of
Good Resolutions ; and the publication of strong whereases and resolves
gains, generally, sufficient reputation for anti-slavery principles, without
any necessity or intention of practising upon them. May God give us
grace to do, as well as say.
As Republicans and Christians let us adopt the generous sentiment
of Sir Samuel Romilly. " A genuine love of liberty is not a selfish
feeling confined to ourselves, and to the contracted circle of our privi-
+ Abbe Kaynal, Histoire Philosophique des deux Indes, Vol. VI., pp. 94-111, and
Vol. Li 23.
VI DEDICATION AND PREFACE.
leged associates ; it expands itself to all without distinction. It is as
indignant at that injustice which we see done to others as at that which
we feel pressing upon ourselves. It delights in the security of the mean-
est in the land ; and even rejoices that it is unable to exercise, as it i3
secure from suffering, an unjust dominion." The sum of the argument,
and of our duty to ourselves and others, is in the prayer of the Psalm-
ist, Deliver me from the oppression of man ; so will I keep thy
PRECEPTS.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PA0B
Introduction. Statement op the Argument 1
I. — Importance op the Investigation 21
II. — Varieties op the Demonstration Against Slavery 29
III. — Historic Investigation. Patriarchal Life 39
IV. — God's Choice op Abraham, and for "What 48
V— Cockatrices' Eggs Laid by Lexicographers 57
VI. — Examination op Enactments ° 66
VII.— Idioms of Buying and Selling in the Case op Hebrew
Servants. No Property in Man 73
VIII— Freedom and Rights op the Children op Servants 81
IX. — God's Fugitive Law for Protection of the Runaway. . . 94
X.— Injurious and Tenacious Mixture op Error and Truth. 105
XT, — First Instance of the "Word for Servant US
XII. — "Word-Analysis Through the Life op Abraham 125
XIII. — The Servile Relation for Money no Proof of Slavery. 134
XIV. — Different Translations of the Same Word by Our Eng-
lish Translators. No "Word for Slave 144
XV. — Patriarchal Establishment op Isaac and Jacob 157
XVI. — Nature of Tributary Servitude < 169
XVIL— The Children of Solomon's Servants 184
XVIII.— Judgment of God Against Slavery in Egypt 191
XIX.— Times of Service of the Hebrew Servant 201
XX.— Phraseology for Contracts with Servants 214
XXL— The Law Against Man-Stealing, or Property in Man. .222
XXII.— Statute Forbidding The Delivery of Fugitives 237
XXni.— Demonstration Continued Against Property in Man, . . 247
XXTV.— Four Impossibilities of Slavery 261
Till CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAOK
XXV. — Specific Enactments op the Jubilee 278
XXVI. — Second Clause of Personal Liberty 292
XXVIL — Case of the Native Hebrew Selling Himself to the
Stranger 309
XXVIII. — Comparison op Roman and American Slavery 326
XXIX. — The Argument of Silence Considered 337
XXX. — With the Old Testament in Existence, any New Com-
mand Against Slavery Unnecessary 347
XXXI. — Examination op Greek Usage in the New Testament.
Evidence from Matthew and Mare 355
XXXII. — Evidence from Luke. Case of the Prodigal Son. . . . 367
XXXIII. — Evidence from the Gospel of John and Acts of the
Apostles 379
XXXIV. — Evidence from the Epistles to the Romans and Cor-
inthians 384
XXXV. — Evidence from the Epistle to the Galatians 391
XXXVI. — Evidence from the Epistle to the Ephesians 398
XXXVH. — Epistles to the Phllippians and Colossians 406
XXXVIII. —Evidence from the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. . . 415
XXXIX. — Evidence from the Epistle of Paul to Philemon. . . . 429
XL. — Evidence from Hebrews, James, and Peter 446
XLI. — Evidence from the Apocalypse 452
XLH. — Appeal of the Moral Argument 462
INTRODUCTION.
Nature and General Scope of the Argument.— Philological, Legal, LTistoeical,
Moral. — Baptism of Greek Words into Freedom from the Hebrew. — Proof of
tiieir usage excluding Slavery. — The Relation and Eealitt of Slavery Con-
demned by the Law and Gcspel. — Consequent Duty of the Church.
The. argument which we propose to develope, demonstrating
the iniquity of slavery, is fourfold ; philological, statutory or le-
gal, historical, and moral. The argument from consequences is
hoth historical and moral.
In pursuing the philological argument we begin with the He-
brew, from which, through the Septuagint translation, it passes
into the New Testament, where it is merged in the moral and re-
tributive, and closes with the great decisive judgment, He that is
unjust, let him be unjust still.
I. The philological argument is baptized throughout with the
idea of the virtue, manliness, honorableness and Christian integrity
of voluntary paid or rewarded labor, as the characteristic of a
truly free and benevolent social state. An admirable German
writer has thrown a great light, cv*en in a few suggestions, upon
the darkness in which this subject has been involved in the Bibli-
cal literature of his own country. He notes and corrects some of
the errors of Michaelis. He notes the fact that the Hebrew
language has no word that stigmatizes a part of the laboring
community by a degrading brand mark, or separates them from
the others as slaves, but only an honorable generic expression for
all who stand in the serving relation. He affirms that among a
people so occupied with agriculture, whose Lawgiver, Moses, and
whose Kings, Saul and David, passed immediately to their high
11 INTRODUCTION.
vocation from the care of their flocks and the labors of the plow,
there could no degrading significance ever he attached to any
appellation of labor; for the name of the Servant of God is the
honorable title of Moses and the pious.*
There is no word in the Hebrew language for slave, and
this grand fact speaks volumes. The glorious necessity and
penury of that divine language in this respect, (a penury the
consequence of wealth), dragged in triumph the Greek words
which human depravity had applied to slavery, and made a show
of them openly, having bound them to the service of a universal
and Christian freedom. In the work of translation, for want of
another pure language that had not been created out of despotism
and servility, the Greek words for service, though stamped with
the superscription of slavery, had to be taken as the exponents of
the nobler Hebrew. But the grand old Hebrew significance held
on and triumphed, being indeed additionally elevated and trans-
figured by the Gospel.
The Greek was not laid aside, nor unclothed, but clothed upon
with the divineness of the Hebrew; and the words that are thus
transfigured must be viewed as reflecting the glory of that Re-
deemer, whose incarnation, death, and work of redemption gath-
ered all mankind into one free family.f To look at them otherwise,
in their usage in the New Testament, would be as if one of the
disciples could have stripped Moses and Elias of their glory, and
compelled them to appear in their earthly and mortal habiliments.
There is no exaggeration in this. If any man will examine carefully
the works of those scholars who have written on the principles of
interpretation as applied to the Greek of the New Testament, he
will find that though this particular view might not have been in
* Saalsciiutz. Das Mosaicho Recht. of the New Testament is based on the
Mosaic System of Laws. Vol. 2, ch. writings of Moses and the prophets,
ei, p. G97. The first and principal helps for inves-
f Seii.kk. Biblical Hermenuetics. tigating the usage of words in the
Part 2, Sec. cexlii. uThc language writings of the Evangelists and Apos-
of the New Testament had its origin tics are the text and the Greek trans-
froin the Greek Jews, and the religion lation of the Old Testament."
INTRODUCTION. Ill
the mind of those writers, yet the demonstration is inevitable from
their principles.*
(1.) The leading word ennobled by this process is dovXog, with
its cognates, as used for the varieties of service. And here what
is needed is simply to rescue the text from the insane thraldom
which the defenders of slavery put upon these words, of being
compelled into the service of that social and civil abomination and
crime, as if no other meaning than that of slavery could possibly
be connected with them. The question is triumphantly asked,
Does not dovXog mean slave ? The pro-slavery interpreters have
melted down the king's coin, and brought it to their mint, for
this base image and superscription. They have taken the basest
and most degraded meaning of the Greek, and have set that as the
standard of usage in Divine Inspiration. All that is necessary in
regard to dovXog is to prove that the New Testament writers used
it as the synonyme of the free old Hebrew word t^>:, the proof of
which is incontrovertible through the Septuagint translation.!
" As this version became the Bible of all the Jews, who were dis-
persed throughout the countries where Greek was spoken, it
became the standard of their Greek language."^ It became their
grand classic library, and in it the word that among the Greeks
designated slaves was redeemed from that degradation, and applied
to freemen, to the free servants of freemen, and to the children of
God. But, in addition to this, it can be proved that even in classic
usao-e, so called, this word and its cognates were not exclusively
applied to slaves ; so that in no case can their occurrence prove
that slaves or the system of slavery were recognized or meant.
These words necessarily all received a baptism of freedom from
* Winer, Grammar of Idioms of Greeks generally did not understand
the Greek Language of the N. T., pp. and therefore despised."
34, 31. "The religious dialect of the f Lightfoot's Works, Vol. 4, p. 31.
Jews, even in the Greek, naturally Planck, Greek Diction of N. T.
approached the Hebrew, and had its Robinson, Philology N. T.— Tittman
type in the Septuagint. " " Their Greek on Forced Interpretations. Tiioluck,
style took the general complexion of Lexicography N. T.
their mother tongue. Hence origin- % Marsh's Lectures, p. 3, sec. xiv.
ated a Jewish Greek, which native
IV INTRODUCTION.
the Hebrew, by being employed in its translation in so many cases
where no meaning of slavery could attach to them ; and then
afterwards by being applied ordinarily to signify the domestics in
Judean families, the servants who were Jews themselves, and could
not possibly be slaves.
In the great and glorious fugitive law, in Dent, xxiii., 16, the
words used are tiN for the Hebrew, a servant, and dovXoc; for the
Greek, a servant. Now if, in this case, it could even be proved
that both these words, both the Hebrew and the translation,
meant slave and slave only, then the argument would be destruc-
tive of the whole claim of slavery as having any sanction in God's
Word. For the person here described as a slave is evidently one
who in God's sight has a perfect right to his freedom, and the
same right as to men also, no matter what may be their claims or
their laws in regard to him. Those claims and laws are so un-
righteous, when they treat him as a slave, that he has a perfect
right to break away from them, and God himself forbids any man
from interfering with that right, but commands every man to
defend it, and to protect the fugitive in its enjoyment, without any
regard to wicked human enactments.
But the stranger and the native were placed upon the same
footing, for certainly God 'would not have inserted in his laws for
his own people a privilege in behalf of the heathen which could
have been denied in behalf of the Hebrew citizen. So that, if the
word describing the fugitive means slave, it is as clear as the day
that slavery is unjust and wrong in God's sight, that the claim of
property in man is sinful and good for nothing, not to be respected,
but rejected, and reprobated, and defied.
And if it does not mean slave, then it means a freeman unjustly
treated as a slave ; so that we have here a case, in the very in-
stance and principle, in the very text and law, on which the Epis-
tle of Paul to Philemon is grounded, of the utter repudiation of
slavery, the denial of the possibility of its being sanctioned by
divine permission, the assertion of the duty of protecting the op-
pressed servant, of the claim of the fugitive slave to freedom, and
INTRODUCTION. V
of the duty, on the part of Christians, to give freedom to the op-
pressed fugitive, whether slave or servant, to give freedom to the
dovXog, and on no account return him into the power of the
oppressor.
The Septuagint usage of the word dovXog, for free service, may
be known by comparing the following instances : Ex. xxi., 2 ; Josh.,
i., 1, xiv., 7, xxii., 4 ; Judges vi., 27, xix., 19:1 Sam. xvii., 9, xviii.
5, xxv., 10 ; 2 Sam. ix., 10, xii., 18, xix., 17 ; 1 Kings xii., 7 ; 2
Kings i\\, 1 ; 1 Chron. vi., 49 ; Neh. ix., 14 ; Dan. ix., 11 ; Eccl.
v., 11, where it is for nab, the sleep of a laboring man is sweet.
These cases, in comparison with others, prove incontrovertibly a
very general use of dovXog, where the meaning of slave can not
be admitted or intimated ; and no Jew, in any of the instances in
which it was applied to any of his own nation, would endure the
signification of slavery. It thus passed into the New Testament
as a synonyme of the old, free, honorable Hebrew word isy, and
was employed by the writers of the New Testaraeut, as of the Old,
indifferently, to signify servants in families, servants of God, ser-
vants of Christ, servants among the Pagans, servants among Chris-
tians; and if at any time it refers to slaves, it is with no intima-
tion of any sanction of slavery, but rather (as in 1 Tim. vi., 1, 2)
in the supposition that only out of the church of Christ, only
among Pagans and unbelievers, can there be found persons who
will hold slaves ;* and that when Christians are so unfortunate as
to be held under such a yoke, they must endure it to the honor of
God, in the hope of the conversion of their heathen masters, al-
* SAALScnuTZ. Das Mosaiscte from which every element of slavery
Recht. Laws of Moses, vol. 2., 715. was excluded. He points out what
He remarks on the impossibility of he designates as a most pernicious
the system of slavery having pre- mistake brought in by Machaehsj
vailed among the Hebrews, in the that of giving the title of bondage or
sense of that word in modern times, slavery to the system of Jewish ser-
and among the nations out of Judea ; vice, when it was not slavery at all,
and states the impropriety of tho and did not allow of slavery. The
term slavery being applied to the work of Saalschutz was published in
Hebrew system of domestic service, Berlin, in 1846.
n INTRODUCTION.
though, if they can he made free, they must not be slaves, but
choulil gain and keep their freedom.*
(2). The same is true in regard to the word dovXcia, service,
often rendered bondage in English, but which in the original is so
often used of the work or ministry of a free person that there
ran be no argument of slavery drawn from its usage any where,
unless the context plainly proves that slavery is the subject of dis-
course.! The usage in the Septuagint may be seen from the fol-
lowing instances : Gen. xxx., 26, of Jacob's service to Laban ; 1
Kings v., C, of Hiram's and Solomon's servants ; 1 Kings xii., 4,
Solomon's service upon the people of his kingdom ; 1 Chron. vi.,
48, service of the Levites for the Tabernacle ; xxv., G, service of
the singers in the house of God ; Psalm civ., 4, herh for the ser-
vice of man ; Ez. xxix., 18, Nebuchadnezzar's service and hire
unto God.
* Campbell on the Gospels, vol. 2.
Note on Matt, xx., 27, declares that
by the word 6uv?.og is meant a servant
in general, whatever kind of work he
be employed in, as well as a slave.
" It is solely from the scope and con-
nection that we must judge when it
should be rendered in the one way,
and when in the other.'' The men-
tion of the subject, or the occurrence
of the word, does not justify the re-
lation or the sin. Neither does the
silence of the sacred writer imply a
sanction ; no more than the silence
of Christ, when John was beheaded
by lb rod, implied the sanction of that
murder. See also Dr. F. A. Cox,
(England) Scriptural Duty to Slave-
holders, etc. He describes tfav?>oc as
" a generic term, applied to all the re-
lations of servitude and acts of service,
even when no inferiority of rank or
condition is predicable."
f Josephus. Antiq. B. xvi., eh. 1.
He is speaking of the impossibility,
under the law of Moses, of there
being such a thing as the slavery of
the Jews to foreigners. He says that
in case of crime, a thief, if he have
not enough property to make restitu-
tion for his theft, may be sold for the
amount of his theft, that is, his ser-
vices may be sold to such an amount,
and he may be compelled to Work,
till his labor shall have amounted to
such a sum. But he can not be sold
to foreigners at any rate, neither to
one of his own nation in such man-
ner as to be under perpetual slavery,
for he must have been released after
six years. This is a very positive and
striking proof of the meaning of the
Jewish system of service as limited
and voluntary ; and inasmuch as
dovAeiav is the word used by Jose-
phus (translated, however, in English
slavery), it is clear that such phrase-
ology does not of necessity mean
slavery, but is used for the service of
hired laborers and freemen.
INTRODUCTION. Vll
(3). The usage of dovXevod is under the same conditions. It is
employed in the Septuagint for the Hebrew verb ixs, to labor,
and receives and retains a signification of freedom in being used
as the exponent of that word.* It is employed where slavery
could not be meant,f as for example, in Gen. xiv., 4, of tributary
confederates serving Chedorlaomer, and Gen. xxv., 23, the elder
shall serve the younger; xxix., 15, of Jacob serving Laban ; xxxi.,
6, of the same ; Ex. xxi., 2, 6, of the service of the Hebrew ser-
vant; Deut. xv., 18, worth a double hired servant in serving six
years ; Hosea xii., 12, Israel served for a wife.
(4). The word outer7]g is another term employed in the New
Testament for servants, which might mean slave, if the context
rendered it necessary, if the subject matter was that of slaves or
slavery ; but also it is used for freemen and free servants, and
might be applied, and was applied, in that sense.
Now oinerrig is rendered by Calvin in the Latin word famulus,
and he notes that inasmuch as it is not dovXot, but olnerai, that
is used in 1 Pet. ii., 18, the passage may be understood to refer
to free servants as well as slaves. J And Bretschn eider says that
oiKerrjg is used not merely of slaves, but also of freemen, of the
wife and the children.§ Josephus employs this word for servants
of the Hebrews, who could not possibly be slaves.|| It is em-
* Josephus, Antiq., B. 3, ch. xii., Trypho, where he employs the word
sec. 3. He describes the fiftieth year edov?,evaiv to signify the labor of
as " a jubilee, in which debtors were Jacob in the service of Laban. This
freed from their debts, and the ser- was not slavery, but a free, voluntary
vants were set at liberty, which ser- contract. See Gen. xxix., 15, 20.
vants (translated slaves in the Eng- •)• Stephanus, Thesaurus. He gives
lish) became such, though of the same an instance from Diogenes Laertius
stock, by transgressing." The Greek of 6ov?.evu applied to working for
is not slaves, but being employed of wages.
Hebrews certainly signifies a free ser- % Calvin, Com. in 1 Peter ch. ii.
vice on a voluntary contract ; ol § Bretscuneider, Lex. " Non so-
dovXevovTEQ eTiEvdepoL d<pievTai, those lum de servis, sed etiam de liberis."
engaged at service were set free. This || Josephus against Apion, B. 3,
phraseology is that used also by Jus- Sec. 19, and elsewhere.
Tin Martyr in his Dialogue with
V1I1 INTEODUCTION-.
ployed in the Septuagint for tliose who were not and could not
be slaves.* In the same way it is employed in the New Testa-
ment. Stephanus, Liddell and Scott, Schleusner, refer to a similar
usage in classical writers, so that it is sometimes opposed to SovXov
(Herodotus, example, also Xenophon), and in the N. T. there could
he no indication or intimation from it of the existence of slavery.
Now Facciolatus renders famulus by the Greek word vTC7]per7]g,
and the Latin words minister, servus. \ At the same time he says
that famulus is employed concerning a free man serving another,
and ministering. Hence Ulpian is quoted showing that all, even
free men, are comprehended under the name of fami lice,- who are
in service ; famulus is also used concerning ministers of the gods.
Again, servus is rendered by Facciolatus as famu lus, and SovXog
and Oeparruv are presented as synonyms in the Greek. But he
quotes Cicero pro Cluentio as saying, Legum id circo omnes servi
sumus, ut liberi esse possimus, we are all for this very purpose
servants to the law, that we might be free. A wise and beautiful
apothegm, not a little like the language of Paul in regard to our
being servants of Christ, that we might have perfect freedom.
And even concerning the word vema,\ a home-born slave, Facci-
olatus says that it was used sometimes in application to a freeman
born at Rome. But as to Oepa-nuv, which Facciolatus has set
with dovXog, as the translation of servus, the lexicographers affirm
that in Homer and the old authors it always differs from dovXog,
as implying free and honorable service. But in Chios depanovreg
was the name for their slaves.
Now deparroyv is the word used by the Septuagint, instead of
dovXog, in several instances, concerning Moses, as a translation of
the Hebrew nry, the -word for servant, though, as is well known,
the word dovXog is most commonly employed for all forms and
qualities of service. But deparruv is also the word employed by
° Sept. Trans. Gen. xxvii., 37; f Facciolatus, Lex. Lat. Famulus.
Lex. xxv. 42, 55 ; Num. xxxii., 5 ; % Becker, Gallus, 213. " Vernce,
Prov. xxii., 7 ; Deut. xxxii., 5, (of children resulting from the contuber-
Moses). nium among the slaves."
INTRODUCTION. IX
Paul in the epistle to the Hebrews (ch. iii., 5), in regard to Moses,
and it is the only instance in all the New Testament in which this
word is used, while 6ovXog is used in cases without number, of
free men in free, voluntary and honorable service. All this
shows (1) how closely the usage in the New Testament follows that
of the Septuagint, and (2) how impossible it is to draw any con-
clusion from the use of any word, which, in the classical Greek
writers, may have ordinarily meant slave, that such is the .mean-
ing of the word in the New Testament. The Septuagint trans-
lators of the Hebrew Scriptures were the classics of the New
Testament writers, although Paul was familiar, perhaps, with all
the Greek literature of his time.
The proof from the use of the word deparrajv is conclusive as
to the freedom of the domestic service and of servants among the
Hebrews. It is used not only of Moses, in Numbers and Joshua,
but of Job, in the book of Job, (i., 8 ;" ii., 3 ; xlii., 1 ;) and by Job
himself concerning his own servants, (xix., 16,) I called my ser-
vant, and he gave me no answer, and (xxxi., 13,) If I did despise
the cause of my man-servant or of my maid-servant, etc., and of
servants generally, (iii., 19,) the servant is free from his master,
and (vii., 2,) as a servant earnestly desircth the shadow, etc. It
is used also in Numbers xxxii., 31, of the children of Gad and
Reuben. The use of this word by Paul, in the Epistle to the He-
brews, in speaking of Moses, was adopted, there cannot be a doubt,
because the Septuagint translation used it in places which referred
to Moses as God's faithful servant over God's house.
Moses is also called in the Septuagint otKer^g (as in Dent.
xxxiv., 5). In the New Testament oinerrjg no more indicates a
slave than oiKerr]g or deparrcjv in the Septuagint translation of the
Old Testament. Trommius renders the word, domesticus, famulus,
servus.* And domesticus is the word employed by Lardner for
ouceioi, in rendering the text Eph. ii., 19, "no more strangers, but
fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." You
* Tromhii Concord. Grtec. Vet. Test, oikettjs.
X INTRODUCTION.
have equal rights of citizenship with the people and natives of the
country, and are God's domestics.* "Whether domesticus, or famu-
lus, or servus, in the translation into Latin he employed, or ouiernc;,
or diatcovog, or dovXoq, or QepaTruv, in the Greek, there is no more
indication of slavery than when the Hebrew word for servant
nrs is employed in the Old Testament,! and rendered by the
Greek translators OLK£rnq,\ or dovXoq, or Qepa-rruv, or by the Latin
yolgate servus, or famulus, or domesticus, or verna.
(5.) An examination of the Scptuagint usage of the words
6ovXv, maidservant, and TraidiOKV, maiden, damsel, servant, as
employed for the Hebrew words rues and rtrtew, reveals the same
conditions. These Greek words received the same free signifi-
cance from the Hebrew, and carried it into the dialect of the New
Testament. In Ruth iii., 9, SovXtj, handmaid, is applied to Ruth
herself; so in ii., 13. So, 1 Sam. i., 11, 16, 18, of Hannah ; and
chapter xxv., several times 'of Abigail ; 2 Sam. xx., 17. Saal-
schutz and others have noted the free signification of these Hebrew
words; improperly, at any time, translated by words that convey
the meaning of slavery. Bondwoman is not the proper translation
of the word designating Hagar in Hebrew as Sarah's maid.
(6.) The usage of TraidioM] is subject to the same law. Gen.
xxi., 10, 12, 13 ; xxx., 3 ; xxxi., 33 ; Ex. xx., 10, 17 ; xxi., 20, 32 ;
xxiii., 12; Deut. xii., 12, 18; xv., 17 ; xvi., 11, 14; Ruth ii, 13 ;
iv., 12 ; 1 Sam. xxv., 41 ; Jer. xxxiv., 9, 11, 16. The examination
demonstrates its usage of free persons. To translate it by the
word londwoman or slave would be to convey a falsehood under
the claim of revelation.
All these words are used in the New Testament of free persons.
* Lardxer on Peter. "Works, Vol. could not be called slaves. They were
6, p. 218. in no sense such. He exposes the
\ Saalschctz. Laws of Moses, falsehood of any such appellative to
Vol. 2, 714. "With what justice (this the system.
writer well demands) can any one ap- % BRETsenNEtDER. Lex. N. T.
ply the term of servile thraldom or oiksttjc, applied to free persons, non
slavery to a free system like that solum de semis sed eliam de liberis,
among tho Hebrews ? Persons that uxore, filiis.
were free by law every seventh year
INTRODUCTION. XI
And though some of them generally, and others often, were applied
in classic Greek, out of Judea, to the state and custom of slavery,
they were prepared for Christianity and for the state of freedom,
first as Hebrew proselytes in. the Septuagint, second, as adopted
into the family of Christ, where there is neither bond nor free.*
Such is the course of the argument in all its branches, from
Genesis to Revelation, under the guidance and presence of the
free system and words of the Hebrew dispensation.
II. The second great form of the argument, the legal or statu-
tory, runs on in the same manner, under the same influences.
The whole system is a system for freemen, and there is no legisla-
tion for slaves. Something of the power of the argument from
the system of laws comes out in the way of contrast. Ye shall not
commit the crimes which ye have seen committed by the Egyp-
tians, but ye shall set yourselves against them. Ye were oppressed
in Egypt, ye shall not oppress one another ; ye were strangers in
Egypt, ye shall love the stranger as yourselves.f
This general principle prevailed, and excluded the possibility
of caste, or prejudice against color or labor, from ever getting a
foothold. It was a law of Egypt that the murder, whether of a
* Campbell. Preliminary Diss, now the saints but the infidels that
to the Interp. N. T. Dis. 2. part ii. call in question the justice of slavery-
The words Greek, but the spirit He- Humboldt, Kingdom of New Spain,
brew. Campbell's acute and interest- Vol. 1, chap. vii.
ing instances of the naturalization laws f Maksiiam. Lex Mosaic. Ex
in regard to words, and the causes malis Egyptiorum moribus, bones Is-
and methods of their operation, might raelitarum leges, remarks Marsham,
be carried, with great weight, into the with as much truth as antithesis. Out
illustration of the subject of slavery, of the wicked manners and morals of
With the antique pagans slavery was the Egyptians sprang the admirable
a virtue of society, with the Christians laws of the Israelites. God never
it was a vice. With modern pagans permitted his people to be personal
it is a vice, with modern Christians (but slaves till the crucifixion of the Sa-
only in the United States) it is a vir- viour and destruction of Jerusalem,
tue, established by law. Not without But out of the hard bondage laid upon
just ground did the celebrated Hum- them by Pharaoh grew the legal
boldt record his sarcasm against pro- provisions against personal slavery
fessedly Christian slaveholders and through all generations. Lev. xix.,
churches in America, that it is not 34; Deut. x., 19.
Xll INTRODUCTION.
freeman or a slave, was to be punished with death ;* and Heeren
regarded this equality of the penalty, together with the law for-
bidding imprisonment for debt, as among some proofs of an
advancement in moral culture among the Egyptians, such as few
of the nations of antiquity have made.f It was a law, Diodorus
has noted, that if any man slew another, or seeing him suffer
violence, did not rescue him, though he were able, he should be
put to death. Compare with this, Prov. xxiv., 11, 12, "If thou
forbear to deliver them that are ready to be slain," etc. There
was no difference, among the Hebrews, as to the claims of benevo-
lence, between the native and the stranger. Michaelis notices
particularly the fact of "the inequality between citizens and
strangers being counteracted by a law which ordained crimes, at
least of various kinds, to be punished precisely in the same man-
ner on both." There shall be one and the same law for the
native and the stranger.J
These principles, laid down in the law book of the nation, are
such, that not only among themselves, but in regard to strangers,
all manner of oppression was forbidden and excluded. No form
of slavery could exist with such constitutional safeguards against
it, any more than a monarchical form of government could exist
under the Constitution of the. United States. Not till the spirit
of the people had departed could the forms of constitutional law
be violated ; and when they were violated, then the wrath of God
descended. The law of freedom was not only national, but par-
ticular, extending even to the treatment of the fugitive by each
individual, the duty of each and every person being to maintain
and defend freedom for each and every other person. The law
was of liberty every man to his brother, and every man to his
neighbor. The attempted violation of this law in the time of
* Diodorus Siculus. But Plato f Heeren. Ideen uber die Politik,
thought there ought to he different etc., der alten welt, 347.
laws for freemen and slaves ; a word % Michaelis. Laws of Moses,
for a freeman, a blow for a slave, and Vol. 2, art. exxxviii.
so in proportion. Seo Beckjer's
Charicles. Excursus, Slaves.
INTRODUCTION'. Xlii
Jeremiah sent the whole nation into captivity ; so that here both
the reality and significance of the law are demonstrated, and the
abhorrence of God against slavery, in such manner as cannot be
mistaken. The law laid upon every man a responsibility of free-
dom for his neighbor.
Entering upon the New Testament, it is not to be imagined
that the glorious elevation and scope of this commandment would
be ignored and contradicted. Accordingly, in the Epistle to
Philemon, we find the rule of giving liberty every man to his
brother and every man to his neighbor reestablished, and slavery
abolished. The law of freedom, by the love of Christ, accomplishes
in the New Testament what the law of God had appointed in the
Old.
III. The historical argument is intimately connected with the
legal, running along with it, illustrating it, and illustrated by it.
In exactly the same manner it is baptized with the spirit of free-
dom, being not the history of slavery, but of God's providence,
word and grace, against slavery, and of the destruction and misery
of the nation through the very attempt to establish slavery. The
attempt comes out, as the climax of Jewish wickedness, in the
thirty-fourth chapter of Jeremiah's prophecy, the punishment of
which cured the madness and the crime. The later history dis-
closes a nation and a social system, the legitimate growth of laws
excluding slavery, and rendering individual labor, and especially
the labors of agriculture, free, honorable and ennobling. Every
man received a just recompense of wages for his work, whether
the contracted time were longer or shorter.* No idea is clearer
* Cave on the Mosaical Dispense*- torn of society to have been that of
tion (Lives of the Apostles), 82. He voluntary labor upon hire, upon con-
quotes Antigonus Sochseus, two hun- tract between the parties, and not
dred and eighty-four years before that of slavery, where the master
Christ, exhorting his disciples not to owned the man, and paid him noth-
be like mercenary servants, who serve ing for his work, and was not sup-
merely for the wages they can get posed to be under any obligation to
from their masters, but to serve God pay him any thing. There was no
for himself, without expectation of such slavery in Judea.
reward. This plainly shows the eus-
XIV INTRODUCTION.
or more common, throughout the New Testament, than that of
the voluntary choice of masters and of service, with agreement
of the price, the conditions, and the payment of stipulated wages.
The supposition of such voluntary, paid service runs through the
whole gospels and epistles.
And whereas the history in the Old Testament discloses a law
for the protection of fugitives, exactly such as might be expected
to follow in the train of a system of legislation that condemned
the making merchandise of man to the punishment of death, the
current of the New Testament brings us to the fulfillment of that
law, under the gospel ; brings us to just such a state of society as
we might suppose -would grow out of such a system of laws, in
conjunction with the spirit and precepts of the gospel, with the
injunction upon the Christian master, in the name of Christ and
his love, to receive that fugitive as a free brother, no longer a ser-
vant, but a brother beloved, both in the flesh and in the Lord.
The historical argument is here perfect and complete, having
traveled all along with the legal, and now uniting with it in a
harmony of proof as impressive and instructive as it is delightful.
This history of the conduct of Paul and Philemon, in regard to
this matter, was presented, doubtless, for this very purpose, to
show that the Hebrew laws against slavery and in behalf of fugi-
tives and freedom were not a temporary speculation, but enjoined
a practical, essential form of virtue, justice and piety, to last as
long as the world stands.
A striking part of this history is the record of the first sermon
of the Lord Jesus, in Nazareth, on the text in Is. lxi., 1, 2. He
hath anointed me to preach deliverance to the captives, the ac-
ceptable year, the jubilee year of the Lord. The last jubilee, the
closing jubilee of the history of the Jewish nation, "fell with the
year of the death of the Redeemer."* Lightfoot notes it as a
* Lightfoot. TIarmony. Part 3. indeed." Lightfoot's chronological
"Works, vol. v., 135. "Not only a reckoning makes the last jubilee of
year of jubilee, in a spiritual sense," the Jewish nation, (freedom to all the
says Lightfoot, " but also a year of inhabitants of the land), correspond
jubilee in the literal and proper sense with the year of the crucifixion.
INTRODUCTION. XV
year of jubilee, in the literal and proper sense indeed. But what
a lamentable confusion and destruction of the prototype and pro-
phetic history would there have been, if, when the time for this
closing jubilee had come, being- a festival instituted as a jubilee
of personal liberty to all the inhabitants of the land, the old di-
vine statutes of personal freedom had been abrogated, and in their
stead the gospel had sanctioned and established personal slavery !
Instead of this, the gospel abolished all slavery, and brought in a
new and perfect freedom in Christ Jesus. The gospel law abol-
ished every thing evil, and fulfilled and carried to the uttermost
perfection every thing good. This law of advancement from that
which was transitory and imperfect to that which was to be per-
manent and perfect, wanting nothing, is so plain, so unquestion-
able, that it is amazing that any human being could so far foiget
and confound it as to admit the possibility of a form of oppres-
sion which had been branded in the Old Testament as a crime
worthy of death, being exalted in the New into a sacred, civil and
domestic system, the supporters, defenders and practisers of which
were to be received as owners of slaves, making merchandise of
men, into the communion of the Christian church !
An astonishing example of such confusion is found even in the
pages of such a writer as Olshausen, who admits that " the insti-
tution of slavery could not be approved by Christianity, for it was
the product of sin;"* but afterwards intimates that inasmuch as
it was an institution established in the world, and the apostles
found it established, "therefore they did not forbid it!" "The
apostles," he says, " would have blamed severely the introduction
of slaverv, if it had not existed when the gospel came into the
world!" Just as if the fact of a sin being established gave it a
solid moral claim, and exempted it from moral reprobation ! And
again he says, " The defenders of negro slavery can not appeal to
Paul, for negro slavery is recent, and not from the earliest times,
but was introduced by Christians themselves, to their everlasting
disgrace, and is kept up only by fraud and kidnapping."
* Olshausen on Ephesians vi., 5, etc.
XVI INTRODUCTION.
In this singular reasoning wc nave a decisive .reprobation of
slavery, as contrary to the law and essence of Christianity, and
yet its possession of the world, when Christianity comes, is pre-
sented as a higher law than Christianity, or as constituting nine
tenths of the law, and imposing silence on the gospel in regard
to it.* By the same method of reasoning the apostles were bound
to have said nothing against idolatry, that also being an estab-
lished institution of society, when and where the gospel came,
an institution involving civil rights and relations, with which the
gospel must not interfere. But this is neither the law, nor the
spirit, nor the history, neither of Judaism nor Christianity, which
are both as united against slavery as they are against idolatry.
IV. The moral argument is a combination of the philological,
legal and historical, which all converge in the great lesson of uni-
versal charity taught by the gospel, Whatsoever ye would that
men should do to you, do ye even so to them, and, Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. These laws lay hold also of the
great announcement in the New Testament that God hath made
of one blood all the races of men that dwell upon the face of the
earth ; with the other great fact that every wall of caste, color,
national peculiarity and prejudice, is broken down in Christ, and
that in him, in the church, there is neither Jew nor Greet, circum-
cision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free.
Whatsoever contravenes or violates these laws of love must be
abolished by the gospel ; no reasoning can stand that disregards
* OLSii.vrsEN on Coloss. iv., 1. commentator to be the interference of
Give unto your servants that which divine inspiration in behalf of slaves
i.s just and equal. To avoid the in- with their masters, not to give more
evitable conclusion of the abolition to one than to another! If a peck of
of slavery from this passage. 01- meal a week were the rule, the mas-
shausen affirms that this direction ter must not give a peck and a half to
"can not moan equality with masters, any favored slave, for that would not
for that would be to abolish slavery, be just and equal to the rest ! So
which was contrary to Paul's inten- deep down into the common sense as
tion 1 It means rather the equal well as piety of the church and of
treatment of all the slaves, not pre- modern theology has the poison of
ferring one at the expenso of another." slavery infused itself I
And this is supposed by a Christian
INTRODUCTION. XVU
them; no piety is true that does not seek their perfect and com-
plete fulfillment.
The moral argument, like the legal, is against the relation it-
self, as intrinsically unjust, cruel and wicked. And the historical
and statistical developments, the argument from consequences,
prove incontrovertihly the disastrous effect of admitting the rela-
tion as compatible with Christianity. If in the outset the piety
of the church had faithfully applied the law of God, had taken
that law, with its legitimate, intended conclusions and conse-
quences, and driven it against the relation of slavery, as incom-
patible with Christianity, then would slavery have been expelled
from the world wherever the church was established. If the
church had applied the law of God against slavery as against
murder, judging the relation of the slaveholder to the slave as it
judges the relation of the murderer to his victim, then it would
have been as impossible for slavery to have obtained a foothold
in the church, or a sanction in the world, as for murder.
But the instant it was admitted that the relation, being civil
and political, must not be interfered with, and might be inno-
cently continued, while it was left to the spirit of Christianity, so
called, to abolish the reality, that instant the whole authority of
the church against it was paralyzed ; for it was manifest that the
reality of slavery consisted in the relation, and if that were per-
mitted and sanctioned in the word of God as just, and not to be
disturbed, then the reality wTas just and permanent likewise. Ac-
cordingly, under such treatment, the iniquity held on, till it not
only destroyed the Roman empire, but ran through the Middle
Ages, prevailing greatly, even in the church, notwithstanding that
here and there, as in the cases of Augustine and Isidore,* emi-
nent remonstrances were uttered in opposition to it, and now and
then churches and monasteries, and, in general, the monastic spirit
and rules, were set against it.f Nevertheless, when it passed from
* Xeaxder, Church Hist. Bonn's, Life. One of the earliest laws in re-
edit, vol. 3. gard to it is mentioned by Eusebius,
\ Ecseeius, Life of Constantino in the life of Constantine, who enacted
and Neander, Memorials of Christian " that no Christian should remain in
XV111 INTRODUCTION.
the form of Roman and Greek slavery into the form of the serfage
of the I >ark and Middle Ages, the reality was still that of slavery,*
and it was submitted to and maintained, even by the church and
its corrupt Christianity,! because the church had never applied
the law of God and the gospel of Christ against the relation itself,
servitude to a Jewish master, on the
ground that it was wrong for the
ransomed of the Saviour to be sub-
jected to the yoke of slavery by a
people who had slain the prophets
and the Lord. The slave was to be
set at liberty, and the master pun-
ished by a line." It is obvious that
such legislation did not strike at the
relation or reality of slavery as in
itself unjust, and forbidden in God's
word, nor had the corrupt Christianity
of that or a later age either the purity
or power to enforce the word of God
against it, or to produce a legislation
accordant with humanity.
* Thierry, History of the Norman
Conquest, S9, 288, 29:;. In the fam-
ine in 1070, " the Saxon, wasted and
depressed by hunger, would come and
sell himself and all his family to per-
petual slavery." The effect of slavery
in the depreciation of property, and
running of the land to waste, was re-
markable. '■ The land on which the
Englishmen of exalted rank had lived
in plenty, maintained, after the con-
quest, only two laborers, poor and en-
slaved, wlin scarcely returned to their
Norman lord a tenth part of the rev-
enue of the ancient free cultivators."
"About tin' year 1381, all those
who were called bond in England,
that is, all the cultivators, were serfs
in body and goods ; the lord could
sell them, together with their houses,
oxen, children and posterity, which,
in the English deeds, was expressed
in the following manner, Know that
I have sold A. B., my knave, and all
his offspring, born, or to be born."
The word bondage, in the Norman
tongue, expressed at that time all that
was most wretched in the condition
of humanity. Yet this word, from
the Anglo-Danish word bond, meant,
originally, a free cultivator, and joined
to the Saxon word hus, denoted the
master of the house, the husbond, or,
in modern English, husband.
f Guizot, Hist. Civilization, vol. 2,
in his Table of the Councils of the
Gallic Church from the fourth to the
tenth century, refers to several canons
of different councils, as in the years
538 and 541, making the above-
named distinction between Jews and
Christians, doubtless following out
that very law of Constantine referred
to by Eusebius, and concluding that
while it was sinful for a Jew to hold
a Christian as a slave, and an oppro-
bium and distress not to be endured
by a Christian, it might be very just
and proper for the Christians to en-
slave the Jews. The Christian bish-
ops are forbidden from restoring run-
away Christian slaves to their Jewish
masters. And in the year 567 a law
is quoted which declares that inas-
much as many persons, to the ruin of
their souls, have made captives of
others by violence and treason, such
persons, if they neglect to restore such
slaves to their freedom, shall be ex-
communicated.
INTRODUCTION. XIX
of property in man, the relation of slaveholding, as by the divine
judgment under all circumstances the guilt of man-stealing.
There always followed, with the relation,* and grew out of it,
all the excesses, all the cruelties, all the degradations and oppres-
sions, all the annihilations of right, and disregard of justice and
humanity,f all the treatment, in fine, of human beings as brutes,
always inevitable on the tolerance and practice of slavery as a
system, under whatever name.J In all ages, whatever wickedness
has been passed into law, whatever has been sanctioned and de-
fended by any form of government, there have always been a
sufficient number of Christians, so called, to defend the divine
right of such wickedness, and give it a respectable place and stand-
ing in the church of God. On the other hand, God has always
kept his witnesses against such inhuman and anti-Christian Chris-
tianity, and sometimes has so exalted them as martyrs, (in the
modern age from Latimer and Sidney down to John Brown) that
the light of their burning sheds the radiance of God's own law and
gospel over whole ages, even in the midst of the excesses of
atheism and depravity. " It hath been ever hereupon observed,"
said one of those noble martyrs, " that they who most precisely ad-
here to the laws of God, are least solicitous concerning the com-
mands of men, unless they are well grounded ; and those who
* Gaillardin. Histoire du Xfoyen dom, was abolished in Sweden. The
Age. Tom. 1, 117. He refers to a old diabolic feature always remained
law of Rotharis, of the Lombards, with it, while slavery lasted, of the
which sets the slave in the rank of impossibility of slaves contracting
things, chattels, and treats the women marriage. A volume might be writ-
in slavery as brutes. " Met l'esclave ten on the internal reason and philoso-
au rang des choses, et traite la femme phy of this one fixture of the great
esclave commo une vache ou une ju- vice.
ment; servum aut ancDlam, seu alias % TniERRY. Hist. Norman Con-
res mobiles.'1'' quest, 288. Wallon. Hist. d'Es-
f Geijer. History of the Swedes, clavage. Vol. 2, ch. v., 177. Becker.
ch. vii, 86. To "beat one like a Gallus, Slave-family; and Charicles,
slave;' to have "as little right as a Exc. Slaves, compared with Blair,
^ourged house girl," or female slave, Inquiry; Fuss. Roman Antiq. Pot-
y are expressions found in the laws. ter. Greek Antiq. Grote, Hist.
Bat as early as 1335, serfdom, or thral- Greece, Vol. 3, 95.
XX INTRODUCTION.
most delight in the glorious liberty of the sons of God, do not only
subject themselves to Him, but are most regular observers of the
just ordinances of man, made by the consent of such as are con-
cerned, according to the will of God."*
Now by the Word of God we are bound to meet and conquer
every thing that opposes itself to the will of God ; for the weapons
of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the
pulling down of strongholds; and it is the business of the church
and ministry to wrestle with the Word of God against the rulers
of the darkness of this world. The relation of slaveholding must
be sentenced by the church as in itself an immoral relation, and
the claim of property in man must be presented as it stands in
God's Word, as a moral guilt equivalent with the crime of murder.
It is the great responsibility of the modern church, the great
work before it, the great honor and privilege offered to it from
God, to turn the lightning of his Word against this gigantic
iniquity of the modern age, that, as in the grand imagery of the
prophet Daniel, "the beast may be slain, and his body destroyed,
and given to the burning flame." The conquest of this sin through
the Word and Spirit of the living God, ministered by a fearless
church and ministry, would be so celestial a triumph, would be
such a proof of Divine Inspiration, such a demonstration of divine
power and grace, that it would stir the whole world as with the
trumpet of an archangel. Let the church of God in our country
assume this position of authority, and exercise this power, and
straightway the Gentiles would come to her light, and kings to the
brightness of her rising.
And it is a terrible position which those have taken, who stand
in the way of such a demonstration, and refuse to admit the light
of God's Word upon this great wickedness. They stand between
the world and its salvation. They trample the world into infi-
delity and darkness, for the sake of supporting a despotic, death-
dealing, popular sin.
* Algernon Sidney. Discourses on Government, Vol. 1, 315.
CHAP TEE I.
Importance op tite Investigation. — The Mood of Mind Requisite foe it.— The
Effect of Prejudice. — Impiety of Desiring and Seeking in the Scriptures a
Sanction of Men's Sins. — Manufacture of Infidelity by the Sanction of
Slavery.
A more solemn and important question than that of the ver-
dict in the word of God in regard to slavery, can not occupy
our attention. If God's judgment is really revealed against
slavery as sin, then we, as a people, are condemned and guilty
beyond any other nation under heaven. The investigation
of the matter can not but be intensely interesting to us as
men, as citizens, as Christians, to whom the welfare and sal-
vation of our country are dear. If wo dare oppose this giant
iniquity, or hope for success in the conflict, we must fight the
battle against it by the word of God. If it be not condemned
there, it is in vain that we struggle for its overthrow. If it
be not condemned of God, men will maintain it, and we have
no power against it, nor any right to denounce it as sin. One
side or the other, it must divide society into extreme parties,
for there is no middle ground, and every man ought to know
where he stands in regard to it, and by what authority. Every
man ought to take one side or the other, by the word of God.
Every man will be compelled to do this, sooner or later, and
the part of wisdom is to take the right position now, on God's
side, and for God's truth and righteousness, while a battle can
be fought and gained on these grounds.
To constitute an impartial juror as to the judgment of the
word of God in such a case, it is not necessary that a man's
humane instincts, or preferences of liberty, should be denied,
22 THE CRIME OF SLAVERY DEMONSTRATED.
or abrogated, or put in abeyance. It is rather requisite that
the heart should guide the understanding, and take, at the
very outset, the side of the oppressed against the oppressor.
There should be, in the first place, a preference of freedom
above slavery, and second, a sympathy in behalf of the op-
pressed, and not in favor of the oppressor.
We have sometimes found men whom we have supposed sin-
cere in their professed abhorrence of slavery, evidently bent,
nevertheless, on discovering something in the Bible to shield
it from unlimited reprobation. It has filled us with astonish-
ment and sadness, on engaging in the argument, to discover a
manifest desire that you may be defeated in your endeavor to
produce from the sacred Scriptures an indisputable indictment
of slavery as sin. And even when the demonstration has been
presented, they have resorted to sophistry and special pleading
to evade its power. Such men come to the word of God not
desiring to find the verdict against slavery, but with prefer-
ences leaning in its favor, and on the lookout for something to
justify the oppressor, rather than to vindicate and righten the
oppressed.
This is not a mood of mind in which men can possibly in-
vestigate fairly. If called to sit upon a jury, they would be
peremptorily and justly challenged as being interested wit-
nesses and judges. The understanding is darkened, the judge-
ment is bribed, the power of discernment is perverted. Such
a prejudice is as a strong magnet, or a box of steel tools, close
by the compass, that will turn a ship out of her way, on the
plainest, smoothest, easiest sea ever navigated.
Moreover, such a disposition of mind is contrary to every
rule of investigation and of judgment, even xohere an acknowl-
edged criminal is to be tried, and where the doubt, if doubt
there be, is to go in favor of humanity, and of the prisoner at
the bar. How much more where the question is as to the
right of millions of our fellow-men to be treated as freemen
like ourselves, or their destination to be held in bondage as
MENTAL MOOD REQUISITE. 23
felons. The doubt in such a ense must certainly, by all Chris-
tian obligation, by all moral sentiment and conscience, weigh
in favor of those held in bondage, and not in favor of those
claiming the right to enslave them. If we are to remember
them that are in bonds as bound also with them, and there is
any doubt in regard to the justice of their being kept bound,
Ave ought unquestionably to side with them^&ndi not with those
who bind them. A verdict for the binding can not righteously
be rendered, without the clearest, most indisputable, most un-
questionable title.
And so with the argument from the Scriptures, in which so
much is involved besides the fate of those held or proposed to
be held in bondage. The slaveholder must show a clear title
to hold, and in such a case the doubt is fatal to his title. The
principle laid down by Paul comes into play, and he that doubt-
eth is damned if he eat this morsel with a hesitating conscience,
because it is not a question of a mere act of harmless self-indul-
gence, more or less, as whether he shall have turkey or corned
beef for his dinner, whether he shall go clad in broadcloth or
sackcloth, whether he shall eat two oranges or half a dozen for
his dessert, the determination of which questions does not at
all concern the interests or rights of others, much less violate
them; but it is, whether he shall eat his own dinner or steal
and consume that which belongs to another man ; whether he
shall take of his own flock and his own herd for his own pur-
poses, or lay hands on the little ewe lamb that is his poor
neighbor's; nay, more than that, whether, in fact, he shall eat
a sheep that belongs to him, or a man that does not. He has
got to settle, beyond dispute, that slavery, at the present day
and in our own country, is sanctioned of God, and that, by
God's ordinance, the slave he claims belongs to him, before he
can take him.
Nor is it enough, if he could prove, which he can not, that
the practice of slavery was once permitted to a particular peo-
ple or a designated individual ; in order to adopt it as his own
24 THE CRIME OF SLAVERY DEMONSTRATED.
right, he must show a similar designation in his own case, an
appointment from God for himself to act as a slaveholder.
For the thing for which he is seeking supernatural sanction,
being the taking and holding of a man as his property, is not
only an infringement of God's ownership as the Creator, a rob-
bery of God, but also a robbery of man, and the highest viola-
tion of all natural right ; and if not, if it were naturally right,
what need to seek such a supernatural sanction ? "We do not
go to the word of God to ask whether we may eat bread, or
drink tea and coffee, and wear raiment, or build houses and live
in them, or pay our just debts, or burn wood or anthracite coal
in our fire-places.
And the going to God's word for a sanction of what all mankind
feel to be villainy, is a dreadful sacrilege and impiety, especially
for a professed Christian. It is worse iniquity than that, of
forging the name of your friend as an indorsement on your
note, which, without that name, would have been worthless.
He, it is true, is sure to reject the note as spurious, and the
forgery will be discovered as soon as the paper is presented
for payment, but, meanwhile, what mischief, confusion and
misery may be the consequence. And suppose a company,
aware of the existence of such forged notes, that should com-
bine to keep up their credit in order to profit by them, jjassing
them from one to another, and makiug the world believe them
trustworthy, what language could severely enough character-
ize such fraud ? By and by God will protest the forgery of
his name and authority on the back of these notes of hand
claiming property in human beings, and he will search out the
wickedness for a terrible retribution, but, meanwhile, what
mischief and misery are enacted by the forgery ! And if a
company take it up, and make a business of it, how wide and
dreadful the destruction !
It is like a corporation of wreckers destroying the lights on
a coast for the sake of profit in their piracy. It is as if you
could put chemical poison into the fountain of our sunlight
MENTAL MOOD REQUISITE. 25
for the sake of a more complete and rapid bleaching process
in an article of your private, profitable monopoly and manu-
facture. It is as if the physicians in a place, in order to keep
up their business, should poison the wells and fountains, or set
malaria in the atmosphere for the purpose of producing or
maintaining a chronic epidemic. It is as if you should adul-
terate all the flour of the year's harvest with plaster of Paris,
or even with arsenic, to make it weigh heavier. These frauds
depreciate the genuine article, even if there were no other
suffering or mischief from them.
Just so the Bible becomes a suspicious book under these
immoral operations conducted by virtue of its authority. Its
credit is diminished just as that of a bank is diminished, when
a company of forgers and counterfeiters have succeeded in
forcing into the market a quantity of false notes and counter-
feits. And suppose that, these villains having been very suc-
cessful in their work, so as to become a great moneyed power,
with much command of the market, the directors of the bank,
for fear of a combination against their own business, should
conclude, instead of protesting the false bills, and prosecuting
their authors, to guarantee them, and strike a bargain for mu-
tual benefit and insurance, assuming the false in order to gain
acceptance for the true ; through how many generations, or
in how many nations, could such a bank maintain its credit ?
Now a man coming to the Scriptures, in search of some ex-
cuse of slavery there, comes despairingly in regard to every
other refuge, comes driven thither for a shield and defense
against the condemnation of humanity, comes acknowledging
that the moral sense of mankind is against it, and desiring to
disgrace that moral sense as a dangerous radicalism and fanat-
icism. But what a diabolical hypocrisy and sacrilege for a
man to come to the word of God, in the hope of proving an
acknowledged injustice and inhumanity to be no sin ; in the
hope of finding some sanction and excuse for the deliberate
voluntary protection and continuance of that which is confessed
2
2G TIIE CRIME OF SLAVERY DEMONSTRATED.
to be a vast evil ! What shall we say as to the moral enormity
of a Christian man's sympathies being in favor of the sin, and
against the condemnation of it, against the finding of a verdict
of such condemnation in the Scriptures.
The moral sense of mankind being against slavery, and there
being something in the heart and conscience of every inves-
tigator of the subject, which tells him that it certainly is not
one of the Christian graces, and it being indisputable that the
world regard it as selfishness and oppression, every Christian
man might be supposed to hope that the book which he con-
siders and teaches to be the only written revelation from Je-
hovah, the only infallible guide as to morality and religion,
will be found so clearly on the side of justice and humanity,
as to leave no doubt what is justice and humanity; and that,
tvhen God has laid down the great rule, Whatsoever ye would
tfiat men should do to you, do ye even so to them, he will
not be found sanctioning that which is the completest violation
■^f that rule. One would think that the sympathies of every
true Christian would lead him. to desire a verdict in the Scrip-
tures in behalf of freedom and against slavery, and that he
would come to the Bible, not to find some ground for defend-
ing slavery from the spontaneous and all but universal repro-
bation of mankind, or some apology for holding human beings
in bondage, or some protection of a system admitted to be
the source and concatenation of boundless crime and misery,
but some irresistible weapons for its overthrow. How can it
be, that any man should not come with a mind open to con-
viction, and a heart ready to hail the condemnation of such a
system, instead of being drawn by the argument like a bul-
lock to the slaughter ? We have sometimes been amazed to
meet with an evident disappointment in the minds of jn'ofessed
Christians, on having it demonstrated to them that there was
nothing in favor of slavery in the word of God ; the admission
has been extorted, unwilling, and the acknowledgment re-
sisted and evaded every step of the way.
MENTAL MOOD KEQUISITE. 27
Any thing miraculous in God's word, we can believe, be-
cause its morality is so heavenly, because the revelation is for
man's good, and tends to make a heaven upon earth ; but it
is impossible to believe an institution that grows out of theft,
cruelty, and murder, and perpetuates all those iniquities ; an
institution which is the climax and support of all villainy, to
have come down from God.
The book being a transcript of God's holiness, we must be-
lieve it to have come from him, for without it, and before it, men
did not know God ; but the moment we should find it to be
a transcript, apology and sanction of men's vices, we must in-
evitably reject and despise it. It is to be supposed that every
true Christian would desire to remove every shade of doubt
or darkness cast upon the holy Scriptures, every cloud that
dims the brightness of their evidence as the word of God,
every barrier of ignorance and prejudice against the clear
shining of that evidence : " Thy word is very pure, therefore
thy servant loveth it." You do not desire to find adultery
sanctioned in the word of God, nor forgery, nor murder.
If the moral delinquencies of the Koran and the book of
the Mormons are admitted to be insuperable objections against
any supposition of those books being from God, so as to take
away all obligation upon any person even to examine their
claims, would not the sanction of human slavery, as known
by its fruits, and for the sake of its fruits, much rather release
a man from any such obligation ? Let a man know what
slavery is — its origin, its results, and the means by which it is
sustained and propagated — and then tell him that such as it is,
it is supported and commanded in this book, and would he not
have reason to say, " This being the case, I am not bound to
examine any farther. I know that this book can not be from
God ?»
There are things in the Bible which men wrest, not for the
sake of good, but for evil, and for their own destruction ; and
such are the texts which they have endeavored to torture
28
TUE CRIME OF SLAVERY DEMONSTRATED.
into the likeness of some permission of this sin. They might
as well plead, while keeping a class of men, for their own profit,
ground down and debased in an employment which would
inevitably make them cruel, profane, insensible, and reckless,
that they were sanctioned in so doing by the passage Avhich
says that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. The men, ministers,
and churches, who plead Scripture as the shield and sanction
of slavery, are wholesale manufacturers of infidelity.*
* These errors and immoralities of
opinion and of practice have been
extended and perpetuated even
through the medium of books pre-
pared for children, and books of
piety. Take the following for one
example, by the American Sunday
School Union.
" Slavery seems to have existed
before the flood. Noah speaks of it
as a thing well known. Among the
ancient patriarchs it was very com-
mon. The servants, of whom wo
hear in the history of their times,
were properly slaves, who might bo
bought and sold without any regard
to their own will. Some of the
richer shepherds, like Abraham and
Job, appear to have had thousands
of them belonging to their house-
holds."
This passage occurs in a work by
Rev. John W. Nevin, D. D., entitled,
" Summary of Biblical Antiquities,
for the use of Schools, Bible Classes
and Families." Every sentence in
the paragraph is the statement of an
absolutely false assertion, even from
the first, for not a word nor a hint is to
be found in the Bible concerning
slavery before the flood. Yet these
falsehoods are for the instruction of
children !
In a valuable work on the Legal
Rights of "Women, by E. D. Mans-
field, the writer declares that Hebrew
wives were bought with money or
produce, and that this was the con-
sequence of the right of the father to
sell his children as skives ! He refers
to Michaelis for proof. Yet the
thought hardly seems to have sug-
gested itself how dreadful a reproach
this throws upon the Bible, and how
impossible it is to maintain as a di-
vine revelation a book which could
be proved to have permitted and en-
joined the traffic in human beings,
and the selling of children by their
parents as slaves ! Calmet, and tlio
Encyclopedias generally, have circu-
lated the same error. Rees is an
honorable exception.
The same monstrous assertion we
find transferred to the pages of the
Commercial Gazetteer, published by
the Harpers, and there also we are
referred to Michaelis, as the authority,
being informed that in Judea, and in
Rome alike, parents had the power
of seUing their children for slaves 1
See the corrections of Michaelis, by
Saalsciiutz, Das Mos. Kecht, Laws
of Moses, Vol. II.
CHAPTER II.
Varieties of the Demonstration Against Slavery. — Historic, Legal an»
Social Combinations of tiie Argument.
The argument against slavery, both from the Old and New
Testament, is various and ample, amounting to a demonstra-
tion of God's abhorrence of this sin, as palpable and cogent
as the demonstration against idolatry itself. We have, first,
the historic record of a state of society appointed of God, in
which there is no trace of slavery to be found ; the first and
only indisputable case of it, or of men's availing themselves
of its existence, being marked as a case of man-stealing, ag-
gravated and monstrous.
'Second, we have the record of God's reprobation of such an
approximation to slavery as was witnessed in the oppression
of the Hebrews by the Egyptians, and of God's vengeanoe
against their oppressors for such a crime.
This is accompanied and followed, thirdly, by a perpetual
injunction against ever imposing on any other race any similar
bondage ; and we have a series of the divine precepts for the
humane and generous treatment of the stranger, the outcast,
the unprotected and oppressed, and repeated warnings from
God never to treat any human beings, but especially the weak
and friendless, with unkindness ; a fortiori, the culmination
of cruelty and oppression in the system of chattel slavery
much more intensely reprobated and forbidden of God.
Fourth, we have a series of explicit divine statutes, appoint-
ing the system of domestic service, marking its bounds, guard-
ing against the possibility of its passing into oppression or
30 VARIETIES OF THE
slavery, protecting the rights of the servants as carefully as
those of the masters, forbidding servants to be sold as slaves,
and rendering the establishment of slavery impossible.
Fifth, Ave have separate, fundamental, unlimited statutes,
condemning with the penalty of death that crime which is the
origin and essence of slavery, man-stealing, holding, and sell-
ing, and forbidding any restoration to his master of any ser-
vant a fugitive from his master. The conclusion from these
statutes is unavoidable, that the claim of property in man is
not only without foundation in justice, but is a crime ecpiiva-
lent in guilt to that of murder.
Sixth, we have historical and legal decisions and precedents,
growing out of these statutes, and settling their interpretation.
Seventh, we have great and solemn recorded cases of the
divine wrath in consequence of the violation of those statutes,
and the divine judgment against the transgressors.
Eighth, we have the curse of God attached to unjust law,
and men forbidden to obey it.
Ninth, we have the commentaries of the prophets upon
the laws, in a body of denunciations against oppression and
slavery, and injunctions of freedom, and demands of justice
and benevolence towards the oppressed, the like of which are
not to be found the world over, nor ever existed in the juris-
prudence or literature of any nation ; and which, if slavery
had been sanctioned in the law of God, would stand forth in
glaring contradiction and condemnation of that law.
Tenth, we have in other forms the principles of the morality
of love, of which that law is the exponent, and on which it is
grounded, and descriptions of the actual life of social freedom,
benevolence and prosperity which it produces, in such his-
tories as those of the books of Ruth and Job.
Eleventh, we have terrible and oft repeated curses pro-
nounced against both the act and the system of taking men's
labor without giving them wages ; curses without any restric-
tion, and belonging logically, morally and expressly to any
DEMONSTRATION AGAINST SLAVERY. 31
system of which this wickedness is a fundamental element, as
of slavery it is.
Twelfth, we have God's requisitions upon men to protect,
defend and restore such as were defrauded of their freedom
and their rights, and his demand, as in Isaiah, that every yoke
be broken, and the oppressed set free ; and to this may be
added the forms of prayer for deliverance from the oppres-
sion of man, that so we may keep God's statutes, and the forms
of promise, that in the coming of God's kingdom, he will save
the children of the needy and break in pieces the oppressor ;
a thing which he could not do, if at the same time the severest
possible oppression had been sanctioned by his law.
In all these ways, the consummation of proof, as well as
its variety, is perfect. Nor is the interpretation of particular
statutes left to opinion or to reasoning merely, but God takes
the broken statute, for example, and shows its meaning, if
there could be any doubt in regard to it, by pronouncing sen-
tence, and executing the penalty. How dare any man assert
that God ever sanctioned slavery in his statutes, when the his-
torical record stands undisputed and indisputable, of his public
indictment and punishment of the whole nation for the intro-
duction and attempted establishment of slavery, contrary to
his statutes? God himself, a thousand years after the framing
of the statutes, calls the people into court, states again the
substance and meaning of the statutes, reads the indictment
for their transgression of them, and promulgates and inflicts
the sentence; and the one crime is that of slavery. The
comparison of the thirty-fourth chapter of Jeremiah with the
twenty-second of Ezekiel, and the examination of concurrent
and immediately succeeding circumstances and events prove
this, and fasten the application with an awful emphasis and
solemnity.
" I made a covenant of freedom with your fathers, freedom
not for yourselves merely, but for your servants, to all time,
that ye should proclaim liberty for them and nut slavery ; but
32 VAKIETIES OP THE
ye have rebelled against my statutes, and brought your ser-
vants into subjection, at your pleasure, and not theirs. Ye
have not proclaimed liberty, every man to his neighbor and
his brother, therefore I proclaim liberty for you, saith the
Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence and the famine, and ye
shall be removed into all nations of the earth." That was the
sentence, and immediately it was executed, almost as swiftly
as the bolt follows the lightning. This is one example of God's
own interpretation of his own laws. And so we are confront-
ed from generation to generation in God's word, with furrows
of light, mountain ranges of light, precedents like volcanoes,
where the flame and the red-hot lava forbid all possibility of
mistake.
Thus the history grows out of the laws, and is a commen-
tary upon them ; and every lawyer, and every historic scholar
knows the value of such testimony. If any old English statutes
of Edward the Fourth's reign, for example, were in doubt, and
a case can be found two or three hundred years afterwards,
clearly attested, in which the statute in doubt was applied, and
judgment issued, and sentence executed for its violation, thai
would settle the matter ; that is the very perfection of inter-
pretation. And thus, in regard to God's own law, God'sjwc^/-
vnents are said by him to be as the light that goeth forth.
And such is the interpretation of the Mosaic statutes by the
sacred history.
And negatively there is the same light as positively. For
£ xample, in the statutes we have man-selling forbidden as well
as man-stealing ; consequently, in the history there are no
instances ever of any sale of human beings, any traffic in slaves.
In the statutes again we have a law forbidding the restoring of
fugitive servants to their masters ; consequently, in the his-
tory we have servants running away, but never any cases of
their restoration, nor any signs of marshals or judges of pro-
bate appointed for slave commissioners, nor any indications of
the institution of bloodhounds to hunt for fugitives, nor court
DEMONSTRATION AGAINST SLAVERY. 33
houses with chains for their trial, nor jails to imprison them,
nor arrangements for having them sold to pay their jail fees.
All the conditions and junctures of society that would inevi-
tably have grown out of the existence and influence of slavery,
had it been sanctioned by law, are wanting ; the inevitable
consequences of slave legislation, proving its reality and its
character, are not to be found. On the contrary, all the fix-
tures of society are found, and all the events happen, that
would naturally grow out of a state of freedom, the result of
a system of laws intended for the perpetual establishment of
freedom, and the prevention, suppression and extinction of
slavery.
Thirteenth. Coming down to the New Testament, Ave find,
first of all, the illustration of this correspondence between in-
stitutions, and the laws that have produced them, in the ab-
sence of slavery from the land and nation governed by the
legislation of the Old Testament. We find that in Judea
there was no such thing as slavery in the social life and cus-
toms of the Hebrews. This iniquity does not appear, as inev-
itably it must have done, had it been a fixture in the divine
laws for the Jewish people. Had it been a domestic institu-
tion ordained of God, the whole land would have been, in the
progress of so many ages, overrun with slaves ; the whole
nation would have been crowded with them. They would
have constituted the great article of wealth and luxury.
There would have been slave marke' .. every city ; and in
Jenisalem, in the very temple, nr ^nly those that sold doves,
but those that sold slaves v. ^ald have had their jjlaces for
such merchandise — their stalls for traffic in human flesh.
For either it is the worst of all theft, or the most sacred of
all property. But there is not the remotest indication of
slavery, or involuntary servitude, or the selling and buying of
men as property. On the contrary, every presentation of
manners, every picture of society, and the very parables of
the Lord Jesus, show the customs of free voluntary service ;
34 VARIETIES OF THE
as, for example, the parable of the householder and his hired
laborers, in the twentieth of Matthew. Five several times
the householder goes forth to look up and hire his laborers,
on a free mutual contract for wages, and there is no intimation
that there is such an accursed thing as slavery, instead of free
labor, in existence. So in the parable of the prodigal son,
" How many hired servants of my father's," etc. " Make me
as one of thy hired servants." And so in the very next chap-
ter, Luke xvi. 13, "No servant can serve two masters, for
cither he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will
hold to the one, and despise the other."
Fourteenth. But, more particularly and expressly, we have
the law of love repromulgated by our Saviour, " Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself," and " Whatsoever ye would
that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," with such
commentaries thereon, as to fasten its application particularly
to the oppressed African race as claiming our compassion. We
have the truth of the universal brotherhood of man proclaimed
anew, and the oneness of all races in Christ so insisted on,
that in their treatment there shall neither be Jew nor Gentile,
bond nor free.
Fifteenth, we have the distinct averment that if a man
be converted to Christ in a state of bondage to an earthly
master, and may be made free, he is by all means to choose
his freedom ; the logical consequence of which, on the other
side, is the duty of his master, as a Christian, to set him free.
Sixteenth, we have, in the epistle to the Hebrews, the ex-
press injunction to remember them that are in bonds, as bound
also with them ; intimating an habitual consideration of such
bondage as the greatest of calamities and wrongs upon those
who endured it, who were to be made unceasingly the sub-
jects of prayer and of sympathy ; but if so, the conclusion is
absolute of its being a sin against God for any person under
the light of his word to hold any fellow-creature in such bond-
age.
DEMONSTRATION AGAINST SLAVERY. 35
Seventeenth, we have, in the epistle to Timothy, a direct
reference to the fundamental Hebrew law against men-stealers,
as a law of God, in full force under the gospel, with an in-
junction to apply it with and by the gospel ; and assuredly,
in such application, whatever law of justice and mercy was
given under the old dispensation, had an enlarged significance
and scope, and a more direct and intense authority under the
new. Nothing in this respect was taken from the new, but
much was added.
Eighteenth. Then in the epistle to Philemon, we find the
Apostle Paul, with that old fundamental fugitive slave law
before him for his guide, acting on its principles ; first, giving
to Onesimus, a runaway slave, a shelter with him till he be-
came converted, and then, with his own consent — and not till
then — sending him back to Philemon, with the distinct aver-
ment that he was now no longer a servant, but a brother be-
loved ; and to guard against the interpretation of his being
merely a Christian brother, but still a slave, it was carefully
added that he was a brother, not only in the Lord, but in the
flesh, no longer a servant in either way ; and the confident
belief was added that Philemon, as a Christian, recognizing
the same law of duty that Paul recognized, would go even
farther than Paul chose to suggest, in the fulfillment of his
whole duty towards this liberated brother.
Nineteenth. In several epistles we have the command,
"Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and
equal ;" an injunction proving that no such class of servants was
admissible, was to be supposed existing in the household of
any Christian master, as were considered property — no class
that were not parties to a compact of service for wages re-
ceived ; proving that all servants under the .Christian law
were servants on wages, consequently not possible to have
been slaves, but their masters subject to the rules for the
treatment of servants laid down in the holy Scriptures, which
forbade any other than free paid service.
36 VARIETIES OF THE
Twentieth, we have the institution of Christian churches,
with their equality of membership and citizenship in Christ,
without respect to persons, or to class, caste, or color ; and
in the church we have the whole family relationship renewed,
and so sanctified in Christ, together with the reciprocal duties
of husbands and wives, parents and children, so distinctly af-
firmed for all mankind, irrespective of classes, as to render
the system of slavery impossible, without defying the author-
ity of God, and violating every one of those sanctities : so
that, for the possibility of the preservation of God's ordinances,
slavery must be abolished, the condition of slaves, and the
system of slave laws and usages, being incompatible with
the keeping of the divine commandments, and the prevalence
of the system impossible, without the defilement, degradation,
and at length abolition of the most precious gifts of Heaven
to man.
Twenty-first. Take, for example, the sacrament of marriage,
with its wondrous transfiguration in such holy loveliness and
glory, in the epistle to the Ephesians, where the sacredness
and closeness of the union between the husband and the wife
is likened to the union between Christ and the church. The
passage begins, " Wives, submit yourselves unto your own hus-
bands, as unto the Lord," and it concludes, " Let every one of
you in particular so love his wife, even as himself, and the wife
see that she reverence her husband."* Now let us apply this
to slavery, and we see instantly that for the miserable creatures
under the crushing despotism of this damning sin, it is impos-
sible ; this blessedness was never made for slaves ; from the
paradise of marriage they are eternally excluded ; and slavery
does not need a stronger demonstration of its guilt, than is
presented by this terrific impossibility of the realization of
that holiness and happiness appointed of God for the whole
race redeemed in Christ Jesus. Husbands, love your wives ;
wives, be obedient to your husbands ; as the church is subject
* Eph. v., 22, 23.
DEMONSTRATION AGAINST SLAVERY. 37
to Christ, so let the wives he to their own hushands in every
thing. Conceive of this as addressed to the millions of Amer-
ican chattels reduced to a state of concubinage for slave-
breeding, and instantly one of the divinest chapters in the
word of God becomes a hideous and horrible satire.
Twenty-second. The same may be said of the instructions
to parents and children, and of the reciprocal privileges and
duties of Christian nurture and obedience ; including the or-
dinance of the baptism of children, and the responsibility of
their consecration to God. The whole household relationship is
swept away, and the very existence of the family, as God has
appointed it, is rendered impossible by a system that forbids
marriage ; forbids children to obey their parents ; makes both
classes the mere property of the master, and forbids parents
from training up their children under any other nurture and
admonition than that of the slave-market and the auction
block, in the most absolute chattelism the world even- saw.
We need, therefore, no other argument to show the infernal
nature of this American system of Christian slaveholding
than such a trial of it on the word of God. It is like the
torture of the boots, the thumb-screws, and the wedges on
the human system. You might as well say that your lungs
were intended to breathe fire or the fumes of sulphuric acid,
or that you can live upon the oil of vitriol, or that the crys-
tals of prussic acid were appointed for the strengthening of
your stomach, as that this dreadful scheme of iniquity grows
out of Christianity, or can possibly be consistent with it. On
the contrary, it destroys for its victims every ordinance of
Christianity, and every possibility of participation in its bless-
ings ; and it must corrupt every element of true religion in
the hearts of those who practice and defend the system. It
creates one class of selfish despots, for whom the word of
God, so frightfully perverted, is made just only a minister to
their avarice and cruelty ; at whose will, and for the conven-
ience of their lusts and interests, all the rights and claims of
38 VARIETIES OF THE DEMONSTRATION, ETC.
others, even to the elementary privileges of Christianity, are
denied and refused, or parceled out at man's bidding, not
God's. It degrades and distorts another class into a set of
creatures for whom the instructions in the word of God are
inadmissible, or if any of its privileges are offered, it is only
at the will of the masters, under whose legislation and ad-
ministration, Christianity itself becomes a perversion of the
attributes of God, a sneering, tantalizing mockery and tor-
ture, a fable of charity, but a reality of prejudice, injustice
and cruelty.
Now we may not pass from this sketch of the course of
argument in the word of God against the sin of slavery, with-
out remarking how eminently and closely scriptural it is as
a subject of investigation, how appropriate as a subject for
preaching and teaching, through what highways of light, of
divine instruction, of the glorious revelation of God's attri-
butes and ways, and what disclosures of duty and happiness,
it leads the mind ; so that, notwithstanding the wicked, in-
human prejudice against having the claims of the oppressed
presented from the word of God, and the iniquity of such op-
pression demonstrated, no subject could be more interesting
and enlivening, and none more suitable for the Sabbath and
the pulpit.'*
* See Granville Sharpe, Declara- laws of God, arid whatsoever is con-
tion of Natural Right, 179. And trary to any of these is malum in se,
Abbe Raynal, Ilistoire Des Indes, which no authority on earth can make
compared with Grotius and others, lawful." " Non sunt statuta, sed cor-
showing that the Law of Nations and rupteke, the laws against Natural
of Natural Right runs parallel with Right are not laws, but corrup-
this whole line of argument from the Tioxs," which the will of God re-
Scriptures. " The Law of Nature is quires every man to disobey. Coke.
founded on the primary aud eternal Bracton, and others, cited by Sharpe.
CHAPTER III.
Historic Investigation.— The Household op Abraham.— No Slavery in his
Family. — Proof from the Hebrew.
Our historic research begins beyond the period of law,
amidst the social, habitual life, mariners and morals, out of
which law ordinarily grows, and of which it is at once the
safeguard and the assurance. We commence with actual life
in the society of which Noah and his family were the consti-
tuted head. There was nothing but freedom—nothing of slav-
ery there. The second great experiment of God with hu-
manity, the second great trial of the human race, excluded
slavery, for God would not permit it to be set up as one of the
elements of the social state. If it had been in existence as
one of the crimes of the antediluvian world, God would not
suffer its inequality, its injustice, its oppression, in any shape,
in any approximation, to be admitted into the ark ; and the
second commencement of a world of human beings was solely
with freemen. God's covenant with Noah and his sons was
a covenant with freemen for perpetual generations ; and the
great statute (Gen. ix. 6), Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by
man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he
man, excludes the possibility of property in man, making the
race equal, and in all its varieties and generations coequal
partners in the same rights.
Noah lived, after the flood, three hundred and fifty years,
and up to, if not after, the birth of Abraham, nearly cotemporary
with him, in whom we investigate the patriarchal system of
society. From the flood to the division of tongues, and the
40 niSTOKIC INVESTIGATION.
scattering abroad of the nations, admit one hundred and fifty
years ; this would leave from the confusion of tongues to the
lifetime of Abraham a couple of centuries. This is the only
interval in which the inequality and oppression of slavery can
be supposed to have had any commencement. But there is
no indication of it whatever, and in the very nature and ne-
cessity of the freedom of society at that time, its existence
would have been impossible ; not till a later period, and a
greater multiplication of human beings, could caste and ser-
vice have ripened into slavery, even in Egypt.
At the age of seventy-five, A.M. 2083, B.C. 1921, after the
death of Noah, Abraham departs out of Haran, and begins
his patriarchal wanderings, journeying towards the south.
Three hundred years after the division of tongues we find
him, by stress of famine, with his household, sojourning in
Egypt, on terms of friendship with Pharaoh, with much riches
of sheep and oxen, and he-asses, and men-servants and maid-
servants, and she-asses and camels. On his departure out of
Egypt, he is described as very rich in cattle, in silver and gold,
and Lot also is described as possessing flocks and herds and
tents ; and the only description of servants specified are herds-
men. They are not catalogued as property, but they have the
charge of Abraham's and Lot's property, and they quarrel, as
opposing clans, among themselves. There is not a trace among
the servants of the household of any thing but voluntary, free
service. There was no mode of compulsion by which either
Abraham or Lot could have procured or maintained any other
service. The supposition of any other is wholly groundless
and gratuitous. It is one of the most insolent assumptions
that can be conceived, without the remotest ground of ali-
gnment or probability, without the slightest fact or hint of
sacred or profane history to build upon, when the apologist or
defender takes up the idea of the code and principles of mod-
ern American slavery, and carries it back to the household of
Abraham, and from that assumption argues as if it were a re-
THE HOUSEHOLD OF ABRAHAM. 41
ality. There is not only nothing to justify, but every thing to
contradict and forbid this conclusion.
Let us consider it closely. The households of Abraham are
brought before us and described, in the way of a brief classi-
fication, in several passages, as in Gen. xiv. 14; xvii. 12, 13,
23, 27. The first classification is of those fit for war, and
drawn out for that purpose ; the second is with reference to cir-
cumcision, and the classes to be submitted to that rite ; both
classifications are of males only, but they include all the males of
every description. In the first classification, only those born
in his own house are included, to the number of three hundred
and eighteen. The Hebrew phrase (Gen. xiv. 14) is wa vwfcrt
yelidhi betho, the bom of the house, the born of his house, or
his household ; a phrase distinguishing the natives of Abra-
ham's community, those born within the families under his
jurisdiction, of his tribe, in his service, and under his protec-
tion, as their head ; a phrase distinguishing them from those
who were born abroad, and had entered into his service, from
the families of " strangers," from tribes or races other than
his. These are not called servants, but instructed ones, or
persons trained and experienced, persons of pi-oved fidelity
and skill, who could be relied upon. He armed, or led forth
in battle array, these trained, tried, disciplined ones, the ex-
perts, of tried character, born and educated in his own patri-
archal settlement or household. They were certainly not born
in his own tent, nor beneath his own roof, but were simply the
children of families dwelling in tents or tabernacles, owning a
patriarchal allegiance to him, not owned by him, not his prop-
erty, but connected with him in the voluntary, definite obliga-
tions which bound the community of families together. Among
these families were found three hundred and eighteen males
capable of bearing arms, and so trained as to be able to act
efficiently as soldiers. He set them in battle array as such,
and not either as servants or slaves. They are not only not
called servants here, but in the twenty-fourth verse, instead
42 HISTORIC INVESTIGATION.
of being mentioned as servants, they are called " the young
men," b"n»sn, hanaarim, certainly, beyond all question, free-
men. The Hebrew phrase describing them as drawn out,
is i^sh p^»3, vayarek henilcav, eduxit milites ad helium
(Gesenius), «p?h, initiatus, hiric peritics, prohatai fdei, in-
itiated, shitted^ of proved faithfulness. He drew out his
trained ones to war.
So much for the first classification, founded on the circum-
stance of having been born in the families of Abraham's patri-
archal household, and the quality of being able and instructed
to bear arms, to serve as soldiers. If we add to the males an
equal number of females, we have six hundred and thirty-six,
say from the age of twenty to thirty or upwards. Add an
equal number from infancy up to twenty, and we should have
twelve hundred and seventy-two, born of the house. Now as
to the second classification in reference to circumcision, the
division of males is as follows. In the 12th verse of the 17th
chapter, the whole household of Abraham is divided into
" those born in the house, or bought with money of any
stranger, which is not of thy seed, every man-child in your
generations." In the 13th verse, "He that is born in thy
house, and he that is bought with thy money." In the 23d
verse, "All that were born in his house, and all that were
bought with his money, every male among the men of Abra-
ham's house." In the 27th verse, "All the men of his house,
born in the house, and bought with money of the stranger."
All but Abraham and Ishmael are comprehended in these two
classes.
In these passages, the division of the whole household com-
munity is into those born in the house, members by birth of
Abraham's tribe-families, and those bought with his money
of the stranger, and not of his seed. There were three hun-
dred and eighteen of the first class, old enough and instructed
enough to serve as soldiers in a military expedition ; on the
lowest average computation there would bo at least as many
THE HOUSEHOLD OF ABRAHAM. 43
more, too young and inexperienced for such service, making
together six hundred and thirty-six. It is assumed by thoso
who assert that Abraham was a slaveholder, that these were
all slaves, for it is assumed that the phrase born in the house
means slaves, and if this were the case, then Abraham had, at
this time, six hundred and thirty-six slave born, and if you
add as many more females, of all ages twelve hundred and
seventy-two.
Now if those born in the house were slaves, what were
those bought with money ? They constituted all the remain-
ing portion of Abraham's household, and if they also were
slaves, then it follows that every male in Abraham's whole
patriarchal jurisdiction and community was a slave, and he
and Ishmael his son were the only free persons among them.
Supposing those bought with his money to be one half as many
as the others, here would be a community of some nine hun-
dred males in the state of slavery and only two free persons
among them, the owner and his son ! If you add as many
more females, then a community of eighteen hundred slaves
in the same case. And this would constitute the whole of an
independent tribe, a nomadic, roving community, eighteen
hundred slaves and the owner and his son ; no laws to bind
them to him in subjection, no military or civil power or pro-
cess by which such subjection could be maintained, or the slav-
ery enforced ; and the owner dependent on one half or one
third of these chattels acting as a band of soldiers to keep the
other half from being carried away captive by surrounding
royal marauders!
If only those born in the house were Abraham's slaves, and
if those obtained from strangers, those bought with his money,
and not of his seed, were not slaves, then the absoluteness
and sacredness of the chattelism were just in proportion to
the nearness of relationship on the part of the chattels to their
owner. Those that were born in Abraham's house, and were
of his own race in nearer or more distant degrees of affinity,
44 HISTORIC INVESTIGATION".
just in proportion to their home relationship, were in a worse
condition than the strangers, more absolutely and entirely en-
slaved !
But in opposition to such extreme absurdities, we find by
examination of the phrases bom in the house and bought xoith
money, that neither of them intimates a state of slavery, nor
can, without violence, be so interpreted. This will be demon-
strated in pursuing the philological argument ; at present the
comparison of a few passages will be sufficient, as of Exodus,
xii. 43-49 ; Leviticus, xxii. 10, 11 ; Leviticrs, xviii. 9 ; Exodus,
xxi. 2; Jeremiah, ii. 14; Ecclesiastes, ii. 7. In these passages
the usage of the phrases " born in the house," " home-born,"
" sons of the house," is demonstrated as a common usage in
reference to free persons ; indeed, not a solitary instance can
be found of their application to slaves. In Genesis xv. 3,
Abraham says, " One born in my house, "^a-ia ben bethi, is
mine heir;" certainly not a slave. Bishop Blayney translates
Jeremiah ii. 14 : rpa tV?, yelidh beth, child of the household,
and affirms that it answers to the Latin words filius familias,
and stands opposed to a slave* But this is precisely the
same word as in Genesis xiv. 14, " born in his oicn house." So
in Leviticus xxii. 11, of a person born in the priest's house,
the same phrase. In Exodus xii. 48, 49, the home-born is re-
ferred to as s-^n hfrN, etzrah haarets, the born of the land,
free-born.
In Leviticus xviii. 9, we have an example of corresponding
usage in connection with rvo beth, as of free persons, "The
daughter of thy father or daughter of thy mother, born at
home, n*? rnV», moledheth beth, the bom of the house ; and
there is no more proof that the phrase in Genesis xiv. 14,
means a slave, or means any other than a freeman, than there
is that the daughter is a slave, because called the born of the
house.
It is impossible to interpret Genesis xv. 3, one bom in my
* Blayney's Jeremiah — note on verse 14, chapter ii
THE HOUSEHOLD OF ABRAHAM. 45
house, is mine heir, of a slave. But the three hundred and
eighteen in Genesis xiv. 14, bom in his oion house, were all of
the same class, and the phrases are synonymous. The chil-
dren of the Hebrew servants were as free-born as the children
of their masters; there was no such thing as chattelism in ex-
istence among them, nor any such infamous law or custom as
that which brands the child as the property of the master,
because the parent was claimed as such, or had been employed
in his service at the time of the babe's birth. Yet nothing
less than this infamy of infamies is attributed to Abraham and
his household, by those who assert that the phrase bom in his
own house is to be interpreted of slaves.
But, second, the phrase bought with money, t\z>p— nrj>», miq-
nath keseph, Genesis xvii. 12, is equally demonstrated as a
usage applying to freemen, and not to slaves. This is proved
by Leviticus xxv. 51, spoken in regard to a Hebrew, (who
could by no possibility be a slave, fcjosto 'tiiSpJa miqnatho mik-
heseph, the money that he was bought for, the money of his
purchase, the phrase always used of obtaining a Hebrew ser-
vant. So in Exodus xxi. 2 : " If thou buy a Hebrew servant,"
the same verb of obtaining, as used likewise in Rnth iv. 10 ;
" Moreover, Ruth, the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I
purchased to be my wife," ■>r;,»spr kanithi, bought, that is ob-
tained with a dowry, for Ruth was not a slave. So likewise
Genesis iv. 1 ; used in regard to the first-born of Eve, who
was not a slave ; Eve said, I have bought a man from the Lord,
■>iY>:jjj Jcanithi, gotten, obtained. So likewise Hosea iii. 2 ; the
prophet's purchase of his wife, I bought her to me, the word
from nns being the word employed, which is placed by Ge-
senius as synonymous with nsj? kanah, to obtain.
Now clearly if from the phrase, bought with his money, it
would be proper to assume that those servants, whose service
was thus obtained, were Abraham's slave property, and con-
sequently to assume that it is right for us to buy human beings
and hold them as slaves, because by this assumption Abra-
46 IITSTOKIC INVESTIGATION.
ham did the same, then from the same phrase we can demon-
strate, first, that the Hebrew servant was a slave, to be bought
and sold as property, and consequently, secondly, that all our
servants are slaves ; thirdly, that Ruth, the wife of Boaz, was
the slave property of Boaz, his chattel ; and fourthly, that the
wife of the prophet Hosea was his slave, his property; and con-
sequently, fifthly, to conclude that it would be right for pious
men now to hold their wives as slaves, and dispose of them as
property. On the contrary, it is incontrovertible that the use
of this idiom furnishes no more indication of slavery in Abra-
ham's household, than it did in Adam and Eve's ; no more
than the use of the phrase in our language at the present day,
I have got me, at a very fair price, a good coachman, or, I have
got me, for a reasonable sum, ten good clerks for our new
warehouse, or, I have procured, at a good bargain, twenty
hands for the farm during the summer, or fifteen carpenters
for the buildings, would prove that the coachman and the
clerks, the farmers and the carpenters, were all chattels, slaves,
property, bought, sold, transferred, as you might transfer a
horse and carriage, a wheelbarrow, plow, carjjenter's bench,
or clerk's writing desk.
So likewise the phrase, born in his house, has no connection
with slavery, and can not be shown to have the least mean-
ing or intimation that way. But in order to gain the first be-
ginning of a sanction for American slavery from Abraham's
household, its defenders have got to prove that God ordained
for him a law that every child born of any of his servants was,
therefore, by law of such birth, a chattel, a slave, a piece of
Abraham's property, and that that quality of property, supreme
above every other, inhered in that race, generation after gen-
eration. Men assume this in order to sustain this iniquity among
themselves ; they can not appeal to Abraham without such an
assumption. And let every thinking man consider the hideous
and horrible perversion of thus carrying back, the most atro-
cious feature of the slavery of our time, and setting that up,
THE HOUSEHOLD OF ABRAHAM. 47
that enormity of the theft of children from their parents, as
the meaning of the phrase, born in his own house, a meaning
which that phrase never bears anywhere, nor ever did bear ;
as if Abraham laid his grasp on every new-born child under
the jurisdiction of his patriarchal authority, and said, This is
my property, my slave, by virtue of the father and the mother,
or the mother alone, having been in my service, under my pa-
triarchal supervision, when the babe came into the world ! This
is monstrous, and would scandalize the pages of a divine inspi-
ration, if foisted among them. And slavery is altogether a
thing so positive and dreadful, that mere suppositions or hints
are not to be endured in the place of proof in regard to it ;
but you rightfully demand the most positive and palpable
demonstration of its existence, especially if men are going to
claim for themselves, by virtue of its alleged practice in Abra-
ham's family, the right, four thousand years afterwards, of
property in human beings, the right of enslaving another race
for ever. If men dare attempt to bring Scripture to sanction
such iniquity, they must be held to the most irresistible and
undeniable demonstration.*
* Butler's Analogy, Christianity revere as the voice of God I Slavery,
as a republication of natural religion, otherwise only a human establishment,
The carelessness of men, though them- becomes thus a divine institution!"
selves opposed to slavery, and regard- And yet, the whole drift of this writer's
ing it as criminal and pernicious in work, which is voluminous, and very
the extreme, yet admitting, or taking learned, is against slavery, and a
for granted, its existence by authority demonstration of the duty of every
of Divine Revelation, is inexplicable, people to abolish it. How dreadful
Yet even Wallon, a recent French the supposition, could* it be made to
historian of slavery, suggests, without a prevail, that the voice of God is thus
single proof, that Abraham's slaves (/ /) in antagonism with the dictates of
composed, with his flocks, the heritage natural justice and humanity ! Com-
which he transmitted to his son Isaac, pare Jay's Works, Letter to Bishop
and that Moses did not merely refer to Ives, and Reproof of Am. Church,
such slavery, but maintained and es- Compare, also, Gisborxe on the
tablisheditbylawl " What authority Morals of Slavery, 144, 155, and
is thus given to usage," exclaims this Granville Siiarpe's Declaration oi
writer, "by a Word, which Christians Natural Right, 29.
CHAPTER IV.
God's Choice of Abraham, and fob Wiiat. — If Abeaiiam had Slaves, "What
Became of Them ?
Now it is to be marked, in this argument, that when God
revealed himself to Abraham, and began in his person the
foundation of a new religious dispensation and race, he plucked
him away from the manners and the morals of the world as it
was, and consecrated him as the person in whom all the fami-
lies of the earth should be blessed, a progenitor of nations,
and the framer of such a discipline and policy for his children
and his household after him, that they should keep the way
of the Lord, to do justice and judgment. A system of justice
was to be established in opposition to the prevalence of injus-
tice and selfish power, and a system of righteous judgment
instead of despotic violence and wrong, and of this Abraham
was chosen to be an example and head.
Justice and judgment! These are the attributes of God,
infallible, immutable, in principle and in action. A God of
truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. Ashe is just
in himself, just in all his attributes, just in all his ways, so he
will not, can not sanction injustice or unjust judgment in
others ; he can not and will not set at the foundation of so-
ciety any example of injustice, any fountain or precedent of
unrighteousness for after generations and ages.
It is monstrous impiety to attempt to foist such deformities
into a divine revelation. When we remember with what fiery
indignation and wrath God has proclaimed vengeance against
all manner of oppression and injustice: "Wo unto him that
THE HOUSEHOLD POLICY. 49
buildeth his bouse by unrighteousness, and his chambers by
wrong ; wo unto him that taketh his neighbor's work without
wages, and giveth him not for his hire ;" when we remember
how every page of this holy book shines with the glory of
God's righteousness, and that of old it passed into a proverb,
that justice and judgment are better than all sacrifices, it is
impossible to admit that in the first household life and consti-
tution, through which God declared he would make all nations
blessed, he should have set a fountain of sin and misery, the
streams of which make every nation that drinks thereof ac-
cursed.
It is equally a monstrous supposition, inadmissible at the
outset, that a man should be chosen of Jehovah to receive
and promulgate, or to plant and exemplify, the great com-
manding principles of right and wrong in human society, the
manner of feeling and of conduct, of personal and social in-
tercourse, pleasing to the Deity, and then that this chosen
ambassador or missionary of religious ethics should have been
left to take his pattern of life and manners from the heathen
world — from tribes and nations destitute of a divine revela-
tion, having corrupted, and at length extinguished that which
the race originally received. It is impossible to suppose, that
in such an essential part, both of natural and revealed moral-
ity, as the rights of men to personal liberty, and the respect
due to those rights, Abraham should have been instructed or
permitted of God to take just what he found in the brutal and
idolatrous, or half-civilized and barbarous tribes around him,
and to set that as the example in his own household, and trans-
mit it as the will of God to posterity. If the system of human
slavery had been established and transmitted, it would inevita-
bly have left no room for doubt as to its reality ; the results of
its establishment Avould have proved it beyond a question. The
passage of the lava from a volcano would not be more surely
traced by its effects, the position of an extinct volcano could
not be more surely known in after ages by the discovery of
5
50 GOD'S CHOICE OF ABRAHAM.
its crater, than the existence of slavery by its fruits in the
laws, policy, and history of the people.
If in any thing we are in doubt as to the details of the so-
cial system appointed of God, in Abraham's exemplification
or foundation of it, we rightly look for information to the
manner in which we find it developed in his posterity. From
that development we can argue back to what must have
been commenced as the source of it in Abraham's own life.
In default of any specific, unquestionable knowledge as to
Abraham's domestic laws and habits, we have to look at
the after result of the system which he set a going; the
earliest point where the arrangements plainly crop out, as it
were, shows us what his own practice must have been. If a
fountain is so deep down in the rifts under a mountain that we
can not get at its depths, to analyze it there, we must be satis-
fied with the nearest accessible point, where the stream comes
rippling through the green meadow, or brawling over the cliff.
God chose Abraham for the purposes of his righteousness, and
grafted upon him the graft of a new society. He did not choose
Abraham to sanction and perpetuate in him the manners and
morals of a violent and unregenerate age, but to set in him
the example and the spring of a Christian society, a benevo-
lent community, a society under the divine law. Now what-
ever that law and those principles are found to be, when they
come to be clearly and unmistakably revealed and developed
in an after age, they must have been in Abraham's planting
and commencement of them. As the stream is known by its
fountain, so the fountain is known by its stream.
If you wished to ascertain the original fruit of the parent
tree in an orchard a hundred years old, which you knew by
the records of the farm that your grandfather planted and
grafted with his own hands, the kind of fruit, we mean, which
the tree yielded the first time after grafting, would you not
appeal to the whole orchard, and to the kind of apples it has
borne in your time ? But suppose that some one should set
PRINCIPLES OF THE HOUSEHOLD. 51
before you the bitter, unwholesome fruit of a wild crab-apple
tree, the product of the wilderness, affirming that to have
been the fruit which your grandfather chose for his orchard,
and intended to perpetuate, arguing that it must have been
so, because that bitter-crab tree had grown wild in the forest
for hundreds of years, and the fact of its being in the neigh-
borhood of the grounds of your grandfather when he grafted
his orchard, proves that the orchard must have been grafted
with slips of that wild crab tree. Thou fool, you would say,
the orchard does not bear crab-apples, and never did, on the
contrary, it has always been a law of the farm that if any
were found they should be cut down, and we know that the
fruit the trees bear now is the very same that our grand-
father grafted, and used in his own family. Does not the fruit
of a grafted tree always prove the nature of the graft ? If I
have half a dozen pear trees in my garden, that bear the most
delicious St. Michael's, and I know that those pear trees were
grafted by my father, do I not know that he grafted the very
fruit which every autumn I use at my table, and not the choke
pear, which even my hogs scarcely put up with ? Will you
tell me that the choke pear was the one which my father was
fond of, and which he carefully cultivated, and intended for
my table ? How then does it happen that the trees which he
grafted bear the St. Michael's ?
"When God converts a man, does he convert him to perpet-
uate by him the works of the devil, or to destroy the works
of the devil, and introduce the fruits of grace ? When a man
is cut out of the wild olive, and grafted into the true olive, is it
for the purpose of fruit or is it to perpetuate poison ? When
God brings a drunkard to repentance, does he do it in order
to set up a new rum shop on the man's premises, under his
care, and so to sanctify the sale of rum by his example ? When
God converts a Pagan, does he do it in order to bring in
Pagan rites into his church, and to sanctify the worship of
Pagan images ? When God chose Abraham, did he do it in
52 god's choice of abkaiiam.
order to set the seal of his approbation upon one of the great-
est enormities of the idolatrous world, slavery and the slave-
trade, in order to bring in that iniquity, and establish it in
the household policy of his own people ? This is the argu-
ment of those who assume that Abraham held slaves and then
appeal to his example as being God's sanction of the crime of
American slavery. That which, if Abraham had let it alone,
would have been branded as a crime, would have stood in the
annals of Sodomic and Egyptian history as a crime, by being
taken up into Abraham's life, as a domestic example, is bap-
tized for a virtue. This is a horrible perversion, and blasphemy
against the justice and holiness of God.
But we say, let the records of that household policy answer.
They are before us, they are plain, from the time of Abraham
downwards. If Abraham had had slaves, had bought and sold
men as property, had grown rich in that way, his slave prop-
erty would have been more valuable than all his other riches,
and Isaac and Jacob would have inherited his possessions and
his claims, and by the very law of propagation and of entail
in slave property would have vastly accumulated it. Isaac
would have had the whole three hundred and eighteen home-
born, or six hundred and thirty-six of both sexes, and twelve
hundred and seventy-two of all ages, or more than eighteen
hundred of all classes, on his father's plantation, besides all
the increase of hands for more than fifty years, for Abraham,
when he died, gave all that he had unto Isaac, and fifty years
would have increased the number, at the lowest computation,
to some ten or twelve thousand. And the same inheritance
descending inevitably from Isaac, and accumulating through
the lifetime of Jacob for more than a hundred years, even if
divided between Esau and Jacob, must have constituted a
great multitude. It is impossible that all this slave property,
as a sanctified domestic institution, could have vanished into
thin air ; or if a missionary institution, Jacob would not have
been allowed to put it up at auction, or dispose of it at a price,
THE HOUSEHOLD POLICY. 53
on account of the famine in Canaan. When Jacob went down
into Egypt, we should certainly have found slaves in his house-
hold, for he took his journey with all that he had, and there
is great particularity in the enumeration both of souls and sub-
stance, but not the faintest shadow of the presence of slavery
do Ave find there, not the most distant intimation of slaves or
slave property being a patriarchal fixture. What has become
of the three hundred and eighteen, or the six hundred and
thirty-six, or the twelve hundred and seventy-two, or the eigh-
teen hundred, and their increase of many thousands, left to his
children by their great slav eh olding grandfather? Slavery never
dies out, but by the law of human cupidity holds on and makes
itself more and more manifest. Abraham never sold slaves ;
nobody accuses him of that ; and even those who assume that
he was a slaveholder, can find no trace of any such transaction.
What, then, became of his three hundred and eighteen, or six
hundred and thirty-six, or twelve hundred and seventy -two, or
eighteen hundred ? They did not descend to Isaac, they were
not inherited by him as a property, for then also we should
have found them in the family of Jacob, since Isaac never sold
slaves. But all traces of them disappear, and neither in Jacob's
family nor Esau's can we discover the least indication of slav-
ery or slave property.
On the contrary, the only instance of the selling and buying
of a human being in a record of more than four hundred years
is that of Joseph, distinctly branded by him, in describing the
transaction, as man-stealing. And until that transaction, there
is no positive proof of slavery existing anywhere ; so that, to
resume our illustration of the orchard and the grafted fruit, this
wild tree, which the advocates of slavery assume to have been
adopted by Abraham, as a universal growth of society, is not
certainly discovered in all that region till at least three hun-
dred years after the calling of Abraham, and then comes up as
a crime. If, instead of being crime, slavery had been a do-
mestic institution, appointed of God and sanctioned as a patri-
54 god's choice of Abraham.
archal rigbt, we should certainly have found some trace of
human beings held as property when the Israelites went up
out of Egypt.
Instead of that, we find such property forbidden, and the
origin of it, and the traffic in it, denounced as an iniquity to
be punished with death. We find a net- work of admirable
legislation, woven with direct reference to the exclusion of this
iniquity, so as to render slavery for ever impossible in the land.
And these laws are beyond question an embodiment of the
great principles of common law and custom that had prevailed
since Abraham set them. They are the grand precedents of
judgment and of justice which God declared that Abraham
was appointed to transmit to his posterity, reduced to specific
written forms ; the principles that had been transmitted from,
the patriarchal life of Abraham, for otherwise the Israelites
could not possibly have been prepared for such legislation, nor
brought submissively under it.
The legislation appointed of God was not that of a break-
up in their habits, not a revolutionary legislation, but a legis-
lation in concord with the system of morals and manners set
in power by Abraham, and consolidated for five hundred
years. The great idea of the sacredness of personal freedom
was not a new unknown idea ; if it had been, no code of laws
could have communicated it, so as to make it instantly per-
vade the nation as a life. And, on the other hand, the des-
potic and dreadful idea of the righteousness and sacredness
of slave property, the justice and benevolence of buying and
selling men as chattels, if that had been a custom and an heir-
loom from Abraham downwards, could not have been opposed
without disturbance, could not have quietly yielded and van-
ished and given place to the unexampled system of freedom and
kindness revealed through Moses. If the people had been slave-
holders, with the example of Abraham to sanction them, and
Moses had undertaken to put a stop to that system, and to
strike the fetters from their slaves, he would have found a
EQUALITY AND FREEDOM. 55
harder task, in some respects, than that of bringing the whole
nation out from Egypt. But there was no such thing as slavery
among them, and never had been.
A system of free service there was, and of customary
wages, and it had come down from the habits of patriarchal
life, and the necessities of a pastoral, nomadic community.
The contract of Jacob with Laban shows plainly the kind of
contract that had been customary, the modes and usages of
service. Seven years' service were not pitched upon by Jacob
at a venture, but doubtless because the period of seven years
was the accustomed period of apprenticeship for a servant ;
and there are plain reasons in the nature of pastoral life why
the contract with servants should extend over so long a period,
or longer, if the servant and the master were so agreed. But
longer or shorter, the service was by agreement, and for wages,
and the contract mutual and voluntary.
To us in modern times, in cities and villages, with a vast
population, unsettled, changing, migratory, it seems long;
but in the case of Abraham it would be desirable for him,
and merciful for his dependants ; profitable and just on all
sides. And the Jewish system of free servitude, as trans-
mitted from Abraham, and systematized and made permanent
in the Jewish code by Moses, under divine inspiration and
direction, was exactly suited to those ancient times, with their
known patriarchal habits and manners, which were fostered
and established in the Jewish dispensation. We have the ex-
ample of this life in its utmost beauty, purity, and perfection,
in the pastoral book of Ruth, in which we defy the keenest
scrutinizes, and the most fanatical believers in the divine right
of slavery, to find the least trace of involuntary servitude.
The same may be said of the book of Job. What a volume-
is contained in those three verses in the thirty-first chapter of
that wonderful book ; what a revelation of freedom and no-
bleness ! " If I did despise the cause of my man-servant, or
my maid-servant, when they contended with me, what then
56 GOD'S CHOICE OF ABRAHAM.
shall I do when God riseth up ? and when he visiteth, what
shall I answer him ? Did not he that made me in the womb
make him ? and did not one fashion us in the womb ?" Com-
pare these sentiments of justice and humanity, this acknowl-
edgment of natural equality and mutual right, this recognition
of mutual obligation and duty, with the tone of opinion, feeling,
and language prevailing at the South towards a race of slaves.
Now, as a patriarch chosen of God, and appointed as the
beginning and head of a mighty religious dispensation, it is not
to be supposed that Abraham was less advanced in morals and
religion, after this divine call, than Job. Wherever Abraham
sojourned under the divine guidance, he certainly must have
carried and maintained, as the friend and prophet of God,
those principles to which God himself referred, when he said,
" I know Abraham, that he will command his children and his
household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord,
to do justice and judgment." It is not to be supposed that
Abraham copied the institutions of the tribes around him, or
adopted the manners and morals of the people among whom
he journeyed, but, on the contrary, he must have had a stand-
ard of his own, and preserved his own principles. If slaves
were presented to him by kings, they passed out from the un-
godly and oppressive rule under which they had been held as
chattels, into a household under divine teachings, where they
were regarded as human beings with rights, and not as articles
of property. When Abraham received them, it is not to be
imagined that he received into his household, along with them,
the slave-code and slave-usages, or supposed them to be crea-
tures without rights, Avhose service he could take without
wages. Their slavery ceased the moment they became his
servants ; and the rite of circumcision, by which they were
all equally consecrated to God, aud adopted in the divine cov-
enant as the objects of his care and favor, was in itself a
most impressive seal of personal freedom and responsibility,
and a recognition of the sacreduess of individual rights.
CHAPTER V.
Cockatrices' Eggs Laid by Lexicographers, and Hatched by Commentators.—
Assumptions and Misrepresentations, and Consequent Prejudices and Errors.
—Difficulty of the Dzslodgment of Old Tenant Lies.— Necessity of tueib Ex-
orcism from Theological Literature.
It is under the guidance of such views that we have to come
to the consideration of the legislation in the Old Testament
on the subject of the nature and times of domestic servitude.
When that legislation was ordained of God, there was no such
thing as slavery in the nation, either to he regulated or extir-
pated. Its asserted existence is the merest imagination and
assumption, without one particle of proof; a figment more
groundless than that of the Blue Laws of Connecticut. They
who assume its existence, are bound to show their authority
in the clearest terms, for it is one of those things that can not
be admitted without positive demonstration. But in the ab-
sence of all evidence, the assumption of such an enormous
system of wickedness is monstrous.
The very assumption rests on the fastening of the word
bondman into the divine revelation in the English version,
when there is no such. word in the original; and on the use
of the word slave in the lexicons and commentaries, instead
of the word servant, which is the Hebrew word of the Scrip-
tures, there being no word for slave in the Hebrew language.
In the history of languages, there is hardly an instance of
greater perversion and violence ; probably no instance of so
vast a conclusion, with such dreadful consequences, being
founded upon the wrong translation of a word. The iniquity
of American slavery, with all its atrocities, builds and perpet-
58 LEGAL INVESTIGATION.
uates itself upon the sanction thus pirated for it in the word of
God. The lexicographers, translators and commentators have
acted as borers for the slaveholding interest, and have laid
the eggs of this sin in the hark of the word, where its mon-
strous developments are defended as the legitimate product
of God's righteous sovereignty. As was said of old, " None
calleth for justice, nor pleadeth for truth ; they trust in vanity
and speak lies ; they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.
They hatch cockatrices' eggs, and weave the spider's web ; he
that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed
breaketh out into a viper."
Without the slightest examination of the original, without
a question as to the justice or injustice of slavery, its incon-
sistency with the benevolence commanded in the Scriptures,
apparently with not a thought as to the bearing of its sanc-
tion upon the character and claims of a divine revelation, or
its manner of representing the attributes of God, the great
tide of commentators and of readers has swept on. Some of
the best writers have, in one sentence, adopted the common
representation of the existence of slaves and slavery in Judea,
and in the next given such details of that slavery, so called, as
proved that there was nothing of slavery in it, and that this
term could not, without a sweeping falsehood, be applied to it.
As an instance of such singular carelessness, we may take
the admirable work of Dean Graves on the Pentateuch (espe-
cially the third Lecture, Part II., on the Moral Principles of
the Jewish Law), in which the iniquity and abominations of
modern slavery and of the slave trade are denounced as " an
aggravated guilt publicly known and nationally tolerated, so
as to fill the minds of the pious and reflecting Avith the most
alarming expectation that the signal judgments of God will
awfully chastise such depravity." The writer says, speaking
of the justice of the death penalty, "On this subject it is
necessary to observe, that as liberty is equally valuable icith
life, the Jewish law, with the strictest equity, ordained that
FALSE ASSUMPTIONS. 59
if any man were convicted of attempting to reduce any fellow-
citizen to slavery, he should be punished with death." Part
ii., Lect. iii., p. 154. Yet in the very same lecture he applies
the word slave to the Jewish servant, and remarks that " the
penal code of the Jews guarded the person of the servant
and the slave, as well as of the freeman ; the injunction,
' Whosoever smiteth a man that he die, shall surely be put to
death,' equally protected all." "The chastity of female
slaves was guarded by strict regulations, and no Jew could
be a slave for longer than seven years." Again, " Compare
the Mosaic regulations respecting female slaves with the
universal and abominable licentiousness which polluted every
ancient nation in their intercourse with slaves."
Here the Hebrew servant, making a contract of service for
six years, is called a slave, and female slaves are spoken of as if
such a class really existed, at the same time that the very fact
of the limitation of service to six years, and the law of free-
dom when such service has expired, demonstrate that such a
servant was in no sense a slave, and such service in no sense
slavery! And with the admitted and applauded fact that
God denounced the bringing of any person into slavery, as a
crime to be punished with death, yet is slavery spoken of as
one of the institutions of the Mosaic law, and, of course, an
•nstitution appointed and established of Jehovah ! That very
condition, into which, if one man were found reducing another,
he should be put to death, is nevertheless represented as being
a condition of domestic society, not merely permitted, but
made, by the divine will, an integral and essential fixture of
the social life !
A still more remarkable instance occurs in Jahn's Biblical
Archaeology, where the writer gravely affirms, in the 169th
section of his work, which he has entitled Respecting Slaves,
that "it is probable that some of the patriarchs, as was some-
times the case at a later period, with individuals in Greece and
Italy, possessed many thousands of them !" Again, he makes
CO LEGAL INVESTIGATION'.
the following astounding declaration : " The Canaanites could
not be held in slavery. For them, under the then existing
circumstances, slavery icas regarded as too great a privilege /"
He then proceeds to enumerate some of the ways in which
men might find themselves endowed with this same privilege !
And so the march of misrepresentation and mistake has
continued.* And such has been the indifference and fatuity
of the world, such the carelessness of commentators, ready to
echo one another's opinions without examination, and such the
power of long-continued prejudice, that the very apparatus of
study, except only the original sacred text itself, has been
tortured and discolored, so as to throw false lights upon the
subject, and set things in a false position. It is just like hav-
ing your tables of logarithms falsified, or the glasses of your
telescope misplaced, confounded, or the screws of your com-
pound microscope reversed, or your chemical tests wrongly
labeled. Under the deception produced by such undiscov-
ered and unquestioned tricks, some of the ablest commenta-
tors on the laws of Moses have gravely considered slavery as
an unquestioned and indisputable fact, not less certain than
the existence of leviathan. The lexicons have translated the
word servant by the word slave. The phrase buying a serv-
* See, for other examples, " Illus- servants 'were manifestly of this
trated Commentary on the Holy Bi- description."
ble," London: 1840, vol. i., page 32. There can be no excuse for such
Also, the comment on Gen., chapter extravagant ignorance or falsehood.
xv. The writer makes the monstrous In an interpreter of the word of God
declaration that " the word translated the carelessness of such assertions
servant generally denotes what wo becomes worse than careless, when
should call a slave." lie then goes on to the subject is of so solemn a weight
say that the mass of the servants men- and importance as that of the judg-
tioncd in the Scripture history were mont in the word of God in regard to
absolute and perpetual slaves. They slavery. Under such teaching, no
and their progeny were regarded as form or prevalence of error could bo
completely the property of their mas- surprising. It is a demoniac posses-
ters, who could exchange or sell them sion that must be exorcised, or wher-
at pleasure, could inflict what pnnish- ever it remains it excludes the truth,
ments they pleased, and even in some and foams and rages against it.
cases put them to death. Abraham's
FALSE ASSUMPTIONS.
61
ant has been set in our language, without any indication of
its Hebrew usage, just as if it meant the traffic in human
beings as property. Learned and able archaeologists, and
writers of introductions, have prepared and printed whole
sections on the treatment of Hebrew slaves, and have adduced
passages as proof-texts, which, rightly examined and inter-
preted, prove that no such thing as slavery was permitted.*
These errors and pi'ejudices were begun at a time when, in
England, and all over the world, not only slavery, but even
the African slave trade, was sustained and practiced without
scruple, even by Christians ; so that there was nothing in the
assertion of slavery being sanctioned, or even enjoined of
* Home's Introduction, vol. iii., page
419: The most singular concatenation
of examples of such heedless mistakes,
is to be found in the fifth chapter of
the fourth part of the third volume
of this work. Assertions are made,
and texts referred to, as if in proof of
them, which, on examination, refute
the assertions. See, for instance, the
note on Deut. xv. 18. The word
slave is heedlessly applied to persons
at voluntary service, and perfectly
free. By such inaccurate use of
terms, reverberated from writer to
writer, there has come to be an accu-
mulation of apparent authorities for
the opinion that slavery was estab-
lished under God's sanction. The
Hebrew servants are called slaves, and
by the same process, historians and
commentators on the domestic lifo
and customs of the free States, could
prove incontrovertibly that chattel
slavery was a domestic institution,
universally established among them.
Bonar on Leviticus, pages 444 and
463, speaks with the same unfortu-
nate carelessness of " every Hebrew
slave," and at the same moment of
the freedom to " leave his servitude ;"
the latter qualification rendering the
former condition an impossibility,
though the inconsistency does not
seem to have once occurred to the
mind of the writer.
The manner in which opinion has
been manufactured and sustained is
exemplified in assertions such as the
following: "The Lord wished to
punish the Canaanites and other hea-
then nations, because of their hea-
thenism ; and of course the Lord has
a right so to do. His decree, there-
fore is this : that heathens shall be ex-
posed to bondage, and Israel shall
take them as their slaves."
If this had been true, the punish-
ment, in such a case, would have
been a reward, for the slavery was
freedom into which they passed ; and
the curse inflicted was their elevation
to all the religious and civil privileges
of God's own chosen people! Sin-
gular enough to see a writer declar-
ing that God cursed and punished
the heathen for their heathenism, by
adopting them into his own church,
and bestowing franchises upon them,
of which, in their heathen condition,
they knew nothing I
62 LEGAL IJSrVESTIGATION.
God, so startling or incredible, as to induce an examination
of the Scriptures in regard to it. The great Hebrew lexi-
cographer, Gesenius, probably never gave it a thought, and
hardly had occasion to mark any distinction between a serv-
ant and a slave, as to the question of any morality or im-
morality in the relation.
In consequence of all this, we come to the Bible argument
under great disadvantages. Long defended titles to opinion,
supposed incontestable, have to be contested, and decisions
based upon misinterpretations have to be set aside, and prece-
dents established by men of great authority have to be resist-
ed. We have not only to prove property, but to disprove false
claims. We have to bring expensive actions for ejectment be-
fore we can take possession of our own. By a species of squat-
ter sovereignty, the advocates of slavery have settled down in
the Scriptures, as the Scribes and Pharisees did in Moses' seat,
with their traditions, under the authority of father Abraham ;
and possession being nine tenths of the law, it takes nine times
as much argument and conscience to dislodge, as it did confi-
dence and ignorance to squat.
Even if there had been such a thing as slavery among the
Hebrews, God's allowance of it among them would have been
no justification of American slavery, no more than Noah's plant-
ing a vineyard would justify our getting drunk on cider-brandy.
'Even supposing God to have admitted, for a season, a degree
of slavery, under laws for its regulation and abolition, suppos-
ing the Hebrews to have held slaves by permission, this could
be no justification for an American slaveholder retaining the
African race in bondage, or holding any human being as pi-op-
erty. To plead Hebrew slavery in excuse or authority for
American, is just to act like a rumseller'in one of the cities of
Scotland, convicted of selling bad liquors ; but he alleged in
defense of the practice the fact stated in the second chapter
of John, verse tenth, Every man at the beginning doth set forth
good wine, and when men have well drunk, then that which
FALSE ASSUMPTIONS. 63
is worse ; but thou hast kept the good wine until now. He
said, they must have used up a great deal of had wine in this
process, and our Lord Jesus said not one word in condemna-
tion of it to the bridegroom ; and it was altogether as proper
for him to provide bad spirits for his customers as it was for that
family to provide it for their guests. That is just the amount
of the whole alleged Bible argument in regard to slavery,
namely, that if the Hebrews, at God's command, or under his
revealed permission, could enslave the heathen, then the Amer-
icans, without God's permission or command, have the same
right to enslave Africans ; an attempted justification so weak,
so worthless, so unprincipled and hypocritical, that it is hardly
fit for a sober notice.
It is a reproach to the word of God to admit for a moment
that a thing so unjust and full of evil has any existence or
sanction whatever in it. An<J it has not. And on this ground
we stand. "We affirm that at the very outset of the Hebrew
legislation there was no such thing as slavery among the He-
brews to be regulated. Not one text can be brought to prove
its existence, nor any intimation that it was any way in prac-
tice when God revealed the Hebrew code of laws to Moses.
The whole spirit of the Bible, from beginning to end, is against
it. The first legislation in regard to domestic servitude was
for freedom, not slavery ; it was to guard against slavery, and
prevent the possibility of its coming in from abroad.
God himself referred to that great fact in the announcement
of his last vengeance on the kingdom and people for their at-
tempt to set up slavery instead of liberty ; for that was just
the essence of their crime. I made a covenant of liberty in
the day that I brought your fathers out of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage, liberty every man to his neighbor. The
covenant so made, so established, and so referred to, was of
freedom against slavery, not in toleration or regulation of it.
The nation was about to enter on a series of conquests, and to
be brought in contact with other nations, where slavery might
64 LEGAL INVESTIGATION.
be found pi'evailing, and where temptations would arise to
practice and establish the iniquity themselves, and under those
circumstances, in preparation for future junctures, such admi-
rable laws were passed, as rendered slavery and the slave
traffic, either domestic or foreign, either of Hebrews or hea-
then, impossible. If those laws were obeyed, then, under
God's old covenant, as well as new, "such a crime as that of
holding men as property, or maintaining the claim of property
in man, was impossible.
There are volumes of commentaries, from which it may be
plainly seen what blindness and insensibility have rested even
on the church of God in regard to this subject, and what ex-
travagances, yea, what madnesses of opinion, and complica-
tions of falsehood, have grown out of such stupidity and ignor-
ance, what monstrosities even good men have gravely and
calmly swallowed, what doctrines, as bad as the vilest immo-
ralities of the Hindoo or heathen mythology, have been ac-
cepted as parts of divine revelation. As a remarkable instance,
we may refer to the Rev. Dr. Pyle's paraphrastic commentary
on the Scriptures, published at London in several volumes in
1717. In the first volume, in the commentary on the twenty-
first chapter of Exodus, taking it for granted that the system
of slavery was an established institution of the state, and, as a
domestic institution, committed of God to the fostering care
of the government and the magistrates, for its perpetuity by
natural increase, the author thus explains the fourth verse in
regard to the Hebrew servant's family relations. " If a wife,"
says he, " were procured him by his master, or appointed him
by the magistrates that sold him, only to breed slaves by, then,
if he leaves his service, he shall leave the wife and children, as
the master's proper goods and possessions /" Could there be
a manifestation of more profound insensibility, darkness, and
consequent perversion of the moral sense, than this ?
It is difficult to conceive how a Christian man, a minister of
the gospel, certainly not ignorant of the first and lowest laws
FALSE ASSUMPTIONS. 65
and principles of justice and of moral purity, could put such a
monstrosity as this in writing, as part of a divine revelation for
the teaching of virtue, benevolence, and. piety. How any man
could deliberately affirm that such a diabolical state of society
as this enactment would constitute was sanctioned of Heaven,
was px*otected, authorized, commanded by a holy God, passes
our comprehension; how he could suppose that other men,
with an enlightened moral sense, could receive such enact-
ments of impurity and cruelty as the dictates and records of
divine inspiration, worthy of a solemn commentary, is equally
amazing. But, with a theological literature baptized in such
opinions, the tenacity and despotism are not strange, with
which the supposition of there being some sanction of slavery
in the Scriptures has knotted itself upon the general mind, has
become rooted and grounded as a common principle, an axiom,
a root of bitterness and error, a possession, indeed, by the
father of lies, and the murderer from the beginning.
Is it any wonder that under such teachings, and from a bap-
tism with such habits of thinking, and such doctrines of devils,
as the supposed water of life, a man like John Newton should
have been enabled even to continue in the slave trade for some
time after his conversion, without any compunction, any mis-
giving, any discovery or sense of its injustice, its sinfulness
against God? We have the same insensibility to contend
against now, and the same difficulty to persuade men to go
back of the fact of present lawful possession, and inquire if
the original guilt of man-stealing does not, by the divine law,
as well as by common justice, inhere in the very claims of a
present property in man, as that same crime. We have to cut
down a whole forest of lies before we can open a pathway to
the truth. It is therefore essential that we take slavery and
the slaveholder, and carry both the sin and its abettors back to
its reprobated origin, and set them under the judgment of the
word of God.
CHAPTER VI.
Examination op Enactments. — Exodus, xxi. 2-6, and xx. 21. — Perversion op tiie
Meaning of these Passages. — All Contracts Voluntary. — Purchase or Ser-
vices, not Persons. — Meaning op the Phrase, He ;a his Monet.
"Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before
them. If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve,
and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he
came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were
married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master
have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daugh-
ters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he
shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say,
I love my master, my wife, and my children ; I will not go out
free ; then his master shall bring him unto the judges ; he shall
also bring him to the door, or unto the door post ; and his
master shall bore his ear through with an awl ; and he shall
serve him for ever." Exodus, xxi. 1-6.
If we should take the first clause in this body of enactments,
and connect it with the last, thus, If thou buy a Hebrew ser-
vant, his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and
he shall serve him for ever ; it would be no unfair example of
the torture by which it is attempted to pervert Scripture, and
sanctify slavery from the word of God. In the first place, there
is the phrase, If thou buy ; in the second place, there is the
phrase, He shall serve him for ever. "What phrases in the En-
glish language could describe slavery, it might be asked, if
these do not ?
But a candid and careful reader, even of the English alone,
VOLUNTARY CONTRACTS. 67
on reading only the first verse in this series of enactments in
regard to domestic service, would, see at once the falsehood of
any conclusion of property as the meaning of the word buy /
for this buying is only a contract of service for six years ; six
years shall he serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for
nothing.
In the second place, he would see the impossibility of prop-
erty, from the fact of its being a voluntary contract between
two persons, equal parties in the contract, and not with refer-
ence to a third person. The bargain for a slave is the purchase
from a third person, while the person bought stands by as a
chattel, a thing, to be disposed of with no more consultation
of himself than if he were a wheelbarrow. There is no such
traffic as this admitted in the Scriptures. Such buying and
selling is forbidden as man-stealing, to be punished with death ;
and such buying and selling is the great sin of our country,
against God and man. There is never a case of the purchase
of a servant from a third person, as a piece of property is
purchased; but only the service of the servant, for a limited,
specified time, was purchased, and always from himself, the sole
owner.
In the third place, the contract, in the words, he shall serve
him for ever, is equally demonstrated to be a purely voluntary
contract, and for a limited, specified time, and no longer. But
how do you prove this, when the language is unlimited, for
ever? Simply by the institution of the jubilee. At the re-
currence of each fiftieth year liberty was proclaimed through-
out all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof Consequently,
by that known institution it is incontrovertible that the words,
he shall serve him for ever, mean only he shall serve him to the
longest period remaining for any service between that time of
the contract and the next coming year of jubilee.
Just so Avith that passage in Leviticus, xxv. 45, 46, which
the defenders of slavery are accustomed so triumphantly to
fling in the face of those who demonstrate its inherent, eter-
68 EXAMINATION OF ENACTMENTS.
nal and immutable 'wickedness. "Moreover, of the children
of the stranger that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye
buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat
in your land ; and they shall be your possession. And ye shall
take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to in-
herit a possession ; they shall be your bondmen for ever." This
the defender of slavery avers to be proof positive of perpetual
bondage; and if he can but succeed in making his hearer ignore,
or exclude from court, the corresponding and explanatory pas-
sages, if he can prevent him from going behind the English
phrases, and showing what is meant, if he can persuade him
into a judgment, without investigation of the merits of the
case, he can prove the existence of slavery to the satisfaction
of any man who is willing to darken his conscience and handle
the word of God deceitfully, that he may indulge his sins in
peace.
But the same investigation pursued as with the other pas-
sage, dissipates the darkness, removes every vestige of invol-
untary bondage, and leaves no manner of doubt as to the
buying being simply a voluntary contract between two parties
of service for a limited and perfectly definite time, guarded by
the jubilee itself from all possibility of perpetuity. The inves-
tigation proves that the buying of servants among the children
and families of the heathen sojourning in the land no more
meant slavery for them, than it did for the Hebrews. The He-
brews were no more permitted to make slaves of them, than
they of the Hebrews. The word for servant is the same. The
process of obtaining servants is the same. The heathen were
perfectly free to serve or not serve, to go or stay ; and if they
were able, they had the same right to buy Hebrews, if the
Hebrews were willing to enter their service, that the Hebrews
had to buy them. Again and again one manner of law was
commanded both for the heathen and the Hebrews. " Love
ye therefore the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of
Egypt. Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger,
RIGHTS OF STRANGERS. 69
nor of the fatherless, but thou shalt remember that thou wast
a bondman in Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee
thence ; therefore I command thee to do this thing. Thou
shalt not oppress the stranger. And if a stranger sojourn
with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stran-
ger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born
among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye were
strangers in the land of Egypt."
Thou shalt love him as thyself. By the interpretation of
those who seek to falsify the word of God for a sanction of
the wickedness of slavery, this means, Thou shalt thrust him
into a worse bondage than ever thou thyself didst endure in
Egypt. Thou shalt take all his rights from him, thou shalt
buy and sell him* as a camel, or a camel's furniture ; thou shalt
make a mere chattel of him. Thou shalt range up and down
the land, as a tyrant over him, with him for thy lawful prop-
erty and possession. Thou shalt lay thy grasp upon his chil-
dren whenever and wherever it pleases thee, and buy and sell
them, for the slaves of thy children to the latest generation.
Thou art delivered and appointed to exercise this cruelty
upon the heathen, and to set an example of God's benevolence
and righteousness in these abominations in the sight of all the
nations.
If such blasphemy were credited, how could it do other-
wise than make infidels out of all honest men, for who could
accept such immoral horrors as the stuff of a divine revelation ?
It could be only a satanic, selfish exultation, that could take
delight in the discovery of such sanction of sin, and a dishon-
esty equally satanic that could make a man boast of such
sanction, as a proof, satisfactory to his mind, that the book
containing it came from a holy, just, and righteous God. Yet
there is such wickedness among men. It is described in the
fiftieth Psalm : " Thou thoughtest that I was altogether
such an one as thyself. When thou sawest a thief, then thou
YO EXAMINATION OP ENACTMENTS.
consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.
What hast thou to do to declare my name ?"
. Just so, again, with the passage in Exodus, xx. 20, 21 : "If
a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die
under his hand, he shall surely be punished. Notwithstand-
ing, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished, for
he is his money." What can be greater proof of property in
man than this ? exclaims the slaveholder ; for he is his money.
But now if you look back to the second verse, and trace the
context, you find it is purchased voluntary service that is
spoken of, and nothing else. It is the service of the Hebrew,
who could not possibly be a slave, or be bought or sold as
property ; but that limited service being bought and paid for
beforehand, for six years, the man from whom it is owing is
described as the master's money, because he had invested
money for his services in hiring him for six years ; and it is
argued that he being worth so much to his master, for a ser-
vice contracted and paid for, that master could not be sup-
posed to have intended to kill him ; and therefore, though it
would be proper to punish his cruelty, yet not to punish him
for murder, a crime which he did not intend to commit. The
presumption that he did not, is founded on the supposition
that he could not have intended to throw away his own
money, which he would have done, in killing him, as truly as
if he had thrown it into the Jordan or the Dead Sea. If he
had intended to kill him, he would have done it at once ; if such
were his object and his malice, he would have murdered him
on the spot, and would have been put to death for it. But
the continuance of the smitten servant for a season, affords a
second presumption that the killing was unintentional. Such
presumptions not unfrequently shield a criminal, justly, from
the highest penalty of the law, because they present to the
jury a doubt, which must go in favor of the prisoner. When
it is said, he shall not be punished, it can hardly be supposed
to mean that no punishment shall be inflicted at all, but
EIGHTS OF SERVANTS. 71
simply that he shall not be avenged with the blood-vengeance
by the avenger, but with some lesser penalty. The case in
the verses next preceding is similar, and throws still more
light upon the matter. "If men strive together, and one
smite another with a stone, or with his fist, and he die not,
but keepeth his bed ; if he rise again, and walk abroad upon
his staff, then shall he that smote him be quit ; only he shall
pay for the loss of his time, and shall cause him to be thor-
oughly healed."
Not only does the enactment under consideration prove that
the transaction of buying, so called in our English translation,
excluded the possibility of property in man, but it inciden-
tally brings out what will be more definitely noted, the sacred-
ness of marriage among servants as among masters. There
could be no sepai'ation of husband and wife. Husbands, love
your wives ; wives, obey your husbands ; were privileges,
duties, obligations, as inviolable for servants as for masters.
The marriage tie alone, with the domestic constitution grow-
ing out of it, was a shield and sanctity of independence and
freedom for servants, that rendered the degradation of them
into slaves, and the claim of property in man over them, im-
possible. This, of itself, demonstrates the crime and guilt of
American slaveholding. The slaveholder is hunted in the
word of God by principles and texts surer than his own blood-
hounds ; nothing in Divine revelation but holds him, in the
guilt of his claim of property in his fellow-man, to an inexor-
able retribution.
The passages sometimes adduced in support or sanction of
men's wickedness prove the very opposite, and cut the pre-
sumptuous, audacious sinner to the heart. The word of God,
in the hands of these daring, but awkward ignoramuses, is
like a South American boomerang. They think they have
seized a great passage for their purpose, and are shying it
away at their adversaries; and at first it goes this way, then
that, then seems as if it were making straight for the target,
72 EXAMINATION OF ENACTMENTS.
when, in the most astounding manner, by an involution of
eccentric hidden law and power of right motion, it comes
back upon themselves. The man who thought he was going
to prostrate his opponent with it is knocked down by it.
"When a great piratical sinner, or captain of one of Satan's
men-of-war, undertakes to grapple upon his intended victim a
coil of perverted Scriptures, it sometimes runs out almost
as quick as lightning, and carries hirnlelf overboard before he
is aware of the entanglement, or can get his legs out of the
knot. It is a pithy proverb, Give rope to a villain, and he '11
hang himself. He doubles and twists the noose for others,
and holds the rope ready for the body of his victim ; but sud-
denly and unexpectedly the noose is knotted about his own
neck, and at the nearest gallows tree of God's providence the
fool is swinging in the air, till his bones rattle and bleach for
a universal warning.
So men are holden by the cords of their own'sins, and their
own snares entrap them. There is the same fatality in a
wicked state policy, only this takes a broader sweep, and the
principles of an immoral expediency close upon their authors
as the lid of a great sepulcher. The wicked precedents and
laws run on for a while in great seeming prosperity, but at
length they come round face to face in conflict, as great glar-
ing hyenas, with the victim of their rage right between them,
the nation and the church that set them on fire, and sanctified
them, to be devoured by them. " Wo to thee that spoilest,
and thou Avast not spoiled ; when thou hast done spoiling,
then they shall spoil thee." Like Daniel's lions, when the au-
thors of such wickedness are given up to its operation, their
own agents will break all their bones in pieces before even
they have reached the bottom of their own den of villainy.
CHAPTER VII.
Idioms of Buying and Selling in the Case of Hebrew Servants.— Demonstra-
tion of Their Meaning. — The Same as to Heathen Servants. — Families of
Servants.— Eights of Husband, Father, Mother, Children. — The Contract
before Judges.
We proceed with the analysis of the ground-passage in the
system of enactments in Exodus, xxi. 2-6, both for develop-
ment of the argument, and removal of objections.
The very first command limited the ordinary term of serv-
ice to six years, but, at the same time, made an enlarged term
optional as a matter of choice and agreement, solemnly entered
into before judges. We pi-oceed to draw out the argument
from this first stand-point, and it carries us nearly over the
whole ground. If thou buy a Hebrew servant. The first
question arising is this : From whom is the purchase made ?
If from a third party, considered as an owner, this would go
far to prove the existence of some kind of slavery. This,
then, is a matter of the very first importance. But a second
question arises, as to the nature of the purchase, the determi-
nation of which goes far to settle the first question, and is
likewise of the highest importance. .Is the buying which is
here brought to light a transfer of ownership, such as we are
accustomed to indicate by the terms buying and selling, or is
there a peculiarity in the usage of the Hebrew term, which
can not be conveyed by our word buy, but on the contrary a
xcrong meaning is conveyed ? The closest examination of the
Hebrew usage, along with the known tenure of the service in
question, proves that the word does not mean to purchase as
an article of property, the idea of property in a person not
74 IDIOMS OF BUYING AND SELLING.
being comprehended in the transaction, nor admissible. The
word in the original is the same which is used when it is said
that the prophet Ilosea bought his wife, not, certainly, of any
third party who owned her — for in this astonishing instance
she was under no man's authority or power — but of herself, by
agreement with herself. Just so, Boaz bought Ruth, certainly
not of any third party, nor as an article of property. So in
Ecclesiastes, ii. 7, UI got mo servants and handmaids," the
same word translated in the case before us, buy, but meaning
simply I obtained, with precisely the same signification as
when we say, I have got me a good cook or a good chamber-
maid, or, I have obtained an excellent servant. If a gentle-
man in this country should hire a coachman, agreeing to keep
him for six years, and he, on his part, to stay for six years, he
might just as properly be said to have purchased his coach-
man as any Hebi'ew gentleman to have bought his servant.
This word, then, does not mean traffic, as of an article of prop-
erty, but indicates a bargain, free and voluntary on both
sides ; a bargain between two, and not the transfer of a
chattel from the ownership of one person to the ownership
of another person as his property.
This, then, of itself, goes far to determine the first question
in regard to buying a Hebrew servant, namely, of whom?
The answer is, not of any third party, but of himself, develop-
ing this grand peculiarity in the phraseology used as to obtain-
ing servants, that the person hiring himself as a servant is de-
scribed in Hebrew idiom, in relation to the person engaging
his services, as selling himself, and himself receiving the pur-
chase money. He simply sells his services for so long a time,
but the Hebrew idiom takes the Niphal form of the verb to
sell, and describes him as selling himself, though he is as truly
a freeman, and as far from being a slave, or an article of prop-
erty, as ever. And the person obtaining his services, and pay-
ing for them, is said to purchase him of himself, not of any
owner or master to whom he belongs, for he belongs to him-
IDIOMS OP BUYING AND SELLING. 75
self, and is perfectly free to hire himself or not to whomsoever
he pleases.
This idiom and meaning are proved, 1st, from the similar
usage of the terms in other transactions, as we have seen ;
2d, from comparison with Leviticus, xxv. 39, 47, where the
case is supposed of a free Hebrew getting poor, and, as our
translation has it, being sold, that is, in the original, selling
himself unto thee. Of course, being a freeman, no third party
could sell, or has any power over him, aud yet this case is one
in which an ordinary reader, from the very necessity growing
out of the form of the translation (be sold unto thee), would
suppose a sale from a third party. The second case is of a
Hebrew in like manner falling poor, and going into service, in
consequence, in the family of a heathen, a stranger, and the
same expression precisely in the original is used to describe
the contract, but in this case it is translated sell himself unto
the stranger — no third party intimated.
3d. A third proof demonstrative of the idiom and mean-
ing, as excluding any third party, is the prescribed time of the
contract, six years, no more, no less. These six years in the
man's life nobody owned, nobody was the master of, but him-
self. He only could sell them. The bargain for his services
was made with himself, not with any third party. Yet he is
described as being sold, and the man who engages his services
is described as buying him.
4th. The same demonstration is renewed in the fact that
his master, at the end of six years, if he enters into a new and
longer contract for his services, has to buy them over again
of himself, not of any other person ; no third party comes in,
nor does the master gain any right of possession by the fact
of six years' previous service. The servant is as free to enter
into a new contract as the master.
This matter being settled, the question comes up, whether
the same idiom prevailed as to the obtaining of heathen serv-
ants, and it is proved that it did. If thou buy a heathen serv-
76 IDIOMS OF BUYING AND SELLING.
atit, would mean precisely the same, as to the parties and the
purchase, as in the case of the Hebrew servant. But inas-
much as nothing is here specified in regard to any other than
Hebrew servants, it might have been argued that there was
no allowance of heathen servants at all among the Hebrews,
because every part of this domestic arrangement was so care-
fully ordered by law. Accordingly, the legal provision was
inserted, and the terms on which the heathen might be ob-
tained for servants were explicitly settled. And the phrase-
ology employed in regard to them, as to .buying them, and as
to their selling themselves, has precisely the same meaning,
and no signification of slavery in it. In their case, there could
no more be the buying of servants of a third party than in
the case of the Hebrews. There were express provisions
against such an enormity, of which provisions the great fugi-
tive slave law in behalf of servants, not of masters, constituted
one ; which law, if we apply it exclusively to the heathen, as some
contend, made the slavery of the heathen absolutely impossi-
ble, bringing it to an end the moment they touched the He-
brew soil. For, by that fugitive law, any heathen slave was at
liberty to renounce* the service of his master at any moment,
and betake himself to the Hebrews for protection, and every
Hebrew was bound to protect his freedom. So far, therefore,
were the Hebrews from the wholesale privilege of making
slaves of the heathen, or buying them as slaves, that they were
by law compelled to receive and shelter as free, and to pre-
serve and defend from oppression, every heathen slave who
preferred freedom. No heathen could be obtained- by any He-
brew as a servant without his own consent, without a free
contract entered into, and the time specified and the wages
paid.
Now, then, a third point is this very point of the length of
time. "If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years shall he
serve /" but there may be a longer period of service, if he
chooses to engage for it, and if the master agrees to it also on
IDIOMS OF BUYING AND SELLING. *77
his part. And this longer period Avas also carefully and strictly
defined, and the perfect freedom of the servant at the close of
it provided for, whether Hebrew or heathen. In the case of
both there was the greatest care in law to prevent the possi-
bility of any limited contract of service, however long, pass-
ing into a claim of property in person. All contracts must be
fulfilled, both of men-servants and maid-servants. A Hebrew
master might have a household of both, and if a man-servant
should marry a maid-servant, and wish to leave the master's
service before his wife's contract with the master had expired,
he would have no right to take her away with him, though she
would have the right to leave as soon as her time of service
also was up.
But suppose the man-servant in such a case should say that
he desired to enter into a new and longer contract with his
master, so that he and his wife might still remain in his serv-
ice ; he was at liberty to do this, and the master was com-
pelled to consent, but the new contract must be until the
jubilee, however distant that might be ; and it might be ten,
twenty, thirty, or even forty years, according as the servant
was hired at the beginning or towards the close of the jubilee
period. A wife was paid for in those days just as Jacob bought
his wife of Laban, with seven years' service, and Rachel with
seven other years. But yet the language used is that of giving
on the part of Laban, not selling. " I will give her to thee.
And he gave him Rachel." Just so in the case before us in
Exodus, the statute having perhaps been formed with reference
to this very example. "If his master have given him a wife,
and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her
children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself."
Exodus, xxi. 4.
But who does not see that if we were restricted to these
words ; if we were not permitted to go behind them, and in-
quire on what usages they are founded, and what mutual
rights and relations of the parties they explained ; if we were
78 IDIOMS OF BUYING AND SELLING.
shut up to these words alone, as to a legal writ, back of which
we could not inquire, the enactment and procedure would
look very arbitrary, would seem cruel and oppressive, if we
had to give an opinion without examination of the other side ?
If a slaveholder could take this passage and some others, and
fling them in our faces, restricting us from inquiring what they
mean, what witnesses they can bring as to their meaning, just
as he can prevent his slaves from testifying against any cruel-
ties, however horrible, of white men, then he might say, as
he can of his own wicked statutes, these are my justification
for holding immortal beings as property, and you are not per-
mitted to go behind these extracted verses to learn from the
context what they really mean, or to gain that explanation
which the word of God itself affords in regard to them.
In those days of early simplicity and nobleness, a man seek-
ing a wife was not hunting for a fortune ; he sought his wife,
if he followed Jacob and Boaz's example, out of love; he
considered his wife herself as his fortune, and was willing to
give a large dowry for her, instead of demanding a dowry
with her. The matches in the Bible are love matches, and
Jacob's courtship was a courtship of seven years' service to the
father of the damsel. And the father is sometimes described
as selling his daughter, as in the very chapter before us, when
he gave her iu betrothal to her future husband, but certainly
without the most distant shadow of that io-nominious meaning
which we justly attach to the infamous transaction, not un-
common in American slavery, of a man selling his own daugh-
ter for gain. But more generally the father is described
as giving his daughter, even while the husband is described
as buying her. Just so, in the case before us in Exodus, the
statute having perhaps been framed with reference to the very
example of Laban with Jacob and Rachel. And the moment
we find that the dowry a man was expected to pay for a wife
amounted, in the case of a laborer like Jacob, to seven years'
steady and faithful apprenticeship and service, then we see
IDIOMS OP BUYING AND SELLING. 79
that the master making such a grant, such a contract of mar-
riage with his servant, has a claim for the payment from him.
If it was right for Laban, it was right for any master ; if it
was a just rule for Jacob, it was just for any servant.
And as he could not take his wife and children away without
having paid the just dowry, so neither would the law allow him
to take the children from their mother, but they must remain
with her. Under these circumstances the servant might at
once engage with his master for the long term of service, and
the covenant had to be ratified before judges in the most
solemn manner, for the protection of the rights of either
party, and for security on all sides against oppression and
fraud. The service money in these contracts would seem,
from some very plain indications, to have been paid before-
hand, or a great part of it ; and hence the necessity of a con-
tract before judges, and also the precaution of boring the
servant's ear, to constitute a proof positive of his obligations,
if at any time he should undertake to deny them, and to
cheat his master out of the service he still owed to him. But
every thing was voluntary on either side.
Now the contract for this longest period of service ever
allowed is expressly described as a contract for ever ; he shall
serve him, for ever. Yet it is demonstrated to have been only
till the jubilee ; for at that time, in the great recurring fiftieth
year, by the central, fundamental, governing law, to which all
contracts of business, of possessions, and of service were
subordinate and amenable, every inhabitant of the land was
free, and all arrangements of hiring and paying were calculated
with reference to that time and that event, when every pre-
vious engagement came to an end. The conclusive proof of
this is in Leviticus, xxv. 47-54 and 39-41 : " He shall serve
thee unto the year of jubilee, and then shall he depart from
thee, both he and his children with him." The term for
ever, applied to domestic service, is necessarily restricted in
its meaning ; at any rate, it can not refer to eternity. The
80 IDIOMS OF BUYING AND SELLING.
limits of the restriction have therefore to be sought and ex-
plained from known circumstances. Under the law of jubilee
it was perfectly plain, and could not be extended. It could
not mean perpetual servitude, nor through the lifetime, be-
cause the time at which the contract was made might have
been only ten years, or less or more, before the recurrence
of the jubilee, and then, by the great controlling law, men-
servants, maid-servants, and children all went out free.
This term for ever, thus applied to the contract with Hebrew
servants, being thus indisputably demonstrated and confessed
to mean only to the jubilee, is in the same way demonstrated
to mean the same thing, to be under the same restriction, when
applied to the contract with heathen servants. They also
might in like manner be bound by the for ever contract, but,
in like manner, also, and by the same limitations, it came to
its close for them at the jubilee. They too might be engaged
for the shorter or for the longer period, but it was just as vol-
untary with them as with the Hebrews, and optional to make
whichever contract the law allowed ; all contracts whatsoever
coming to an end at the jubilee, when liberty was proclaimed
to all the inhabitants of the land, whether Hebrew or heathen,
natives or strangers.*
* JosEPnus. Antiq., B. III., ch. xii. was thus that the Jubilee, as the year
Josephus intimates no restriction, but of Redemption and of Liberty, univer-
says, in the most general terms, ol sal, was so lively a type of the coming
6ovXe(iovtec £?.Ev0£f)oi tlipicvTai, the of Christ, and the ransom by him of
servants are set free. Immediately sinners of every race. See, also,
previous ho has said, speaking of the Lightfoot. Works, Yol. Y., 136.
freedom of the fruits of the earth to Lightfoot quotes Zohar in Lev. xxv.,
all in common in the seventh and lif- " As at the jubilee all servants wext
tieth years, that there was no distinc- free, so at the last redemption," etc.
tion in that respect between their own Also, Yol. III., 110, 111. Compare
countrymen and foreigners. If in Saalschutz, Laws of Moses, Yol. II.,
minor things, much more in this great 714. Also, Kitto's Cyclop., Art.
law of justice and benevolence, would Slave. See, also, remarks in Stil-
the grand principle bo fulfilled, Ye lixgfleet's Origines Sacra;, Yol. I,
shall have the same manner of law ch. vii.
lor the stranger and the native. It
CHAPTER VIII.
Freedom and Eights or the Children of Servants. — Essence of American Slav-
ery.— Perversion of the Marriage Relation into a Slave-Breeding Factory.
— Impossibility of such a Monstrosity and Atrocity being Sanctioned of God.
And now we have a fourth point, of immense importance in
this investigation, growing directly out of this clause before
us in the twenty-first chapter of Exodus, the point, namely,
as to the position and rights of the children of servants born
in the households of their masters. Did they belong to the
master, or to their own parents ? The bare statement of the
question is enough to settle it, but we patiently pursue the
investigation. From the length of the contracts with servants,
both ordinary and extraordinary, both the six years' contract
and that up to the jubilee, it follows, necessarily, that there
might be, must be, children of servants born in the house. If
these had belonged to the master, and not to the parents,
then the ordinance of marriage would have been, as to serv-
ants among the Hebrews, neither more nor less than a slave-
breeding institution, a perpetual manufacture of property in
human flesh, for the sole profit of the owner, the manufactory
being established and protected by the same divine law which
said, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor and the stranger as thy-
self" It would have broken up and destroyed the parental
relation, and changed the children of the servants into house-
hold cattle of the master, owned by him, and owing obedience
to him only. It would have cut off" one whole commandment
in the decalogue from its application to parents and children,
" Honor thy father and mother," and transferred the author-
ity and claim of obedience to the master and owner, the rela-
4*
82 EIGHTS OF CHILDREN".
tion between father and mother being only that of factors,
that of agents for the owner, to prepare, stamp, and make
over into his possession, for his riches, new articles of prop-
erty belonging to him.
If any one can believe that a marriage institution, of a na-
ture so barbarous and diabolical as this, was set up by the
divine law among the Hebrews, such a man can believe in any
iniquity as divine. And to this extent a man must go in order
to find any sanction of the system of American slavery in the
word of God. For the essence of American slavery, the cen-
tral, fundamental element of cruelty and crime, by which it is
sustained and made perpetual, is just this, namely, the inces-
sant and perpetual stealing of children from their parents, by
the factorship of the marriage relation, perverted, corrupted,
diabolized, into an engine of anguish and debasement to the
parents, and of gain to the masters, that hath on it, more than
any thing else in this world, the stamp of hell. But of this
indescribable and infinitely atrocious wickedness there can not
be a trace discovered in the Hebrew laws or domestic usages.
The children of servants could no more be taken for property,
or converted into property, or claimed by the master as be-
longing to him, than the servants themselves.
It would be infinitely monstrous to suppose that whereas
the parents were free to hire themselves out as they chose,
and could not be challenged as owing service to any one
longer than six years, or, if for a longer period, only by a
definite, voluntary contract, and never were, nor could be
slaves, never could become the property of their masters ;
that their children, by the accident of being born to them
while they were engaged in his service, became, not their
children, but his property ! Where are the articles of such
villainy, or any indications of them ? Where did ever the
parents exist on earth that would consent to it? The suppo-
sition of such a thing among Hebrew parents, such an admis-
sion of child-stealing as an article of domestic service, would
ATROCITY OF CHILD-STEALING. 83
be an impious buffoonery. Such a thing could not exist,
such an operation could not take place, but by divine com-
mand, and upon a voluntary contract. Was there ever such
a command, or, even among the imported forms of idolatry,
was there ever such an incarnation of Pandemonium, bad
enough to suggest, or fierce enough to enforce it ? Was
there ever a set of servants so servile and dehumanized as to
obey it or admit it ? Did they ever make such a contract ?
Did they ever agree that, though the master had no power
over them, no claim upon them as property, he should never-
theless have the right to grasp and hold as his property the
objects of their affection, the children given to them of God,
and dearer to them than themselves, just by reason of the fact
that they were born in his household ? Could a more incred-
ible, impossible monstrosity of oppression and of cruelty be laid
to the charge of a divine revelation ? Nothing but a system
which is " the sum of all villainies" could ever give birth to
the imagination of such an atrocity.
Even if the tenure of service on the part of the parents
had been such as to admit some idea of property in them-
selves, bought and paid for by the master as their owner,
which it does not, still there could be no claim, except by a
separate agreement and purchase, to the children ; and such
agreement there never was, nor ever the possibility of such
purchase provided for. Even if the law could be shown to
have given you property in the father, it gives you none in the
child. Not one step can you go in this wickedness beyond
the bond. If the law could allow your pound of flesh, it gives
no drop of blood ; above all, it does not allow you to take the
heart's blood of the parent, in consigning the children, from
the very womb, to the degradation and hopeless misery of a
breathing and sensitive article of property and traffic. For the
sanction of such an abomination, you have got to show a law
in Hebrew legislation for claiming the children of servants,
without right, without equivalent, without consent, a law dem-
84 RIGHTS OF CHILDREN.
onstrating that for all that portion of the human family who
work for wages, children are not a heritage from the Lord,
but an heir-loom for the owner's avarice and cruelty. Such
a law you can show in American slavery, and it brands the
page where it is recorded, and the whole legislation that ad-
mits and sustains it, to everlasting execration, as the climax
of iniquity and cruelty. But you can not, dare not, claim
that as an essential element of Christianity; yet you must,
in order to find the least sanction of American slavery in
God's word, produce in that word the .exact model of that
devilish law.
There is, certainly, no natural right to enslave. It must be
the creation of law, and of law framed on purpose for oppres-
sion, on purpose to establish, as legal, that which is naturally
unjust. It were blasphemy to suppose this done by Jehovah.
But assume, if you please, the existence in Judea of servants
bound for life, bought for life. Is there any natural claim upon
the children in consequence of such purchase of the parents ?
Did they, when they sold their own services, stand as the fed-
eral head of a race consigned by that purchase as the property
of their masters for ever? Is there the slightest indication of
such a monstrosity ? Is that the meaning of God's embrace
of the children in his covenant of mercy and love to the
lathers? Was that the meaning of the Lord Jesus, when he
said, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid
them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven ? All these
enormities are essential to the existence of slavery, of that
American slavery which claims to be sanctioned of Jehovah
in his word. It constitutes and perpetuates, under pretense
of divine law, nay, and of divine benevolence, such an accursed
race, a race given over as the property of another race, with-
out equivalent, without purchase, without payment.
The examination of the point before us is as an observa-
tion by the quadrant at sea, whereby we bring down the sun
to demonstrate our exact position in relation to this sin ; we
EIGHTS OF MARRIAGE. 85
learn the position of this sin in morals, and the depth and ad-
vancement of our depravity if we maintain it. We guage
the guilt both toward God and man by this test, and show the
impossibility of there ever having been the least sanction of
it on the pages of a divine revelation. The institution of
marriage was for all mankind, and not for certain aristocratic
or governing classes merely. The unity of the family circle,
with its privileges of sanctity, freedom and independence that
could not be invaded, was not for the wealthy merely, while
the laborer, the servant, was to be excluded from it, and put
under the law of the contubernium for the master's profit ;*
under the operation, in a slave-breeding manufactory, of a
promiscuous concubinage so diabolical, that that worse than
heathen monstrosity, set apart of God with a special seal of
wrath branded upon it, should become no uncommon reality,
" That a man and his father should go in unto the same
maid."f
The institution of marriage, so adulterated, in combination
* Fuss, Roman Antiq., of Slaves, remarkable proof of the efficacy of
sec. 51, 52, 54, 56. The frightful the system of American slavery, as a
similarity is to be noted between hot-house of exotic abominations that
Roman and American slavery — Ro- could have been reared nowhere else
man under the system of Paganism, under heaven, under no climate, in
American under Christianity — and no tropic of pure, unadulterated na-
especially the oneness and monstros- tive religion, but only where the ca-
ity of both in the same Sodomic li- pacities of natural depravity were
centiousness and adultery, on prin- assisted by the artificial combinations
ciple and for profit. It has been of a gangrened and perverted Chris-
gravely decided that the marriage tianity, made the efficient instrument
contract not being possible in law of deadliest sin. "While they promise
between slaves, the crime of adultery the perfection of liberty, the sup-
is done away among them, and they porters of this system are themselves
having no marital rights, no man can the servants of corruption, speaking
be punished for any violation of them, great swelling words of vanity, out
f Amos, ii. 7. The startling appa- of a heart exercised with cursed
rition of the grossest and most horrid practices, and presenting to the world
iniquities engendered from the ming- an amalgamation of the gospel in
ling of the worship of Moloch aud of a form of most vaunted orthodoxy
God, in full blossom and power under with the most wanton antinomian-
the light of the gospel, is the most ism under heaven.
86 EIGHTS OF CHILDREN.
with the law of domestic service, must have constituted, if
that service was the system of slavery, the excommunication,
to the latest generation, of all the posterity of servants from
all the privileges of freedom, and the creation and consecra-
tion of children and children's children, for and under the
curse of chattelism, to be cast out and trodden down of so-
ciety with a ban worse than any ever contrived or fastened on
mankind by the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition. Where is
the covenant of such an abomination ? In what part of the
charter of divine mercy for mankind does it lie enshrined or
buried ? Under what literal or typical swathing, with what
winding sheets of grave-clothes, laid away for the millennium
of its resurrection ? It has been reserved for the false Mes-
siahs of a modern slaveholding Christianity to stand at this
sepulcher, and bid this festering carcass come forth, com-
manding the church and the ministry to loose him and let
him go. And this is the missionary Lazarus, whom the mod-
ern interpreters of divine providence are to charter and send
out as the great power of God, the wonder-working, mission-
ary, providential agency, whereby Ethiopia shall soon stretch
forth her hands unto heaven !
The entailment of slavery among the Hebrews, the law of
its hereditary succession, the abrogation of marriage by it, and
the substitution of a system of concubinage and adultery in-
stead of that divine ordinance, would have changed the whole
condition and history of the nation. If the children of serv-
ants had been of necessity and by birth slaves, if such had
been the law, and consequently the practice, the result would
have been inevitable, a slave population in Judea increasing
more rapidly than the free Hebrews themselves. But for a
thousand years there is not the least trace of such a popula-
tion, or law, or traffic ; and the last crime that filled up the
measure of the nation's iniquities, and brought down upon
them the wrath of God without remedy, was the attempt to
GUILT OF CHILD-STEALING. 87
set aside their free constitution, which made such a slave race
impossible, and to establish slavery in its stead.
"We see, very plainly, some of the reasons of God's extreme
severity in punishment of that last mighty crime. The moment
that free constitution, which had been appointed of God, was
set aside, and the people took their servants and said, You
shall be ours at our pleasure, our property for ever, it made
them all, at one blow, men-stealers — a nation of men-stealers.
And if they proceeded to take the children also, as they would
have done, it would make them double men-stealers, that is,
stealers of the children first from their parents, second from
themselves, without any price or equivalent paid to any one.
But in the very same chapter of laws in which God had re-
stricted the period, of Hebrew domestic service to six years,
there was written out also the great divine law against man-
stealing and selling : " He that stealeth a man, and selleth
him, or if he be found in his hand, shall surely be put to
death." Now the stealing of mere property was never pun-
ished by death ; and if men had been considered as property,
there would have been no such penalty as that against the
stealing of men. But they were not ; and because the convert-
ing of them into property Avas a perpetual moral assassination
of them and their posterity, destroying the children through
their parents, therefore, not only the act of stealing, but the
claim of property in a human being, the holding of him as
property, and the making merchandise of him, was, in the
sight of God, as great a crime as killing him ; it was an ini-
quity set in the same category for its punishment as murder.
And such a system as that of slavery could not possibly
have been established without this crime and guilt of man-
stealing ; for even supposing any persons ever to have been
sold as slaves for crime (of which there never was an instance,
and could not be), the law strictly defended the children from
being affected by that punishment. The children could never
have been held in bondage because the parents were ; there
88 EIGHTS OF CHILDREN.
was no attainder, or entailment of vengeance, permitted. " The
fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall
the children be put to death for the fathers, but every man
for his own sin." Deuteronomy, xxiv. 16. And the practical
enforcement of this law we may find in 2 Chronicles, xxv. 4,
where Amaziah punished the murderers of the king, his
father, " but slew not their children, but did as it is written in
the law of the book of Moses, where the Lord commanded,
saying, " The fathers shall not die for the children, nor the
children for the fathers, but every man for his own sin." God
also says in Ezekiel, in reference to the same thing, " Behold,
all souls are mine ; as the soul of the father, so also the soul
of the son is mine." Ezekiel, xviii., 4.
There was, therefore, no possible way in which children
could be enslaved without man-stealing ; and when the nation,
in the last stage of corruption and decay, undertook so to
change their constitution and laws, as that servants and their
children should be the property of their masters, they became
a nation of man-stealers ; aud for that crime God swept them
from the face of the country. This same iniquity it is, which
constitutes the great guilt of our own nation, and makes
American slaveholders a people of men-stealers. They may
aver that they bought the parents and paid for them, but the
children they have stolen, stolen them from themselves, from
their parents, from society, from God, without one farthing
ever paid for them, with no claim upon them, save only the
unrighteous and cruel enslavement of their parents before
them.
Man-stealing and man-selling are the sole origin especially
of American slavery. The progenitors of the human beings
now bought and sold as chattels in this country were stolen
from their native land, and they who first bought them knew
that they were stolen. And their paying the price for them
to the slave trader could not and did not take away from the
poor stolen creatures their own right of ownership in them-
GUILT OF CHILD-STEALING. 89
selves, but they remained stolen men and women, just as
truly after being bought and paid for as before ; and they
who bought them and paid for them and claimed them as
property, knowing them to have been stolen, were accessory
to the crime, just as, by common law, the receiver of stolen
property is party with the thief. If buying and paying, with-
out just title, constituted lawful property, then what infinite
villainies would be hourly committed with perfect safety !
You, A B, declaring yourself to be the owner of any piece
of property in the city or the country, could sell it to C D
for five hundred or a thousand dollars, could sell any man's
house over his own head, and the payment of that thousand
dollars would make that buyer the owner, though you had no
more right to sell, no more authority on the premises, than the
nakedest beggar in Australia !
The absurdity is palpable, when the article thus bought and
sold is an ordinary item of estate or merchandise ; but the moment
the subject of such buying and selling is a human being with a
dark skin, it is enough for the buyer to aver that he has paid for
him. In the case of ordinary articles of traffic, in the transfer
of property, justice watches both sides, and the seller must es-
tablish his title to sell, or the buyer's having paid forty thousand
dollars for the property could not make it his. In the case of a
negro, it is enough for any white man to swear that he purchased
him, and that makes the purchased black man a slave without
remedy. How dreadful is this guilt ! Plow sinful in the sight
of Heaven such perfect disregard and annihilation of the right
of each human being to the ownership of himself ! The trans-
mission of such property by inheritance is merely the trans-
mission of a crime ; no title can be transmitted where none
existed. A man's slave property being inherited gives him
no title as heir, since it was stolen at the outset, and all the
increase by natural propagation is just merely the increase of
the theft, the race on his hands being a stolen race. It is im-
possible, by transmission, to convert the crime into an inno-
90 EIGHTS OF JUBILEE.
cent transaction. No man can innocently buy a fellow-man as
property, or acquire any right of property in him, though he
should give for him the cost of the whole solar system, it' that
could be weighed in God's balances, and put into his hands.
The essential element of man-stealing is in the very title by
which you claim any creature of those human beings whom
you hold as property.
It is this perpetuating of injustice, this predestination and
legacy of it as an inheritance, which the heirs of the estate
plead that they are compelled to accept, as its guardians, that
makes the system infinitely horrible and monstrous. The ele-
ments of evil in this iniquity, as well as the living subjects of
oppression, run on increasing from generation to generation.
You had perhaps two slaves bequeathed to you ; yourself
create five others and bequeath them. If you merely trans-
mitted the two that you received, the system would be com-
paratively harmless ; but it is a wickedness redoubled by every
successive race of owners, who in their turn not only receive
the stolen goods of those that preceded them, but themselves
steal a new community, themselves claim a new and separate
circle of human beings as their property, and maintain that all
this is by the sanction of God Almighty.
Now, if such iniquity as this, and suoh propagation of it,
had been rendered impossible in no other way, it would have
been by the great law of jubilee, which was a universal, un-
conditional emancipation of all the inhabitants of the land
every fifty years, making it absolutely impossible for any
man's race or posterity ever to be enslaved. And that was
one great object of this law, while at the same time it pro-
vided a preparatory discipline of heathen servants, to fit them
also for the perfect freedom of the Hebrews.
It took them from the influences and examples of heathen-
ism, and kept them, on an average, twenty or twenty-five years
under the power and teachings of the divine law, and then
they were free. The service of the heathen was by voluntary
THE JUBILEE CONTRACT. 91
contract, and not an involuntary servitude ; it was for wages
paid, according to agreement, and made no approximation to
slavery ; and the law extending the term of contract to the
jubilee operated as a naturalization law of benevolent proba-
tionary freedom for those who had perhaps been idolaters
and slaves. They were put under such a system as made
them familiar with all the religious privileges and observances
which God had ordered and bestowed ; a system that admit-
ted them to instruction and kindness, and prepared them to
pass into integral elements of the nation. But all engagements
were voluntary. No Hebrew could compel any heathen to
serve him ; no Hebrew could buy any heathen servant of a
third party as an article of property. No such buying or sell-
ing was ever permitted, but every contract was to be made
with the servant himself. The forty-fourth verse of the twenty-
fifth chapter of Leviticus proves this. " Both thy men-servants
and thy maid-servants, which shall be to you of the heathen
that are round about you, of them shall ye buy the man-serv-
ant and the maid-servant." And the forty-fifth verse contin-
ues, "Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do so-
journ among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their fiimilies
that are with you, which they begat in your land ; and they
shall be to you for a possession." Of the children of the stran-
gers shall ye buy ; that is, ye shall take the children them-
selves, as many as are willing to enter your service on this
contract, not from a third party, but from themselves, by their
own free choice, and from their f tmilies begotten among you ;
and those so taken, so engaged, shall, as to their time and serv-
ice for the period for which they engage themselves, belong to
you, be to you for a possession, a fixture of service, up to the
period of jubilee. " Ye shall take them as an inheritance for
your children after you to inherit a possession ; ye shall serve
yourselves with them for ever."
This language is the same with that used before concerning
the Hebrew servant, under the same long contract till the jubi-
92 TEEMS OF THE CONTRACT.
lee, and what it means in the one case, precisely the same it
means in the other ; that is, they shall be your servants for
the longest period admitted by your laws for any service or
any contract, even till the jubilee. And as engaged by such
contract, and paid on such terms, ye do take them, and may
take them, as an inheritance for your children after you, for
any part of the term of such service which may remain un-
expired, when you, the head of the family, are taken away.
Then those servants, by you engaged and paid for an appren-
ticeship till the jubilee, shall be for your children to inherit as
a possession, the possession of their time and service, which,
by your contract with them, as rightfully belongs to your chil-
dren as to you, until the stipulated period come to an end.
Hebrew servants thus engaged themselves, or sold them-
selves to families of strangers, and it was called selling them-
selves to the stock of the stranger's family ; that is, selling
themselves for a possession to the children of the family, until
the jubilee ; thus constituting a fixture, a possession, as to time
and service that had been engaged and paid for, in the family
stock. This was done by Hebreics themselves, who, neverthe-
less, were perfectly free, and in no sense slaves ; it was done
in exactly the same way by the heathen, on a contract exactly
as free, and they were nevertheless in no sense slaves. But
this jubilee contract, once entered into, Avas a contract belong-
ing to the family ; it was a contract by which the servant's
time and labor having been purchased, if ten, or forty years, was
due to the family for that period. It had been purchased by
the master for himself and his household, his children ; and
the servant so apprenticed would belong, that is, his time and
service would belong, to the family, to the children, if the
master died before the time of the contract expired. If, for
example, the master entered into such a contract the seventh
year after the jubilee, it would be a contract for forty-three
years to come. Now, suppose the master to die ten years
from that time, then manifestly the time and service of the
DURATION OF CONTRACTS. 93
Hebrew sei'vant would belong to the family as their inher-
itance; it would belong to the children as their possession,
after their father ; and, again, if they all died within the next
ten or twenty years, and the servant lived, then ten or twenty
years of the unexpired service would still belong to the grand-
children, as their possession; and so on till the jubilee. It
would be an inheritance for the master, and his children after
him, to inherit a possession ; inasmuch as his death, ten years
after a contract made and paid with a servant for forty years,
did not and could not release that servant from his obligation
to complete the service for which he had been paid before-
hand.
Meantime, the servant could, on his own score, trade with
the money which he had thus received, could turn it to the
most remunerative account possible ; for he was not owned
by his master ; and if any inhuman, oppressive claim were
set up over him as property, he could flee away from such
tyranny, and every man was bound to shelter and protect
him ; no man was permitted to return him to his master.
He was protected by other definite provisions, likewise, from
the cruelty of a bad master ; of which provisions the enact-
ment in Exodus, xxi. 27, is an example : " If he smite out his
man-servant's tooth, or his maid-servant's tooth, he shall let
him go free for his tooth's sake." "We shall proceed to develop
the peculiarities of freedom and benevolence in these remark-
able laws, and demonstrate their operation.*
* See Saalschutz, Laws of Moses, Granville Sha'rpe, Law of Retribu-
on the provisions by which the ser- tion against Tyrants, Slaveholders, and
vant could trade on his own account, Oppressors. Compare, also, Judge
and on the nature of the service ren- Jay on Hebrew Servitude, one of the
dered by Jacob to Laban. Also, best productions of that eminent phi
Ejtto's Cyclop., article Slave. See, lanthropist. Compare, also, Stilling
also, Barnes on the privileges of He- fleet, Origines Sacra;, Yol. I., ch. vii.
brew servants. Inquiry into Scrip, remarks on the duration of the Jubilei.
Views of Slavery, ch. v. Compare Contract.
CHAPTER IX.
God's Fugitive Law for Protection op tiie Runaway. — Comparison of it with
Laws for the Restoration of Property. — Demonstration from it of the Im-
possibility of Property in Man. — The Guilt of such a Claim. — Slavehold-
er Punished with Death. -
" Tnou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which
is escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with
thee, even among you, in that place which lie shall choose, in
one of thy gates, where it liketh him best. Thou shalt not
oppress him." Deuteronomy, xxiii. 15, 16. This is part of
God's personal liberty bill for a free people, who, if they would
preserve their own freedom, must respect that of others, must
protect the liberties of all, without respect of person. The
benevolence and generosity of the Mosaic legislation against
slavery, with the running fiery commentary of the prophets,
denouncing this and every form of oppression, will for ever
remain among the most convincing proofs of a divine revela-
tion. A rainbow over the gates of Paradise, a cataract of
liquid ruby or diamond bursting into spray, with the sun shin-
ing on it, a dome of the celestial city, with a phalanx of angels
floating around it, would not be more beautiful, more won-
derful, than these verses, in contrast with the slave legislation
of the world. This divine fugitive law is a suitable companion
for the law against man-stealing, completing the demonstration
against the possibility of property in man.
It proves that in the divine estimation, no man could own
another man in such a sense, as to have any claim upon him
against his own will, without his own consent, in a contract of
voluntary service; no man could own another man as property;
and if he set up such a claim, the poor oppressed creature so
GOD'S personal liberty bill. 95
claimed had the right to run away, the right to take possession
of himself as his own, no matter how much his alleged owner
might have paid for him. He had the right to run away, and
every righteous man was bound to help him run away, and to
give him shelter and protection. His master could not rio-ht-
eously demand him, for he could not and did not own him, could
not righteously have bought and held him as property. The
bargain of purchase and sale, by which he pretended to have
acquired possession of him, was not only null and void, but
was a theft, a robbery, an act of man-stealing. And so, instead
of returning the fugitive, it would be incumbent on the law to
seize the master making such a demand as his professed owner,
and to indict and punish him for that crime. But the fugitive
could never be treated as a slave ; the whole nation, and every
individual in it, were bound and compelled to regard and pro-
tect him as a freeman. He could never have been justly
bought or sold as property, and the claim in him as such was
forbidden on pain of death.
If he could have been justly, at any time, bought as prop-
erty, then he would have been justly owned, he would have
been the buyer's property ; and if he had fled away, would
have been himself the thief, and by the law of God, every
Hebrew would have been bound to aid in capturing and re-
storing him to his owner. For it was expressly provided that
all manner of lost or stolen property should be restored to the
owner ; and the Hebrew code had a specific closeness of detail
and pertinacity of justice in this respect, that never marked
the jurisprudence of any other people. If any man's ox, or
ass, or sheep strayed from him, and any man found it, he was
bound not only to advertise the owner, but even if he were
his enemy, to bring it back to him again. If the owner was
not known, or lived at a distance, then the law ran, " Thou
shalt bring it to thine own house, and it shall be with thee
until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it to him
again. In like manner shalt thou do with his ass, and so shalt
96 EIGHTS OF PROPERTY.
thou do -with his raiment, and with all lost things of thy
brother'3, which he hath lost and thou hast found, shalt thou
do likewise ; thou mayst not hide thyself."*
All lost things thou shalt deliver unto the owner. Now it
is clear that if a slave were a thing, or if there had been such
a thing as a slave recognized or lawful, such a possibility as
that of property in man, there would have been no withdraw-
ing that kind of thing, that kind of property, from under the
operation of these laws. The obligation of restoring all lost
things, all escaped, or runaway, or stolen property, must have
included the most valuable of all property ; and the law Avould
inevitably have read, Thou shalt especially restore unto his
owner his lost slave. But it reads the reverse, Thou shalt not
deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his
master unto thee. The conclusion is inevitable, the proof
from God impregnable, that man can not own property in
man. If the servant could have been property, then he would
have been the most valuable of all property, and the man de-
taining him from his owner would have been the greatest of
all thieves. If he could have been property, as an ox or a
sheep" is property, then the obligation to restore him to his
owner would have been by as much greater as a man is more
valuable than a sheep. By the market price, on the compari-
son of lost things, according to the southern tariff, there
would be at least fifty or a hundred times a greater obligation
to deliver up a man than a sheep. The thing, therefore,
is unqualified demonstration, and by this line of argument
alone, from this one statute only, it is plain that there can be
no such thing as property in man. This is God's judgment.
But God has made the case still stronger. By the statute
in Exodus, xxii. 1-4, if a man steal an ox or a sheep, and kill it
or sell it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for
a sheep. But if the theft be certainly found in his hand alive,
whether ox, ass, or sheep, he shall restore double. Tha thief
* Deuteronomy, xxii. 1-3.
EIGHTS OF MAX. 97
of mere property was not otherwise punished than by such
fine, but never with death ; but he must make restitution, in
some cases seven-fold. Now, according to this measure, if a
man could have been property, like an ox, if there had been,
or could be, or could have been, under God's law or permis-
sion, such property as a slave, then the thief stealing a man
and selling him as a slave, or helping him to run away, would
have been bound to restore at least five slaves for the one he
stole and sold, or helped to escape ; but if the stolen man
were found in his hand, then he would have to restore two
slaves for one. And if any man, considered as a slave, consid-
ered as property, ran away from his owner, and were caught,
then, having been himself his own thief, he would be bound
to become two men returning ; he must restore two slaves in-
stead of one to his master. If any other man stole him and
sold him, or helped him to run away, he must have restored
five slaves to his owner, instead of the one he had helped to
escape. Such must have been the law, if a man could have
been property, if property in man had been admitted or pos-
sible.
Now read the law in regard to stealing a man. He that
STEALETH A MAX, AND SELLETH HIM, OR IF HE BE FOUND IN"
HIS HAND, HE SHALL SURELY BE PUT TO DEATH. As a man can
not possibly be property, and as the making of him such was
an injury that could never be recompensed, any more than
the injury of murder, the scale of retribution instantly ascends
to the highest penalty possible for crime on earth, and he that
stole, sold, or held a human being as a slave was inevitably to
be put to death. The claim of property in man was such a
crime, that any connivance with it was worthy of death ; and
any legal toleration or establishment of its possibility would
be a wrong against man so immeasurable, and a sin against
God so infinite, that to admit it even by implication in a just
code was impossible. God forbade the very supposition of
property in man.
5
98 DEFINITION OF SLAVERY.
Slavery is the holding and treating of a human being as
property. It is buying, selling, making merchandise of him.
The making merchandise of him is set by itself as the same
crime with the stealing of him, and is condemned ot God to
the punishment of death. The holding of him as a chattel, a
thing of merchandise, is in like manner forbidden on pain of
death. The first law against this crime ran as follows: "He
that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his
hand, he shall surely be put to death." A man, any human
being ; the statute comprehended both Jew and Gentile. The
note of Grotius on this text shows the interpretation given to
it by one of the most impartial and learned jurists in the
world, and one of the most careful and accurate students of
the Scriptures. It is a testimony of great value, as being the
opinion of a competent judge, without bias, without prejudice,
on a matter not then in controversy, the meaning of a statute
perfectly explicit in its terms, and the extent and particularity
of its application.
This emphatic note was adopted by the General Assembly
of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, in the publi-
cation of the Larger Catechism appended to the Confession of
Faith, and it stood there for a number of years, a faithful tes-
timony from the word of God against the iniquity of slave-
holding. The note of the Assembly was on the first paragraph
of the answer to the question, "What are the sins forbidden in
the eighth commandment?" Answer, "The sins forbidden in
the eighth commandment, besides the neglect of the duties
required, are theft, robbery, man-stealing, and receiving any
thing that is stolen." Note, "1 Timothy, i. 10. The law is
made for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with
mankind, for mex-stealeus. This crime among the Jews ex-
posed the perpetrators of it to capital punishment (Exodus,
xxi. 16), and the Apostle here classes them with sinners of the
first rank. The word he uses, in its original import, compre-
hends all who are concerned in bringing any of the human
DEFINITION OF SLAVE-HOLDING. 99
race into slavery, or in detaining them in it. ITominura fares,
qui servos vel liberos abducunt, retinent, vendunt, vel emunf.
Stealers of men are all those who bring off slaves or freemen,
and keep, sell, or buy them.'1'' " To steal a freeman," says Gro-
tins, "is the highest kind of theft. In other instances, we
only steal human property, but when we steal or retain men
in slavery, we seize those who, in common with ourselves, are
constituted, by the original grant, lords of the earth." Gen.,
i. 28. Vide Pol. Synopsin, in loc.
This direct and faithful testimony against the sin of slave-
holding stood for years in the book of the Presbyterian Con-
fession of Faith. Editions of it were published and freely
circulated at the South,* where the testimony could not be
contradicted, and as being the testimony of the church, in her
received standards, was of the highest authority and impor-
tance, to be carefully maintained and constantly and without
hindrance proclaimed. It was worth more than all that has
since been put in its place, by any or all Assemblies since the
year wrhen it was expunged from the volume. For expunged
it was, and that too at a time when its voice was becoming
more and more powerful and necessary, and a long and com-
promising note in the year 1818 was set in its place.
The first law against man-stealing, holding, and selling, re-
corded in Exodus, was promulgated of God in the year B. C.
1491. Forty years afterwards, this statute appears in another
form, or rather, an additional statute is enacted, not taking the
place of the other, nor in any way abrogating it, or restricting
its application, but particularizing the native Hebrew, the Israel-
* The edition before me is that of the fled and adopted by the Synod of
year 1801, at Wilmington and Balti- New York and Philadelphia, held at
more. The title page is as follows: Philadelphia May the 16th, 1783, and
" The Constitution of the Presbyterian continued by adjournments until the
Church in the United States of Amer- 28th of the same month. Wilming-
ica, containing the Confession of ton : Printed and sold by Bonsall &
Faith, the Catechisms, the Govern- Niles; also sold at their bookstore,
ment and Discipline, and the Direct- No. 173 Market street, Baltimore,
ory for the Worship of God. Rati- 1801."
100 SLAVE-HOLDING AS MAN-STEALING.
ite, as the object of a special protection. This statute (in Deut.,
xxiv. 1) runs as follows : " If a man be found stealing any of his
brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of
him, or selleth him, then that thief shall die ; and thou shalt
put away evil from among you."
If we inquire the reason for the repetition of the old statute
against man-stealing, in this new form, we shall probably find
it in the fact of the tendency of the appointed system of do-
mestic service among the Hebrews, as an apprenticeship, ordi-
narily of six years, to pass, in the hands of a cruel householder,
into oppression ; the temptation for him to take advantage of
the power given him by this contract, to hold the servant for
a longer period, and in fact attempt to enslave him. A man
might possibly endeavor to do this in regard to a Hebrew
servant, who would not dare attempt it, in the face of the old
law, in regard to any heathen freeman, or any man, the stealing
of whom required the commission of the whole crime, without
any foundation of previous legal service to build upon. The
making merchandise of any of his brethren would be the
changing of him from a voluntary servant into a slave ; it
would be the act of man-stealing, if he held him as a servant
against his will, without contract, with the claim of property
in him, and the claim and usurpation of the right of disposing
of his services, or of his person, to others as property. Such
a transfer of him would be a crime worthy of death ; and any
man who entered into the conspiracy against him, receiving
him as property, and in his turn maintaining the claim of prop-
erty in him, and treating him as merchandise, committed the
same crime, and came under the same condemnation.
Now it is plain that this crime, if the fact of its being com-
mitted at second-hand deprived it of any of its primeval wick-
edness, might have passed in Judea into a domestic institution,
a possession, an organized sin, with connivance and protection
of the law ; just as it has done in our own land, where the
very same iniquity, forbidden by law as piracy, in the primal
SLAVE-SELLING AS MAN-STEALING. 101
act, in the first taking of a human being as property and mak-
ing merchandise of him, is, by simple transfer through other
hands, transfigured from crime into righteousness, from theft
into lawful possession, from man-stealing into a just domestic
right and honorable mercantile transaction ; is established and
protected by law as an institution, is defended by divines, and
received into the bosom of the Church as a Christian and
missionary sacrament !
God would not suffer such horrible perversion of justice,
and enshrinernent of iniquity as righteousness, among his an-
cient people, and therefore statute after statute was enacted to
render it impossible. The stealing, the selling, the making
merchandise in any way, not only of a man, a heathen, a
stranger, but of a Hebrew, though he were a servant, or of
any of the children of Israel, under whatever pretense of
service due, was forbidden on* pain of death. Whosoever
was found detaining or claiming any human being for such
purpose, or conspiring with others to maintain such a claim,
was found guilty of stealing a man, and was to be punished
with death for it. There is doubtless, in the particularity of
these statutes, a reference to the crime by which Joseph was
sold to the Ishmaelites by his brethren, which act was, in both
the sellers and the buyers, the act of man-stealing, and was so
described by the record in Genesis. Joseph was stolen by his
brethren in being sold by them ; and if they had been the
buyers instead of the sellers, if they had bought him as mer-
chandise, instead of selling him, the crime would have been
the same ; the making merchandise of a human person being
under all forms and circumstances, no matter through how
many transfers, by how many parties soever, the crime of
man-stealing.
Men-stealers, in the words of the original note in the Pres-
byterian Catechism, comprehended all who were concerned in
brmging any of the human race into slavery, or in detain-
ing them in it. Now the slaveholder, the holder of human
102
CONCLUSION OF THE CRIME.
beings as property in slavery, is, in all cases, the man who is
concerned and employed in detaining the victims of this op-
pression in it. The slaveholder may say that he only received
the stolen property, and that he paid for it in receiving it.
But one of the sins forbidden in the eighth commandment is
the receiving any thing that is stolen ; and one of the forms
and methods of this sin, to be punished with death by the law
of God, Avas the holding of any human being in slavery as
property ; not the mere stealing of him, which was the more
palpable form of the crime, but also the holding of him in
such bondage, as property, (which might more easily have
escaped notice,) was the whole crime, and was as certainly
to be punished with death as the original stealing. This dis-
poses of every slaveholder before God, and sets the crime of
slaveholding just where it ought to be set — under the gal-
lows.* .
* Compare Granville Sharpe's
powerful scriptural presentation of
this guilt, in bis Law of Retribution
against Tyrants, Slaveholders, and
Oppressors ; and Aristotle's definition
of a slave, KTTjfia icai opyavov tov
deoTTorov efupvxov, an animated tool
and piece of property for the master's
use; with the slave laws by wbicb
this definition is carried into de-
tail ; and the fearful severity with
which in all ages these laws have
been executed ; and the manner in
which the slaveholder makes merch-
andise of unborn generations, and
brands the babes of his slaves, as soon
as they are born, with the Pagan's
brand for an immortal being. All
things taken into consideration, no
man can wonder at God's awful se-
verity and wrath against the crime
of making merchandise of man, which
is the crime of slaveholding. Com-
pare Grotius and Clarke on Ex.
xxi., 16, and 1 Tim. i., 10, with Dy-
mond's Essays on Morality, ch. xviii. ;
Stephen's Merciless Laws of Slavery,
and Wallox, Histoire d'Esclavage,
Vol. II., ch. v. ; also Fuss, Eom.
Antiq. ; and Becker, Manual, Ac-
count of Rom. Slavery in Bib. Sac,
1845. Compare Becker's Charicles,
Excurs. slaves, and Gallus, Excurs.
slave family ; also Judge Jay's Works,
Reproof of the Church, and Letter to
Ives ; also Stroud, Slave Laws ; and
Goodell, Am. Slave Laws, Part I.
PART II,
DEMONSTEATION
THE HEBREW ORIGINAL
INVESTIGATION
OF WORDS AND STATUTES
CHAPTER X.
Injurious and Tenacious Mixture of Error and Truth. — Importance of the "Work
of Under-Draining. — Investigation of tiie Words for Servants and Service.
— Falsely Translated to Mean Bondage and Slave.
The handling of tbe word of God deceitfully, and all the
miseries and mischiefs consequent thereupon, may begin in a
very small, unnoticed way. It is insects, with their microscopic
eggs, that work the greatest ruin with the most precious
plants and flowers. By the capture of single words, by set-
ting his mark upon them, perhaps clipping and milling them,
and then setting them in circulation as the true coin, Satan
has gained vast possessions. Perverted phrases, occupied
with false interpretations, become the strongest citadels of
the adversary of men's souls. We have adverted to some re-
markable instances of inveterate and obstinate perversion and
mistake ; a volume might be occupied in tracing their origin
and progress.
The fruits and forms of religious truth, poisoned by such
malignant error at the fountain, have become like gnarled
apricots and apples, stung by the curmlio ; and men have be-
come so habituated to the poisoned fruit, and the fair, sound,
wholesome plum has become such a stranger, that at length
they claim the knotted, bitter work of the eurculio as the per-
fect work of God, and the attempt to excommunicate it from
the market, and introduce the true fruit in its stead, is de-
nounced as the work of infidelity and fanaticism.
Such errors acquire a singular tenacity by time. They con-
glomerate and adhere, till all the neighboring theology is like
an old Roman wall, or like the Mrs Nimroud, with the bricks
100 ERRORS OF PRECEDENT.
so fast in the rocky asphalt urn, that no power can separate
them ; the whole is as one solid rock, through the tenacity of
the mortar. One built up a wall, and another daubed it with
untempered mortar ; but the mortar in this case is tempered
with vehement passion and power, and the most diabolical
wickedness is protected by it.
It is a work of great difficulty to break down these preju-
dices. Precedents of mistake and wickedness, instead of the
divine law, are made to constitute the highway of theology,
the great military road. It follows some tortuous sheep-track,
the highway of God's truth having been deserted, the prece-
dent having been set by some bell-wether of the flock passing
through a gap in the wall, and imitated by others, till the great
route of theological traffic has become established over the
breach of God's own commandments. The error has run on,
age after age giving it sanction, till the support of it has be-
come a mark of theological conservatism ; and he who en-
deavors to stand in the way of the multitude, and direct the
stream of opinion and of trade into the good old paths of
God, is in danger of being himself run over and trampled to
death, or cut down as a heretic and fanatic, or treated with a
commission of lunacy. If he be not, of a truth, an angel,
armed with the sword of the Spirit, and trusting wholly in
God, Balaam on his ass will ride over him for an interview
and compromise with Balak.
A few vicious precedents, especially if of high authority,
are sufficient, even in the church of God, to overlay or shove
aside the law, till they are at length adopted as the law ; pre-
cisely according to the example of usurpation set by the
Scribes and Pharisees in Moses' seat, thrusting the traditions
of the elders in the place of the divine statutes, or alongside
with them, as their supreme interpreters. Error is thus taught
by rote, while the rule of God's word is disregarded or per-
verted. When things have run on in this manner, unchecked,
unquestioned for a while, the vital elements of religion suffer,
NEED OF UNDER-DRAINING. 107
and a poison unsuspected is intruded into our daily food. The
whole province of theology is in danger of becoming an in-
fected region, as a fair inviting country, beneath whose soil
the seeds of disease lurk for activity.
There is a great work of under-draining needed, for we are
as a people who have built upon ground infested with con-
cealed fountains of marsh malaria, and filled in for the pur-
poses of building, with soil thrown over those feverish and
pestilential springs ; which, being thus partially restrained and
suffocated, diffuse their noxious effluvia and seminal principles
through every square foot of soil, into every cellar, beneath
every basement. There is no possibility of outliving, or ignor-
ing, or defying this invisible mischief. There can be no remedy,
no security, but in a thorough under-draining of our ecclesias-
tical and theological marshes by the word of God. The fever
and ague of a false piety is in every shovel-full of soil thrown
up out of such stagnant centuries of error ; every furrow turned
over by the plow of such theology emits a vapor that smites
the very husbandman with disease. All the quinine of the
Tract volumes, all the tonics of the most stringent Calvinism,
can not keep out the sickness from the system, while its ele-
mentary principles are diffused as health. The whole piety
that builds over such foundations will be the condemned vic-
tim of the shakes, a fitful, unreliable, antinomian religion, now
burning, now freezing ; furious and proud in the extremes of
a boasted orthodoxy, and confident at the same time in the in-
dulgence and defense of the worst licentiousness. God must
overturn and overturn and overturn, working according to
Hebrews, xii. 27, and removing the things that are or can be
shaken, till the principle of fever and ague is banished, and
that alone which can not be shaken remains. In this work of
sacred radicalism, there is the divine assurance of receiving a
kingdom which can not be moved.
Our survey thus far has been general and introductory.
We now proceed to a careful investigation of the words, or
108 ORIGINAL FOR SERVANT.
periphrastic expressions, employed in the original Hebrew for
81 wants and bond-servants, servitude and bondage. Not a little
is depending on their history and usage, and we have already
noted the remarkable fact, that there is, in reality, no word
for slave, or bondman, in the Hebrew tongue ; there is no
Hebrew word, into which these English terras, with our ideas
attached to them, could properly be translated, or by which
they could be conveyed. The Roman, Greek, or modern defi-
nition of the word slavery can not, with the least propriety or
truth, be assumed as the meaning of the word used for serv-
ant or bond-servant in the Hebrew Scriptures. This is a most
important fundamental consideration.
ORIGINAL WORD FOR SERVANT.
The ordinary word for servant is is?, evedh. The verb nay,
avadh, to labor, constitutes the root. The primary signification
of the verb has nothing to do with that afterwards attached to
the noun, but is independent, separate, generic. It is an honor-
able meaning ; for labor is the vocation of freemen, or was so
before the fall, when the lather of mankind was put into the
garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it, and to till the
ground ; to work upon the ground, to cultivate it. The first
iustance of the use of the verb is in Genesis, ii. 5 : There was
not a man to till the ground, "1M&, laavodh, to labor upon it,
to cidtivate it.
So in Genesis, iii. 23 : The Lord God sent him forth from
the garden of Eden, to till the ground, from whence he was
taken ; "0?£, laavodh, to wor/c upon it.
So in Genesis, iv. 2 : Cain was a tiller of the ground, "or,
ovedh, a man working the ground; that was his occupation.
Also, Genesis, iv. 12: in the sentence of Cain, the same word
is made use of, the verb in the second person ; when thou tillest
the ground, "0?£ taavod/t.
The generic signification of the word, and the only significa-
tion possible in primeval society, is that of labor, work, personal
SERVANT AND SERVICE. 109
occupation. The same universal meaning is in the command-
ment, Six days shalt thou labor, -asp, taavodh. Exodus, xx. 9.
In process of time comes the secondary meaning, with the
idea included of laboring for another; that additional idea
constitutes, indeed, the secondary meaning. At first it is only
the idea of working for another willingly, or for a considera-
tion, for wages; as might be done by brothers and sisters, or
other blood relatives in the same family. See Malachi, iii. 17:
As a man spareth his own son that serveth him, isyn, haovedh.
There is yet no signification of subjection or of servitude. In
Genesis, xxix. 15, it is used concerning the service of Jacob
to Laban : Shouldst thou serve me for nought ? Tell me what
shall thy wages be ? ■'rnnayjj, a voluntary service. And Jacob
served, etc., *ra»sn, vayavodh, xxix. 20. For the service which
thou shalt serve, xxix. 27, "iajjg yo» sviass.
Next comes the added significance of subjection, first, j^olit-
ically, the subjection of tributary communities under one lord,
as in Genesis, xiv. 4 : Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer,
ite^^a h« i^s, avdhu. So in Deuteronomy, xx. 11 : All the
people shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee,
5p"»a»3, vaavadhu. So in Genesis, xxv. 23, of the subjection
of Esau to Jacob: The elder shall serve the younger, -toyi,
avodh. Also, Genesis, xxvii. 40, in Isaac's prediction : Thou
shalt serve thy brother, yttn, avodh. Also in Jeremiah,
xxv. 11 : These nations shall serve the king of Babylon,
$*-ns nasi. So Genesis, xxvii. 29 : Let people serve thee,
Second, both politically and personally. Genesis, xv. 13,
spoken of the bondage in Egypt : Thy seed shall serve them,
tma», avadhum. Genesis, xv. 14: That nation whom they
shall serve, will I judge, srh»5 -npx ■'San— n». Also, Exodus,
i. 13 : The Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with
rigor, na»r, avidhu. Also, Exodus, xiv. 12 : Let us alone, that
we may serve the Egyptians, en-sw-nx ?Haw\ Also, Jeremiah,
v. 19: Ye shall serve strangers in a land not yours, nays
110 WORDS FOR SERVANT AND SERVICE.
taavdhu. Also, Jeremiah, xvii. 4 : I will cause thee to serve
thine enemies, Sprnsyfti ^rm
Third, spoken of personal servitude. Exodus, xxi. 2, con-
cerning a Hebrew servant : Six years shall he serve thee, na*;
d'wp tip, avodh. Exodus, xxi. 0 : Shall serve him for ever,
b'Vy? rrasj, avadhu. Leviticus, xxv. 39: Thou shalt not compel
him to serve as a bond-servant, nay frWa* ia "iayri— ah. Leviti-
cus, xxv. 40 : Shall serve thee, unto the year of jubilee, nse — i?,
yaavodh, "ias>2 Va-n. The personal servitude embraces the idea
of laboring for another, in subjection and inferiority, either on
contract for wages, or as an oppression without wages. And
thus the meaning and reality of the verb nss passes gradually
from voluntary labor for oneself into service performed for an-
other, either for wages, or under oppression.
There are several other modes of usage in which the verb is
employed, as, first and most commonly, of the service of God.
Deuteronomy, vi. 13 : Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and
serve him, "iasri, taavodh. Joshua, xxii. 5: To love the Lord
your God, and to serve him, "inasjV. 1 Samuel, vii. 3 : Prepare
your hearts unto the Lord, and serve him only, sn*03>i. Also,
1 Samuel, vii. 4 : The children of Israel served the Lord only,
nin^-mx inar^i. Psalm lxxii. 11 : All nations shall serve him,
nnnas\
Second, of the service of idols. Psalm xcvii. 7 : Con-
founded be all they that serve graven images, Vbj ina>-Va.
Ezekiel, xx. 39 : Serve ye every one his idols, i'iss, avodhu.
Deuteronomy, xii. 2 : The nations served their gods, dip— ana*.
Deuteronomy, xvii. 3, and Judges, x. 13 : Served other gods,
tp-.hx b"»n'5>N "ias*!. 2 Kings, xxi. 3, worshiped all the host
of heaven, and served them, trjx "jajjaj. Jeremiah, xxii. 9 :
"Worshiped other gods, and served them, Bna?^, avdhum.
Third, it is used once as synonymous with nj-y, to perform,
in the sense of presenting sacrifice to God ; doing sacrifice, as
our translation has it, Isaiah, xix. 21 : The Egyptians shall do
sacrifice and oblation, rtrtswi hat sna»i.
WORDS FOR SERVANT AND SERYICE. Ill
Fourth, imposing labor on others. Exodus, i. 15 : All their
service wherein they made them serve, bna snay— iris cunnh?-Vs,
service served upon them. Similar is Leviticus, xxv. 46, ren-
dered unjustly in our translation, They shall be your bondmen
for ever ', rbypi cna, taavodhu, on them ye shall impose service.
So Jeremiah, xxii. 13 : With his neighbor's service without
wages, cat-i na?^ wafts, upon his neighbor imposeth work for
nothing. Jeremiah, xxv. 14: Greek kings shall serve themselves
of them, di-rtay, avdhu. Jeremiah, xxx. 8 : Strangers shall no
more serve themselves of him, that is, of Israel, qvvt -r.2>
to— !)"<a»;— *&}, yaavdhu ; shall no more impose servile labor
on him, shall no more play the bond-master with him. This is
as far as the verb ever goes toward the signification to enslave,
an expression for which there is no equivalent in Hebrew,
though the verb isto, to sell, is used for the transaction, as in
the enslaving of Joseph, when his brethren sold him to the
Ishmaelites.
Now upon the verbal is?, evedh, which is the word all but
universally employed in Hebrew for servant, it is the second-
ary meaning, and not the primary, that has descended from the
verb nay, avadh. The noun "ray, evedh, never means a la-
borer, a worker, in the generic sense, as Adam and Noah
were laborers, but always a worker with reference to the will
of another, a worker in subjection, either on contract by hire,
or by compulsion. In Ecclesiastes, v. 12, it is said, Sweet is
the sleep of a laboring man / but there the verb is used, and
not the noun ; "nfrn, haovedh, him that worketh, or him work-
ing, the working man. The noun tny means, indeed, a work-
ing man, but always under direction of another, or in subjec-
tion as a servant, a serving man. This is the generic meaning
of the noun ; not labor, but labor as service.
In Deuteronomy, xxvi. 6, 7, we have examples of several
words used for labor in the same connection, that is, the con-
dition of Israel in bondage : The Egyptians laid upon us hard
bondage, ffop nnh?., hard labor. And the Lord looked on our
112 WORDS FOR SERVANT AND SERVICE.
labor and our oppression, MShV—hK'j »Vto». htzy is the verb
frequently used for laboring to weariness, and feto3>, the verbal
from it, for wearisome toil, employed frequently in Ecclesiastes,
as in Ecclesiastes, ii. 10, 11, 19-22, both the verb and the
noun, both concerning labor of the mind and the body. So
Psalm exxvii. 1 : They labor in vain, *Vte».
In Psalm exxviii. 2, yet another word for labor, which is
frequently used, »*;, thou shalt eat the labor of thy hands,
swj, the verbal, used also in Genesis, xxxi. 42, Haggai, i. 11,
Job, x. 3 : The labor of the hands. But none of these words
besides )"Hb» are used of servile labor exclusively, or with any
definition that restricts their meaning, and decides it as ap-
plied to service for another, as is the case with is* and nnhj>,
for example, in Leviticus, xxv. 39, nay rrhy, rendered in our
translation, the labor of a bond-servant.
Then, secondarily, nay, evedh, is applied by persons of noble
station and life in speaking of themselves to other noble per-
sonages, instead of using the personal pronoun me. It is an
oriental peculiarity. Genesis, xxxiii. 5, in Jacob's address to
his brother Esau : The children which God hath graciously
given thy servant, Jpja?. So Genesis, xlii. 13: Thy servants
are twelve brethren, ipnay. In the same manner, speaking
of their father Jacob, Genesis, xliv. 27 : TJiy servant my
father said unto us, 5pa?. So in Isaiah, xxxvi. 11, the style
of Eliakim, Shebna and Joab with Rabshakeh, Speak, I pray
thee, unto thy servants, V'^.-
This is the style of deference, politeness, humility. It may
be the formal style of equals toward one another in high life,
or the style of the inferior towards the superior. The effect
is an elaborate and elegant courtesy toward equals, and a def-
erential, respectful homage towards superiors. The abrupt-
ness of an immediate address is prevented, and the form of
language seems to have the effect of employing an ambassador
or mediator between potentates. That which, in the courtesy
of a formal politeness, is connected by us with the signature
ELEVATED MEANING OP SERVANT. 113
at the bottom of letters, as, your obedient and humble servant,
or, faith f uUy and truly your friend and servant, the men of
the East applied in daily conversation. See, for example, Da-
vid's interview with Saul, 1 Samuel, xvii. 34 : Thy servant kept
his father's sheep, etc. Also, David's conversation with Jon-
athan, 1 Samuel, xx. 7, 8 : Thou shalt deal kindly with thy
servant. Also, Abigail's address to David, 1 Samuel, xxv.
24-31 : When the Lord shall have dealt well with my lord,
then remember thine handmaid. And likewise David's address
to Achish, 1 Samuel, xxviii. 2 : Surely thou shalt know what
thy servant can do. See also Daniel, i. 12 : Prove thy serv-
ants. Also ii. 7, the address of the Chaldean astrologers to
the king : Let the king tell his servants the dream.
Now to trace the delicate distinctions of intercourse in the
use or neglect of such a form, and the manner in which the m
necessity of an independent spirit may compel its abandon-
ment, let the reader mark the fact that Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, in their interview with Nebuchadnezzar, when
they encountered the rage and authority of the king in full
conflict with the authority of God, threw aside utterly the
formal and deferential mode of address, and exclaimed, in the
first person : " O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer
thee in this matter. Be it known unto thee, O king, that Ave
will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which
thou hast set up." This defiance of the tyrant was far more
bold, direct, and energetic, than if they had said : " The
king's servants will not worship the image of the king." But
their indignation annulled this form of homage, and even the
intimation of being the king's servants, so grateful to the
sense of power, they rejected from their language, and, rising
to the dignity of equals and of freemen, they said : We, O
king, will not obey thee, be it known unto thee. We will not
serve thy gods. It was much as when, with us, to make de-
fiance stronger, it is added, I tell thee to thy face, I will not
heed thee.
114 ELEVATED MEANING OF SERVANT.
But this deferential form is more especially and commonly
the usage of the word nay, evedh, in all addresses to God, and
in prayer. Genesis, xviii. 3 : My Lord, if now I have found
favor in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy serv-
ant. And so 1 Kings, viii. 28-32 and 1 Chronicles, xvii. 17-19 :
What can David speak more to thee for the honor of thy serv-
ant, for thou knowest thy servant ? So Psalm xxvii. 9 : Put
not thy servant away in anger. Psalm xxxi. 1C : Make thy
face to shine upon thy servant. Daniel, ix. 17:0 our God,
hear the prayer of thy servant, tj-ay n?£n-VN.
In the same manner in which the verb nay, avadh, is used
to signify the service of God, the verbal nay, evedh, is also
used to signify the servant of God ; whether the application
be to men of piety generally, those who trust in God, or to
persons called and appointed of God to particular offices and
undertakings. Psalm xxxiv. 22 : The Lord redeemeth the soul
of his servants, i^a? »B?> rnr^ rrrs. Nehemiah, i. 10: Now
these are thy servants, Sp^a?,. Psalm cv. 42 : He remembered
Abraham his servant, 'ray. Psalm cv. 26 : He sent Moses, his
sen-ant, Sua*. So likewise the verbal Jrjby, avodha,is used of
the service of God, and of his temple, and of the righteous,
as in Numbers, iv. 47 and Isaiah, xxxii. 17, the verbal nw*to,
maitseh, from n'sy, to do, beincj here also used as synonymous
with rnay, avodhath. 1 Chronicles, ix. 13 : Able men for the
xoork of the service of the house of God, D^rjssrj— n^a rnSay
h5t£>tt. The expression in Numbers, iv. 47, is illustrative
KtoM rnajn rnay rn'ay "ia»V, to do the service of the ministry,
and the service of the burden in the tabernacle of the congre-
gation.
Now then, we have seen how the meaning of the verb -ray,
avadh, passes from the general idea of labor, to that of serv-
ice for another, at first for wages, afterwards in bondage. But
the derivative, the verbal i^y, evedh, is. never used in any
sense corresponding to the first and generic sense of the verb
to labor, a laborer. It never means an independent laborer,
ELEVATED MEANING OF SERVANT. 115
as when it is said that Cain was a tiller of the ground. The
verb, or participle, has to be used with reference to Cain, and
not the noun, for as yet, the thing answering to the noun, the
servant, was not ; there is no mention of service at the will or
wages of another, no intimation of labor for hire, and no men-
tion of servants.
" "When Adam delved, and Eve span,
"Where was then the serving man ?"
Cain was a tiller of the ground, Genesis, iv. 2, roana "iss> rrr.
He was a man tilling the ground, a man cultivating it, but he
was not a servant. There was labor, but as yet no servitude ;
it is the participle employed, but not the noun. It is some-
what remarkable that the noun is never once employed, nor
does the word servant come into view in the sacred record,
till after the history of the antediluvian posterity of Adam is
finished. Doubtless there was the reality of servitude ; there
must have been oppression in some of its worst forms, for the
earth was filled with violence ; but there is no intimation of
slavery, and the example of some modern nations is sufficient
to show that there may be violence, despotism, and oppression
of the most terrible nature, even where "the system of per-
sonal slavery does not exist.*
* If there had been slavery before Natural Right. Raynal observes
the deluge this would certainly be no that if Pope Alexander III. had been
argument in its favor, no more than iuspired with the love of justice and
than the mention of bond and free in humanity, instead of saying merely
connection with the Judgment Day. that Christians ought not to be slaves,
Natural justice and right are as much he would have declared that man
against slavery as against murder ; was never born for slavery, that none
both crimes are forms of assassina- can lawfully hold a human being as a
tion. See the Abbe Ratnal's ener- slave, that if the slave can not break
getic and powerful reasoning (His- his chains by force, he may flee, and
toire Philosophique des deux Indes, his pretended master is an assassin
Vol. VI., 90-112), compared with if ho punishes with death an action
Gkanville Sharpe's Declaration of authorized by nature.
CHAPTER XI.
First Instance op the "Word foe Servant. — The Curse upon Canaan not Slav-
ery, but National Dominion. — Egypt after Five Hundred Years from the
Deluge. — Words used for Maid-Servants.
The curse pronounced upon Canaan contains the first in-
stance of the use of the word n:=5>, evedh, Genesis, ix. 25, a
servant of servants, fna?. las?. No mention had been made
of servants or slaves in the whole antediluvian history. There
were neither servants nor slaves in the ark. There was no
slave upon the earth when God entered into covenant with
Noah. The whole earth was peopled with freemen, for God
would have the new experiment begin with such, and the
curse of servitude, predicted and denounced as a curse, grew
directly out of sin. " Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants
shall he be unto his brethren."
MEANING OF THE CURSE ON CANAAN.
The use of the word tas, evedh, by Noah, as a word of deg-
radation, a word of inferiority and subjection, the meaning
of which was well understood, shows that the thing indicated
by it was not then a new and strange thing. At the same
time the after history of the word, and its indiscriminate ap-
plication to servants in general, and service of all kinds, proves
conclusively that it was not a specific word for that kind of
servitude which we call slavery. But if there had been the
thing there would have been the name, and if Noah had in-
tended the particidar thing, he would have used the specific
name. If slavery had existed among the antediluvians, it can
CUESE UPON CANAAN". 117
not be questioned that there would have been a term exclu-
sively denoting it ; and if Noah had designed to threaten that
curse, or to predict it, concerning a part of his posterity, he
would inevitably have used that term, and not a term applied
to all kinds of service. There is no word for slavery in the
Hebrew language, answering to our word slavery, nor to the
Greek word dovXeia, although that word is sometimes em-
ployed in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew n^a?,
avodha, as in Exodus, vi. 6, for DJjnasw, from their bondage,
viz., Egyptian bondage. It is certainly a fact of no unimpor-
tant significance, that there is no word in Hebrew which spe-
cifically signifies slave or slavery / and there is the best of all
reasons for it : the reality did not exist, and from the outset,
when the language was formed, the root-word labor was of
necessity taken for service, and from that the various con-
structions have been formed, and no word for slavery has
been created.
In this curse upon Canaan there is, therefore, no proof that
what we call slavery was intended ; no proof that the state
of slavery was either in the mind of the speaker, Noah, or in
the will of God, considered as inspiring the prediction. There
is, indeed, no declaration that either the curse or the predic-
tion was God's, no intimation that Noah was inspired of God
in uttering it, no more than in planting his vineyard ; and
were it not for the gift of the land of Canaan to Abraham,
and the subjection of the Canaanites to the Hebrews, there
would be no reason for supposing a divine inspiration in the
case, since there is no reference anywhere to the prediction
as inspired. But whether it were or not, it is not probable
that the word servant, used by Noah, had the signification
sometimes attached to it a thousand years afterwards. They
assume too much who suppose that slavery existed among the
antediluvians, there being not the least trace of it, and no
more proof of it than that the immediate posterity of Adam
were idolaters. It is most likely that man-stealing and man-
118 CAJSTAAXITES NOT SLAVES.
selling came into practice along with idolatry, fit accompani-
ments or consequences of such wickedness, after the deluge.
The use of the words ns?>, evedh, servant, and f"=". i^y,
evedh avadhirn, servants, by Noah, can not, therefore, be as-
sumed to mean any thing more than servants and under-
servants, even were the passage applied in a personal sense,
■which, however, is not the sense of the prediction.
It is applied, as in many other cases, to the subjection of
nations. The same word precisely is used by Isaac in regard
to the dominion of Jacob over Esau, Jacob's posterity being
the subject of Isaac's prediction as the dominant power.
Genesis, xxvii. 37 : All his brethren have I given to him for
servants, b^ssV. I have made him (Jacob) thy lord, tos.
This did not mean that Jacob and his posterity were to be
slaveholders, and Esau and his posterity slaves, but that one
nation should be under the government of the other. Let
people serve thee, bi»? t)i~i?:, Genesis, xxvii. 29. Just so in
the original prediction, Genesis, xxv. 23 : TJie elder shall
serve the younger, nhr;, yaavodh ; nation in subjection to na-
tion / the phrase employed by Gesenius is pqpulus populo ;
people shall be tributary to people. The prediction in the
blessing given to Esau, as well as that to Jacob, and the com-
pletion of both, leave no doubt as to the meaning of the word,
and the nature of the service designed. See Genesis, xxvii.
40 : Thou shedt serve thy brother, "bsp tphN, but shalt break
his yoke from off thy neck. So accordingly in 2 Samuel,
viii. 14, the posterity of Esau are recorded as in subjection
to the posterity of Jacob, but not as slaves. David put gar-
risons in Edom, and all they of Edom became David's serv-
ants, cms, avadhim. But in 2 Kings, viii. 22, it is recorded
that under the reign of Jehoram, 892 B.C., Edom revolted from
under the hand of Judah, and made a king over themselves.
This kind of service and rebellion is recorded in similar lan-
guage in Genesis, xiv. 4 : Twelve yeai-s they served Chedor-
laomer, my, avdhu y in the thirteenth, rebelled, i"i"ft}, meiradhu.
WORDS FOE MAID-SERVANTS. 119
EGYPT AFTER FIVE HUNDRED YEARS.
After Genesis, ix. 25, it is full five hundred years before we
meet the word nsy, evedh, again, or any indication that the
reality answering to it exists in human society ; and then we
meet it first in the family of Abraham, or rather, first of all,
in the family of Pharaoh, where Abraham for a season resided.
After Abraham went down into Egypt, and was received into
Pharaoh's house, and entreated well, he is represented, Genesis,
xii. 16, as having sheep and oxen, and he-asses, and men-serv-
ants, -••■py, avadkim, and via id-servants, nhBtn, shephahoth.
Here we have, as yet, no commentary on the word, nothing
by which we might be permitted to imagine or assert that
these in Abraham's family were slaves. Hagar, Sarah's hand-
maid, was an Egyptian ; and, doubtless, was taken into Abra-
ham's household, and given to Sarah, in this, his first visit to
Egypt. But Abraham did not go down into Egypt to copy
Egyptian manners, or to adopt into his own household, and
set at the foundation of the domestic and national policy, of
which the divine Being had informed him he was to be the
stock, the civil and social principles and customs of a people
of idolaters. He had gone on compulsion into Egypt, by
reason of the great famine ; but his idea of the morals and
manners of the Egyptians may be gathered from his anxiety
and distress in behalf of Sarah, Genesis, xii. 11, 12. He knew
that the fear of God Avas not in Egypt. The cpxestion, there-
fore, very naturally comes up: Did Abraham, on receiving
these men-servants and maul-servants into his household, re-
ceive and treat them according to the principles of servitude
then prevalent in Egypt? The consideration of the nature
of God's covenant with Abraham will enable us the better to
determine this question.
WORDS FOR MAID-SERVANTS.
But, in the meantime, let us suspend our inquiry as to the
word iay, evedh, and consider the meaning of the two words
120 WORDS FOR MAID -SERVANTS.
applied to Hagar, and designating her situation in Abraham's
family. These are the Hebrew words nhEtr;, shiphhah, and n»»,
amah. Hagar is first introduced to us under the name fttivo,
shiphhah, Genesis, xvi. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, and under this name
Sarah gives her to Abraham to be his wife, and by her Ishmael
is born unto him, and the condition of Ishmael has no taint of
bondage from the condition of his mother. The Hebrew pa-
triarchs neither held nor sold their own children for slaves.
Some fifteen years after Hagar's first appearance as a nh£&
shiphhah, Sarah, enraged at the mocking of Hagar's son Ish-
mael, calls her hen, amah, rendered by our translators a bond-
woman, and her son the son of a bondwoman, Genesis, xxi. 10.
But there is no reason for translating this word bondwoman
rather than servant. God, speaking to Abraham concerning
the whole transaction, calls her mss, amah, most generally
translated handmaid or maid-servant, and says to Abraham,
" Of the son of the handmaid, fiBNsr—ja, ben-haamah, will I
make a nation." Now this same word hex, amah, is used in
Psalm cxvi. 1G, of the mother of David: I am thy servant, and
the son of thine handmaid, ijrjttx— ja, ben-amathekha. It is
also used by Hannah, 1 Samuel, i. 11, addressing the Lord:
Look on the affliction of thine handmaid, SjfJfcK, amathehha,
repeated in the same verse three times. Also, addressing Eli,
1 Samuel, i. 16 : Count not thine handmaid, Tftx. This usage
corresponds with that of the word nrij?, evedh, under similar
circumstances. But in the eighteenth verse, also addressing
Eli, she says: Let thine handmaid, ^nfiB.sJ, shiphhathekha, find
grace in thy sight. It is obvious, therefore, that the words
rocN, amah, and nhsto, shiphhah, are synonymous, one being no
more indicative of a state of bondage than the other. An-
other instance of the use of both interchangeably is in 1 Sam-
uel, xxv. 41, in Abigail's address to David: Behold, let thine
handmaid, ^msn, amah, be for a servant, nnstt;^, shiphhah, to
wash the feet of the servants, ina», avdhei, of my Lord. Here,
then, are these two words, at periods of nearly a thousand
WORDS FOR MAID-SERVANTS. 121
years' distance, employed in the same manner, applied to the
same persons. The impossibility of making a distinction be-
tween the two, as to dignity, will be further evident by exam-
ining the following passages:
Genesis, xx. 14: And Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and
men-servants and women-servants, nhse»i ta"»na»5, evedh and
shiphhah, and gave to Abraham.
Genesis, xx. 17 : God healed Abimelech, and his maid-serv-
ants, vtffrflaKi, amah.
Genesis, xii. 1G: Abram had men-servants and maid-serv-
ants, nh£ii, shiphhah.
Genesis, xxi. 10: Cast out this bondwoman, masn, amah.
* ' T T T 7
Genesis, xxx. 43 : Jacob had maidservants, iViftsti, shiphhah.
Genesis, xxxi. 33 : Jacob's maid-servants'1 tents, nfna«, amah.
Exodus, xi. 5 : The first-born of the maid-servant, nhsain,
shiphhah.
Exodus, xx. 10 : Man-servant nor maidservant, ^ira& amah.
Exodus, xxiii. 12: The son of thine handmaid, ^jMssr- js,
amah.
Deuteronomy, v. 14 : Man-servant or maid-servant, S[*j»s,
amah ; also xii. 18; xv. 17 ; xvi. 11, 14.
Exodus, xxi. 7 : If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-
servant, T02*h, amah.
Exodus, xxi. 27, 32 : Man-servant or maid-servant, mass,
amah.
Judges, ix. 18 ; Jotham calls Abimlech the son of his father's
maid-servant, infcs— }a, amah, who was his father's concubine
at Shechem.
Ruth, ii. 13, applied by Ruth to herself and the hand-
maidens of Boaz, ^haw, shiphhah.
Ruth, iii. 9, used by Ruth twice, thy handmaid, ^rpx, amah.
1 Samuel, xxv. 14 : Let thine handmaid, tjritoN, amah.
1 Samuel, xxv. 25 : But I thine handmaid, 'jtyax, amah.
1 Samuel, xxv. 27 : Thine handmaid hath brought, ^heo,
shiphhah.
122 WORDS FOR MAID-SERVANTS.
1 Samuel, xxv. 28: Trespass of thine handmaid, 5f$o»,
amah.
1 Samuel, xxv. 31 : Remember thine handmaid, Sfftiwt, amah.
1 Samuel, xxv. 41 : Let thine handmaid, r^tz^, be a servant,
ni-istV, shiphhah.
2 Samuel, xiv\ 15 : Thy handmaid, ^fiftBfc, shiphhah.
2 Samuel, xiv. 15 : The request of his handmaid, totes,
amah.
2 Samuel, xiv. 16 : To deliver his handmaid, sn^N, amah.
2 Samuel, xiv. 17 : Thine handmaid said, ^rtjaw, shiphhah.
2 Samuel, xiv. 19 : The mouth of thine handmaid, ^n.rrsti,
shiphhah.
2 Samuel, xiv. G, 7, 12 : Thine handmaid, Sjnrsw, shiphhah.
2 Samuel, xvi. 20 : Handmaids, of his servants, i"nas n'nrrtsN,
2 Samuel, vi. 22, David calls the same, maid-servants,
nSnteNn, amah.
Job, xxxi. 13 : My maid-servant, ims«, amah.
Jeremiah, xxxiv. 9, 10, 11, 10, the same word is used six
times, singular and plural, for maid-servants of the Hebrews,
coupled with men-servants, "snhittj rnrr&ttSn, shiphhah.
These instances determine the usage of the words. They
are evidently used for precisely the same relation, being each
applied, indifferently, to the maid-servant, whether Hebrew or
heathen, just as the word iss, evedh, is applied to the man-
servant. Neither word seems to indicate a higher grade than
the other, Job using mxjn, amah, Jeremiah nhBtJ, shiphhah, and
Moses fiKN, amah and firisto, shiphhah, indiscriminately, for per-
sons held as maid-servants, both Hebrew and heathen, and the
usage in Samuel putting both words indifferently into the
mouths of free women, speaking of themselves.
SEPTUAGINT TRANSLATION BY naidl(7K7].
The Septuagint translation uses the word naidtOKn for both
the Hebrew words, rwN, amah, and rtrjB», shiphhah. The same
"WORDS FOK MAID-SERVANTS. 123
word is used of Ruth, where the Hebrew is the feminine of
■wa, naar, a young man, na^n rny.a.v, this young woman. So
Ruth is the Traidionw as well as Hagar. Also, of all the maidens
of Boaz the same word is used, as in Ruth, ii. 22 : His maidens,
•prn-iss, his young women, and ii. 23 : The maidens of Boaz,
ts'a h'"H?.$, the young women, Boaz himself uses the same
word, ii. 8 : My maidens, ■,n(i3>5, my young women or damsels.
And in ii. 5, G, Boaz asks concerning Ruth, whose damsel she
is ? msa, and the servant answers, the Moabitish damsel,
rvixMi n-i'j, young woman.
But in the New Testament, the same word, Traidiaicn, is em-
ployed in contrast with the word kXevQepaq, with reference to
the case of Hagar, Galatians, iv. 22, the servant in contrast
with the free woman, the word servant being translated bond-
woman, though the same is in other places simply translated
servant or damsel or maid, as in Matthew, xvi. G9, Mark, xiv.
66 : One of the maids of the high priest, \iia ru>v -naidian&v
rov 'Ap^teptwc. If this had been translated one of the bond-
women of the high priest, it would have been an unjustifiable
assumption, if by the term bondwoman were signified slave.
The ordinary usage in the New Testament may be learned
from Matthew, xxvi. 69; Mark, xiv. 66, 69; Luke, xii. 45,
xxii. 56; John, xviii. 17 ; Acts, xii. 13, xvi. 16. Only in one
of these cases is it clear that the word probably signifies a
slave, and that is the case in Acts, xvi. 16, of the damsel pos-
sessed of the spirit of divination, who brought much gain to
her masters, who were pagans, idolaters. On the other hand,
the word dovXn is used only three times, Luke, i. 38, 48, and
Acts, ii. 18, in all three, spoken of servants and handmaidens
of the Lord.
It is, therefore, impossible to determine, merely from the
word 'TTaidioicr], the exact condition signified : for the term in
the New Testament, though it implies service, in a state of
servitude, does not imply necessarily bond-service or slavery,
but may be used also of a free person hired, a hired servant,
124
WORDS FOR MAID-SERVANTS.
as the "pste, saJcir, of the Hebrews, or also a free maiden, in
no respect under servitude. As applied to Hagar, the term
used by Sarah in the Old Testament, and by Paul in the New,
would seem to apply more directly and specifically to her orig-
inal condition among the Egyptians, and not to her state in
the family of Abraham. In Abraham's family, and as his wife,
she certainly was not his bond-servant or slave ; and the sar-
casm of Sarah is directed to her foumer state, out of which
she had been raised, and especially when presented by Sarah
to Abraham to be his wife.*
* Two points are to be specially re-
garded iu considering Ilagar's con-
dition. 1. The name given to her
bears no indication of slavery. Some
have derived it from tho Hebrew for
stranger, so that Ilagar's name would
mean this stranger. But Gesenius
gives as its definition the word flight,
from an unused root signifying to flee.
Hence, also, the Hegira, for the
flight of Mahomet. But as Hagar
bore this name before her flight from
Sarah, it is more likely to have been
the name of a stranger.
2. Her condition as a servant,
whatever it might have been, conveys
no taint of servitude or subjection to
her offspring. If, therefore, it could
be imagined that modern slaveholders
are justified in holding slaves, be-
cause Abraham held Hagar, they are
also bound by the same example to
give freedom to the children of their
slaves. If they claim a divine per-
mission they must take the whole rule
or none. They must strike out from
their code the infamous principle, in-
troduced from Pagan slavery, but
baptized by Christians (so called) as a
rule of justice, piety and divine the-
ology, that partus sequitur ventrem.
In fine, if Abraham's example with
Hagar were followed, the whole sys-
tem of slavery would come to an end
in a moment. It is nothing but the
savage brand of Paganism, conveying
the act and quality of man-stealing,
as a legal right upon tho posterity of
the stolen parents, and adopted by
Christianity (so called) as a right and
a missionary virtue, that sustains tho
system.
CHAPTER XII.
Wobd-Analysts Througii the Life of Abraham.— Meaning of Sorts Gotten m
Hakan.— Usage of Phkases for Domestic Service. — No Intimations of Slav-
ery in Domestic Life. — Principles of Justice and Equity. — Abraham's Serv-
ants not Bound by Compulsion.
"We continue now our investigation by tracing the words of
service in their usage, renewing thus our analysis of the house-
hold of Abraham in a somewhat varied light. The repetition
of references, which becomes necessary, may be endured, in con-
sideration of the necessity of confirming every part of our argu-
ment, leaving no position at hazard, no citadel unoccupied, or in
the hands of the enemy. Following the word-analysis through
the life of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the next step is found
in Genesis, xiv. 14, 15 : Abram armed his trained ones, as our
ti-anslation has it, bom in his own house, '.iva ■n'fcj v*1^.
There were in number three hundred and eighteen ; and he
divided himself against the enemy, he and his servants,
■p-ns.
In this passage, the word jpih, hanihh, the verbal from
Sj:h, instructed ones, experienced, proved, seems to be used as
synonymous with na», evedh, servant, and both words are
equivalent with '.rvo "^V, yelidhe betho, the bom in his own
house, the sons of his house. In the twenty-fourth verse the
same are called young men, d^ssri, that which the young men
have eaten. These young men, though born in Abraham's
house, were not slaves, and an examination of the circum-
stances of the case, and of the phrases rp:i t>V, yelidh beth,
the born of the house, and IT'S— "ja, ben-beth, the son of the
house, will show the extreme mistake of defining either of
126 HOUSEHOLD OF ABRAHAM.
these expressions as signifying necessarily a slave ; for Hebrew
servants might be the bom of the house, but could not under
any circumstances be slaves.
In Genesis, xv\ 3, the phrase used is ■»*}">»""■ \$, ben-bethi, the
sou of my house, one bom in my house is mine heir.
But it is clear that at this time Abraham had other servants
besides those born in his house ; at a previous period he had
received such in Egypt, where, as a consequence of Pharaoh's
favor, he had men-servants and maul-servants, or an increas-
ing number of them.
In Genesis, xii. 5, there is mention of the souls that Abram
aud Lot had gotten in Haran. Not unfrequently the mon-
strous assumption has been taken, without one particle of
evidence, without even an intimation looking that way, that
these souls meant slaves, that they were such. With just as
much authority we might presume and assert that the cattle
spoken of as Abraham's and Lot's property, meant souls, and
that when it is affirmed that they increased their substance,
the word substance means souls. The Chaldee paraphrasts
maintain a much more likely assumption, when they insist that
the souls gotten were proselytes gained by Abraham to the
true faith. We might with superior propriety assume that
the phrase means persons whom Abraham was able to per-
suade to go forth with him from his own country to the
promised land.* At Bethel they were so rich in cattle and
silver and gold, in flocks and herds and tents, that the land
was not able to bear them together, and the quarrels among
their herdmen led to their separation. At this period they
* Smith's Sacred Annals, Patri- had gotten in Haran' (verse 5), use
archal Age, page 448 : " Many com- these words, ' the souls of those
mentators believed that Abram not whom they proselyted in Ilaran.*
only worshiped God in his family, Abraham was certainly called away
but diligently taught his name and from all idolatrous influence, that he
his law to those with whom he came might bo a witness for the truth to
in contact. Hence the Chaldee para- all the nations with which he came in
phrasts, when rendering the clause as contact." Page 439.
given by Moses, ' the souls that they
PURASES OP SERVICE. 127
were nomadic chiefs, and those that were born in their tents
belonged to their households, and were dependent upon
them under the guardianship and care of the patriarchal au-
thority. A patriarchal community that could muster three
hundred and eighteen young men to bear arms, born under
Abraham's government, and under allegiance of service to
him, must have been numerous ; and, besides these depend-
ents, he had other servants obtained with money of the stran-
ger ; among these his herdmen may have been comprised, for
the phrase bought with money was applied, as we have seen,
to such a purchase or contract as secured the right to their
time and labor for a limited period. In regard to the Hebrews,
this is clearly demonstrated from the very first law on record
in this matter, Exodus, xxi. 2 : If thou buy a Hebrew servant,
six years he shall serve, n?.j?r^ ■»&, if thou buy, the same word
being used as in the description of the portion of Abraham's
household designated as bought with money. Parents were
accustomed sometimes thus to sell the services of their chil-
dren. It was something like the purchase of apprentices, or
the contract of an apprenticeship for a number of years.
Hosea bought his wife, Hosea, iii. 2. The term t^a-ftspte,
miknath keseph, bought with money, or the purchase of
money, does not, therefore, necessarily imply an unlimited
servile sale; and, as we shall see, a restriction was finally
imposed on all such transactions by the laws of jubilee, ren-
dering the system of what we call slavery impossible.
Here, then, are three phrases demanding careful considera-
tion : rna vtyy, yelidh beth, h"»5H5j ben-beth, and fc)&s-hsj>tej and
miknath-keseph. In Ecclesiastes, ii. 7, we have the rv^n— ,s, ben-
beth, thus: I acquired servants and maidens, rr.nsci D^a:?, and
sons of my house were mine, 15 n-n h^a— »iax In Genesis, xv. 3,
a son of my house is mine heir, ^a— j ;a. These two phrases,
n-n tV\ yelidh beth, and rpri— ja, ben-beth, seem to be nearly
synonymous, but the iva—js, ben-beth, the son of the house, is
descriptive of a class of servants more affectionately attached,
128 PHRASES OF SERVICE.
and enjoying greater privileges, with greater confidence re-
posed in them. The whole three hundred and eighteen of
Abraham's young men are called ma *nV?, yelidh beth, born
of the house, that is, of the families under his authority and
patriarchal government and care ; but the h'O—ja, ben-bet h,
the son of his house, who might be his heir, may have been of
his own immediate household. In Genesis, xvii. 12, 13, 23, 27,
in the detail of the covenant of circumcision, and the execu-
tion of that rite on all born in Abraham's house, the phrase
used is rvo t^*:, yelidh beth. Elsewhere it is very seldom
found, once in Leviticus, xxii. 11, concerning the priest's
family, and who in it may, and who may not, eat of the holy
things; no stranger, nor any sojourner, nor any mere hired
servant of the priest shall eat thereof; but the servant bought
with his money, and he that is bom in his house, irca t^'i,
yelidh betho, may eat of it. The hired servant was not re-
garded as an inseparable part and fixture of the priest's
family, in the same manner as the servant born in his house
was, and had not the same privileges. A hired servant
might be a foreigner, but a servant born in the house
was a native of the land, and might be also a native He-
brew.
Neither can this phrase, bom of the house, with safety or
correctness be assumed as always specifically implying serv-
itude of any kind, or a servile state ; for it might be right the
opposite. It might be used of freemen as well as servants,
and of the children of the master and mistress of the house.
In Leviticus, xviii. 9, a similar phrase is employed of the
daughter of the family, daughter of thy mother, bom of thy
house, rra n-V"» M,3.^""n:?- ^n Jeremiah, ii. 14, it has been
sivpposed to be used as synonymous, or nearly so, with nay,
evedh. Is Israel a servant, nay ? evedh. Is he a home-bom, rra
T>y>-CiN ? yelidh beth. But these words are not synonymes,
and a very different translation of this verse is possible, as
may be seen in the note of Blayney, in his translation and
PHRASES OF SERVICE. 129
commentary on this prophet, a passage which is worthy of
consideration. He translates Jeremiah, ii. 14, thus : Is Israel
a slave f Or if a child of the household, wherefore is he ex-
posed to spoil? And he remarks " that h^a t>*£, yelidh beth,
answers to the Latin word filius familias, and stands opposed
to a slave. The same distinction is made Galatians, iv. 7,
and an inference drawn from it in a similar manner : 'Where-
fore thou art no more a servant (a slave), but a son ; and if a
son, then an heir of God through Christ.' As Christians
now, so the Israelites heretofore, were the children of God's
household ; and if so, they seemed entitled to his peculiar care
and protection."
The passage is susceptible of this rendering. Is Israel a
servant, is*? evedh ; but if a home-born, rra t^v-sk, yelidh
beth, why is he yet spoiled? If he were an ns$, evedh, merely,
he might be expected to be rigorously treated, to be carried
into captivity, and " sold with the selling of a bondman."
But if a home-born, then under a care and privilege, which
would preserve him from such treatment. The ordinary in-
terpretation is different, grounded on the idea that the ques-
tion is equivalent to a negation. Israel is not a servant, nei-
ther -is?, evedh, nor n?a t»V>.? yelidh beth, but is God's own son,
and free born. Why then is he become a prey ? Because of
his own wickedness.
That the phrase tra t»V.i yelidh beth, does not necessarily
mean a servant, or a bondman in contradistinction from a
freeman, appears from Genesis, xvii. 27. After relating the
circumcision of Abraham, and Ishmael his son, it is added that
all the men of his house, bom in his house, and bought with
money of the stranger, were circumcised with him. It is ab-
surd to suppose that of all Abraham's dependent community
or tribe, for such are the households here designated, not one
male was accounted a freeman. Every male among the men
of Abraham's house was circumcised, and all the men of
Abraham's house are divided into these two classes only, born
130
NO INTIMATIONS OF SLAVERY.
in the house, or bought with money of the stranger. In the
next chapter, xviii. 7, Abraham is described as fetching a calf
from the herd, and giving it to a young man, "ijw, to dress it.
This young man was in Abraham's service, of Abraham's
household, but there is no intimation whatever of his being in
the condition of a slave. In fine, we might as well assert that
our domestic household animal, the cat, was precisely the same
animal with the South American jaguar or the Bengal tiger,
as assume that the servants of Abraham's household were
what we call slaves. There might be families beneath his pa-
triarchal authority, neither the head nor the children of which,
though born in his house, dependent on him, as the rva t>V*i
yelidh beth, were in any condition approximating to that of
slaves.*
* The history of the word slave is
instructive. Gibbon, in his 55th
chapter, traces it to the captivity of
" the Sclavonian, or more properly
Slavonian, race." "From the Euxine
to the Adriatic, in the state of cap-
tives, or subjects, or allies, or ene-
mies of the Greek empire, they over-
spread the land ; and the national
appellation of the Slaves has been
degraded by chance or malice from
the signification of glory to that of
servitude."
"This conversion of a national into
an appellative name appears to have
arisen in the eighth century in the
oriental France, where the princes
and bishops were rich in Sclavonian
captives. From thence the word was
extended to general use, to the mod-
ern languages, and oven to the stylo
of the last Byzantines (see the Greek
and Latin glossaries of Ducange.)
The confusion of the 2ep/32.oi, or
Servians, with the Latin Servi,
was still more fortunate and famil-
iar."— Gibbon's Decline and Fall,
chap. 55.
The only instance in which the
word slave has been intruded in our
English translation of the Hebrew
Scriptures is that of Jeremiah, ii. 14,
where the confession that thero is no
such word in the original was made
by the translators themselves, in put-
ing the word slave in italics. The origi-
nal reads, " Is he a home bom ?" Tho
translators added, " Is he a home-
born slave .?" This was a most singu-
larly unauthorized and contradictory
assertion. It amounted to an interpo-
lation in the translation, and by
means of it, of the falsehood that thero
was, or might be, under the Hebrew
constitution, such a thing as a slave
and such a domestic iniquity as that
of slavery.
The origin of the word sebvus is
better known, from the custom of
preserving for sale tho captives taken
in war, who were, therefore, from the
verb servare, to preserve, denominated
servi, the preserved. "The words ser-
vus and mancipiuni designated slaves
so made ; servus, as having boen pre-
served by the victor, a victore servatus,
NO INTIMATIONS OP SLAVEKY.
131
From the building of Babel to the time of Terah, Abra-
ham's father, it was but two hundred years, and during this
period there is not the slightest intimation of any such vast
social inequality in the community as that of slavery on the
one hand and freedom on the other ; nor is there time and
scope, nor are there causes sufficient, in the generations of
Shem, to produce such a condition, where the population was
sparse, and the whole race, within little more than three gen-
erations, on a perfect equality. It is easy to conceive how
the habits of patriarchal government and life could arise and
be established, but that a state of slavery should become the
social state, while Noah and his family were still living, is in-
or, according to some etymologists,
from the Greek root, Ipu, or epvu, to
drag, to rescue from death; manci-
pium, from a manu capere, to take
captive with the hand." — Fuss. Ro-
man Antiq., chap, i., sec. liii.
See, also, Edwards' Roman Slav-
ery, in the sixth volume of the Bib-
lical Repository, 411 : "The origin of
the word servus" says Augustine, de
Civit., lib. xix., chap, xv., "is under-
stood to be derived from the fact that
prisoners, who, by the laws of war,
might have been put to death, were
preserved by the victors, and made
slaves."
Now, our modern kidnappers and
slaveholders, with the new and gra-
cious theory of being the honored in-
struments of God's missionary provi-
dence of salvation to the Africans by
means of the merciful reduction of
them to slavery, and consequent in-
troduction to Christianity, might take
a hint from these etymologies, and
establish for themselves and their
victims a new nomenclature, com-
memorative of piety and love. In-
stead of being named pirates, the
kidnappers should be called mission-
ary pioneers, and their victims, instead
of being called slaves, should be called
translated ones, not servi, but salvati,
and the slaveholders should be called
salvatores, saviours. To designate the
subjects of such providential mission-
ary grace, the old word salvages might
be re-adopted in our language, to sig-
nify persons transported from the con-
dition of savages to the state of salva-
tion. Or, the kidnappers might be
designated as Redemptionists, and the
slaveholders as Ministrants and Guar-
dians for them who are the heirs of
such a salvation. And inasmuch as
tho children of those thus providen-
tially redeemed from savage freedom
in Africa are appointed for ever to the
salvation of slavery in America, from
which state of salvation they never
can be plucked away, the heirs of this
salvation might be named consecrated
ones, or, better still, conserved, and tho
owners of the conserved race might
appropriate to themselves the much-
abused term Conservatives. Are they
not all ministering spirits, sent forth
to minister unto them who shall bo
heirs of such salvation ?
132 NO INTIMATIONS OF SLAVERY.
credible. There are no intimations of slavery in Betbuel'a
family, nor in Laban's after him, in Mesopotamia. "We find
Rachel feeding her father's sheep, and performing servile
labor, and all the indications are of a simple social life, in
which slavery was unknown. Up to the time of his sojourn
in Canaan, Abraham had been engaged in no wars or preda-
tory excursions, so that that which was afterwards so preg-
nant a source of captivity and slavery, did not in his family
exist, and indeed the very first war in which we find him a
conqueror, we find him also refusing to hold any of the con-
quered as his captives. There was no black color as yet to
stigmatize a servile race as the legitimate property of the
white races. There were no laws by which free persons might
be seized and sold for their jail-fees, not being able to prove
their freedom. In short, a more gross and gratuitous assump-
tion can hardly be imagined than that the three hundred
and eighteen young men born and trained under Abraham's
jurisdiction, of his household, were slaves! The tie between
him and them Avas assuredly not of compulsion, or oppression,
or legal chattelism, but of service and obedience, at least as
justly required, and freely yielded, as that of hereditary clans
in Scotland, or tribes and families in Arabia.
The other phrase, qo3-ri5|;», miknath keseph, Genesis, xvii.
12, the possession of money, the thing bought xoith money, is
applied to any acquisition gained by purchase, and also to the
price paid. In Genesis, xxiii. 9, 18, 20, it is used as synony-
mous with n-jhN, the jiossession of his burying-place. Accord-
ing to the use of the verb n:^, kanah, to buy, from which it is
derived, it would be suitably applied to acquisitions transitory
as well as permanent, and to attainments of the mind as well
as earthly riches. The same verb ni]?, kanah, to buy, as we have
before noted, is applied by Boaz to his purchase of the field that
Avas Elimelech's, and also to his purchase of Ruth herself to be
his wife. I have bought, wsj?, all that was Elimelech's, more-
over, Ruth have I purchased, Nrys)?, to be my wife. It is also
USAGE OF THE WORD BOUGHT.
133
applied, Proverbs, iv. 7, to the acquisition of wisdom. Prov-
erbs, xv. 32, to the getting of understanding. So also xvi. 16,
and xix. 8. It is applied in Isaiah, xi. 11, to the Lord's recov-
ering of people. Cain's name, ■)?£, that is, gotten from the Lord,
was given because Eve said, Genesis, iv. 1, "^J?, I have gotten
a man from the Lord. In Psalm lxxviii. 54, God is said to
have purchased, nmj?, this mountain with his right hand. And
in Proverbs, viii. 22 : God is said to have possessed wisdom in
the beginning, ^i;j5, kanani*
* Barnes' Inquiry into the Scrip-
tural Views op Slavery, chap. iiL,
p. 75. " The word bought occurs in a
transaction between Joseph and the
people of Egypt^ in sucli a way as
further to explain its meaning. "When,
during the famine, the money of the
Egyptians had failed, and Joseph had
purchased all the land, the people pro-
posed to become his servants. When
the contract was closed, Joseph said
to them, ' Behold, I have bought you —
■>rv,:pT, kanithi — this day, and your
land, for Pharaoh.' Genesis, xlvii. 23.
The nature of this contract is immedi-
ately specified. They were to be re-
garded as laboring for Pharaoh. The
land belonged to him, and Joseph
furnished the people with seed, or
stocked the land, and they were to
cultivate it on shares for Pharaoh.
The fifth part was to be his, and the
other four parts were to be theirs.
There was a claim on them for labor,
but it does not appear that the claim
extended further. No farmers, now,
who work land on shares, would be
willing to have their condition de-
scribed as one of slavery."
CHAPTER XIII.
The Servile Relation for Money no Proof of Slavery. — Two Methods of a
Hebrew Selling Himself. — No Slavery in Either. — Sons of tiie House
Never Slaves. — Argument from Moses to Abraham. — Abraham's Steward,
the Elder of his House. — Elders of the Land. — In no Sense a Slave. — Slav-
ery Impossible, Along with the Principles of Justice and Equity Revealed
to Abraham.
It is clear, then, that the circumstance of the servile rela-
tion being acquired by money, and called the purchase or pos-
session of money, did not necessarily constitute it slavery, any
more than the purchase of a wife constituted her a slave, or
the purchase of wisdom constituted that a slave. Abraham
could acquire a claim upon the service of a man during his
life by purchase from himself; he could acquire the allegiance
of a man and his family, and of all that should be born in the
family, by similar contract, not to be broken but by mutual
agreement ; and, in this way, in the course of years he might
have a vast household under his authority, born in his house
and purchased with his money, but not one of them a slave.
He might in the same way purchase of the stranger whatever
claim the stranger possessed to the service of the person thus
sold, and yet the person thus transferred to Abraham's house-
hold might be a voluntary party in the transaction, and in no
sense a slave. It is not possible to suppose that, if a servant
were offered to Abraham for his purchase, who could say, I
teas stolen by my master, as Joseph could say, it is not possi-
ble to suppose that Abraham would consider such a purchase as
just, or that he could rightfully make such a person his serv-
ant, without his own consent. There is no intimation what-
SELLING ONE'S SELF. 135
ever of any such unrighteous or compulsory service in Abra-
ham's household; there is no ground for the supposition that
he either bought slaves, or traded in slaves, or held slaves in
any way.*
HEBREWS SELLING THEMSELVES.
In Leviticus, xxv. 47, there is mention of two modes in
which a poor man might sell himself for a servant, namely,
being a Hebrew, he might sell himself to a stranger or so-
journer, or, to the stock of a stranger's family. Here we
have great light cast on these transactions. The poor man
sells himself on account of his poverty, but not as a slave.
He may sell himself not merely to one master, during that
master's life, but to the stock of the family, firjatfta njisV, as a
fixture of the household. It is supposable that he might thus
sell himself with his children, or make a contract for the service
of his children that might be born to him during the time of
this stipulation ; and the children so born would be the rv>a
tV?, the born of the house of his master, or rro 133, the sons
of the house. But from this contract he might be redeemed
by any one of his kin, or he might redeem himself, if he were
able, by returning a just proportion of the price of his sale,
the price of his services ; and whether redeemed or not, the
* Kitto's Cyclopaedia, p. 774, Serv- The admirable article from -which
ants of Abraham : " In no single in- the above paragraph is extracted,
stance do we find that the patriarchs stands in marked contrast with the
either gave away or sold their serv- mass of commentators and lexicogra-
ants, or purchased them of third per- phers on this subject, by the accuracy
sons. Abraham had servants bought with which it marks distinctions, and
with money. It has been assumed resists the falsehood of mere assump-
that they were bought of third par- tions in the place of facts, and the
ties, whereas, there is no proof that despotism of precedents in the place
this was the case. The probability is of principle and just law. It was
that they sold themselves to the pa- contributed to the work by Rev.
triarch for an equivalent; that is to "William "Wright, M. A. and LL.D.,
say, they entered into voluntary en- of Trinity College, Dublin, the trans-
gagements to serve him for a longer lator of Seller's Biblical Hermeneu-
or shorter period of time, in return tics,
for the money advanced them."
136 ENGAGING AS SERVANTS.
contract should be binding no longer than up to the period of
the jubilee.
In the case of the household of Abraham, the phrase in
Genesis, xvii. 12, tjo^ n:j5«, the %)ossession or purchase of
money, is qualified with reference to a stranger only, which is
not of thy seed. In the twenty-seventh verse, all the men of
Abraham's house are designated as either bom in the house or
bought with money of the stranger. They were all circum-
cised, at the commandment of God.
But Hebrew servants might also be bought with money, as
in Exodus, xxi. 2 ; Leviticus, xxv. 47; Deuteronomy, xv. 12 ;
Jeremiah, xxxiv. 14.
But only for six years ordinarily could such a purchase bind
the person bought; the seventh year he was free. Deuteronomy,
xv. 12; Exodus, xxi. 2.
He might sell himself, that is, sell his own time and labor,
for six years. In such a case, as when a master sold him,
he was a servant bought for money, and distinct from the
servant born in the house. The rule was the same for men-
servants and maid-servants.
Supposing him to have been a married man, and himself
and his wife sold, and that during their six years of servitude
they had children born to them, then, in the seventh year, all
would go free. Supposing his master to have given him a
wife, if a Hebrew, then his wife could not be retained beyond
the period of her six years of servitude by law, neither her sons
nor daughters. But yet, on comparison of Exodus, xxi. 2-6,
with Leviticus, xxv. 39-41 and 47-54, and Deuteronomy, xv.
12-18, and Jeremiah, xxxiv. 14, it is manifest that Hebrew
servants, husbands, wives, and children, might be retained
under certain conditions, until the year of jubilee, in servitude.
Many of them, in such cases, would be servants born in the
house, sons of the house; yet, even then and thus, no master
could compel them to serve as bond-servants, but they were
to be treated as hired servants and sojourners. If a man with
CONTRACTS OF SERVICE. 137
a household already thus composed, should huy a Hebrew serv-
ant, and give him a wife from among the number of maid-
servants that were already, by rightful contract, the fixtures
of his family until the jubilee, then he would have no right, if
he chose to go out free at the end of his six years, to take away
his wife and the children she might have borne him ; but they
were to remain until the jubilee ; and, if he chose not to avail
himself of this legal privilege of quitting his master's residence
and service, but preferred to remain with his wife and chil-
dren, the sons of the house, then he, too, must remain till the
jubilee. He could not quit, after making this choice, at the
expiration of another seven years. But all were free in the
year of jubilee, men, women, and children.
It is clear, then, that, while the servants born in the house
might, under certain conditions, be born under a claim of con-
tinued service till the jubilee, those bought with money could
be bound only for a period of six years. On the other hand,
the master was obliged by law to treat those who were under
servitude until the jubilee as hired servants, giving them their
stated and covenanted wages. The question then comes up as
to the specific difference between bond, or rather apprenticed,
servants and hired servants, and the nature of their respective
treatment. This we shall have occasion to examine histori-
cally, in considering the successive developments of the law ;
but much light may be gained from the examination of the
words.
ARGUMENT FROM MOSES TO ABRAHAM.
But, before considering this, we have to ask how far it is
safe to draw conclusions as to Abraham's household, from the
laws made for his posterity more than four hundred years
after his age. The gross perversions and mistakes made by
commentators taking the state of things in modern Egypt and
in pagan Rome, in the horrid prevalence of the lowest and
most universal slave-life and manners, and carrying that pic-
ture and those ideas back as supposed originals and illustra-
138 PRINCIPLES REVEALED.
tions of the servitude in the time and even the household of
Abraham, may teach us the necessity of caution. Even the
words coined out of Roman despotism and slave-customs have
been taken by lexicographers to interpret Hebrew words that
had no such meaning ; and hence the assumption with which
i^y, evedh, and rvzti amah, and rues— ja ben-amah, are some-
times rendered by mancipium, ver/ia, and slave, when there
was neither Hebrew word, nor personal chattel answering to
any such appellative.
But conclusions and illustrations from the completed theoc-
racy and system of Hebrew law and life, back to Abraham, as
chosen and instructed for its beginning, can not be very erro-
neous. The general principles upon which God would gov-
ern and train the Hebrew nation were certainly revealed to
Abraham, along with the great covenant that separated them
from the heathen world as a peculiar people, and the ap-
pointed seal of that covenant, in the rite of circumcision. The
application of that rite to servants as well as masters, and to
those purchased from the stranger as well as those born in
the house, and the admission of all to the privileges of the
same national covenant, was a remarkable equalizing interpo-
sition, doing away, by itself alone, most of the injustice and
evil of the system of slavery as it came to exist in the heathen
world. All were to be instructed in religion, and treated
with kindness. According to the nature of the Divine law as
revealed to Abraham, Abraham could not, if obedient to God,
treat his servants, that were hired of the stranger, with his
money, or those born in his house, whether obtained in Egypt
or elsewhere, according to the principles of idolatry and servi-
tude prevalent in the countries where he traveled and dwelt.
When they came into his household, they came on very differ-
ent principles, and under very different regulations, from
those of the system of an irresponsible despotism, or of what
we call slavery.
There is really no such thing as slavery discoverable in
THE ELDEST SERVANT. 139
Abraham's household, though there were servants that had
been given to him by the most despotic slaveholders then in
the world, and others whose services were obtained with
money, of races of strangers, and others, doubtless, who were
in his family as servants for a stipulated time. But, concern-
ing his administration of the whole, God declares, " I know
him, that he will command his children and his household
after him ; and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice
and judgment," Genesis, xviii. 19. This is sufficient proof that
there never was, in Abraham's household, that thing which
the Romans called mancipium, nor that iniquitous system
which in modern times we call slavery. His was a system of
paternal and patriarchal kindness, instruction, and well-regu-
lated service, but not of enforced and unpaid servitude. It
was a system of generosity and confidence on one side, and
of free and affectionate obedience on the other. It wTas nei-
ther power without right, nor submission without willingness.
There were no fugitive slave laws, nor any need of them, nor
do we find traces of any such custom as that of training hounds
to hunt runaways. It is manifest that a confidence almost
unlimited wTas reposed by Abraham in the faithfulness and
contentment of those under his authority. The oldest servant
of Abraham's house, who ruled over all that he had, and had
been trained himself under the influence of the laws and man-
ners of his household, bears witness, by his own character,
to the nature of the whole system.
This man was called, Genesis, xxiv. 2, hrpa "jp.T '-ay, his
eldest servant of his house, or, his servant, the elder of his
house, the major-domo, the word used being the same em-
ployed to designate the elders of Israel. In the history of
Jacob's burial (Genesis, 1. V), we have the same word applied
to the elders of Pharaoh's house, and all the elders of the
land of Egypt. "And Joseph went up to bury his father;
and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the
elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt" —
140 ABRAHAM'S HEIR.
hHVx vp.!, zikney betho, and »-n i*^, zikney arets. If the
elder of Abraham's household could be assumed to have been
a slave, because he is designated as a servant, then were also
the elders of Pharaoh's house, and all the elders of Egypt,
all the men in authority, the aristocracy and the princes, by
the same assumption, slaves, for they are all designated as
Pharaoh's servants. In Genesis, xv. 2, this eldest servant of
Abraham is called also the steward of his house, W ps>£— sa,
ben-meshek bethi, the son of possession of my house, for so
Gesenius renders it, fillus possessionis, p>ossessor of my house.
This steward of Abraham's house was to be his heir. The
Septuagint renders it the son of Mesek, vlog Msoek, as being
the name of a tribe or district in Syria, whence Dammesek,
or Damascus, the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Da-
mascus.
Others again derive the word from a root signifying to
wander about, to make excursions in search of something, and
so translate it the son of discursion, that is, the overseer, or
procurator of the house. But any interpretation is less forced
and far-fetched than that which assumes this steward and heir
of Abraham's house to have been a slave, without a solitary
intimation in the text or context on which such a supposition
can be built. This elder servant of his house is said to have
ruled over all that he had, a phrase which answers very well
to that of the son of possession / and before a son was born
to Abraham, this eldest servant was to have been his heir. In
like manner, we find, in Ezekiel, xlvi. 17, an intimation of a
prince giving a gift of his inheritance to one of his servants,
to be his to the year of jubilee ; and it would be a monstrous
conclusion to assume from this that this servant was a slave,
and that it was the custom for householders in Judea to be-
stow their inheritance upon their favorite slaves! But what
will not prejudice accomplish? Not only has it been assumed,
from this one place in the historic record in Genesis, that this
servant of Abraham was a slave, but, also, that assumption
THE ELDEST SERVANT. 141
being settled, another has been drawn from that, namely, that
we may gather from this, that in those days it was the custom,
if any man died without heirs, his estate descended to the
oldest or superior slave of the family ! No other proof of
any such supposed custom is adverted to ; none can be found ;
there is no ground for any such imagination ; the whole is a
mere pile of conjecture, built upon an assumption, itself en-
tirely destitute of foundation, entirely false. It, therefore,
serves as a remarkable example of the manner in which the
idea of slavery and slaves among the Hebrews, and especially
in the households of the patriarchs, has got possession of
men's minds, has been admitted into books of lexicography
and commentary, and passed unquestioned for indisputable
fact from generation to generation.*
The arming of the whole multitude of Abraham's servants,
and committing to their steadiness and bravery the conduct
of a war, argues for them all a participation in the same char-
* Havernick's Introduction to tho the fact of Abraham's steward being
Pentateuch, page 152. And Rosen- his intended heir is said to disclose a
mueller, in the note. Havernick, fol- very ancient custom, of which there
lowing Rosenmueller, observes that had been no previous trace, nor after-
the verse describing Abraham's stew- wards any thing corresponding to it,
ard " discloses a very ancient custom, the custom being that of making one's
that afterwards had nothing corre- slave his heir !
sponding to it. According to that, Even this learned and admirable
in case of childlessness, a slave was writer takes it for granted that the eld-
heir ; but the slave here appears est servant of Abraham's house could
under the very peculiar appellation be nothing but a slave, and speaks of
of the son of possession of the house, him as such : " Rebekak immediately
referring to special nomadic rela- resolved to go with the slave;" "the
tions." This very ancient custom is religious language of the slave;" quite
inferred by Rosenmueller from the regardless as to any question of mo-
case of the steward ; and then from rality, indeed, seemingly unconscious
that inference is drawn the conclusion of there being any such question in
that the steward was a slave, accord- regard to the right or the sinfulness
ing to the very ancient custom dis- of holding slaves. A great number
closed by his being the heir 1 "What of just such instances of careless and
the special nomadic relations are, the groundless assumptions might be pre-
learned writer does not state, nor is sented.
there any disclosure of them ; but
142 ORIGIN OF SLAVERY.
acter, and the enjoyment of a freedom among them, and of
privileges and blessings so great and valuable under their
allegiance to Abraham, that he could repose the utmost con-
fidence in that allegiance, and in their contentment under his
authority and service. The only case in which there is any
intimation of oppression or severity in the household, is on
the part of Sarah, and the subject of it takes an immediate
opportunity to flee from such oppression. And such oppor-
tunity, in that state of society, was open to all, nor were
there, in the sojournings and life of the patriarchs, any of
those safeguards of law and State power, to keep down the
oppressed, without which a system such as that of Roman or
of modern slavery could not be maintained for a single gen-
eration.
It is scarcely to be doubted that slavery grew out of
idolatry, and in its perfection was one of the last and
most perfect fruits of the execrable system of Egyptian
and of Roman paganism. The exalting of men of gigantic
vice and ability into gods, and the consequent consecration
of tyrannic power as a celestial attribute, and the obedience
of its instruments to its despotism, the superstitious de-
basement of the soul before it, and the necessity of slaves
as the victims and tools of its ambition and success, very
naturally suggest and account for the progress and fixture
of slavery in the old heathen social life. Every thing
evil and abominable grew, in such society, out of the
bestial and oppressive idolatrous systems into which men
fell. There were near five hundred years from Abraham to
Moses, during which the idolatry of the Egyptians and the
Canaanites, and every depraved habit along with it, grew
more dreadful and inveterate. It was a prominent article of
the divine law: "When the Lord thy God shall cast out the
nations from before thee, take heed to thyself that thou in-
quire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations
serve their gods ? even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt
CLIMAX OF DEPRAVITY. 143
not do so unto the Lord thy God: for every abomination
which he hateth have they done unto their gods : for even
their sons and their daughters have they burnt in the fire to
their gods."
The consecration of a race to slavery, the adoption of such
inhumanity and injustice to be perpetrated from generation
to generation, would be worse cruelty by far than the pass-
ing of a selected number of children, at stated times, and
in idolatrous festivals, through the fire to Moloch. No one
of the kingdoms of Satan in our world ever began with the
atrocity of slavery as a fundamental law. If this sin and source
of misery, this security for the violation of every precept in
the decalogue and every principle of righteousness, had been
enshrined in the domestic constitution established by Abra-
ham, the scheme would have outdone, in diabolic malignity
and ingenuity, any form of evil ever contrived by the father
of lies and fastened on posterity. If the problem had been
to lay the foundations and provide for the completion of the
most depraved possible society on earth, instead of building
up a social kingdom through which all the families of mankind
might be blessed, this far-reaching, infernal purpose could not
have been more certainly accomplished than by the introduc-
tion of human slavery, with its atrocious code of law and cus-
tom, as the most perfect system of the social state.*
9 Warburton, Divine Legation, impudently avowed, against the uni-
B. I., sec. vL, states what he regarded versal voice of nature ; an impiety in
as a monstrosity almost incredible, but which moral virtue is represented as
which is renewed among us, in the the invention of knaves, and Christian
elaborate defence of slavery as just, virtue as the imposition of fools."
and right, and religious, and of the Compare Jay's Hebrew Servitude,
highest benefit to society ; that " to and Stroud, Slave Code, and Good-
the lasting opprobrium of our age ell, American Slave Laws, with G ro-
and country, we have seen a writer tius, Coke, Gisborne and Dymoxd,
publicly maintain that private vices on the principles of Natural Law and
were public benefits. An unheard Morality,
of impiety, wickedly advanced, and
CHAPTER XIV.
DIFFERENT TRANSLATIONS OF TIIE SAME Word BY OUK ENGLISH TRANSLATORS. — DIF-
FERENCE Between Apprenticed and Hired Servants. — Neither the Appren-
ticed Servant nor the Hireling could be Slaves. — Comparison of Valub
Between the Apprenticed and Hired Servant.— Designation of Servants as
Young Men.
The general term for servant, 1^3, evedh, is sometimes ren-
dered by our translators servant and sometimes bondman.
The translation, bondman, can not be justified, if the word is
meant to imply slavery. The word is sometimes used with
an emphasis of oppression, determined by reference to the na-
ture of Egyptian bondage, which was the ultimate standard
of rigor, cruelty, and tyranny. Deuteronomy, xv. 15 : He-
member that thou toast a servant (translated in our English
Bible bondman) in Egypt, iav, an evedh, in a bondage with-
out mitigation. Thou shalt not compel thy brother to serve
as such a servant. For they are my servants, which I brought
forth out of the land of Egypt ; they shall not be sold as serv-
ants. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor, but shalt fear
thy God. Leviticus, xxv. 39, 42, 43 : They shall not be sold
as servants (translated in this case bondmeii), tgs ri~?'Kr*3
stmb? «V, not with the sale of a servant. And in verse forty-
four: Of the heathen shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids,
mcs5 nay, the servant and the maid-servant. There was no
separate word for bond-servant, no word for slave. There
was only the word nay, evedh, honorable in its origin, and
free in its original meaning, winch they had to adopt and
use. But a man might be an -mj>, a serva?it, and yet be a
freeman. It is not the term, therefore, but the context, that
THE HIRED SERVANT. 145
limits and particularizes the signification. In 2 Kings, iv. 1 :
" The creditor is come to take my two sons to be (in our
translation) bondmen," that is, d^ajfe, to be for servants,
but not bondmen ; for by law, being Hebrews, they could not
be sold as bondmen, though they might be taken as servants,
at a valuation of their time and labor, for the term of six
years, for payment of the debt, to work out the debt. But
if that did not suffice, but they must be held longer, then it
was not lawful to hold them as bondmen, but as hired serv-
ants. See the law, Leviticus, xxv. 39, 40: "If thy brother
that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee,
thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant ; but as
a hired servant, and a sojourner he shall be with thee." Not
as lay, evedh, but as "P5to, sakir. Thou shalt not compel him
to serve as a bond-servant, tay may 'is nhyn-N'^. Thou shalt
not task -upon him the tasking of a servant.
The service of the bond-servant thus designated was fre-
quently compared, for illustration, with the servitude endured
by the Israelites in Egypt. This was despotic, and without
wages, without stipulated reward ; no agreement or bargain
between master and servant, but the latter forced into the
service and under the rule of the former ; a degradation and
a yoke, under which no right of a freeman could be asserted.
See Leviticus, xxvi. 13 ; Deuteronomy, xvi. 12; xxiv. 18-22 ;
xxvi. 6 ; xxviii. 68. It was the bondage endured by the Jews
in their captivity, Ezra, ix. 9 ; Nehemiah, v. 8. It was the
bondage into which Joseph was sold, Genesis, xxxvii. 28, 36,
and Psalm ev. 17. Various legal privileges, to which even
the lowest class of servants among the Hebrews were enti-
tled, and various limitary statutes, controlling the system of
servitude, made it impossible for the Hebrews to impose the
same despotic slavery upon others. They could not rule over
the servants obtained from the heathen with the same unlim-
ited authority with which the heathen ruled over their own
slaves. Both the Hebrew servants and the servants " bought
7
146 THE HIRED SERVANT.
with money of the stranger," were under protection of the
same laws against cruelty, and were in the same relation to
the Church by circumcision, and entitled to their rights in all
the religious festivals and privileges of instruction and of
worship. The Sabbath, and also the Sabbatical year of rest,
was theirs as well as their master's ; and, as we shall see, the
recurrence of jubilee was a limit beyond which no form or
period of bondage could in any case be continued.
HEBREW TERM FOR HIRED SERVANT.
The Hebrew term for hired servant, "VOb, sakir, the hire-
ling^ is from the verb "toto, sakar, to hire. Leviticus, xix. 13,
the icages of him that is hired, T^?, sakir. — Exodus, xxii. 15,
of a person who has hired himself out with his ox or ass, or im-
plement of husbandry, if he were a hireling, "Vt'y— oa. So in
Exodus, xii. 45, a hired servant, "V>ste, sakir y also, Leviticus,
xxii. 16, a hired servant of the priest ; also Leviticus, xxv. 40,
50, 53. In Isaiah, xvi. 14, we have an illustrative passage :
Within three years, as the years of an hireling -vote imjjb,
sakir; also Isaiah, xxi. 16 : Within a year, according to the years
of cm hireling, "VSto imjs, computed as the years of a servant
hired by the year are computed. But the TWs»j sakir, the
hired servant, might be hired by the day, while the ordinary
servant, the ns? evedh, had no such compensation, having
been apprenticed or hired for six years. Job, vii. 2 : As a
servant, "oj>, evedh, earnestly desireth the shadow, and as an
hireling, t>s», sakir, looketh for his wages. Here the con-
trast between the two words and their respective significa-
tion is marked. The "isv, evedh, the ordinary servant, looks
for no wages at the end of the day, but longs for the evening,
and for rest, or for a shadow from the sun, and for some relief
from his toil ; but the hired servant, "vste, sakir', looks for the
reward of his work, according to the law in Leviticus, xix. 13.
So, likewise, Job, xiv. 6, that he may accomplish, as an hire-
ling, his day, "Wsto..
THE HIKED SERVANT. 147
Now it is to be noted that the word n:w, evedh, is never
used in conjunction with any adjective to signify a hired serv-
ant ; for the naa>, evedh, the servant, was one whose whole
services were purchased at the outset for a specified time,
longer or shorter, as the case might be, from himself, or from
some one to whom for such a time he owed those services ;
it might be for a term of years, it might be till the jubilee.
It is quite clear that the distinctive signification of tay, evedh,
excluded the idea of daily wages. In Leviticus, xxv. 39, 49,
the particular difference between the ordinary servant and
the hired servant is legally drawn out : " If thy brother that
dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee, thou
shalt not compel him to serve as ia», evedh ; but as an hired
servant and as a sojourner shall he be with thee." The spe-
cific word "VtV, sakir, is used ; thou shalt not compel him to
serve as an nsy, evedh ; but as a vsto, sakir, and a sojourner shall
he be with thee. The point in view evidently is this ; thou shalt
not treat him as a servant of all work, bound to thee irrevoc-
ably by his apprenticeship, but as a hireling who can leave at any
time, on giving notice. Yet this is spoken of one who is sold, one
who is bought with money. The buying with money did not
imply ownership, did not render consequent or extant the con-
dition which we call slavery : this is perfectly clear. All the
Hebrew servants so bought were merely servants bound out
for a term of years, and if longer than six years, then to be
treated as hired servants, not as bond-servants. So in Exo-
dus, xxi. 7, where it is said, If a man sell his daughter, the
thing signified is merely a six years' contract for her services ;
her service for six years is sold for so much.
A Hebrew might sell himself to a stranger, sojourner, or
alien in Israel, or to the stock of the stranger's family, to the
heir, for an unlimited time, that is, for the period of time
from the making of the bargain to the jubilee. But this sale
had two conditions : first, he was to be with his master " as a
yearly hired servant," n:aa n:w ts'wd, Leviticus, xxv. 53, as a
148 THE HIKED SERVANT.
hireling from year to year, or year by year; second, he could
at any time be redeemed, that is, could buy back his own
time, or have it bought back for him; and his owner was
compelled to grant the redemption and take the money.
The price of redemption was reckoned from the year that
he was sold to the year of jubilee, so much a yeai-, accord-
ing to the price and time of a yearly hired servant. If
more years remained to the jubilee, a greater price, if fewer
a less price, was to be paid for his own time. If not re-
deemed, he and all his family were to be free at any rate in
the year of jubilee; and meanwhile he was to receive wages
as a yearly hired servant, a "vsts, sakir, and not an n?3? , evedh.
It is added that his master shall not rule with rigor over him.
And in Leviticus, xxv. 46, when it is enacted that the servants
of the Hebrews may be purchased of the strangers or the fami-
lies of strangers, the heathen or their descendants in the. land,
it was added, " but over your brethren, the children of Israel,
ye shall not rule, one over another, with rigor." The rigor-
ous rule, as contrasted with the lenient rule over hired serv-
ants, consisted partly in the very fact of their being bound
to serve the whole six years, or the whole time for which
they had apprenticed themselves, for the sum paid for such
apprenticeship, without being entitled to receive any other
wages, either daily, weekly, or yearly. This was the grand
difference between the "ts» and -rcto.
There were other differences by statute, as described in
Exodus, xii. 43-45, and Leviticus, xxii. 10, 11. No uncir-
cumcised stranger or foreigner, nor any man's hired servant,
might eat of the passover. But the servant bought for money
niiobt eat thereof when circumcised. It was a household or-
dinance, to be observed by families, as well as national. The
home-born servants were regarded in this respect as belong-
ing to the family, but the hired servants not. Yet this could
not have been intended to operate to the exclusion of hired
servants, under all circumstances, from the passover ; it may
DIFFERENT PRICES. 149
mean hired servants nncircumcised. Certainly Hebrews them-
selves were sometimes in the state of hired servants, and conld
not have been excluded. But again, in the priest's family,
Leviticus, xxii. 10, 11, while the servant bought with money,
or born in the house, was permitted to partake of the holy
things, the hired servant was forbidden, was not regarded as
belonging to the priest's household.
DIFFERENCE IN VALUE.
In Deuteronomy, xv. 1 8, there is a computation of the com-
parative worth of a servant, ns?|, evedh, and the hired servant,
iisto, sakir. " The Hebrew servant, serving thee six years by
sale, hath been worth a double hired servant to thee in serviny
thee six years /" or perhaps it means, duplicate the wages of
a hired servant for six years ; that is, if you had kept a hired
servant for six years, by yearly wages, it would have cost you
double the price you have paid for the six years' Hebrew
servant. The servant bought for six years you had no yearly
wages to pay, but the hired servant you must pay by the
year. On this account, when the Hebrew servant was set free
at the end of his six years' service, the master was by law en-
joined to give him a parting gift ; was not permitted to send
him away empty, but was " bound to furnish him liberally out
of the flock, the floor, and the wine-press." It was an outfit,
intended in some measure to supply to him the absence of
yearly wages. Deuteronomy, xv. 13, 14.
From all this it appeal's that, so far as the Hebrew servant
was an is?, evedh, he was such only for the term of six years,
an ids, evedh, for the whole term, without daily wages; but
if in longer servitude, then he was an T>sto nny, evedh sakir, a
servant, an hireling, a servant on wages. The mere n^» was
ordinarily the servant bought for money, and was considered
as bound to pay, by his labor, for the sum of money given as
the purchase of his whole time. If the master had to pay him
yearly or daily wages in addition, then the servant bought
150 YOUNG MEN AS SERVANTS.
with his money would have cost him much more than the
hired laborer. It was the difference between a six years' ap-
prenticeship, and a six years' service on daily, weekly, or
yearly wages.
Such were the relations between master and servant in the
Hebrew household four or five hundred years after the time
of Abraham. Such was the system of servitude as regulated
by law, to which God's regulations with Abraham, in the
founding of the Hebrew nation and policy, looked forward.
Abraham, five hundred years before the operation of the
Mosaic statutes, had servants that were born in his house,
servauts that were given him, and servants that were bought
with his money. They were all circumcised and instructed ;
and his children and his household were to keep the way of
the Lord, to do justice and judgment. God's testimony to
Isaac concerning Abraham, after his death, was this : " be-
cause that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge,
my commandments, my statutes, and my laws." Genesis,
xxvi. 5. There were men in Abraham's house, born in his
house, and there were those bought with money of the
stranger ; they were all circumcised along with Ishmael his
son, and formed one and the same religious family.
DESIGNATION OF SERVANTS AS TOUNG MEN.
It is in Abraham's household that we first find mention of
servants under the form iss, notar, a young man, Genesis, xviii. 7.
This designation is repeated in Genesis, xxii. 3, 5, 19, where
Abraham's young men accompanied himself and Isaac to the
mount of the appointed sacrifice. They were employed in
menial services, though the word does not necessarily mean
servants, and Isaac himself is called by the same designation,
rendered in his case lad. Indeed, the generic signification is
lad, or boy, while it is often applied to designate servants, as
also is the feminine of n?: applied to a maid-servant. Thus
we find Abraham, on these two important occasions, person-
YOUNG MEN AS SERVANTS. 151
ally waited on (as also his illustrious guests) by his young
men, mst.
There is the same usage in the following instances : 2 Kings,
iv. 22, 24, used to designate the servants of the Shunamite,
and verse 25, applied to Gehazi, the servant of Elijah. Also,
v. 20 and viii. 4. In 2 Kings, vi. 15, it is one of two terms
applied to designate the servant of Elisha, the first from the
verb r\-yo, to serve, to minister, and the second, n?s, as also in
verse 17. In 1 Kings, xix. 3, Elijah left his servant at Beer-
sheba, '-njfi. It is used also in 1 Kings, xx. 14, 15, 17, 19, and
in like manner in 2 Kings, xix. 6. The same designation is
applied in Nehemiah, iv. 16, 22, 23, and v. 15, 16, and vi. 5.
It is applied to ISTehemiah's servants, the people's, Sanballat's,
and the former governor's servants. But in the same his-
tory, Tobiah, the servant, the Ammonite, is designated with
intended contempt as the is», probably a runaway slave of
the heathen, though he was the son-in-law of Shechaniah, the
son of Arah. Nehemiah, ii. 10, 19, and vi. 18, and xiii. 19.
In Numbers, xxii. 22, the term n?5, is applied to the two serv-
ants of Balaam.
After the overthrow of Sodom, Abraham sojourned in
Gerar, and there Abimelech took sheep, and oxen, and men-
servants and women-servants, nhs** b^a*, and gave to Abra-
ham, Genesis, xx. 14. And all that Abraham had, he gave
unto Isaac, flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and men-
servants and maid-servants, and camels and asses, Genesis,
xxiv. 35, 36, and xxv. 5. After the death of Abraham we
find Isaac dwelling in Gerar, under the divine blessing, so
that he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds,
and great store of servants, na-i nnayn, Genesis, xxvi. 14.
Precisely the same words are used of Job, that he had a very
great household, nan rnax, the xohole body of domestics and
dependents, Job, i. 3.
But the servants are here called, as in Genesis, xxii. 3, and
other places referred to above, young men, D^s*, Job, i. 15-17,
152 YOUNG MEN AS SERVANTS.
three times : first, the servants are slain ; second, the sheep and
the servants are consumed ; third, the camels are carried away
and the servants slain by the Chaldeans. These D^a were
certainly a part of the great household, the n*a?s, the domes-
tics and servants of Job. But in the nineteenth verse the
same word is used to describe Job's own sons as destroyed in
the falling of the house ; they, too, are called the young men,
tji^ssn. In Job, xli. 5, the feminine plural is used for maidens:
Wilt thou bind him for thy maidens? tpK--i?.:*5.
This peculiar usage prevails in Judges, Ruth, and the first
book of Samuel. Judges, vii. 10, 11 : Phurah, the servant of
Gideon, 1*5, naar. Judges, xix. 3 : His servant with him, and
a couple of asses, '.->?$, naar. Judges, xix. 9, 11, 13, 19: The
master to the servant, and the servant to the master, the dis-
tinction being that of wis and ta*3, naar. Ruth, ii. 5, 6 :
Boaz to his servant over the reapers, his young men, hnss?,
naar. Also ii. 9, 15, 21. The feminine of the same word
in this book is used for maidens, as ii. 8, my maidens, Vp£S.
Ruth, ii. 22, 23, the maidens of Boaz. R is the servants of
Boaz that are thus designated, and Ruth calls them, in ii. 13,
handmaidens, ^rjhao, shiphhah. The young men and the maid-
ens, as servants to Boaz, were at work in his fields, and Ruth
gleaned among them and after them. In this book, the word
12?, evedh, for servant, is not once employed ; an indication
that there was no approximation to slavery known in the
household of Boaz, though he was a mighty man of wealth of
the family of Elimelech.
In 1 Samuel, ix. 3, 5, 8, 7, 22, 27, and x. 14, there is the
same usage. Kish said to Saul, take now one of the servants,
w-virn, naar, with thee, and seek the asses. Then said Saul
to his servant, Sim, naar, and so repeatedly. The same usage
in reference to maidens employed in drawing water; in ix. 11,
they are called nViJ>5. And so in 1 Samuel, ii. 13, 15, the
masculine of the same noun is used for the priest's servant,
nw, naar.
THE SERVANT OP SAUL. 153
In 1 Samuel, xxx. 13, the word is used as follows: a young
man (nys, naar) of Egypt, servant ("lay, evedh) to an Araalek-
ite. In 2 Samuel, ix. 2, compared with ix. 9, 10, and xvi. 1,
and xix. 17, the terms ia!g, evedh, and i»s, naar, are applied to
the same person, Ziba, of the house of Saul ; and a close ex-
amination of the passages indicates the condition signified to
be quite different from any thing implied in the appellation of
slave. Ziba is first called a servant, nss, evedh, of the house
of Saul, and then he is named the nys, naar, of the house of
Saul, with twenty servants, b^s*, evedh, under him, in his own
house, and all that dwelt in the house of Ziba were servants,
Es"n:=y, evedh, unto Mephibosheth. 2 Samuel, ix. 9 : " The king
called to Ziba, Saul's servant, -iy;, naar, and said unto him, I
have given unto thy master's son all that pertained to Saul,
and to all his house. Thou, therefore, and thy sons, and thy
servants, spw^ evedh, shall till the land for him." 2 Samuel,
xvi. 1 : Ziba is called the servant, nyi, naar, of Mephibosheth,
and meets King David with provisions. 2 Samuel, xix. 17:
Again he is called Ziba, the servant of the house of Saul,
V.N^j n">3 -iy5, naar, the young man of the house of Saul.
Very evidently, Ziba was an officer of some importance in
Saul's household, but it is equally clear that he was not a
slave, though called both the nay, evedh, and the iyi, naar
of his master the king. The naarism may have been a form
of service, more honorable, and of a higher grade, than the
evedhism. The indication, wherever -iy;_, naar, is employed,
is certainly that of free service, and not bond-service.
For the present, we stop in our investigation with the
Abrahamic period. From the survey of this period, as it lies
in the Scriptures, Ave find no trace wdiatever of the existence
of slavery, except among idolatrous and despotic nations.
There is no proof that it ever existed in the household of
Abraham. There is evidence of the revealed judgment of
God against it. God's description to Abraham of the bondage
which his seed should be compelled to undergo in Egypt, was
7*
154 JUDGMENT AGAINST SLAVEEY.
a reprobation of involuntary unpaid servitude, as a crime on
the part of those who enforced it. The nation whom they
serve will I judge. Know of a surety that thy seed shall
serve them, and they shall afflict them. The sentence is as
clearly condemnatory as if God had said, They will be guilty
of great and cruel oppression, and for the crime of such op-
pression I will punish them. Is it possible to conceive that
the individual, with an enlightened moral sense, to whom this
revelation was made, could himself, as the head and founder
of a social race and system, establish in his own family and
nation the same reprobated state of enforced, unpaid, involun-
tary servitude ? Could Abraham make another seed his prey
and property, by the same spoliation and affliction denounced
of God as a crime to be punished, when inflicted on his own
seed ? The crime of the Egyptians against the Hebrews was
the enslaving of them, and treating them as slaves. The en-
slaving of others, and treating them as slaves, would be the
same crime in Abraham ; it would be the founding of the
same system of oppression and cruelty, which God plainly in-
formed Abraham was wrong.*
* Antiquities of Egypt. The Fu- have defrauded no man ; I have not
ture State, 155. slaughtered the cattle of the gods; I
It has been questioned by some have not prevaricated at the seat of
writers whether slavery existed in justice ; i" have not made slaves of the
Egypt under what is called the the- Egyptians ; I have not defiled my
ocracy in that country ; and ho cvi- conscience for the sake of my supe-
dcnces of slavery, in the law } cited rior ; I have not used violence ; I
by Diodorus, are referred to a period have not famished my household ; I
very much later than that of Abra- have not made to weep ; I have not
ham. That the Egyptians did not smitten privily; I have not changed
make slaves of their own country- the measures of Egypt; I have not
men, and that tho doing of this was grieved the spirits of the gods ; I have
regarded as a crime of the greatest not committed adultery," etc.
magnitude, is manifest from their own Tho enumeration of slave-making
records. From the Egyptian ritual as among the greatest crimes is re-
pictures in the British Museum there markable. It is hardly to be sup-
is gathered the following address of posed that the conscience of Abra-
the departed soul before Osiris, on en- ham, enlightened by divine revela-
tering tho Hall of Judgment : " I tion, would permit him to maintain
JUDGMENT AGAINST SLAVERY. 155
Even when, in the execution of God's judgments against
the heathen nations expelled from the promised land, the He-
brews were commanded to put the remnant of those nations
to tribute and service, they were forbidden to treat them as
they themselves had been treated in Egypt. The system of
servitude under which they were to be brought, was hemmed
in and restricted by such legal limitations and periodical clos-
ures, that what we call slavery could not grow out of it, but
would, on the contrary, be abolished by it. It is impossible that
the system which God thus predestinated to abhorrence, as a
system of iniquity, could at the same time be set in the house-
hold and line of the patriarch as an example and model of so-
cial and domestic life. There must be positive proof of the
most unquestionable clearness, before we can admit the exist-
ence of such an anomaly ; but no proof is found. It is no
proof to take assumptions from the existence and nature of
slavery in ancient Greece and Rome, or in modern ages, and
carry them back to the foundation of the patriarchal society,
and force them there, as a supposititious conclusion in regard
to that society. It is no proof to take from modern times and
languages a name, a term, of which there is no trace in the
Hebrew tongue, and apply it to Hebrew usages that have no
reality corresponding to it, and then, notwithstanding all this,
draw from such application of the term an opinion that the
thing itself existed. Strange to say, this has been the cas&
with not a few commentators, almost without reflection, witl-
not the slightest examination of the question ; so that wt>
find the term slave most carelessly, incongruously, aiKi
groundlessly applied, even in books and essays assuming *o
be critical.
If we could suppose a species of upas-apple to have been
grafted on the antique olive-tree, so that from the time of
as a habit, what even the natural ians, taught them to consider as an
conscience, and the remnant of relig- oppression and a crime,
ious knowledge among the Egypt-
156
THE OLIVE AND THE UPAS.
Julius Caesar down to this day the most ordinary fruit of the
olive should bo a hitter, oily, poisonous apple, used for the
purpose of intoxication and intemperance, it would certainly
be a somewhat serious error to assume the existence and use
of this artificial corruption of the olive in the land of Palestine
in the time of Joshua and the Judges. If this modern per-
verted fruit had its own peculiar name, it would be an extra-
ordinary stupidity or willful perversion, for any lexicographer
or commentator to call the fruit of the oriental antique olive by
that name. And it would be a most disastrous and absurd
confusion to carry in our minds the idea of that poisonous and
vicious modern invention, when reading of the habitual use of
the olive as a native and most precious production of the Holy
Land, one of the most gracious gifts of God to its inhabitants.
But even this would be not more absurd than for us to carry
the name or the idea of slavery back to the household life of
Abraham.*
* Saalschutz. Das Mosa'sche Eecht.
Laws of Moses, Vol. II., note on sec.
xii., p. 114. Saalschutz corrects
Michaelis, and affirms that he had
brought in a most pernicious mistake
in giving the general title of bondage
or slavery to the system of Jewish
service. Referring to instances in
proof of this error, " With what jus-
tice," he asks, "could the appellation
of Leibegenschaft, servile thraldom, or
slavery, be applied to such a system ?
Servants that were free by law in the
seventh year, and universally in the
year of jubilee, could not be called
slaves ; they were in no sense such.
With what propriety or justice can any
or all these classes of servants bo
called bondsmen or slaves ?"
Compare Graves, on the Penta-
teuch. Moral Principles of the Jewish
Law, Part II., sec. in., and Dymond,
Essays on Morality, with Blackstone
and Coke on Natural Law and Right.
" As liberty is equally valuable with
life," remarks Graves, "the Jewish
law, with the strictest equity, or-
dained that if any man were convicted
of attempting to reduce any fellow-
citizen to slavery, he should be pun-
ished with death." The principle of
one and the same law for the stranger
and the native applied here, for the
death penalty is against stealing a
man, and it has been again and again
demonstrated that he who holds a man
as a slave, against his own will, re-
news the stealing of him every hour.
" Whoever," says Gisborne, (Slave
Trade, 144, 155,) "detains the slave
in bondage, directly or indirectly, a
moment, commits a flagrant sin against
God."
CHAPTER XV.
Patbiarchal Establishment op Isaac and Jacob. — The Outrage at Shechem.—
Tbibdtaby Sebvice. — Captives in Wab. — God's Eepbobation on the Custom of
Selling them fob Slaves. — Tub First Instance of Man Stealing. — Condition
of the Iseaelites in Egypt.
Lepsius has noticed the great personality of Abraham, and
what he calls the non-prominent activity of Isaac. The con-
trast is indeed striking ; and the only interval in which we be-
hold in his circumstances the patriarchal greatness and prosper-
ity of his father, is the period of his sojourn in the land of the
Philistines, recorded in the twenty-fifth chapter of Genesis.
But Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac, xxv. 5 ; and
the account given of him some twenty years after Abraham's
death, is as follows: "The Lord blessed him, and the man
waxed great, and went forward and grew until he became
very great ; for he had possession of flocks, and possession of
herds, and great store of servants," xxvi. 12-14. Here the
appellative for the greatness of his household is the Hebrew
rnay, avudha, the verbal from nay, avadh, signifying the whole
body of his domestics, or of those in his employment, includ-
ing, of course, the herdsmen and well-diggers. Compare
Job, i. 3, the description of Job's very great household, nttto
nan n*»aj. There is no intimation of slavery, nor any approxi-
mation thereto, in Isaac's family or jurisdiction.
From him the same gift of inheritance descended with the
right of the first-born to Jacob, in whose family the patriarchal
dominion and opulence passed from one person to twelve in
the constitution of the Jewish State. During the sojourn of
158 WAR AND SLAVERY.
Jacob with Laban, there is no change of manners, no intro-
duction or appearance of any form of slavery. Jacob himself
is said to have served Laban for wages ; he was Laban's serv-
ant as well as his son-in-law ; and it is said that " the man in-
creased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maid-servants
and men-servants.'''' D-Hssn rnhDti, Genesis, xxx. 43. These
went with him, when he fled from Laban : they were his nna?.,
aviidha, his patriarchal establishment, when he met Esau, and
sent messengers to his brother, saying : "I have oxen and
asses, flocks, and men-servants, and women-servants," Genesis,
xxxii. 5. But his two wives, and his two women-servants,
and his eleven sons, are described as his immediate family,
and are set apart by themselves — the handmaidens with their
children, and Leah with hers, and Joseph and Rachel, Genesis,
xxxiii. 6, 7. After a favorable interview with Esau, he travels
on slowly, with his flocks and herds, to Succoth and Shalem,
and erects an altar.
But here, at Shechem, was perpetrated that murderous out-
rage, by the sons of Jacob, in the sacking and spoiling of that
city, remembered by the patriarch, with a solemn curse, upon
his dying bed. After destroying the males of the city, " all
their wealth, and all their little ones, and their wives, took
they captive." There is no account of the final disposition
made of these unfortunate captives; but in this infamous
transaction we have the first intimation of.any possibility of
the possession of servants, by violence and fraud, among the
descendants of Abraham.
WAR AND SLAVERY. CRIME OUT OF CRIME.
Among the heathen nations, captivity in war was one of the
most common modes by which men became slaves; but in
the history of Abraham we see the patriarch refusing to sanc-
tion such a transaction by his example. When he had con-
quered those heathen marauders who took Lot captive, the
king of Sodom proposed that Abraham should give him the
HOUSEHOLD OF JACOB. 159
persons, and take the goods to himself, dividing thus the spoil
between them, on grounds easy to be guessed at from our
knowledge of the morals of the Sodomites. But Abraham de-
clared that he would enter into no bargain with him, neither
for goods nor persons : from a thread to a shoe-latchet, he
would take nothing. Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre the Amorite
might make what terms they pleased, but he himself would
take nothing.
Jacob's abhorrence of the conduct of his sons is marked :
he denounced the whole wickedness of the murder and cap-
tivity of the Shechemites, and was beyond measure distressed
by it. He seems to have made it the occasion of a religious
reformation, commanding his household, and all that xoere
with him, to put away the strange gods that were among
them, and be clean, Genesis, xxxv. 2. Thus Jacob returned
to the habitation of Isaac his father, who died in Hebron at
the age of one hundred and eighty years, and his sons Esau
and Jacob buried him. "And Esau took his wives and his
sons and his daughters, and all the persons of his house,
!iv>a hSttBJHst—fiw1}, and all his substance which he had gotten in
the land of Canaan, and went into the country from the face
of his brother Jacob ; for their riches were more than that
they might dwell together, and the land wherein they were
strangers could not bear them because of their cattle," Gen-
esis, xxxvi. £, 7. Here the expression hrna n't-Ei-Vs holnaph-
shoth betho, is clearly synonymous with n^sy avudha, in the
description of the households of Isaac and Job; it compre-
hends domestics and dependents, the born in the house, rra
t»*£, and the hired servants, and all whose time and services,
in a limited or definite apprenticeship, were bought with money
of the stranger.
The blessing of a birth-right conferred in itself no superior
authority upon one brother over the other ; but Isaac's pecu-
liar blessing upon Jacob, on the occasion recorded in Genesis,
xxvii., made Esau tributary to his brother, as unexpectedly to
160 CRIMINALITY OF SLAVERY BY "WAR.
Isaac as to himself; for the arrangement had been quite the
reverse, but for Rebecca's deceit and Isaac's blindness. " Let
people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee : be lord
over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee,"
Genesis, xxvii. 29. There was the solemnity of a divine inspira-
tion or compulsion in this, for Isaac felt that he could not revoke
or change it; yea, and he shall be blessed, in spite of his strata-
gem and our disappointment. Behold, I have made him thy
lord, and all his brethren have I given to him for servants,
Genesis, xxvii. 33, 37. The expression for servants is tpnasis,
laavadhim, so that an unscrupulous advocate for the divine
right of slavery might much more plausibly find it here, in the
blessing upon Jacob, than in the curse upon Canaan. But
the nature of this domination is instantly defined, and the
definition applies to both transactions. "By thy sword shalt
thou live, and shalt serve thy brother ; and it shall come to
pass, when thou shalt have dominion, that thou shalt break
his yoke from off thy neck." Here a national subjection was
meant, and not a personal servitude.
CAPTIVES IN WAR. SINFULNESS OF MAKING SLAVES OF THEM.
That the divine reprobation rested upon the custom of
making slaves out of captives taken in war, is manifest from
many passages. God never permitted it among the Jews
themselves, when there were two kingdoms in conflict, and
among other nations it is not unfrequently presented as a sin
and misery, the result of a marked retributive Providence.
The transaction recorded in 2 Chronicles, xxviii. 8-15, affords
a very remarkable proof of God's abhorrence of such a traffic.
It is a lucid commentary on the laws against making merchan-
dise of men ; and the immediate obedience of the people to
the word of the Lord forbidding this crime, shows how deep-
ly their conscience was stirred and struck with remorse under
the sense of it, for having intended it : " Deliver the captives
again, which ye have taken captive, for the fierce wrath of
GUILT OF TIIE SLAVE TRADE. 161
the Lord is upon you ;" " Our trespass is great, and there is
fierce wrath against Israel ;" " Ye purpose to keep under the
children of Judah and Jerusalem for bondmen and bond-
women unto you." Such compelled, involuntary bondage
would have been slavery, would have been the stealing and
holding, and making merchandise of men ; would have been,
in fact, that very crime, which, by the divine law, was to be
punished with death. The number of the captives was two
hundred thousand ; but so convicted and subdued were the
victorious Israelites before the word of God by the prophet
Oded, so penetrated with a sense of the magnitude of the
crime they were on the brink of committing, that immedi-
ately they " rose up and took the captives, and with the spoil
clothed all that were naked among them, and arrayed them
and shod them, and gave them to eat and to drink, and
anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them upon asses,
and brought them to Jericho, the city of palm trees, to their
brethren." This is a record of immediate obedience to God,
in the midst of the rage and flush of victory, and of forbear-
ance and generosity toward the vanquished at God's com-
mand, unparalleled in the annals of history.
The account is full of instruction ; for of all the modes in
which men have ever been made slaves, conquest in war has
been supposed to be the least contrary to justice ; but here it
is denounced as a crime to be visited with the fierce wrath of
God. But if so in the case of a war between rival kingdoms,
how much more when the war is against a helpless race, such
as the natives of Africa ; a piratical invasion, and a series, un-
interrupted, of savage incursions, entered upon, instigated, and
perpetuated, for the sole purpose of seizing and carrying away
captive the wretched victims of such cruelty, to sell them as
slaves, and to keep them and their posterity as a race of slaves,
to be held, bought, and sold, as chattels, and only chattels,
for ever. Both the foreign piracy, and the domestic slave
trade in the United States, are one and the same crime, but
162 FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC.
perpetuated and legalized in this country with greater aggra-
vations; the very legalization and sanctification of it constitut-
ing a greater guilt, and working out in it and by it a far more
exceeding and eternal weight of infamy and cruelty.
Among heathen nations it was a custom to dispose of the
captives taken in war by casting lots for them. This was the
late endured by some of the Jews themselves, who were thus
disposed of, in some cases, for the most infamous purposes
conceivable, Joel, iii. 3. " They have cast lots for my people,
and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine,
that they might drink." It was thus that the cities of Egypt
were laid waste, and the inhabitants carried captive. No
Araon is mentioned in Nahum, and it is stated that "they
cast lots for her honorable men, and all her great men were
bound in chains," Nahum, iii. 10. In the prophecy of Oba-
diah, the Edomites are threatened of God for their violence
against the Israelites, and for standing aloof when the heath-
en carried them away captive, and foreigners entered their
gates and cast lots upon Jerusalem, Obadiah, 11. They are
also accused of " standing in the crossway to cut off those
that escaped," and of " delivering up those that remained,"
and it is declared that, as they had done to others, so should
it be done to them, Obadiah, 14, 15.
In the same manner, the tribes and inhabitants of Tyre and
Zidon, and of the coasts of Palestine, are arraigned and assured
of God's vengeance, because they had sold the children of Jic-
dah and the children of Jerusalem to the Grecians, that they
might be removed far from their border, Joel, iii. 6. For this
iniquity God declares, " I will sell your sons and your daugh-
ters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell
them to the Sabeans, to a people far off, for the Lord hath
spoken it," Joel, iii. 8. As a direct testimony of God in re-
gard to the sinfulness of such a traffic, these passages are very
important. The being sold in bondage is presented as one of
the most terrible judgments of God upon a guilty nation. The
FIKST CASE OF MAN-STEALING. 163
same judgment is threatened against the sinful Hebrews them-
selves, Deuteronomy, xxviii. 68, as the climax of all the curses
pronounced against them for their sins : " Ye shall be sold
unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man
shall buy you :" ye shall be tossed to and fro for sale, as so
many cattle, with the shame and the misery of being so de-
spised and abhorred that no master will be willing to buy
you.
The despotism of such a dominion, even when it was in
some measure lightened, and God began to redeem them
from it, is graphically set forth in the confession, prayer, and
covenant of Xehemiah and the people, returning from their
captivity. " Behold we are servants this day in the land thou
gavest to our fathers, and it yieldeth much increase to the
kings whom thou hast set over us because of our sins; also,
they have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle at
their pleasure, and we are in great distress,'' Nehemiah, ix.
36, 37.
THE FIRST INSTANCE OF MAN-STEALING.
There needed no law against man-stealing to assure the
conscience of its being a crime ; and it has been a subject of
wonder that the sons of Jacob could so deliberately and re-
morselessly plunge themselves into such guilt. But the steps
in the histoiy are logical forerunners and sequences. Events
follow upon character, and one act produces another, with a
perfect moral fitness and fatality. Any thing might have been
expected, any development could not have been surprising,
after the dreadful tragedy at Shechera. The murderous sack-
ing of that city, and the disposal of the captives, had prepared
the sons of Jacob, " moved with envy," (the former passion
having been revenge), for the crime of kidnapping. They
took their choice between murdering their brother and selling
him, it being only the providence of God, in the passing of
the Ishmaelites just then, from Gilead toward Egypt, with their
caravan of camels, laden with spices, and balm, and myrrh,
164 FIRST CASE OF MAN-STEALING.
that suggested to them the merchandise as more profitable.
So they sold Joseph to the Ishmaelities for twenty pieces of
silver. And the Midianites sold him into Egypt, Genesis,
xxxvii. 28-36. The word used for this transaction is in both
cases the same, ns», makar. And Potiphar bought him,
»7t3}?»5. vayiknehu, xxxix. 1. The word bought is from hjj?,
Jcanah, and the same is applied, Nehemiah, v. 8, to the pur-
chase, for redemption, of the Jews that had been sold unto
the heathen. Joseph is called by Potiphar's wife, xxxix. 17,
the Hebrew servant, tayji, haevedh. Joseph describes the
transaction by which he was brought into bondage in Egypt
as man-stealing • for indeed Iioas stolen away out of the land
of the Hebrews, itfiai s&A. The chief butler's description or
designation of Joseph is that of a young man, a Hebrew, serv-
ant to the captain, nzv 1*03; ny$, naar, ivry, evedh, Genesis,
xli. 12.
In the course of Joseph's interview with his brethren, the
word nay, evedh, is very frequently employed ; and they and
Joseph use it to signify both the condition of a free servant
and of one condemned to servitude for crime. The variety in
the translation of the same term, sometimes by the word bond-
man, sometimes servant, is singularly loose and groundless,
Genesis, xliv. 9, 10, 16, 17, 33: "With whomsoever of thy
servants (t23>, evedh), it be found, both let him die, and we
also will be my lord's bondmen," (nay, evedh), the same word,
servants. " And he said, lie shall be my servant" (nay, evedh).
And again, " Let thy servant ("ray, evedh), abide instead of
the lad, a bondman" (na?, evedh), Genesis, xliv. 33. The bond-
age here signifies a servitude in punishment of crime — a
slavery into which, without crime, Joseph had been many
years previous most diabolically sold by his own brethren for
twenty pieces of silver. It was a question, then, whether to
sell him or leave him to die ; a most extraordinary demonstra-
tion of the exactly equivalent nature of the two crimes of mur-
der and man-stealing; showing the diabolism at heart, and
ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 165
proving that a man capable of making merchandise of his
brother man was capable also of murdering him, the latter
form of wickedness requiring no greater malignity than the
former. And if men, under the light of revelation, can see
nothing criminal in slavery, neither would they in murder, if
murder, like slavery, should become profitable.
CONDITION OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT.
The question next arises, in the order of the history,
whether any of the great store of servants spoken of as for-
merly belonging to Jacob's household, went down with him
into Egypt to settle there. No mention is made of them, and
only his own posterity are particularized in the census. " And
Jacob rose up from Beersheba, and the sons of Israel carried
Jacob their father, and their little ones, and their wives, in
the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him. And they
took their cattle, and their goods, which they had gotten in
the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob, and all his
seed with him. His sons and his sons' sons with him, his
daughters and his sons' daughters, and all his seed brought he
with him into Egypt," Genesis, xlvi. 5, 7. " All the souls that
came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, be-
sides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls threescore and six,"
xlvi. 26. The enumeration here is simply all that came out of
Jacob's loins ; it does not prove that none others were with
them ; and Joseph is said to have " nourished his father, and
his brethren, and all his father's household, with bread, accord-
ing to their families," xlvii. 12, iva-^s mn% veethkolbeth, all the
household. Joseph's own enumeration to Pharaoh was : " My
father, and my brethren, and their flocks, and their herds, and
all that they have, are in the land of Goshen." The two years
of sore famine must have greatly reduced the *rj»», avitdha,
the household establishment of the patriarch, once so rich and
numerous. Servants and dependents would be dismissed, their
herds and their flocks would be diminished ; nevertheless, we
166
TIIE SPOILING OF EGYPT.
can not certainly conclude that no servants whatever went
with them into Egypt. But there we shortly find the testi-
mony, Exodus, i. 7, that " the children of Israel were fruitful,
and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceed-
ing mighty, and the land was filled with them."
Though they occupied a separate province, yet manifestly at
the time of Moses and the Exodus there was much comming-
ling with the Egyptians in social life and in neighborhoods.
There was visiting and sojourning between Egyptian and He-
brew families. This is clear from Exodus, xii. 21-23, and Ex-
odus, iii. 21, 22 : " Every woman shall borrow* of her neighbor,
* The error iu regard to this trans-
action is very great, if it be sup-
posed that the Hebrews really pre-
tended to borrow with the intention
of returning, and that such deception
was sanctioned of God. It is a mis-
translation, like that of slave for serv-
ant.
" Of those numerous writers who
take every opportunity of depreciat-
ing the Bible, many have been care-
ful to dilate upon the impropriety of
the Israelites borrowing goods of the
Egyptians, when about finally to
leave the country, and consequently
without any intention of repayment.
In addition to what is said in the text
in explanation of this conduct, and
on the justice of this requital, it will
bo quite sufficient to observe that the
idea of borrowing arises entirely from
the English translation, and has no
place iu the original, which is, liter-
ally, "to ask." So the Septuagint
reads: "Every woman shall ask of
her neighbor," etc. Should any one
still contend for rendering the word
Vn», borrow, let him try to render
it so in Psalm cxxii. 6 : 0 borrow the
peace of Jerusalem ! (Kenxicott)." —
Smith's Sacred Annals, voL iL, G2.
Gesenius renders the word, ma-
tuum petivit, asked or sought, but he
also renders it postidavit, as a demand.
But God declared that this was done
as a just retribution : " Ye shall spod
the Egyptians;" that is (as in verse 20,
where God says, " I will smite Egypt,")
" Ye shall spoU Egypt," Exodus, iii. 22.
Accordingly, Exodus, xii. 3G, it is said,
" They spoiled the Egyptians," or,
as in the other case, it may be trans-
lated, they spoiled Egypt. It was
a just, retributive process ; for the
Egyptians had despoiled the He-
brews, had taken their labor without
wages, had made them serve without
right and without recompense, so
that whatever the Hebrews now took
away was no more than belonged to
them. God did not propose a com-
pensation to the Egyptians for the loss
of so many slaves set free, but in this
divine scheme of emancipation he
proposed some compensation to the
oppressed bondmen, besides their free-
dom, some compensation for the in-
justice and robbery they had en-
dured.
If the slaves of the United States
wrere emancipated on these divinely
recognized principles, the spoiling of
THE BONDAGE IN EGYPT. 167
and of lier that sojourneth in her house." A degree of
intimacy and familiarity is here intimated, which the op-
pressive edicts and cruel measures of the Pharaohs had
not broken up. Up to the time of the death of Jacob
and Joseph and all that generation, their condition in
Egypt had been one of honor and prosperity, and their in-
tercourse with the Egyptians was disastrously productive
of increasing looseness, luxury, and idolatry in social life,
and was full of evil morally, as it was of advantage finan-
cially. The system of cruelty at length adopted by the
government of Egypt did not find nor create a correspond-
ing cruelty on the part of the Egyptian people, and their
friendly communion with the Hebrews was kept up even to
the last.
From Exodus, i. 11, it would seem that the avenue or
pretense on which their oppressors began to afflict them
was the collection of the tribute for the king. Operating
by means of officers, tax-gatherers, for the collection of
the impost, they seem to have required its payment in
labor, and to have increased the severity of that labor at
their pleasure : " Let us deal wisely with them. There-
fore they did set over them &"Ott "N&, sarai missim, cap-
tains for the tribute, to afflict them with their burdens."
Under these exactors, other officers were appointed, called
afterwards rpAb, nogesai, taskmasters, Exodus, v. 10 ; and
under them, from among the Hebrews themselves, were
appointed ">ysiv, shoterai, overseers, Exodus, v. 14-19 ;
their oppressors, by compelling them See also Calvin, Harmony of
to make some restitution of defrauded the Pentateuch, vol. i., Exodus,
wages, would be equally just. The iii. 22. Calvin's translation of the
African slaves have as perfect a claim word is postulabit. Hengstexberg-
upon their masters as the Hebrews supposes the spoil to have been a
had on theirs ; the borrowing and free gift of the Egyptians to the
spoiling would bo as just a divine Hebrews, in consequence of the kind-
requisition in the one case as in tho ness produced in their hearts towards
other. See Josephus' Antiq., book Israel, by God giving them favor in
h., chap, xiv., sec. vi. their sight.
168 THE BONDAGE IN EGYPT.
in fact, slave-drivers. How large a proportion of the peo-
ple were drafted for these burdens, or how many were
exempt, Ave have no means of knowing. It was a servile
conscription, but it did not make the whole people, per-
sonally, slaves.
The condition of the Hebrews in Egypt was one of kind-
ness, freedom, and comfort, in comparison with the condition
of the victims of slavery in America. They were a separate
community, with their own institutions, and only tributary to
the Egyptians. They possessed large property in flocks and
herds, and very much cattle. They had for their abode the
land of Goshen, the best part of Egypt. In their neighbor-
hood with the Egyptians, they dwelt in their own houses,
which were secure from violation, each family in a house by
itself. Their manner of living was, in respect to provisions,
abundant and nourishing, There was never any pretense on
the part of their oppressors of owning them as chattels ; they
were not treated as merchandise, they could not be sold. It
was a governmental oppression, but under which they were
as far removed from the condition of that chattel slavery
in which four millions of human beings in the United States
are trampled and bound, as the subjects of Austrian oppres-
sion in Italy. Yet this comparatively light oppression endured
by them is reprobated of God as grievous, afflictive, cruel, in-
iquitous ; a crime deserving of his wrath, a crime demanding,
and visited with, the most tremendous retribution. In the
light of such a demonstration, what language would be strong
enough to describe the divine disapprobation and wrath against
American slavery ? And what is the probable future of our
country, if we persist in this crime, bold, defiant, impenitent ?
See Granville Sharpe, Law of Friend, 58, 163. "The only choice
Retribution, and "Whewell, Duty of left to a vicious government is either
the State, Vol. II., 1003 ; compared to fall by the people, if they are suf-
■with Jefferson, Correspondence, and fered to become enlightened, or with
Notes on Virginia, 39, 40 ; Abbe' them, if they are kept enslaved and
Katnal, Burke and Coleridge, ignorant."
CHAPTER XVI.
Nature of Tributary Servitude. — Case of the Canaanites Generally, and of the
Gibeonites Particularly. — Case of tiie Nethinim. — Condition of the Serv-
ants of the Captive Jews. — Jaeiia, the Egyptian. — Children of Solomon's
Servants. — Strangers Appointed to Labor. — Nothing of Slavery in any of
These Conditions or Races.
NATURE OF TRIBUTARY SERVITUDE. CASE OP THE CANAANITES
GENERALLY, AND OF TIIE GIBEONITES PARTICULARLY.
In the prophetic blessing of Jacob upon his children, it is
said of Issachar that " he bowed his shoulder to bear, and be-
came a servant unto tribute," "n'» e»V, lemas ovedh, Genesis,
xlix. 16. As our line of induction and of argument is at present
historical, taking up the points of statutory law in their regu-
lar succession, Ave propose here to examine the nature of the
tributary and personal servitude imposed by the Mosaic laws,
and set in practice by Joshua, upon the Canaanitish nations.
This phrase, nii>— o^V, lemas ovedh, a servant unto tribute, ap-
plied by Jacob to Issachar, is the generic expression descrip-
tive of that servitude. Let us carefully trace the principle,
the law, and its operation.
THE PRINCIPLE AND LAW.
In Deuteronomy, xx. 11, it was enacted that when any city
of the heathen was conquered by the Hebrews, "all the peo-
ple found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall
serve thee,'''1 ^••ii?.! e*^ SjV S"»*r;. The same expression is found
in Joshua, xvi. 10, of the conquered Canaanites serving the
Ephraimites under tribute. The form is exactly that used by
Jacob in reference to Issachar, "iab>— &ta*» iircij, lemas ovedh. In
Judges, i. 28, 30, 33, 35, we have four instances of the same
8
170 LAW OF TRIBUTARY SERVICE.
expression applied to the treatment of the Canaanites — by
Manasseh, by Zebulon, by Naphtali, and the house of Joseph.
They did not drive out nor exterminate the inhabitants, but
they became tributaries unto them, efc^ cnV iiin, hayu lahem
lamas / in verse 28, they put the Canaanites to tribute, dkV
tijfisn— ris 6b»5, lamas. In Joshua, xvii. 13, the same expres-
sion, varied only in the use of the verb "jro, they set, or ap-
pointed, the Canaanites, Ma??, lemas, to tribute. So in Isaiah,
xxxi. 8, the young men of the conquered Assyrians shall be
for tribute, shall serve as tributaries, vw) We?», lamas. We
shall see, from a comparison of 1 Kings, ix. 21, 22, and 2 Chron-
icles, viii. 8, 9, precisely what this kind of tributaryship was
in personal service.
The law in regard to the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites,
Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, was this ; that they should
be exterminated; nothing should be saved alive "that breath-
eth," in any of the cities of the people, whose land God had
given to the Hebrews for their inheritance, Deuteronomy,
xx. 15, 16, IV; also Deuteronomy, vii. 1-4. And the reason
was plain, namely, " that they teach you not to do after all
their abominations, which they have done unto their gods,"
Deuteronomy, xx. 18; Exodus, xxiii. 23, 33.
EXCEPTIONS UNDER THE LAWr. TREATY WITH THE
GIBEONITES.
Only to the cities of other and distant heathen nations was
peace to be proclaimed, and, if accepted, then the people were
to be tributaries, as above ; but if not accepted, and war was
preferred, then all the males were to be destroyed, and the
women and the little ones preserved, Deuteronomy, xx. 12-14.
See, for an example of the manner in which this law was ful-
filled, Numbers, xxxi. 7-18, in the war against the Midianites.
The children of Israel took the women of Midian captives,
and their little ones. See, also, in regard to the cities of the
Canaanites, Joshua, vi. 21, and viii. 26 ; also, x. 32, 35, 37, 39,
TEEATY WITH THE GIBEONTTES. 171
and xi. 11-19. And, for example of the different treatment
of cities not of the Canaanites, see Joshua, ix. 15, 27, the
league that was made with the Gibeonites, under the sup-
position that they were a distant people ; and which was ful-
filled, according to the law, as above, by which the distant
nations were to be treated. The Gibeonites were made trib-
utaries : " There shall none of you be freed from being bond-
men, and hewei's of wood and drawers of water for the house
of my God," Joshua, ix. 23.
More than four hundred years afterwards, under the reign
of David, this treaty was remembered, and a most tremendous
judgment came upon the kingdom in consequence of its vio-
lation by Saul. The three years' fiirnine mentioned in 1 Sam-
uel, xxi. 1, was declared, of God, to be for Saul and for his
bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites. According to
the treaty made with them by Joshua, they were to be always
employed in the menial service of God's house. The treaty
was kept. The city of Gibeon, with most of its dependen-
cies, fell to the lot of the tribe of Benjamin for an inher-
itance, Joshua, xviii. 25. It was also, with its suburbs, ap-
pointed of God, by lot, to be one of the cities of the Levites,
given to them for an inheritance out of Benjamin, Joshua,
xxi. 17. But more than this, it became the place of the
tabernacle* of the congregation of God, 1 Chronicles, xvi. 39,
and xxi. 29, and also 2 Chronicles, i. 3 ; and the great high
place of sacrifice, 1 Kings, iii. 4 ; and of the brazen altar be-
fore the tabernacle, 2 Chronicles, i. 5, where Solomon offered
a thousand burnt-offerings at once ; and where God appeared
to Solomon, and entered into covenant with him, 1 Kings,
iii. 5.
There is a remarkable coincidence between this historic fact
and the tenor of the treaty with the Gibeonites, Joshua, ix.
* " Being brought thither as to tuary when Shiloh fell." — Lightfoot,
tho chief residence of the sons of vol. ii., p. 198.
Ithamar, who waited on tho sane-
172 SERVICE OP THE ALTAR.
27 : " For Joshua made them hewers of wood and drawers of
water for the congregation, and for the altar of the Lord,
even unto this day, in the place which he should choose." No
one could have foreseen that he would choose Gibeon ; but so
it was. Yet not in that city only did the Gibeonites serve
the altar ; but when the city was passed to the inheritance of
the Levites, the Gibeonites and their race must have become
the servants of the priests, " for the congregation and for the
altar of the Lord," wherever the tabernacle was set up, as at
Nob, the city of the priests, where David received the hal-
lowed bread from Ahimelech, 1 Samuel, xxi. 1 and xxii. 19.
In his wrath against Ahimelech, and against all that harbored
David at that time, Saul not only slew the priests, fourscore
and five, but destroyed the whole city of the priests, with all
its inhabitants, 1 Samuel, xxii. 18, 19. This was the most
atrocious and the hugest crime of all his reign. Nothing is to
be found that can be compared with it.
Several points are now determined : 1st, The separation of
a particular race to be bondmen of the altar, servants of the
priests, for the service of God's house, in a class of labors in-
dicated by the proverbial expression " hewers of wood and
drawers of water." There is no intimation of the Gibeonites
or their posterity ever being servants in any other way, or in
private families. 2d, This service, and their separation and
consecration for it as a race, was a boon granted them instead
of death, which otherwise, by the Divine law, they must have
suffered. They were spared, in consequence of the treaty
with them ; and the covenant with them was" of life and labor
as the servants of the sanctuary. The life was pleasant, the
service was not over-toilsome ; they accepted it with gratitude.
3d, The treaty was kept for hundreds of years; and from
generation to generation the Gibeonites and their posterity
fulfilled their part of it, continuing, as at first 'appointed,
the servants of the sanctuary. 4th, Saul was the first who
broke this treaty ; and God's own view of its sacredness may
CASE OF THE NETHINIM. 173
be known by the terrible manner in which he avenged its
breach, and continued to protect the Gibeonites. Saul had
not only destroyed the city of Nob, but had " devised means
by which the Gibeonites should be destroyed from remaining
in any of the coasts of Israel," 2 Samuel, xxi. 4.
CASE OF THE NETHINIM.
It has been supposed that the Gibeonites constituted a part
of the Nethinim, so often mentioned as the servants of the
tabernacle and of the temple. The first trace of this name
we meet in Numbers, hi. 9, and viii. 19, where the Levites are
said to be given as a gift d^rs nethinim, from God to Aaron
and his sons for the service of the tabernacle. Also, Num-
bers, xviii. 6. The verb from which this word is derived, irs,
nathan, is used by Joslma in describing the result of the treaty
made with the Gibeonites : he gave or granted them to be-
come, he set or established them, hewers of wood, etc., for
the altar of the Lord, Joshua, ix. 27 ; he nethinized them for
the service of the priests. So, in 1 Chronicles, vi. 48, the Le-
vites are said to have been appointed, d^sr^, nethinized, unto
all manner of service in the tabernacle. In the same manner,
for the service of the Levites, others were given, appointed,
nethinized ; and this class, under the Levites, included the
Gibeonites, and came to be designated, at length, apart from
them, and from other servants, as the Nethinim, d^prsn, 1
Chronicles, ix. 8, where the name first occurs as of a separate
class ; the people returned from the captivity in Babylon be-
ing designated as Israelites, Priests, Levites, and the Neth-
inim. Then the term occurs in Ezra, ii, 43, 58, coupled with
the children of Solomon's servants, vjns isa, in one and the
same classification ; all the Nethinim and the children of Sol-
omon's servants, in number, three hundred and ninety-two.
" The priests and the Levite3, and some of the people, and
the singers, and the porters, and the Nethinim, dwelt in their
cities; tand all Israel in their cities," Ezra, ii. 70. Priests, Le-
174 PRIVILEGES OF THE NETHINI3I.
vitcs, singers, porters, and Nethinim are again specified in
Ezra, vii. 1 ; and, in verse 24, the edict of Artaxerxes is spe-
cified, forbidding any toll, tribute, or custom from being laid
upon priests, Levites, singers, porters, Nethinim, or ministers
of the house of God.
In Ezra, viii. 17-20, a message is sent to Iddo and his breth-
ren the Nethinim, at the place Casiphia, for ministers for the
house of God ; and in answer to this message, there were
sent, along with a number of Levites, two hundred and twen-
ty Nethinim, of the Nethinim whom David and the princes
had appointed for the service of the Levites. In Nehemiah,
iii. 26, the Nethinim are recorded as having repaired their por-
tion of the wall of Jerusalem, near their quarter in Ophel.
They are also enumerated, as in Ezra, along with the children
of Solomon' 's servants, as having come up from the captivity,
Nehemiah, vii. 60, 73. They are also recorded with the Le-
vites, priests, and others, as parties in the great covenant
which the people renewed with God, to observe his statutes,
x. 28. The particular quarter of Jerusalem where they dwelt
is pointed out, and the names of the overseers that were over
them, Nehemiah, xi. 21. Others of them, as well as of the
priests, Levites, and children of Solomon's servants, dwelt in
other cities, according to their respective possessions and en-
gagements, Nehemiah, xi. 3.
Their return to Jerusalem from the captivity was volun-
tary : they might have remained abroad. It was not a return
to slavery, but a resumption, of their own accord, of the serv-
ice of the sanctuary, to which they had been devoted. So it.
was, likewise, with " the children of Solomon's servants ;" they
resumed their position in their native land, of their own
choice, and by no compulsion. And both the Nethinim and
the descendants of Solomon's servants, had their families and
lineal ancestry preserved in the genealogical register of the
nation. They had " entered into the congregation of the
Lord."
SERVANTS OF THE CAPTIVITY. 175
CASE OF THE SERVANTS OF THE CAPTIVE JEWS.
Tho enumeration given by Ezra of the returned people, is,
for the whole congregation, forty-two thousand three hundred
and sixty, besides their servants and their maids, tarrna*
enitnteK1!, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred
thirty and seven ; and there were among them two hundred
singing men and singing women. At first sight it might have
been supposed that these singing men and singing women
formed a part of the train of servants; but it does not appear
so from the corresponding record of ISTehemiah : they were an
additional class. They, with the servants and the maids, may
all have been "bought" by the Jews during their captivity;
but the purchase of a servant was no indication of slavery,
where this language was customary to describe even the ac-
quisition of a wife, or the buying of a Hebrew servant, who
could not be a slave. The case of the free-born Hebrew sell-
ing himself for money, Leviticus, xxv. 47, is in point; and the
same person who has thus voluntarily sold his own time for
money is afterward said to have been bought, xxv. 51. Such
was the common usage of the term, not at all implying
slavery.
It seems remarkable that they should return from their
captivity in such array : men-servants and maid-servants,
crprrxNi crr^ay, seven thousand three hundred and thirty-
seven ; singing men and singing women two hundred and
forty-five, Nehemiah, vii. 67. To account for this, we have to
turn to the prophet Isaiah, to the prediction of God, that when
he should have mercy upon his captive people, and set them
again in their own land, " the strangers should be joined wit/i
them, and should bring them to their place, and the house of
Israel should possess them in tho land of the Lord for serv-
ants and handmaids, n'rrBtVi b*na»V, and they shall take them
captives whose captives they were," Isaiah, xiv. 2. Here is a
most remarkable fulfillment of prophecy. At the same time
1VG SERVANTS OF TIIE CAPTIVITY.
it is obvious that the whole arrangement of their servitude
must have been of contract, and voluntary — a service for
which remuneration was required and given. It must have
been in every respect a service contracted and assumed, ac-
cording to the principles and laws laid down in the Mosaic
statutes, and in no respect a slavery such as those statutes
were appointed to abolish.
It is to be noted that, in the language of Nehemiah, the
term nay, evedh, is not used in designating servants, but the
word -i5>i, naar, young man / as, for example, Nehemiah, v. 16,
spoken of the governor's servants, cro^yj, having borne rule
over the people; also v. 16, all Nehemiah's servants, i-yi— fes ;
also iv. 22, of the people with their servants, every one with
his servant, *n$y\ fc"1* ; also iv. 23, I, nor my servants, i-rjin •>$«.
The same in v. 10, and other places. The usage is plain, and
not to be mistaken. The same usage prevails in the book of
Ruth.
On the other hand, when Nehemiah intends to describe
. what the Jews themselves had been in their captivity, he uses
the word nay, evedh. For example, chapter v. 5, We bring
into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants,
b">ns»V tivf:p ; also ii. 10, Tobiah the servant, nssin rrs'-tai ; also
ix. 36, We are servants, trnsy ; and xi. 3, The children of
Solomon's servants, b">";a*.
There was a " mixed multitude" that came up with the Is-
raelites from the captivity, xiii. 3, and of this multitude the
two hundred and forty-five singing men and singing women
must have formed a part. The servants belonged to the same
class; and there were a large number of strange women of
'the Moabites, Ammonites, Egyptians, and others, with whom
the people had intermarried, and formed families. These
would bring their household servants with them ; but the
class designated by Nehemiah as to^ys, naarim, must have
been of a different character. They may have been free, and
free-born in every respect, making their own contracts of
THE SERVANT OP SHESHAN. IV 7
service, and choosing their own masters. And whether n;?*,
evedh, or *w;, nuar, whether strangers or natives of Palestine,
they belonged, when circumcised, to the Jewish nation, and
" might enter into the congregation of the Lord." They
might have been slaves in Egypt, or Ethiopia, or Assyria, but
they could not be such in Judea ; on the contrary, however
degraded, in whatever country from which they came, the
Mosaic Institutes immediately began to elevate and emanci-
pate them.
We find an interesting and important instance in the epi-
sode related in 1 Chronicles, ii. 34, 35 — the case of the Egyp-
tian Jarha, the servant of Sheshan, and adopted by him as his
son, to whom he gave his daughter to wife, and the Jewish
genealogy of the family continued uninterrupted in the line of
their children. This is an instructive commentary on the
laws ; and, being a case nearly parallel, in point of time, with
the transactions in the book of Ruth (for Sheshan must have
been nearly cotemporary with Boaz), it indicates, as well as
that history, the admirable contrast between the freedom
prevalent in Judea and the despotism in every other country.
" I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth out ot
the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen ; and
I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go up-
right," Leviticus, xxvi. 13. The same emancipating power,
exerted by God's interposing and protecting providence and
discipline upon the Jews themselves, was also exercised by the
system of statutes, privileges, and instructions under which
the poorest and humblest creature in the land was brought,
upon the bond-servants taken from the heathen : the bands of
their yoke were broken, and they were made to go upright.
" Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is thy brother ;
thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, because thou wast a
stranger in his land. The children that are begotten of them
Shall enter into the congregation of the Lord in their third
generation," Deuteronomy, xxiii. 7, 8.
8*
178 CRUELTY OF SLAVE THEOLOGY.
The people and the nation were absolutely forbidden to
treat any race of strangers in their land as they had themselves
been treated in the land of Egypt. Ye shall not oppress the
stranger, for ye know the heart of the stranger, for ye were
strangers in the land of Egypt ; and the stranger in your own
land shall not be treated as ye were treated in the land of your
bondage. Such was the benevolent tenor, and such the ex-
plicit benevolent letter, of the laws of God in regard to the
treatment of other races brought into Judea or sojourning in
the land. How absurdly incongruous with these statutes is the
supposition, which nevertheless many persons entertain, that
the Hebrews were at liberty to make slaves of the heathen,
the strangers round about. They were expressly interdicted
from any such oppression, and warned against it. Their laws
made it impossible. The reprobation of God against it is a
solemn indication of the exasperated greatness of the sin in
his sight, the sin against God and man, when a Christian na-
tion, under so much greater light, distinctly enacts and prac-
tices, on a vast scale, the oppressive cruelty which he has for-
bidden ; brands a whole race of human beings as fit stuff only
for slavery ; assumes the rightful possession of them for such
bondage, to make perpetual slaves out of them, to be a supply
of chattels from generation to generation.
HYPOCRISY AND CRUELTY OF SLAVE THEOLOGY.
As God is said to have given to Christ the heathen for his
inheritance, to save them, so the patrons, theologians, and
devout workers and brokers of the slave theology profess to
have received the Africans as their inheritance, to bring them
through the hell of slavery (which in this case is the highest
missionary agency,) to the heaven of a servile piety. It is
impossible to regard without horror the diabolic caricature
of religion, which has been evoked as from the bottomless pit,
in support of this atrocity, and set with anthems in the church
of Christ, with a more blasphemous impiety than ever attend-
THE DRED SCOTT DECISION. 1*79
ed the enshrinement of Dagon or of Baal in the temple of the
living God. The public solemn excommunication of a race
of human beings from all the rights of humanity, and the con-
secration of them in the name of piety and justice to the per-
petual condition of a slavery in many respects the most cruel
and unmitigated ever known upon the globe, was a spectacle
reserved for the government, judiciary, and people of the
United States of America in the nineteenth century of the
Christian era. When we behold such a transaction, and read
the new enactments and decisions of sweeping and exacer-
bated cruelty, with which the vast speculative crime is being
consummated in practice, we are filled with wonder at the
long-suffering of God, that the bolts of divine vengeance do
not suddenly break upon such a nation and people.
It has been supposed that this system of iniquity could
scarcely be carried to a higher point of juridical impiety than
in the decision by the Chief Justice of the United States in the
case of Dred Scott — a decision which was, in fact, a decree
for the moral assassination of the race. But every step in
this sin is onward, none backward, and the States are not to
be outdone by the national government in their advancement.
It might have been imagined that the slave code was already
sufficiently barbarous, but the Dred Scott decision has shown
that there was room for improvement, and now it is publicly
decreed that negroes, or persons having the least tincture of
African blood, are an inferior race, aliens, and not only aliens
but enemies, excluded from civilized governments and the
family of nations, and doomed to slavery. " It is the policy
of this State," says the High Court of Errors and Appeals of
the State of Mississippi, " to interdict commerce and comity
with this race, and by law expressly provided, we enforce the
strictest doctrines of the ancient law as applicable to alien
enemies, except as to life and limb, against them. We en-
slave them for life if they dare set their foot on our soil and
omit to leave on notice in ten days, and this not on the prin-
180 NATIONAL PIRACY.
ciplc, supposed by some, of enmity, inhumanity or unkiudness
to such inferior race, but on the great principles of self-preser-
vation which have induced civilized nations in every age of
the world to regard them as only fit for slaves."
The hypocrisy that, in a Christian State, in the tribunal of
justice, could pretend a necessity of self-preservation as the
motive and the justification for such atrocities, is quite equal
to the malignity of the atrocities themselves. In the lowest
pitch ot Jewish or of pagan degradation no ancient people
ever sank so low as this; even when any of the old uncivil-
ized or demon nationalities contemplated a similar crime, they
were not so lost to all truth and decency as to proclaim the
falsehood that their own existence depended on the subjec-
tion of a race of slaves, and that therefore they were not
inhumanly, but most righteously, willingly and of necessity
forced into such wickedness as a measure of self-defense. It
was not till they had arrived at such a condition that they
could compass the betrayal and crucifixion of the Saviour of
mankind, their own Messiah, that even the Jews could pro-
fess, as a justification of this murder, through the lips of the
high priest of their religion and their justice, that it was
necessary for the welfare of the state that one mau should be
sacrificed, " that the whole nation perish not." These two
crimes, the crucifixion of Christ and the consecration of the
African race to slavery, on the same plea of state necessity,
show that nothing but the affinity of the same depravity is
wanting, to make even two such extremes meet in their utter-
most corruption, as those of ancient Judaism and modern
Christianity ; the same cruel selfishness will convert them, as
with one leaven, into the same putrid mass. The Christianity
that, under the plea of self-preservation, or, still worse, of a
missionary benevolence, can maintain slavery as an element
of justice and humanity, is not a whit behind the religion
that, in the name of a religious state compassion and neces-
sity, could crucify the Saviour of the world.
CRUELTY OF SLAVE LAW. 181
In addition to the horrible barbarity which, by an act of
national piracy, takes possession of a race of strangers and
condemns them to be sold as slaves, just as savage wreckers
would seize a stranded ship thrown upon the coast and steal
both crew and cargo, or destroy the crew to possess the car-
go,— in addition to this barbarity, the slave jurisprudence
of our country proceeds to an extreme that never disgraced
any other, that of excluding the miserable victims of such
cruelty from all possibility of an appeal to justice against
any violence or wrong, however diabolical. The laws of the
Jews commended the stranger to the protection of the same
statutes by which the people of the land were secured from
cruelty and fraud. The laws even of the Romans provided
some appeals to religion, if not justice, for the lowest slaves.*
Our Christian system denies all possibility of any rights
belonging to this persecuted, tortured, colored race, that
their white persecutors, their missionary saviours, are bound
to respect. We cast them out as mere things, chattels, and
not persons, from all possibility of any appearance or status
in a court of justice, or any claim upon the laws of the coun-
* A fugitive slave, who entered a The laws against emancipation, and
temple, or embraced a statue of a in favor of slavery, are every year
god, or of an emperor, could not be more rigid, and every new decision is
restored to his own master, but could made more unalterably against free-
claim from the magistrate the privi- dom. Mr. Baker Woodruff, a slave
lege of being sold at auction, the owner in New Orleans, who died in
privilege, at least, of a change of May, 1857, ordered in his will that
masters. The slaves were also al- his slaves, sixty-two in number, should
lowed a peculium of their own, which be liberated and sent to Pennsylvania,
might increase, by industry, to a small providing also for their passage thither
patrimony, enabling them to buy their and their support during the first year,
own liberty. But the slave in America The permission to apply any portion
finds mercy neither from religion nor of the estate for the execution of this
the law. The state of perpetual slav- will was denied by the court, on the
ery is impudently proclaimed to be, for ground that the slaves could not be lib-
him, the highest happiness of which erated. The Supreme Court of Appeals,
he is capable on earth, and the surest in April, 1859, decided in the same
pathway to the happiness of heaven, way, and tho slaves have been sold.
182 SANCTION OF SLAVERY IN THE CHURCH.
try, save the security of being oppressed by those laws.
They are subjects of law for oppression only, for use and
abuse at the will of their so-called owners. It is not possible
to convey in human language an adequate idea of the com-
plication of cruelty and wrong, impiety toward God, inhu-
manity toward man, defiance and violation of all just law,
human and divine, and of every sentiment of benevolence and
justice in the law of nature engraven on the common heart
and conscience of mankind, with which, in this Christian
country, and by a professedly Christian people, the miserable
race of outcasts and yet natives, subjected to the state of
slavery, are treated on the plea of having a skin not colored
like our own.
But the very worst feature of the crime is this, that the
popular religion of the country accepts, defends and sanctions
it ; and those persons are held to be bad citizens, agitators,
disturbers, dangerous to the peace and good order of the
state, suspicious and afflictive members of the church, not who
defend slavery, but who oppose it, and demand its abolition
as a sin against God and man ! It hurts no man's character
or popularity to be a slaveholder ; it does not exclude him
from membership even in missionary churches, nor from the
station of corporate membership or directorship in missionary
or Bible associations ; on the contrary, the ownership of slaves,
or a known fellowship with the owners of them as Christians
of unspotted piety, and a defense of the propriety and expe-
diency of such continued ownership, make up an element of
conservatism, that rather increases than diminishes the in-
fluence of such a member of society. And Christian preachers
can, without losing caste, declare, that if by a single prayer
they could emancipate the slaves tbey would not do it ; that
under Christian masters no condition can be conceived more
favorable to salvation than that of the slaves ; that slavery
possesses the divine sanction ; that nevertheless it is " a sore
social evil, but was entailed upon us by God, that freedom
A PORTENTOUS WICKEDNESS. 183
might be established and Christianity spread over Africa !"
Such monstrous wens and excrescences of moral pestilence men
can carry about with them, and not be shunned by a sane and
healthful society, nor quarantined in it ; while they who lift
up their voices against this iniquity, and denounce it in the
name of God, especially from his Word, from the pulpit on
the Sabbath day, are marked for avoidance and suspicion, and
wherever it is possible, ejected from their parishes, a'nd shut
out from the opportunity of ministering God's truth.
What an amazing and portentous phase of the Christian
religion, what judicial blindness it would seem to intimate,
and a state like that of the idolaters under the light of divine
revelation, as described by the prophet Isaiah ; men who,
with their eyes open, could carve out their own gods for them-
selves, as schoolboys might cut a whistle or an image from a
poplar branch, and burn the remainder of the stick in the lire;
could carry their gods under their girdles or in their trowsers'
pockets, and yet not be able even to suspect the folly of such
idiotic debasement ; not so much unclouded reason left as to
be capable of asking, " Is there not a lie in my right hand ?"
It is an equally strange inconsistency, when men in one
and the same breath proclaim, to the honor of Christianity,
that its prevalence abolished Roman slavery, when almost uni-
versal through the world, and that the very same Christianity,
better known, reinstates a worse slavery in religious and en-
lightened America, and inaugurates it as God's last, chosen
and most effective system of social, civil, and missionary prog-
ress and refinement 1
CHAPTER XVII.
The Children of Solomon's Servants. — The Tributary Service Levied on Them.
— The Tributary Service of Strangers. — Nothing of Slavery in it.— Na-
tions to Have Been Exterminated, but Admitted to the Tributary
Service. — Condition of the Races Under this Law. — Bill of the Enslaved
for Wages.
CASE OF THE CHILDREN OP SOLOJION'S SERVANTS, AND OF
THE STRANGERS APPOINTED TO LABOR.
The children of Solomon's servants, as well as the Nethinini,
have the honor of being registered, according to their gene-
alogy by families, as in Nehemiah, vii. 57-00. Ten individu-
als, or heads of families, are named ; and their children are
the children of Solomon's servants, numbering, together with
the Nethinim, only three hundred and ninety-two. From the
context it would appear that their fathers' house was consid-
ered of Israel ; and they, being able to show their genealogy,
were honorably distinguished from others, who could not
show their fathers' house, nor their pedigree, whether they
were of Israel, Nehemiah, vii. Gl. On the whole, it would
seem that they were a favored class, and honorably distin-
guished by their service, which was to them an hereditary
privilege worthy of being retained, and not an ignoble or a
toilsome separation, nor a mark of bondage.
We must, however, consider their state and probable em-
ployment, in connection with the following passages and
proofs in regard to the tributary service levied by Solomon
upon them and similar classes. In 2 Chronicles, ii. 17, 18, we
find it recorded that Solomon numbered all the strangers that
were in the land of Israel, after the numbering wherewith
CHILDREN OP SOLOMON'S SERVANTS. 185
David his father had numbered them ; and they were found
a hundred and fifty-three thousand and six hundred. And
he set threescore and ten thousand of them to be bearers of
burdens, and fourscore thousand to be hewers in the moun-
tain, and three thousand and six hundred overseers, to set the
people to work. See also 1 Kings, v. 15, 16. To this is add-
ed, on occasion of the mention of Solomon's vast enterprises
in the building of cities, the following historical record, 2
Chronicles, vhj. 7, 8, 9 : " All the people left of the Hittites,
and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the
Jebusites, that were not of Israel, but were of their children
who were left after them in the land, whom the children of
Israel consumed not, them did Solomon make to pay tribute
unto this day. But of the children of Israel did Solomon
make no servants for his work." Comparing this with the
similar record in 1 Kings, ix. 20, 21, 22, we find some addi-
tional light as to the kind of tribute exacted : "Their children
that were left after them in the land, whom the children of
Israel were not able utterly to destroy, upon these did Solo-
mon levy a tribute of bond-service, nsb* ott^>, a tribute of labor ;
but of the children of Israel did Solomon make no bondmen."
The tiibute, then, was an appointed value, paid in manual
labor, furnished by these tributary races, in the person of la-
borers, who labored not as hired servants, but as working out
the taxes of such service imposed by the monarch.
All the strangers were numbered, n— ;r,r;, the same word
used in Leviticus, xix, 33, 34, and other passages, as Exodus,
xxii. 21 : "Thou shalt not oppress the stranger; the stranger
shall be as one born amongst you, for ye were strangers in the
land of Egypt." But these nations of Canaan, that were to
have been utterly destroyed, see Deuteronomy, xx. 17, had
never been exterminated, and the different tribes, in their in-
heritance, could not drive them out; but as far and as fast as
possible, put them to tribute, made them serve under tribute,
nai oj;V, Joshua, xvi. 10, being precisely the same expression
186 TRIBUTARY SERVICE OF STRANGERS.
used in 2 Chronicles, viii. 9, and 1 Kings, ix. 21, of the tribute
of bond-service levied by Solomon. See Joshua, xv. 63 and
xvii. 12, 13 ; also Judges, i. 21, 27, 28, 30, 33, 35 ; also hi. 3, 5.
This tributary service did not make them all hereditary bond-
men ; but was a tax of service to a certain amount, levied
according to fixed rules, so that these foreign races must sup-
ply a sufficient number of laborers to work out that tax. The
tax was a perpetual tribute ; consequently, the bond-service
by which it must be paid, was perpetual, unless there had been
a system of commutation, of which, however, we find no direct
evidence. It was only the races of the land of Canaan, such
as are mentioned in 1 Kings, ix. 20, 21, and 2 Chronicles, viii.
7, that could by law be thus treated ; and such treatment was
itself, in reality, a merciful commutation, instead of that de-
struction to which they had originally been devoted.
The numbering of these strangers for the work of building
the temple, was begun by David ; that work was a public,
national, and religious service, such as that to which the Gib-
eonites, more especially, from the outset had been consecrated,
at a time when it was supposed that they only, of all the in-
habitants of Canaan, would have been spared. But a great
many others were spared also ; so that, in the general num-
bering of the people by Joab, at David's command, 2 Samuel,
xxiv. 2, and 1 Chronicles, xxi. 2, the cities of the Hivites and
of the Canaanites are particularly designated, 2 Samuel, xxiv.
7 ; and comparing this with Joshua, xvii. 12, and Judges, i. 27
-33, there is reason to suppose that the particular designation
is with reference to the class of inhabitants. In this general
census of the people, Joab seems to have noted these " stran-
gers" by themselves ; and after this census " David command-
ed to gather together the strangers that were in the land
of Israel, and he set masons to hew wrought stones to build
the house of God," 1 Chronicles, xxii. 2. It is doubtless to this
that the reference is made in 2 Chronicles, ii. 1 7, " Solomon
numbered all the strangers that were in the land of Israel,
THE TRIBUTARY RACES. 187
after the numbering wherewith David bis father had numbered
them."
That the strangers numbered and appointed for their work
by David, and those numbered and appointed by Solomon,
Mere of the same class, and that this class comprised the races
named in Solomon's catalogue of tribes from whom he levied
his tribute of bond-service, is rendered more certain by an
examination of the number of foreigners or strangers of all
classes that must have been, at this time, under the royal
government of Israel. In 1 Chronicles, v. 10, 19, 20, 21, there
is an account of a battle between the Reubenites and a very
numerous tribe of Hagarites, in which the children of Israel
gained a great victory, insomuch that they captured a hun-
dred thousand souls. This was in the days of Saul. Besides
these Hagarites, it is evident that the number of tributaries
must have greatly increased from David's own wars, as is
proved in 2 Samuel, viii. 4, 14. We should have a census of
more than a hundred and fifty thousand "strangers," from
these transactions alone; so that the number recorded in 2
Chronicles, ii. 17 (a hundred and fifty-three thousand and six
hundred) as being all the strangers in the land of Israel, must
be taken as rated for legal bond-service, from the nations or
remaining races of the Canaanites only.
In this connection we must remember the law in regard to
all heathen nations conquered in war, (except the Hittites,
Amorites, Canaanites, Hivites, Perizzites, and Jebusites, de-
voted to extermination,) which was as follows, Deuteronomy,
xx. 10, 11 : " When thou comest nigh to a city to fight against
it, then proclaim peace unto it; and it shall be, if it make thee
answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be that all
the people that is found therein shall be tributaries tmto thee,
and they shall serve thee." Between these and the races of
the Canaanites there seems to have been a distinction as to
treatment always maintained. It would seem that Leviticus,
xxv. 45, " Of the children of the strangers that do sojourn
188 CONDITION OF SUCH RACES.
among you, of them shall ye buy," must refer particularly to
the Canaanitish races, as we shall see more particularly in the
examination of that passage. These nations and their descend-
ants were to be made to pay a tribute of bond-service, such
as the Hebrews could not exact from all the heathen, and
were forbidden to impose on one another. Accordingly, in
the account of such bond-service, as laid by Solomon on the
descendants of these races, it is expressly stated in contrast,
that " of the children of Israel did Solomon make no bond-
men." A levy was raised at the same time, from all Israel,
of thirty thousand men who labored in Lebanon, ten thousand
a month, by courses, 1 Kings, v. 13, 14 ; but this was very
different from the tribute of bond-service levied, which com-
prised the threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and
fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains. Along with
these tributary and hereditary laborers, there were united the
laborers obtained from Hiram, king of Tyre, for whose service
Solomon paid Hiram, but not them : " unto thee will I give
hire for thy servants, according to all that thou shalt appoint,"
1 Kings, v. G.
That the condition of the races under this law of tributary
service was not one of general or oppressive bondage, is clear
from the position in which Araunah, the Jebusite, appears be-
fore us in the interview between him and David, 2 Samuel,
xxiv. Araunah, although of the tributary race, is a substan-
tial householder and farmer, dwelling amidst his own posses-
sions, and making a bargain with king David, as in every re-
spect a freeman. Uriah, also, though high in the service of
David, and having his house at Jerusalem, was a Hittite. The
tributary service was evidently a very different thing from
universal personal servitude. In the same way, from the
transaction recorded in Exodus, ii. 9, we learn that the servi-
tude of the Hebrews in Egypt was not so universal as that all
were slaves, or treated as such. Pharaoh's daughter makes a
bargain with the mother of Moses, for a nurse's service, and
WORKING OUT TAXES. 189
oives her her wages. The -woman is free to make such a bar-
gain, and to receive such wages ou her own account. There
is no master over her, notwithstanding that the tyranny of
Pharaoh is so terrible that she dare not acknowledge her own
child, lest he be put to death.
In our own country there is a service of tribute, called the
highway tax. Those who do not choose to pay this tax in
money, may work it out, if they please, in person, or may
hire laborers to work it out for them. The service of tribute
levied upon the strangers in Judea, must have been some-
thing such a service. It is possible that David's sin against
God in numbering the people, may have consisted in some
purposed odious distinction, oppressive and illegal, by which
it was intended to set apart the descendants of the strange
or foreign races, and to exact from them a tribute or im-
pose upon them a bondage, in connection with the building of
the temple, displeasing to God, and manifesting the style ot
a conqueror, a despot, rather than a constitutional king.
Joab's expostulation on the occasion, intimates some such
difficulty ; for he takes pains to remind David that all the
inhabitants of the land are equally the king's servants ; why
then doth my Lord require this thing ? why will he be a
cause of trespass to Israel ? Any such bondage of service
as the Israelites had endured in Egypt, if laid upon the
strangers in Israel, would have been contrary to the divine
law. They were to be tributaries to the government, but
not personal servants, except at their own pleasure. To treat
them with cruelty, or make them the subjects of oppression
such as the people of God had endured in Egypt, was ex-
plicitly and many times forbidden. They could not be treated
as the king's or any man's property, they could not be made
slaves ; no service was ever to be laid upon them, which woixld
take away their rights as freemen.
Michaelis, in his Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, (vol.
ii., page 185,) presents a Jewish Rabbinical story, illustrative
190 DEFKAUDING OF WAGES.
of the oppression of taking men's labor without wages. The
Egyptians (so the Jews relate,) sued the Jews for the gold
and silver vessels carried oft* by their ancestors at their de-
parture from Egypt, (the transaction of borrowing,) and in-
sisted on their making restitution. One should suppose that
the Jews would have pleaded the law of prescription. But
ihey did no such thing. They readily admitted the claim, and
offered restitution ; but they at the same time preferred a
counter-claim of their own. For two hundred and ten years,
said they, we were in Egypt, to the number of 600,000 men.
We therefore, demand days' wages for that period, at the
rate of a denarius for each man ; and our account stands
thus: 365x210=70,050 days, the time of each man. This
multiplied by 000,000 men, gives of denarii, 45,990,000,000,
that is, of our money, two thousand eight hundred and seventy-
four millions of ducats. On this the Egyptians began to wax
warm, and dropped their suit.
If a bill of this nature were made out by the four millions
of slaves in our country, who could compute the amount of
our robbery of their just wages? But God has calculated it,'
and in good time will send in his bill for settlement.*
* Granville Sharpe. Law of cessity of its abolition by the State
Retribution against Tyrants, Slave- becomes more and more urgent, be-
holders, and Oppressora Compare cause of the future, and Wiiewell
Sir James Mackintosh's speech in (Vol. II., 1003. Duty of Abolition by
the case of the Missionary Smith, the State) notes that "a State cannot
Works, VoL III., p. 405. Compare, neglect this, without divesting itself,
also, Whewell, Elements of Morali- to an extent shocking to all good men,
ty, and Dymond, Essays, ch. xviii. of its moral character, and renounc-
" Every hour of every day the present ing its hope of that moral progress
possessor is guilty of injustice." The which is (ought to be) its highest
guilt of rendering the crime hereditary purpose." Compare Goodell, Ameri-
no man has attempted to compute, can Slave Code. Ownership aud use
God only can measure it. The ne- without wages. Part I., ch. v., 10, 12
CHAPTER XVIII.
Judgment of God against Slavery in Egypt.— Comparison with the Bondage of
thf, Helots.— The Exodus of Israel from it.— The Mixed Multitude.— The
Law of the Passover.— Religious Privileges of Servants.— Law of the Sab-
bath.—Perversion of Terms.— The Year.— Sabbaths, and Annual Feasts.
The first moral judgment of God concerning the slavery of
Egypt was impressed upon the mind of Abraham in the cove-
nant which God made with him : " Know of a surety that thy
seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and
they shall serve them, d-narj; and they shall afflict them, sass1;;
and also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge." The
moral sense of Abraham was sufficiently enlightened to know
that not simply because the subjects of oppression were of his
seed, was such oppression sinful, but that the bondage, unless
inflicted of God as a punishment for sin, was itself sinful. The
slavery prevalent in Egypt is here condemned as a crime
Avorthy to be punished.
The first historical description of it, after this prophetic
judgment, is in Exodus, i- 11:" They did set over them task-
masters, to afflict them with their burdens," Tiay ^aV d-'sw -Kb
er^rsa, overseers of tribute, on purpose for their oppression in
their burdens. " And the Egyptians made the children of Is-
rael to serve with rigor, and they made their lives bitter with
hard bondage, n«;pT rnhsa, hard labor, in mortar and in brick,
and in all manner of service in the field ; all their service
Avherein they made them serve was with rigor," Exodus, i. 13,
14. Now therefore behold the cry of the children of Israel is
come unto me : and I have also seen the oppression, yhi, where-
with the Egyptians oppress them, Exodus, iii. 9. The same
192
HELOTTSH OF EGYPT.
word is used in Exodus, xxiii. 9: " Thou shalt not oppress a
stranger." This dreadful bondage was a type of the slavery
■ of sin ; as also the passover, in memory of their deliverance,
was a most affecting and powerfully significant type of re-
demption by the blood of Christ.
This bondage, continued, would have become a Helot ism,
and was fast verging to a system of perpetuated oppression
and cruelty, like that described by historians as having been
endured by the unhappy conquered victims of despotism in
the Spartan state. It might have been all that, and still at a
great remove from the dehumauizing cruelty of American
slavery.*
were a part of the State, " having their
domestic and social sympathies devel-
oped, a certain power of acquiring
property, and the consciousness of
Grecian lineage and dialect."
Deprived of their liberty, oppressed
and maltreated, they were dreaded by
their tyrants, who adopted measures
against them, to prevent their in-
crease and insurrection, singularly re-
minding us of the policy of Pharaoh
and the princes of Egypt towards the
Hebrews. The terror of Helotic re-
volt sharpened the cruelty of the
Spartans, and led them to " combina-
tions of cunning and atrocity, which
even yet stand without parallel in the
long list of precautions for fortifying
unjust dominion." On the authority
of Thucydides we learn that on one
occasion two thousand of the bravest
among the Helots were entrapped by
promises of liberty, and assassinated
at once. On the authority of Plu-
tarch, from Aristotle, it was an insti-
tution of the State, that every year
war should be declared against the
Helots, " in order that the murder of
them might bo rendered innocent ;"
and that " active young Spartaus
should be armed with daggers and
* Grote's History of Greece, vol.
ii., pp. 372-379. Helots in the Vil-
lages.
The condition of the Helots under
the tyranny of Sparta, treated like
slaves, yet never sold out of the coun-
try, and, probably, never sold at all ;
beaten, down-trodden, put to death
without punishment of their murder-
ers, yet belonging not so much to the
master as to the State ; " living in the
rural villages as adscripti glebce, culti-
vating their lands, and paying over
their rent to the master at Sparta, but
enjoying their homes, wives, families
and mutual neighborly feelings apart
from the master's view;" — this con-
dition would represent much more
nearly the state of the Hebrews un-
der thoir Egyptian bondage, and
would give a fairer idea of their op-
pression, than can be drawn from
modem slavery. The Helots were a
conquered race. The word, accord-
ing to some etymologists, is synony-
mous with captive ; according to oth-
ers, derived from tho town of Helos,
" which tho Spartans are said to have
taken after a resistance so obstinate
as to provoke them to deal very rig-
orously with the captives." They
THE EXODUS FROM SLAVERY.
193
Out of this bondage, when God delivered them, they went
up, " about six hundred thousand men, on foot, besides chil-
dren ; and a mixed multitude went up also with them, and
flocks, and herds, very much cattle," Exodus, xii. 37, 38. The
sent about Laconia, either in solitude
or at night, to assassinate such of the
Helots as were considered formid-
able."
How long it may be before the in-
comparably more atrocious and crimi-
nal system of American slavery, with
the frightful increase and intelligence
of its victims, may lead to similar hor-
rible combinations on the part of mas-
ters and of the government, and simi-
lar assassinations, sanctioned by law,
under pretense of the necessity of self-
defense from the apprehended horrors
of a servile insurrection, is only known
to that God whose own vengeance
merely waits the justest and most
perfect time. Meanwhile, the pro-
posed reduction of the free blacks in-
to slavery, the doctrine practiced as
an edict, that black men have no
rights that white men are bound to
respect, the renewal and intended
sanction of the foreign slave-trade by
law, the proposed establishment of
slavery in free territories, and enact-
ment by the government of a special
code of slave laws for the protection
and perpetuity of slave-property, in
addition to the savage barbarity of
existing State slave codes, make the
crime and guilt of this Christian peo-
ple incomparably greater than any
ever committed by the government
or people of Sparta, or any other pa-
gan nation in the world. What we
think to sanction, and defend from
Heaven's reprobation, and commend
as duty to Christian families and
churches by human law, is a far
greater outrage of the conscience, and
defiance against God and nature, than
the law of war against the Helots on
purpose for the sanction of their mur-
der.
The manumitted Helots, those who
had gained their liberty by signal
bravery, and those whose superior
beauty or stature placed them above
the visible stamp of their condition,
were regarded in the Lacedemonian
community with peculiar apprehen-
sion, and if not put to death, were
employed on foreign service, or plant-
ed on some foreign soil as settlers.
The intervention of colonization socie-
ties as safety valves for the security
of slave property in this country, had
not been suggested, neither does it
seem to have been the custom to im-
prison the subjects of such tyranny
and jealousy, and then sell them for
their jail fees. But it is stated that
the Helots " were beaten every year,
without any special fault, in order to
put them in mind of their slavery;
while such masters as neglected to
keep down the spirit of their vigorous
Helots were punished."
Slave-breeding does not seem to
have been an element of the Spartan
chivalry, nor an employment of the
first families, or oldest and most aris-
tocratic class of the State. The sell-
ing of slaves not being customary,
the breeding of them for high prices
never came to be a profitable busi-
ness. Indeed, in this quality of glory,
this feat of mammon and of morals,
the Christian slave States of America
surpass the accomplishments of any
other age or nation in the world.
194 THE MIXED MULTITUDE.
mixed multitude, a^?, are nowhere definitely described. The
question whether they had bond-servauts of their own, whom
they carried away with them from Egypt, might possibly be
settled could we have a classification of that mixed multitude.
On the whole, it seems not probable that any Egyptians were
under bond-service to them, and their own race were certainly
not slaves to one another, though they might be servants. If
they had foreign servants, not of their own race, we judge
(from the manner of the enumeration in a similar case, namely,
the return of the Jews from the captivity in Babylon), it
would have been distinctly stated. In Ezra, ii. 64, 65, and
Neheniiah, vii. 66, 67, as already noted, the number of the
whole congregation of Israel, is first given, as in Exodus, and
then it is added, " besides their men-servants and their maid-
servants, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred
and thirty-seven." The whole number of the people to be
cared for and to be fed, are again mentioned by Moses in
Numbers, xi. 21, as six hundred thousand footmen, no refer-
ence being made to any others than those named in the first
census. The mixed multitude, also, are again referred to in
the same chapter by themselves : " The mixed multitude that
was among them fell a lusting," Numbers, xi. 4 ; but no refer-
ence is found to the servants among them.
In regard to this point, it is impossible to determine abso-
lutely from the law -of the passover, because that law looked
to the future condition of the congregation, providing for fu-
ture emergencies. No uncircumcised stranger might eat of
the passover ; but every man's servant, bought for money and
circumcised, might eat of it. The uncircumcised foreigner
and hired servant might not eat of it ; and both the home-
born and the stranger were under one and the same law in re-
gard to it, Exodus, xii. 43-49 ; Numbers, ix.14 . The servant
bought for money was bought into the Lord's family ; he was,
in point of fact, redeemed from bondage into comparative free-
dom, taken under God's especial care, and from a system of
RELIGIOUS PRIVILEGES OP SERVANTS. 195
lawless slavery, passed into a system of responsibility to God,
both on the part of the master and on his own part. It was
a change of amazing mercy, from hopeless heathenish bond-
age to the dignity of citizenship in the commonwealth of
Israel.
RELIGIOUS PRIVILEGES OF SERVANTS. LAAV OF THE SABBATH.
After the law of the passover, the first indication looking to
the condition of servants is in the law of the Sabbath, Exodus,
xx. 10 : " Thou shalt not do any work ; thou, nor thy son, nor
thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, 'qr-KN}
^Ttv" This was a provision unheard of in the world, a pro-
vision necessary for the religious jn-ivileges and freedom of
those under servitude, a provision which alone, if there had
been no other, would have separated the condition of servants
and the system of menial service, among the Hebrews, from
that among any other people on earth, raising it to a partici-
pation in the care and sanction of God, and transfiguring it with
social dignity and liberty. Such would be the effect of the
Sabbath, fully observed according to its intent and precept,
upon the system of labor and the condition of the laboring
man, all the world over ; for the Sabbath is the master-key to
all forms and means of social regeneration, freedom, and hap-
piness. But it was a new thing in the world for the leading,
governing gift, privilege, and institution of instruction, refine-
ment, and piety to be conferred upon the poor as well as the
rich ; upon the serving and laboring classes equally with the
ruling ; and appointed as directly and on purpose for the en-
joyment and benefit of the one class as of the other. The
work of the transfiguration of the toil and bondage into a sys-
tem of free and voluntary service, carefully defined, protected,
and rewarded, adopted and adorned of God with all the equal-
izing religious rights flowing from a theocracy to the whole
people ; this work, thus begun in the appointment of the Sab-
bath, was carried on, as we shall see, in the same spirit, and
196 THE SON OF THINE HANDMAID.
with the same purpose, in all additional regulations, till society,
in this its normal form, became (as it would have continued, in
reality, if the appointed form had been carried out) a fit type
of the Christian dispensation to come, " where there is neither
Jew nor Greek, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian,
Scythian, bond nor free ; but Christ all and in all," Colossians,
iii. 11, and Galatians, iii. 28. Such an institution of free and
willing service, guarded by the law as an integral portion of a
free and happy state, was preparing and molding, by divine
command, and in form was perfected, as should not need to be
put away or unclothed, at Christ's coming, but was fitted to
be clothed upon with his Spirit, and sanctioned by his benedic-
tion. This was to take the place of slavery, was to put slavery
out of existence ; and, wherever and whenever the oppressed
of other communities should be gathered beneath its opera-
tion, was to make freemen of slaves.
There is a striking particularity in one of the repetitions of
the law of the Sabbath, Exodus, xxiii. 12, where the servile
classes specified in the first normal form are omitted, and the
purpose of the Sabbath's rest is stated to be " that the son of
thine handmaid^ and the stranger, may be refreshed." Here
the expression, "son of thine handmaifl," is ^rwx— ;a, the same
as used in Psalm cxvi. 10, of David : "I am thy servant, and
the son of thine handmaid." I am not a servant, but thy
servant, and the son of thine handmaid. The son of the
handmaid, in Exodus, xxiii. 12, is catalogued in the same class
and standing with the free stranger ; and the passage is cer-
tainly, in some measure, a key to the interpretation of the ex-
pressions, ",r-'s— )D and rr:c— t£-, Genesis, xv. 3; xvii. 12, 13;
Leviticus, xxiii. 11; Ecclesiastes, ii. 7; and Jeremiah, ii. 14.
These expressions, so far from indicating slaves, as the assump-
tions and perverse interpretations of some lexicographers and
translators might lead the English reader to suppose, do not
necessarily even mean servants, but are a form of expression
purposely separate and different from the generic appellation
FREE SERVANTS OP THE HOUSE. 197
for servants, because they intimated a relation to the master,
and the family which was not that of seryants. The condi-
tion of the child did not follow that of the parent ; but, after
the period of natural dependence and minority, the fi^a— 15a
and the rv5 ^V?, the sons of the house, and the bom of the
house, or home-born, were their own masters, free to choose
for themselves the master whom they would serve, and the
terms on which they would serve him. This is susceptible of
demonstration beyond possibility of denial in regard to chil-
dren of Hebrew descent, because not even the parents could,
by law, be kept as servants longer than six years ; and, of
course, the children, being Hebrews equally with the parents,
and coming under the same law, could no more be so held
than the parents themselves.
This shows how monstrous is the assumption and perversion
of the lexicons, beginning with the fons et origo of modern
interpretation, that of Gesenius, when they deliberately, and
without one particle of proof, render these expressions by the
Latin word, verna, followed by English translators with the
word slave. Neither by periphrasis, nor literal signification,
can these expressions be so interpreted ; never, in any case,
in which they are used. And if the literal interpretation had,
in every case, been adhered to, sons of the house and born of
the house, instead of the word slave, employed in the lexi-
cons, or servant, which is mostly used in our translation, no
one could have connected the idea of servitude with these
expressions, much less the idea of slavery. For example, the
literal translation of Ecclesiastes, ii. 7, is thus : " I obtained
servants and maidens, and there were to me sons of the house,"
■3s n;n rrn— ^as, a relationship of dependence, certainly, and
showing wealth and perpetuity in the family, whose servants
were not hirelings merely, but voluntary domestic fixtures,
of choice as well as dependence; but not a relationship of
compulsory servitude, or slavery, or of servants considered as
property. Now the transfer of the deirradino- and infamous
198 PROOF OF DIVINE INSPIRATION.
dhattelism signified in the Latin word verna and the English
word slave to such a relationship, and to the phrase son of the
house, or bom of the house, as its true meaning among the
Hebrews, is one of the most unauthorized and outrageous
perversions ever inflicted upon human language. It is almost
blasphemous, as designed to fix the blot and infamy of slavery
upon what was and is the noblest, most benevolent, most care-
fully guarded, freest, and most affectionate system of domes-
tic service in the world.
It is a system of such freedom and benevolence, and so in-
geniously designed and adapted to conquer every surrounding
and prevailing form of slavery, and subdue it to itself, that its
infinite superiority to the selfish law and oppressed condition
of the world, and its enthronement of benevolence instead of
power as the ruling impulse and object (in that part of social
legislation especially, where the law and custom of mankind
have made selfishness not only supreme, but just, expedient,
and even necessary,) are something supernatural. The con-
trast and opposition of this system over against the creed and
habit of power, luxury, oppressive selfishness, and slavery, so
long prevalent without question of its right, is, by itself, an
impregnable proof of the divine inspiration of the Pentateuch.
It is a proof, the shining and the glory of which have been
clouded and darkened by the anachronisms, prejudices, and
misinterpretations of Biblical archajologists and translators,
but which is destined to be yet cleared, and acknowledged by
the Christian world with gratitude to God. "We shall at length
cease to look to Arab or Egyptian sheikhs and pashas for
illustrations of the life of Abraham, and to Roman or Amer-
ican slaves for pictures of the Hebrew households.
THE YEAR SABBATH AND THE ANNUAL FEASTS.
But besides the weekly Sabbath of devotion, every seven
years the land should keep a Sabbath of a whole year unto
the Lord, the seventh year, a Sabbath of rest for the land,
TIME FOE EEST AND LEISURE. 199
and, in consequence, for all classes of servants : " And the
Sabbath of the land shall be meat for you ; for thee, and for
thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and
for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee," Leviticus, xxv.
27. Here the i£i\ the servant of all work, the nttN, the maid-
servant, and the Tftip, the hired servant, are all specified ; the
seventh year belongs to them as well as to their masters. In
Exodus, xxiii. 11, 12, these two institutions of the year-sab-
bath and the seventh-day Sabbath are coupled, and the pur-
pose specified is that of rest and refreshment " for the son of
thine handmaid and the stranger," *aty\ ^wax— )a. Here are
already two sevenths of the time of life guarantied to the serv-
ants for rest and sacred discipline. The injunction of a cir-
cumspect piety is added to the enactment of both these or-
dinances.
Then in the same chapter, the three great annual feasts fol-
low, enacted in order, Exodus, xxiii. 14-17, these enactments
being drawn out with minute detail and precision in Deuter-
onomy, xvi. 2-16, and they are designated as the Feast of
Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Tab-
ernacles. In Exodus, xxxiv. 21-23, the weekly Sabbath and
these three annual festivals are coupled in the same manner
as the Sabbath and the seventh year of rest in Exodus, xxiii.
The spirit of these festivals and their duration are described
in Deuteronomy, xvi., and Leviticus, xxiii. 34-43. And the
equalizing benevolence of these institutions is the more marked
by the repetition of the rule: "Thou shalt rejoice in thy feast,
before the Lord thy God ; thou, and thy son, and thy daugh-
ter, and thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant, and the Le-
vite that is within thy gates, and the stranger, and the father-
less, and the widow that are among you," Deuteronomy, xvi.
11. Taking into consideration the time necessary for going
and returning to and from each of these great festivals, to-
gether with their duration, we have in their observance some
six weeks, or nearly another seventh of the whole time devot-
200
ENJOYMENT OF SERVANTS.
ed, for the servants as well as the masters, to religious joy,
and rest and refreshment.
Then, in addition, are to be reckoned the Feast of Trum-
pets, Leviticus, xxiii. 24, the Day of Atonement, xxiii. 27-34,
and xvi. 29, the Feast of the New Moon, Numbers, xxviii. 11.
Hosea, ii. 11 ; Ezekiel, xlvi. 1, 3. If to these we add the Feasts
of Purirn and the Dedication, and the oft-recurring joyous
family festivals, 1 Samuel, xx. 6, Genesis, xxi. 8, we have more
than three sevenths, or nearly one half the time of the serv-
ants given to them for their own disposal and enjoyment,
instruction and piety, unvexed by servile labors, on a footing
of almost absolute equality and affectionate familiarity and
kindness with the whole household : father, mother, son,
daughter, man-servant and maid-servant, all having the same
religious rights and privileges — " They go from strength to
strength, every one of them in Zion appearing before God."
How beautiful, how elevating, how joyous was such a national
religion, and how adapted to produce and renew continually
that spirit of humility and love, in the exercise of which the
whole law was concentrated and fulfilled.*'
* Saalschutz. Das Mosaische Eecht.
Laws of Moses, Vol. II., 715, refers to
the appellation of the Oak of Weeping,
Gen. xxxv., 8, given on occasion of
the death of Rebecca's nurse, as a
proof of the intimacy and affectionate
equality with which the servants en-
tered among the family relationships
of the Hebrews. Saalschutz re-
marks very truly that nothing more
felicitous could have happened to a
heathen slave than to have been sold
into Judea, where a law prevailed,
leading, central, fundamental, by
which he was released from his mas-
ter, if he choose to quit the service, for
he could escape from him, and the
whole Hebrew world were forbidden
to do anything towards bringing him
back, but were bound of God to shel-
ter the fugitive. In all the earth there
never has been such an expression of
kindness in human law towards the
oppressed and persecuted. Compare
Graves on the Pentateuch, P. II.,
L. iii. Also. Lelaxd's Divine Au-
thority 0. and N. T., 75. Also, Judge
Jat on Hebrew Servitude.
CHAPTER XIX.
Times of Service of the Hebrew Servant. — Jacob's Time and Wages with La-
ban. — Appoint. — Outfit of the Six Years' Servant, at the End of His Ap-
prentioeship. — Wages of tiie Servant Considered, but the Price of a Mas
Never. — No such Thing Recognized as the Owner of a Man. — Nor Servant
without Wages. — Only Condition on which the Servant could be Kept
till TnE Jubilee. — The Transaction Voluntary, the Conditions Exact. — Mar-
ried Persons Engaging as Servants.— Average Time of Jubilee Contracts.
— Penalties Against Cruelty to Servants.
We have seen what a transfiguration would be produced
by a religions and legal system, that gave to the servants
nearly one half their time for their own disposal, in the observ-
ance of the rites, and enjoyment of the privileges of the na-
tional religion. We are now to consider the times of service,
and the manner of treatment, both for Hebrew and heathen
servants, on engagements or contracts, always voluntary, and
arranged with legal exactness.
TIME AND TREATMENT OF THE HEBEEW SERVANT. THE SIX
TEARS' CONTRACT.
The section in Exodus, xxi. 2-11, prescribing the time and
treatment for the Hebrew servant, is full of instruction : "If
thou buy a Hebrew servant, "nias -ns »)?in, six years he shall
serve, "i'=?.:; and in the seventh he shall go out free for noth-
ing," nsh ■»»fih% ns" ; his term of service expires, and he is free
without cost. He had himself sold his own time and labor to
his master, by contract, for six years — no longer ; and this was
called buying a Hebrew servant. Such a servant was not the
master's property, nor is ever called such, although he might
have been described as " his money ;" that is, he had paid in
money for his services, for so long a time, and, in that sense,
202 THE SERVANT IN NO SENSE A SLAVE.
he was his money, but in no other. We have already noted
the usage of the word n:pT, to buy ; and its application in de-
scribing the purchase of persons in such relations as to forbid the
idea of property or slavery. This is one of those instances.
The Hebrew servant was bought with money, yet he was in
no sense a slave, or the property of his master. In entering
into a six years' contract of service, he was said to have sold
himself; yet he was not a slave. He might extend this con-
tract to the longest period ever allowed by law, that is, to the
Jubilee ; yet still he was not property, he was not a slave ;
his service was the fulfillment of a voluntary contract, for
which a stipulated equivalent was required, and given to him-
self. The reason for the adoption or appointment of six years
for the ordinary legal contract of Hebrew servitude is not
given ; but doubtless the arrangement was based upon some
previous custom or statute ; perhaps some social law like that
which must have led Jacob to propose a service of seven years
to Laban for his wife, Genesis, xxix. 18, and six years for his
cattle, Genesis, xxxii. 41. " Twenty years have I been in thy
house ; I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters,
and six years for thy cattle." The period of service with the
year of release, thus made a septennium, a week of years, the
multiplication of which seven times brought them to the great
Jubilee of universal national freedom, equality and joy.*
This section is to be compared with Deuteronomy, xv. 12—
18:7/' thy brother be sold, that is, if he have hired himself
* It ia worthy of note, as indicat- upon a member of a family, much
ing the general moral sense of the so- more could not a stranger be com-
eial circle in which A lira ham, Isaac, polled into such service. Laban'sman-
and Jacob moved as patriarchal legis- ner of speaking is an intimation that
lators, that even in Laban's mind, the involuntary and unpaid servitude was,
idea of any man serving another with- in their society, a thing unknown, an
out wages was absurd, not to say enormity. " Because thou art my
immoral. Even a brother, a near brother, shouldst thou serve mo for
kinsman was not expected to do this, nought ? Tell me, what shall thy
much more a stranger; and if service wages be?" Genesis, xxix. 15.
without wages could not be imposed
THE SERVANTS OUTFIT OP FREEDOM. 203
to thee, and serve thee six years ; or if a Hebrew woman do
the same ; then, when this period of service is ended, not
only is he free, as above, bnt thou shalt not let him go away
empty. Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock,
and out of thy floor, and out of thy wine-press. This extra-
ordinary provision of an outfit was some offset, and was in-
tended to be such, for the comparatively low wages of a six
years' t:m>, evedh, or servant, as compared with the wages of a
hired servant, by the year or by the day. It was a great in-
ducement to continue the engagement to the end of the con-
tract, and not be seeking another master. And at the same
time it is enjoined as a reason why the master should be lib-
eral in this outfit, that he has gained so much more from the
labor of the servant in six years, than he could have done if
he had contracted with him as a T>sto or hired servant. The
computation is made as follows : lie hath been worth a double
hired servant, in serving thee six years • T\"^?. "i^b nsio rt5*»,
double the wages of a hireling serving thee ; that is, if thou
hadst hired a servant by the year, and kept him six years, he
would have cost thee twice as much as a servant whom thou
buy est or contractest with, for six years at a time.
AVERAGE OF WTAGES.
Suppose that for a six years' term a man could be engaged
for eighteen shekels ; then a yearly hired servant could not
be got for less than six shekels the year ; it would, therefore,
in most cases, be more desirable to engage a six years' iay,
evedh, than to hire by the year; and, notwithstanding the dif-
ference in price, it might, in many cases, be more desirable for
the servant also. Micah, in the case recorded in Judges, xvii.,
hired a young Levite from Bethlehem Judah, to dwell with
him as his priest, for wages; and he gave him ten shekels of
silver, and a suit of apparel, and his victuals, by the year.
There are no such examples of specific contracts with ordinary
servants recorded ; but the price of Joseph's sale to the mer-
204 WAGES OF SERVANTS.
chant-men of the Midianites, was twenty skekels of silver. The
sum to be paid when a man-servant or maid-servant was
gored to death by an ox was thirty shekels of silver to the
master, Exodus, xxi. 32, the price, perhaps, of a six years'
contract. The price of the prophet, in Zechariah, xi. 12, or
the hire or wages, (veto is the word used,) at which he and his
services were valued, and paid, was thirty shekels of silver.
The redemption-price for a man who had vowed himself to
the Lord, Avas fifty shekels of silver from twenty years of age
till sixty ; and for a woman, thirty shekels ; from five years to
twenty, twenty shekels for a man, ten for a woman ; from a
month to five years old, five shekels for the man-child, three
for the girl. And it is added, from sixty years old and above,
fifteen for the man, ten for the woman. This was the priest's
estimation of the persons for the Lord, Leviticus, xxvii. 2-7.
Now this seems an estimate adopted from the value of labor
or service at these different periods, the value of a man's
time and labor.
ARGUMENT FROM WAGES.
Now, the wages of a man as a servant are often the subject
of consideration in the Scriptures, but the price of a man
never. There is no such idea recognized as the price of a
servant considered as property, or as if he were a thing of
barter and sale : his owner is never spoken of; there is no
such thing as the owner of a man, and no such quality is ever
recognized as that of such ownership. When the recompense
is appointed for the master whose servant has been killed by
another's ox, it is the master, not the owner, to whom the
recompense is to be made, as master, not as owner. The
words employed are strikingly different, Exodus, xxi. 32 : If
the ox shall push a man-servant or maid-servant, he shall give
unto their master, vs'ikV, adhonai, the word applied to Jehovah
as Lord. But Exodus, xxi. 29, 34, 36, if the ox hath been
used to push, or if a pit have been digged and not covered,
ARGUMENT FROM WAGES. 205
their owner, i»a, baal, shall make it good. The selection and
appplication of the words are emphatic.*
There was no servant without wages, either paid before-
hand, for a terra of years, or paid daily, if hired by the day,
or annually, as the case might be. The three kinds of con-
tract or service, and of corresponding wages, are specified ;
first, generally, Leviticus, xix. 13, the wages of him that is hired
shall not abide with thee all night until morning, "VOto hVss ,
the reward of the hired servant ; second, Job, vii. 1, his days
like the days of an hireling ; third, Leviticus, xxv. 53, as a
yearly hired servant; fourth, Exodus, xxi. 2, where the rule
seems referred to as most common, of a six years' service and
contract. There was no indefiniteness in any of the legal pro-
visions, no difficulty in ascertaining each servant's rights ; and
they were not only secured by law, but such tremendous de-
nunciations were added in the prophets, as that in Jeremiah,
xxii. 13 : Woe unto him that useth his neighbor's service with-
out wages, and giveth him not for his work; and Malachi, iii.
5 : I will be a swift witness against those who defraud the hire-
ling in his wages, and keep the stranger from his right. The
stranger comprehended servants, as well as sojourners, of hea-
then extraction.
Now when the recompense of thirty skekels was ordained
for the roaster, whose servant had been gored by another
man's ox, they were to be paid, not because the servant was
his, as property, or as being worth that price, as if he were a
slave, a chattel, belonging to an owner, but because the mas-
* Josephtjs' Antiquities, book iv., hold with the servants. The goods
chap.viii.sec.36. The discrimination of were owned, the men were governed;
Josephus in referring to these laws is the goods, the cattle, were chattels,
emphatic. He applies a different word property ; the servants were persons,
to the owner of the cattle and the men, their own only owners, with
master of the servant; although the * freedom to dispose of their services
difference in the Greek can not be so for a proper and just equivalent in
strikingly illustrative of the distinction wages. The description in Josephus
in the original between the owner of is very properly, owner of the cattle,
property and the master of a house- master of the servants.
206 CONTRACTS AT THE SERVANT'S PLEASURE.
ter had paid to him the price of a certain number of years of
labor, which years the servant owed ; and therefore the recom-
pense was for the loss of that part of the service which had.
been paid for, but, by reason of death, could not be fulfilled.
The master did not and could not own him, in any case, but
only had a claim to his time and labor, so far as it had been
contracted and paid for. It must have been paid for before-
hand, because, otherwise, if the servant's pay had not been
promised till after the time of the contract, the master would
have been owing the servant at his death, and could have no
claim, but the nearest of the family of the servant would have
had the claim. But the case being that of the -t^y, the six
years' hired servant, or perhaps the servant obtained from
among the heathen, the master has the claim for services which
were paid for, but not fulfilled.
The legal term of service for six years could not be length-
ened, except at the pleasure of the servant. The man-servant
and the maid-servant were equally free in making their con-
tracts ; neither of them could be held at the pleasure of the
master, nor could be disposed of, but at their own pleasure.
They were perfectly free, excej^t so far as by their own act
and free will they had bound themselves for an equivalent to
a term of service. Under certain contingencies they could, by
law, compel their master to keep them, but he could^never use
them as property, never make merchandise of them, never
transfer them over to another. If a maid-servant chose to
contract herself to her master's family, in such manner that he
on his part could keep her till the jubilee, and she on her part
could forbid his sending her away, then both herself and her
children were to remain till that time. The covenant was
legal and explicit. They were bound to him, in his service,
and could not quit, but with his consent, till that time. On
the other hand, he was bound to them, and could not transfer
them to another family, country, or household, nor any one
of them, nor convey their service to any other person.
CONTRACT TILL THE JUBILEE. 207
ONLY CONDITION ON WHICH THE SERVANT COULD BE KEPT
TILL JUBILEE.
This is to be regarded, in examining the next clause, which
states the one only condition on which the servant could be
retained by the master until the jubilee. If, during his period
of six years' service, his master.had given him a wife, and she
had borne him children, then, at the end of the six years, he
could not, in quitting his master's service, compel the master
to relinquish the contract, whatever it was, which had given
him a right to the service of the maid-servant, his wife, for a
still longer period, or to the jubilee. It was optional with
him to leave his wife and children with his master, and go out
from his service by himself alone, or he could stay, and with
his wife and children engage with his master anew until the
jubilee; and his master could never separate the family, nor
send any one of them away, nor violate any of the terms of
the contract ; and both for time and for wages, the covenant
was at the pleasure of the servant, as well as the master, and
by law the master was compelled to treat him as a n:£a nitti
"Vttes, as a yearly hired servant, and not as an is?, or servant
of all times and all work ; as a servant on stipulated monthly
or yearly wages, and not as one whose whole time of service
until the jubilee had been bargained for and paid for in the
lump. The whole covenant was determined and ratified in
court, before the judges, with the greatest care and solemnity,
on the affirmation of the servant that he loved not only his
wife and children, but his master also, and his house, and was
well with him, (compare Deuteronomy, xv. 10,) and would not
go away from him. The sign of the covenant, and its proof
positive and incontrovertible, so that neither master nor serv-
ant could by fraud have broken it, was the boring of the ear,
both of man-servant and maid-servant.
This transaction was entered into by the servant, notwith-
standing the claim of a liberal outfit from his master, from the
208 POSITION OF SERVANTS.
flock, and the floor, and the wine-press, to which he was enti-
tled by law, if he chose to leave his service. The receiving a
wife from his master, during any time of his six years' service,
was also at the servant's own pleasure ; all the conditions of
such marriage being perfectly well known to him, the dowry
which he would have to pay for hie wife, if he remained with
her, being in part the assuming,of a new contract of service with
the master, as long as hers had been assumed, or to the jubilee.
And then, they and their children would go from his service,
with all the property they had been able to acquire by their
wages and privileges in his household. This, if they had been
provident and sagacious in the use of lawful means and oppor-
tunities, might at length amount to an important sum. The
servant might become possessor of a competency, during a
twenty-five or thirty years' sojourn in his master's family.
And the servant born in the house, his son, tra t>V, the home-
born, rra— >5ai, or of the sons of the house, might become his
master's heir, as in the household of Abraham ; or he himself
might be his master's steward, with all the wealth of the es-
tablishment under his hand.
The position of such an nay, or Hebrew servant, or even
heathen servant, as in the case of Eliezer of Damascus, might
be more desirable than that of the hired servant not belong-
ing to the family. It was only households of comparatively
considerable wealth that could afford to enter into such con-
tracts with their servants, or to keep a retinue of retainers
born in the house. Hence the fact of having such a class of
servants is referred to in such a manner as proves it to have
been esteemed a mark of greatness and prosperity, Ecclesi-
astes, ii. V. And these domestic servants, born in the family
and holding by law such a claim upon it, were attached to it,
and its members to them, with an affection and kindness like
that of its sons and daughters, one toward another. Perhaps
the passage in Jeremiah, ii. 14, may be rendered with refer-
ence to this fact : " Is Israel a servant, nig ? If a home-born,
SHESHAN THE EGYPTIAN. 209
t>^— b«, why is he a spoil?" How should he he carried away
and made a prey, if he belongs to the household, if he is the
home-born of his God ? These home-born servants, and those
whose contract of service lasted beyond the six years' term
of ordinary legal indenture, were at the same time to be
treated on the same footing with the hired servants and so-
journers, with the same careful regard to all their rights and
privileges.
In connection with the case of the master giving his servant
a wife, the instance of Sheshan is illustrative, 1 Chronicles,
iii. 34, 35. Sheshan had no sons, and he gave one of his
daughters as a wife to one of his household servants named
Jarha, an Egyptian. This Egyptian servant, beyond all doubt,
was received into Sheshan's service on the legal conditions
laid down in Leviticus, xxv., on a contract voluntary and for a
stipulated equivalent. There is not the slightest indication of
his ever having been a slave. Egyptian strangers and so-
journers among the Hebrews, as Avell as those from other
nations, often sold themselves to service in this manner in the
Holy Land. Yet with such reckless confidence and mistake,
characterizing the assertions of too many commentators on
this whole subject, it is asserted in Kitto's Cyclopaedia, article
Sheshan, that Jarha was not only a slave, but that his marriage
took place while the children of Israel were themselves in
bondage in Egypt ! This is said, notwithstanding the fact that
the recorded genealogy of Sheshan demonstrates that he and
his family were cotemporary with Boaz, Obed, and Jesse, being
in the seventh generation in direct descent from Hezron, the
grandson of Judah.
CONDITION OF MARRIED SERVANTS AND THEIR CHILDREN'.
There is no other instance, save this in Exodus, xxi.4, (which
is plainly mentioned as an exception to a general rule,) in
which any claim of the master to the children of his servants
is ever intimated. The home born, n-a — c^, and the sons of
210 NO INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE.
the house, n?s— 15s — though in subjection to him, as the father
of the family, and lord of the household, were not his prop-
erty, in any sense ; and because he had a servant-maid, her
children were not on that account his servants, except by a
separate specific contract. No child, whether Hebrew or
heathen, in*the land of Judea, was born to involuntary servi-
tude, because the father, or mother, or both were servants ;
but every child of the house was born a member of the fam-
ily, dependent on the master for education and subsistence.
If married persons engaged themselves as servants, or sold
themselves, according to Hebrew phraseology, then, when the
six years' time of their service expired, they went forth free,
and their children with them ; there was never any claim
upon the children to retain them merely because they were
h?a— "»aa, sons of the house ; but their parents had authority
over them, and possession of them. The phraseology in the
case before us, the tclfe and her children shall be her masters,
*\s--nV rri-iF rrnV»3 frisn, conveys no meaning of possession, but
simply of remaining tenth the master, as long as the contract
specified, as long as he had a right by law to her services.
Inasmuch as she herself was not, and could not be, her mas-
ter's, except only by voluntary contract, for a price paid to
herself, and for a time specified, neither could the children be
her masters.
The only way in which he could give her to her husband
to be his wife was, (l) either by paying to her father the dow-
ry required, and so purchasing her for a wife for his servant,
in which case he would have a claim upon his or her services
or both, additional to the amount of that dowry ; or (2) she
was his maid-servant already according to the ordinary or ex-
traordinary legal contract, for the six years, Deuteronomy,
xvi. 12, or for the time from the making of a new contract,
till the jubilee, Deuteronomy, xvi. 17, and as such he gives
her in marriage. In either case, she being bound to him for a
longer time than her husband, her children would, of right,
MARRIED SERVANTS AND CHILDREN. 211
and by law, remain with her, under subjection in her master's
household, and could not be taken away by the father, if he
chose to quit. The children could not be taken from their
parents, but after a certain age they were at liberty to choose
their own masters, and to make their own terms of service.
This resulted inevitably from the law limiting and defining
the period of service in every case ; even when until the ju-
bilee, still, most absolutely and certainly defined and limited
by that. There was nothing left indefinite, and no room for
the assumption of arbitrary power, so long as the provisions
of the law wrere complied with. And it was the breaking of
those provisions, and the attempt on the part of the masters
to force their servants into involuntary servitude, and so
change the whole domestic system of the state from freedom
to slavery, that, by the immediate wrath of God in conse-
quence, swept the whole country into a foreign captivity, and
consigned the people to the sword, the pestilence, and the
famine, Jeremiah, xxxiv, 17. The horror with which any ap-
proximation again towards any infraction of the great law of
liberty, wras regarded, after the return of the Jews from that
retributive captivity, is manifested in Nehemiah, v. 5, and is
instructive and illustrative.
AVERAGE TIME OF THE LONGEST SERVICE.
Let us now see what would be the actual operation of the
exceptional contract in Exodus, xxi. 4-6, running on to the
jubilee. That this is the meaning of the term for ever, in the
terms of this contract, is not disputed, and is incontrovertible
from Leviticus, xxv. 39, 40, the law of the jubilee overriding
all others and repressing all personal contracts within itself.
At the recurrence of the jubilee, all were free. Then, after
the year of jubilee, when every family had returned to its
original possessions, new engagements were necessarily en-
tered into with servants, new contracts were made. It does
not seem likely that, at the outset, any indenture of service
212 AVERAGE OF LONGEST SERVICE.
for the next forty-nine years Avould be deemed desirable,
either by masters or servants. Almost all contracts would be
the ordinary legal ones of six years. But after the expiration
of one or two septenfiiwns, there might be cases of contracts
looking to the jubilee. On a probable computation, the in-
stances would be rare of such engagements beginning before
the middle, or near the middle of the period. In that case,
if a master gave a wife to his servant, and the covenant was
assumed by boring the ear, the children, as h**— »3S, home-
born, the sons of the house, would be under subjection to the
master, at the very farthest, not longer than our ordinary pe-
riod of the minority of children. For example, take the con-
tract of a maid-servant as occurring in the fourth septennium,
or say in the twenty-fifth year, an agreement to serve in the
family for twenty-three years, or until the jubilee, and ac-
cording to the Hebrew idiom for contracts till that time, for
ever. During the first septennium of this maiden's service, a
Hebrew servant is engaged for six years, and soon forming an
attachment, asks of his master the maid-servant for a wife.
She is given to him by his master, and they have children ;
and, at the expiration of his six years, he avails himself of his
legal privilege, and enters into a new contract with his master
till the jubilee. At that time the oldest of his children would
be about twenty-one years of age, and the youngest might be
five or ten ; they are all free by the operation of the law of
jubilee. From twenty to twenty-five years would ordinarily
be the utmost limit of any contract of service, whether for par-
ents or children.
PENALTY AGAINST CRUELTY TO SERVANTS.
The penalties against the master for cruel or oppressive
treatment of his servants were the same, whether the servants
were Hebrew or of heathen extraction. Whatever injury
was committed against any servant, was to be avenged ; for
loss of an eye or a tooth the servant should have his freedom,
PENALTIES AGAINST CRUELTY 213
whatever might have heen his contract with his master, what-
ever sum his master might have paid him beforehand, no mat-
ter how many years of unfulfilled service might remain, Exo-
dus, xxi. 26, 27. In connection with a similar section it is
added, " Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the
stranger as for one of your own country, for I am the Lord
your God," Leviticus, xxiv. 22. The application of this princi-
ple is beautifully and pointedly illustrated in Job, xxxi. 13-
15 ; and the reason given is the same, namely, that the same
God and Creator is the God both of master and servant : "If
I did despise the cause of my man-servant or of my maid-serv-
ant, when they contended with me, what shall I do when God
riseth up ? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him ?
Did not he that made me in the womb make him ? and did
not one fashion us in the wonib ?" If a servant were killed
by his master, the punishment was death ; if the servant died
after some days, Exodus, xxi. 20, 21, in consequence of blows
inflicted by the master, then, in mitigation of the punishment,
the presumption was admitted in law that the killing was not
intentional ; because, the master having paid the servant be-
forehand for his services up to a certain time, " he was his
money," and he could not be supposed to have intended to
kill him, unless he did kill him outright; and then the penalty
was death.*
* In regard to the possession, ac- of servant to Laban, shows the nature
quisition, and merchandise of property, of such service. It was the service
and the increase of personal riches, by of freemen by contract, for wages,
servants, such being their privileges "Mit welchem Kechte konnen diese
as freemen, see Saalschutz on the Alle Lcibeigene genannt werden?"
Laws of Moses, page 119. Saalschutz See note on page 714. "With what
again refers to a mistaken conclusion propriety can any of these be called
by Miekaelis, and remarks, in illustra- slaves?" Compare, on the meaning
tion of the subject, that Jacob's pos- of the jubilee contract (forever), Stil-
session of flocks and herds, with lingfleet, Origines Sacroe, Vol I.,
servants to take care of them for him, p. 'z63.
while he himself stood in the relation
CHAPTER XX.
Phraseology for Contracts with Servants. — Selling or Hiring Out, the Same
Transaction. — Various Usages of the Verb to Sell. — Buying or Selling as
Merchandise Forbidden on Pain of Death. — Demonstration of the Guilt of
Slavery from this Prohibition. — Slavery, Slaveholding, and the Slave-
Traffic, Alike the Subject of Divine Keprobation.
We have illustrated the position of the buyer, and the mean-
ing of the word used for the purchase of servants. Let us now
examine the usage of the word which is applied to designate
this transaction on the part of the seller. We take the first
example from the law of contracts with servants, Exodus, xxi.
7, 8, if a man sell his daughter to be a maid- servant. Here the
subject of the sale, so called, is a Hebrew daughter. Her sale
as a servant could not possibly be any thing more than an en-
gagement for six years' service, at the end of which she was
again free. The person who purchased her had no property
in her, for she was as free as he was, except in the engage-
ment of service for a limited time. But in the case before us
she is sold for a wife, and is" purchased as such ; and the law
defines and secures her rights with her master, who has be-
trothed her to himself. He buys her for his wife and must
treat her as such, and can not transfer her to another. If he
put her away, she is free without money. She is described as
being sold at one and the same time, to be a maid-servant and
a wife. She is at once the tocn and the pj»n of the husband.
Her master may be the husband himself, or he may marry
her to his son ; but the section shows that her father has en-
cased her in the service of the master on condition of her
marriage either to one or the other ; and if this engagement
is not fulfilled, she returns to her father free without money.
USAGE OF THE WOKD TO SELL. 215
1. The word here used for this transaction is the verb h5to,
to sell. It is used of contracts with free persons, both as
servants and wives. The first instance is in Genesis, xxxi. 15,
where Rachel and Leah declare that their father had sold
t/ietn, •s'sa, merely the concise description of his giving them,
in marriage to Jacob, who had paid for them to Laban, seven
years' personal service for each. The instances in Exodus,
xxi. 7, 8, Genesis, xxxi. 15, and Deuteronomy, xxi. 14, are the
only cases in which the word is employed in reference to a wife.
These cases form a class by themselves.
2. Then there is the class of passages in which the same
word is applied to the ordinary legal contract of a Hebrew
servant with his master or employer. Deuteronomy, xv. 12,
if a Hebrew man or woman be sold unto thee, ^V iSte?— >a.
Jeremiah, xxxiv. 14, hath been sold unto thee, I5te\ Leviti-
cus, xxv. 39, 42, 47, 48, 50, different forms of the same word,
n^to. To these cases we add the instance of a similar purchase,
but forced beyond what the law admits, that is, an arbitrary
contract, forbidden in regard to the Hebrew servant. Will ye
sell your brethren ? or shall they be sold unto us ? si2te.Pi.,
&*fetes\ Both the sale and the purchase are forbidden, except
on the conditions in Exodus, xxi. 2-11.
3. The same word is used to designate the crime of man-
selling^ the idea of contract for service being excluded. It is
the sale of persons as of chattels, by way of merchandise.
The first instance is in Genesis, xxxvii. 27, the selling of Jo-
seph by his brethren, S9*3tt5, let us sell him y also, xxxvii. 28,
ii-irc1:, they sold him. The same, Genesis, xlv. 4, 5, and Psalm
cv. 17. This crime of selling a man is described by the same
word, and forbidden under penalty of death, Exodus, xxi. 16,
and Deuteronomy, xxiv. 7.
4. A fourth class describes selling as the penalty for theft,
Exodus, xxii. 3. But here the sale is not indefinite ; it is in
case of the thief not being able to make restitution, in which
case he must be sold, that is, put to compulsory service, for
216 USAGE OF THE WORD TO SELL.
such a period as would make up the sum by the customary
wages for labor. In this class of passages we include the cases
of selling for debt. Isaiah, 1. 1 : To which of your creditors
have I sold you ? Compare Matthew, xviii. 25. The selling
for debt is simply an engagement of service for so long time
as would be sufficient, by the ordinary legal wages, to pay
the legal claim. It was not slavery, nor any selling as of
slaves.*
5. A fifth class of passages, in which God is described as
selling his people for their sins, or causing them to be sold to
the heathen. Deuteronomy, xxviii. 68, sold unto their ene-
mies for bondsmen, ye shall be sold, DP*:srn. Deuteronomy,
xxxii. 30, except their roclc had sold them, b^sto b^st rs so-es.
Judges, ii. 14; iii. 8; iv. 2 ; x. 7. 1 Samuel, xii. 9. Psalm
xliv. 13. Joel, iii. 8. The sense in these cases is that of de-
livering up into the power of another. Of this meaning is
Judges, iv. 9, the Lord shall sell Sisera. To this class must
be added, Isaiah, 1. 1, and Iii. 3, where the Jews are described
as selling themselves for their transgressions ; that is, they
did, by their sins, what God did, for their sins, delivered
themselves over into the power of their enemies.
6. A sixth class comprehends, 1 Kings, xxi. 20, 25, Ahab
selling himself to work wickedness, and 2 Kings, xvii. IV, the
people selling themselves to do evil ; that is, giving themselves
* Josephus, Antiq., book xvi., original laws; for those laws ordain,
chap, i., sec. ii. The great mistake that the thief shall restore fourfold,
of imagining the selling for theft or and that if he have not so much, ho
debt to have been a selling into slav- shall be sold indeed, but not to for-
ery, or a species of slavery, would eigners, nor so that he be under per-
havo been prevented, even by con- petual slavery, for he must have been
suiting Josephus alone. This histo- released after six years." If so with
rian refers to an instanco of such op- the criminal, how much more with
pression committed by Herod, and the mere" debtor, who also might be
remarks : " This slavery to foreigners taken for service to work out the
was an offense against our religious debt, but must be released within the
settlement [or constitution], such a septennium.
punishment being avoided in. our
CRIME OF MAN-SELLING. 217
up unrestrainedly, in consideration of the wages of sin for a
season.
7. In a seventh class of passages, the word is employed to
describe the bondage of the Jews in their captivity, Nehemiah,
v. 8, oysh epnsteBH. Add instances in Esther, vii. 4, where the
word is used to signify delivering or betraying into the power
of another, first, for destruction, second, for bondage.
8. In another class still, the heathen are arraigned for the
crime of selling Hebrew captives. Joel, iv. 3, 6, 7, sold a
girl for wine, ^"i-fc; sold the children to the Grecians, dSpttt.
Here the meaning obviously is that of traffic, as in merchan-
dise, and the denunciation of God's wrath follows accord-
ingly-
The crime of selling one another is also described by the
same word in Amos, ii. 6 : " They sell the righteous for silver
(those that have committed no crime, they sell), and the needy
for a pair of shoes. ^ Compare Amos, viii. 6, where the op-
pression of buying the poor with silver is denounced along
with the crime of perjury and false balances in traffic. The
getting, or in Hebrew phraseology, the buying, of servants, as
provided by law, was a just transaction, voluntary on both
sides ; but in the cases before us, the thing forbidden is the
buying and selling of persons against their own consent, who
are compelled by their poverty to be thus passed as merchan-
dise; and this is denounced as crime. So in Zechariah, xi. 5 :
They that sell them say, Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich :
adding to this monstrous crime the inicpiity and hypocrisy of
invoking and asserting God's blessing upon it.
MAKING MERCHANDISE OP MEN OR WOMEN UTTERLY
FORBIDDEN.
From all these cases it is clear, that in law the word -tett,
to sell, when applied to persons, signified a voluntary contract,
such as ours of hiring workmen, or the contract between a
master and his apprentices ; and that in any other cases, ex-
10
218 CRIME OF MAN-SELLING.
ccjJt as making restitution for theft, or to work out a just
debt, the buying and selling of persons was a criminal trans-
action. The buying as well as the selling, in such a transac-
tion, is denounced as criminal. It was making merchandise
of men, a thing expressly forbidden in the divine law, on pen-
alty of death. Accordingly, even in anticipation of the law,
its principles were already acted on. There is not one particle
of indication that Abraham, Isaac or Jacob ever sold one of
their servants, nor any supposition of the power or right to do
so. Nor ever, from the patriarchs down, is there any instance
of any man or master selling a servant. The history of the
world fails to disclose one single case of such merchandise. On
the contrary, it proves that it was forbidden, and was regard-
ed as sinful ; and that either the holding, or selling, or both,
of a servant for gain, and against his will, or without his vol-
untary contract, was an oppression threatened with the wrath
of God.
And here belongs the consideration of Deuteronomy, xxi.
14, the case of the captive woman taken from the heathen for
a wife, but afterwards rejected. Two things are forbidden in
the treatment of her ; 1. Thou shall not sell her at all for
money; tjs^a ns-ster}— nV ir^. Compare Exodus, xxi. 8.
2. Thou shalt not malce merchandise of her. Thou shalt
not bind her over to another, thou shalt not transfer her to
the power of another. She shall not so be subject unto thee,
that thou canst deal with her as merchandise or property.
The word in this second prohibition is "teSM^rj, from nrs, to
bend. Our English translation seems to make it exegetical
of the preceding prohibition ; but it is not a synonyme with
-lite, neither was intended as paraphrastic of that. It is the
same word employed in Psalm cxxix. 7, of the mower binding
sheaves to be carried away for use or traffic, sia i^yrr-KV, thou
shalt not play the master or oppressor over her.
A comparison of this with Exodus, xxi. 8, where the English
translation speaks of selling a Hebrew icoman to a strange na~
BUYING AS PROPERTY FORBIDDEN. 219
tion, which is forbidden, will show that in that passage the
translation does not convey the proper meaning ; for it was
never permitted on any ground, or for any reason whatever,
to bind a Hebrew woman to a heathen, or to deliver over to
a foreign nation any Hebrew man or woman as servant or
wife. In the case before us, Deuteronomy, xxi. 14, this is for-
bidden in regard to the captive taken from the heathen in
war; how much more in regard to any Hebrew! The ex-
pression in Exodus, xxi. 8, a^Stei *>£«•-*& i^ss btfs, to a strange
■nation he shall have no power to sell her, should be rendered,
to sell her to a strange tribe, or to a strange family ; and the
meaning evidently is, that she shall not be transferred from
her master to any other family, but is wholly free. For the
usage of ■>•;;:;, compare Leviticus, xxi. 1, 4, Ecclesiastes, vi. 2. It
might mean, to a family of strangers, sojourning in the land,
and joined to the congregation by circumcision. The hiring,
selling, apprenticing, or disposing of her in any icay at all for
money, is strictly forbidden. She is perfectly free.
RESULT OF THE EXAMINATION.
The result of the examination of the phrase to sell, in the
word "teto, mahtr, and in the passages in which it is employed
with reference to servants or captives, is perfectly conclusive
against the existence of slavery, and triumphant in demonstra-
tion of its guilt, as reprobated and forbidden of Jehovah. The
buying being proved to have been a bargain free and volun-
tary with the servant himself, and not the purchase, as of prop-
erty, from any third party, and the selling being absolutely
forbidden, in the sense of merchandise, as property, the mak-
ing merchandise of a man being forbidden on pain of death ; —
between these two lines of argument the demonstration of
the guilt and crime of slavery is perfect.
Now it is interesting to bring together the two prohibitions,
in each of which precisely the same terms are made use of,
but the .one relating to the treatment of captive women,
220 TRAFFIC IN MEN FORBIDDEN.
strangers, the other to the treatment of Israelites, and in
each case the treatment of man or woman as property forbid-
den. In the first case, Thou shalt not sell her at all for
money: thou shalt not make merchandise of her. In the
second case, If a man he found stealing any of his hrethren of
the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or sell-
eth him, then that thief shall die ; and thou shalt put evil away
from among you, Deuteronomy, xxiv. 7. The repetition of the
prohibition by separate phrases, as if one were not explicit
enough, though ever so plain, in reprobation of the crime of
treating human beings as property, is exceedingly emphatic :
Thou shalt not sell her at all / thou shalt not make merchan-
dise of her. If thou make merchandise of him, or if thou sell
him, thou shalt die. It would be difficult to reprobate more
explicitly the infamous supposition that man can hold property
in man, or to guard more carefully against the infamous crime
of treating man as property ; converting human beings into
merchandise, buying, holding, transferring, selling them as
chattels.
In forbidding this traffic in human beings on pain of death,
having already sealed up the original crime of man-stealing,
in which the traffic began, under the same condemnation and
penalty, the Divine Being brands slavery, slaveholding, and
the slave traffic, so ineontrovertibly, so palpably, as the sub-
ject of divine hatred and wrath, and forbids it, so unquestion-
ably, for all mankind, that the reader of these statutes stands
amnzed at the hardihood and impiety of any nation or people,
professing any regard to the authority of God, any belief in
divine revelation, that can permit the crime within its borders,
much more can sanction, legalize, protect it ; can raise it to
the dignity of a domestic institution, perpetuate it to other
generations by laws for its entailment, set apart a race for its
enormities of oppression and of cruelty to be exercised upon,
and make the breeding of that race, and the domestic trade
in human stock, thus propagated, the object of State and Na-
IMPIETY OF THE TRAFFIC IN AFRICANS. 221
tional protection, as the most sacred and valuable of all the
rights of property under heaven.
It is a fit climax of such infinite rascality and impiety to
select, as the qualifying direction of this crime, as the mark
denoting the consecrated subjects of such ineffable atrocity,
a seal of God's own providence, the tincture of the skin, the
hue it has pleased him to impart in the organization of a por-
tion of his creatures. Had the race of men-stealers in the
United States, and of judicial tyrants and impostors, thought
good to set forth and establish as the guidance of their detest-
able villainy, the reason of their slave-law, and the security
and ground of its execution, some infernal or atrocious discov-
ered quality of character, some combination of moral and phys-
ical depravity, so that it might seem as if the very will of God,
in his providential retributive justice, were being carried out
in the reduction of such a race to slavery, the crime had not
reached such a height of impudent malignity, such a depth of
meanness, such a consummation of intense, causeless, irreligious
cruelty. But to take the divine providence, in the hue of the
African race of human beings, as a guide and sanction for the
violation of the divine law, in the commission against that race
of the one crime which God has branded, because of its guilt,
in co-equality with murder ; and to make that providential
color of the skin, the reason of an announcement from the
highest tribunal of national justice, that black men have no
RIGHTS THAT "WHITE MEN ARE BOUND TO RESPECT this, Cer-
tainly, is to have reached at once an impious sublimity and de-
formity of wickedness, such as no other nation under heaven
ever yet attained.*
* This opinion is the concentrated Also, the volume of Rev. "W. Goodell,
essence of the current of slave legisla- equally demonstrative, with a moro
tion, down to the present time. Com- particular and powerful moral applica-
pare, for proof, the volume of Judge tion. The history of the world contains
Stroud, Laws relating to Slavery, the nothing, as a system of outrage, wrong
twelve propositions of the nature of and cruelty, so dreadful as the reality
the system, with cases and decisions, in these volumes, viewed under the
a demonstration not to be questioned, gospel.
CIIAPTER XXI.
The Law Against Man-Stealing.— Explicit Definition of tiie O.ime.— Stealing a
\l\s. Holding Him as a Slave, oe Selling Him, all the Same Crime.— Slave-
holders, Slave-Buyers, Slave-Sellers, are Consequently all Man-Stealers.—
What the Death Penalty Proves.— Property in Man Impossible.— Contrary
to God's Law.— Attempted Perversion of the Law.— Paul's Quotation of it
Against Men-Stealebs.
TIIE LAW AGAINST MAN-STEALING. WHAT IT PROVES.
Immediately after the laws determining the nature and
time of contracts with servants, the legislator passes to the
crime of murder and the death penalty against it. Then fol-
lows the great fundamental statute, which demonstrates the
criminality of slavery in the sight of God: He that stealetii
a man and selletii him, or if he be found in his hand, he
SHALL SURELY BE PUT TO DEATH, ExodllS, X.\i. 10. As the
stealing of men is the foundation of slavery in most cases, and
especially of modern slavery, this statute condemns it as sin-
ful, intrinsically, absolutely. The stealing, the selling, the hold-
ing, of a man in slavery, is death ; either form of_the crime
shall be so punished. Whether the kidnapper keep or sell his
victim, the crime is death.
But the purchaser, with knowledge of the theft, is ecpially
guilty, and would be treated as conspirator and principal in
the same crime. On the principles of common law, as well as
common justice, this is inevitable. Common law and justice,
as well as common sense and piety, pronounce the slaves and
their descendants in our own country a stolen race, their pro-
genitors having been stolen at the outset, and there being no
possibility, by transmission, of changing the original theft into
a just possession, the original man stealing into a just claim of
II0RSE-TIIIEVES AND MAN-THIEVES. 223
property in man. On the same principles of simple incontro-
vertible justice, every receiver and buyer of the stolen race,
or of any individual slave, with the claim of property in him,
is the man-stealer, an accomplice in the crime ; for the maxim
at common law holds, above all, in such a case, that the re-
ceiver is as bad as the thief. He that buys and holds a man,
knowing him to have been stolen, steals him ; and his having
been bought and sold forty times, before the last trafficker in
human flesh bought him, could make no difference. He re-
mains, and must remain, a stolen man, no matter through
how many hands he passes. All the hands that hold him as
property are red with this crime of stealing him, this murder
of his personal freedom. The same principle on which the
buyer of a stolen horse, knowing him to have been stolen, is
a horse-thief, makes the slave buyer and the slaveholder a
man-stealer. The slaveholder in withholding the slave from
his freedom, steals him. The continuing to withhold him from
his freedom, and to hold him as property, is the renewed
stealing of him. It is as truly the stealing of him, as the buy-
ing of a stolen horse from a horse thief, while the owner was
bound, and gagged, and helpless, would be the stealing of the
horse, even though the thief was paid for him.
In connection with the other provisions in the Hebrew sys-
tem, this law against man-stealing rendered slavery absolutely
impossible. The limitation of legal servitude to six years, and
the law of universal freedom on the recurrence of the jubilee,
would alone have prevented it ; but the law of death against
man-stealing made the practice of slavery as criminal a system
as an organized system of murder would have been. The
stealing of a man is the stealing of him from himself; the
buying of him is the receiving of stolen property ; the enslav-
ing of his children is the stealing of them both from them-
selves and from him, so that the crime is incomparably exas-
perated in its descent ; by transmission, the crime is at once in-
creased in extent, and undiminished as to the original iniquity.
224 THE RECEIVER AS BAD AS THE THIEF.
AXY TRAFFIC IN HUMAN BEINGS IMPOSSIBLE UNDER THIS LAW.
PROPERTY IN MAN IMPOSSIBLE.
This law must effectually and for ever have prevented any-
traffic in human beings. It denies the principle of property
in man. The stealing of a man is the stealing of him from
himself, and the converting of him into property; and that is
to be punished with death. Xo matter if the thief merely
kept him as a captive for his own use, and did not intend to
sell him ; the being found in his hands was enough ; he should
surely be put to death. He might say that he captured him
in Africa, among savages, and brought him to Judea as one
of God's missionaries, on benevolent grounds and with justi-
ficatory circumstances. The pretense would avail nothing ;
he should surely be put to death for the stealing of a man.
The stealing alone should be punished by death ; and the
holding would be sufficient evidence of the stealing; the hold-
ing of him as a slave would be itself the stealing; the being
found in his hands, under constraint, against his own will,
would be enough.
Then comes the selling, equally to be punished by death,
because the selling is not only the converting of him into prop-
erty, but, it is the transfer of that property, under such cir-
cumstances as to make the stolen man a more hopeless victim
still of such cruelty, It is the transfer of that property under
the pretense of a just claim. It is putting the counterfeit bill
in circulation, with a voucher ; it is giving the forgery a cur-
rency by endorsement. The selling is the assumption of prop-
erty in the stolen person, and the selling is punishable by
death. The stealing alone, if the thief did not sell, might not
be the assertion of property, or of the^»7«c^/e of property in
man ; but the selling of him would be ; and either stealing
and holding, or stealing and selling, or stealing, holding, or
selling, the crime is put on a level with murder.
NO ESCAPING FROM GOD'S LOGIC. 225
THE POWER OF THIS DIVINE LOGIC. DAMNING NATURE OF
THE TRAFFIC IN HUMAN BEINGS.
There is no escaping- from this logic. It holds the slave-
holder with a grip more inexorable than his own remorseless
and infernal claim of property in man. He commits the orig-
inal iniquity of man-stealing comfortably and innocently, as he
thinks, without either the guilt, or the trouble, or the danger
of the original piracy; but God will hold him to an inexorable
account under his own explicit law, and on the principles of
common justice, as to fraud and cruelty between man and man.
God will not hold him guiltless, though man may ; God will
never hold his own truth in unrighteousness, though the
church of God on earth may do it, and may sacrifice both
truth and righteousness in the compromise with crime ; God's
judgment remains, and is unalterable, and by that, and not
by human compromises, or adjustment of expediencies, must
men be tried, when they violate God's law, and proclaim
such violations innocent, by framing a human law for its pro-
tection.
The stealing of human beings as property, and the convert-
ing of them into property, is worse, by the divine law, than
the stealing of property ; as much worse as murder is than
stealing. Such is the distinction which God makes between
this and a common theft, between the stealing of a man and
the stealing of property. The theft of property was punished
by fine ; but the stealing of a man, by death : " If a man shall
steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it or sell it, he shall restore five
oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep," Exodus, xxii. 1.
" If the theft be certainly found in his hand alive, whether it
be ox, or ass, or sheep, he shall restore double," Exodus, xxii. 4.
Compare Exodus, xxii. 9. If slavery had had any existence
among the Hebrews, any toleration, if man had been consid-
ered as property, then the penalty for such theft could not
have been death, but the restoration of five slaves for a slave,
10*
220 NO TRAFFIC IX MEN PERMITTED.
or the payment of five times as much as the stolen man would
bring in the market. And the near and striking contrast be-
tween these crimes and the respective penalties attached to
them, must have made men feel that the assertion of property
in man was itself a crime.
Accordingly, there is no indication of any traffic in human
beings except where it is indicated as a crime, with the wrath
of God pointed against it. There was such traffic among other
nations, but no approach to it in Judea. The trade in human
beings is set down by the prophet Ezekiel as among the com-
mercial transactions in the market place of Tyre ; but no He-
brew had any thing to do with it, Ezekiel, xxvii. 13. It is set
down by Joel as a damning trade of Tyre and Zidon, of the
heathen, and the Grecians, Joel, iii. 2-8, and every approxima-
tion to it, on the part of Israel, is marked for divine vengeance.
But no such traffic was allowed, or existed, under the law of
God ; no such thing as slavery was either recognized or tol-
erated. There is no instance of the purchase even of servants
from a third person, as if they were articles of possession that
could be passed from hand to hand, from master to master,
without their own agreement. There is no instance of the safe
of any servant to a third person. There is no indication that
masters ever had any power to sell their servants to others, or
to put them away from their own families, except in perfect
freedom. Our English translators, and the lexicographers,
have indeed, in most cases, assumed slavery and the slave
trade as existing in Judea ; but the Mosaic laws and the
Jewish history demonstrate the contrary. A single assump-
tion, by Gesenius, that the word for souls in Genesis, xii. 5,
C2i, souls that Abraham and Lot had gotten hi Haran, means
slaves, shall be followed, without examination, by other lexi-
cographers, and shall set the tide of opinion to run on without
questioning.
THE LAW MADE FOR MAN-STEALERS. 227
HUMAN BEINGS CAN NOT BE TREATED AS PROPERTY.
But the statute under consideration shines like a sun upon
such an investigation, and throws its light backwards as wef
as forwards in history and law, as a light of supreme defining
and controlling principle. Human beings can not be treated
as property. There is no restriction : the universality of the
law is unquestionable ; the subject of it being a man, not a
Hebrew man exclusive of a stranger, but a man, whosoever
he might be. The universality of this law is as evident as that
law in verse 12 : lie that smiteth a man so that he die, shall
surely be put to death. There is no more ground for restrict-
ing the application of the statute against stealing a man to the
Hebrew stolen, than that against killing a man. So with the
statute against killing a servant ; there is no restriction. A
comparison of this with Leviticus, xxiv. 17, 21, 22, makes it
still clearer. In this place the statute is also concerning the
death-penalty, and the form is as follows : He that killeth
any man shall surely be put to death ; and it is added, Ye
shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger as for
one of your own country ; for I am the Lord your God. So
with the laws concerning the treatment of one's neighbor ; if
any man ask, But who is my neighbor? willing to restrict
their application to a countryman, the commentary of our
Lord, in Luke, x. 30, settles the matter. But if so in a smaller
injury committed, or benefit required, much more in the
greater. Along with this statute is placed the law, Thou
shalt not vex a stranger, nor oppress him, Exodus, xxii. 21,
and again xxiii. 9. But finally the matter is settled by Paul,
in 1 Timothy, i. 10 : " The law is made for man-slayers, men-
stealers," and others named, without restriction as to lineage
or land. The reference is unquestionable ; the application
equally so.
He that stecdeth a man. If it had been (as some modern
supporters of the system of slavery affirm) a statute for the
228 TER VERSION OF GOD'S WORD.
support, sanction, and better protection of slavery and slave
property, a statute against stealing slaves or servants, the dis-
tinguishing word would have been used (had there been a word
in the Hebrew tongue signifying slave) ; and for want of such
a word, the nearest approximation to it would have been
taken. The statute must have read, He that stealeth a serv-
ant,is», not he that stealeth bjik, a man. So gross a blunder
could never have been committed by the lawgiver as the in-
troduction of the genus instead of the species, in a case involv-
ing the penalty of death ; so gross a blunder as that by which
the slaveholder instead of the slave-stealer might have been
obnoxious to the penalty. If it had been a law against the
stealing of another man's slaves, then the slaveholder might
have stolen a man and made him a slave, with perfect impu-
nity ; and only the thief who should dare to steal from him
the slave so made would be subject to the penalty. The law
would have been not against the stealing of a man, as ma?i,
and making him property, but against the stealing of him as
property, after he is so made. The assumption of those who
would maintain that Moses promulgated this law for the pro-
tection of slavery, is just this ; that man, as man, is not
sacred against kidnapping ; but man as kidnapped and made
property, man as property, is so sacred and inviolable a pos-
session, that the theft of him as a slave must be punished with
death.
DETESTABLENESS OF THE ATTEMPT TO FALSIFY THIS STATUTE.
Did the history of crime, or of impudent wickedness in jus-
tifying it, ever record an endeavor so brazen to falsify fact, to
distort the laws of the Almighty, to pervert their meaning, to
change good into evil, and put darkness for light ? The trick
is too barefaced and palpable even to be dignified with the
name of sophistry ; it is a downright and deliberate falsifica
tion of God's word, in order to shield from Ills reprobation
that which, along with murder, and equally as that, constitutes
MAN CAN NOT BE A SLAVE. 229
the greatest of human villainies. These deliberate falsifiers of
God's truth endeavor to shield from condemnation the crime
of stealing a freeman, and making him a slave, because the con-
demnation of that crime, as a crime worthy of death, includes
inevitably, and necessitates, the equal condemnation of slavery,
as the result and essence of that crime. If it be a crime to
steal a man, it is an equal crime to hold him when stolen ; for
the holding of him is the renewal of the stealing every day.
If he is passed over to a second thief for a consideration, then
that thief, holding the stolen man, does himself steal him, does
himself renew the theft of a man. The fact that he paid for
him does not make it any less the stealing of him.
These falsifiers of God's word endeavor to shield this crime
of stealing a man from condemnation, and to throw the whole
reprobation against the imaginary crime of stealing a slave.
There is no such crime ; for the stealing of a slave would be
criminal, merely because it is the stealing of a man from him-
self, and not a slave from his master ; merely because God has
denounced the stealing of a man as being a crime as great as
that of murder. Therefore, the stealing of a slave would be
criminal, because it is the stealing of a man, but not because
the slave can be any man's property, not because he belongs,
or can belong, to his master, which God forbids, but to him-
self only ; and his master, in claiming and holding him as
property, steals him ; in making a slave of him, steals him.
But these apologists for slavery maintain that it is a greater
crime to steal a stolen man than it is to steal a freeman. They
hold that it is no crime at all to steal that which is not prop-
erty, namely, a freeman ; but the moment the man is stolen,
and converted into property, then he becomes sacred, as an-
other's possession, and the stealing of him becomes robbery,
because it is the stealing of a slave ! The stealing of a
freeman from himself and from God is to be protected, be-
cause it is a mode of creating the most valuable of all prop-
erty ; but the stealing of the stolen man, when thus once ere-
230 EVERY SLAVE IS A MAN.
ated a slave, once transformed into property by the original
stealing of a freeman, is the worst kind of theft, because it is
the stealing of a stolen man from his owner, after he has been
laboriously, and at great cost of cruelty and wickedness, trans-
figured into a slave ! A slave, by God's law, according to
these " doctrines of devils," is sacred from theft, but a free-
man is not ! A max may be stolen with impunity, but the
stealing of a slave is to be punished with death ! A slave is to
be protected as property, but not as a max. A man, as a man,
and a freeman, can not be shielded from being stolen, and there
is no law against the man-stealer ; but as a slave, God inter-
poses and makes it death to steal him, not, however, on his
own account, or for his own protection as a max, but for the
protection of his master's sacred right of property in him as a
stolen man !
With what sublimated essence of cruelty and compound
wickedness these moral chemists charge the word of God !
Passing it through the manipulations of such complicated
power of lying, the retorts and crucibles of their own diabol-
ism, it comes forth glaring like a demon, filled, in this thing,
with their own murder, debate, deceit, malignity. The glory
of the incorruptible God is changed into the image of a devil,
when that unrighteousness of men against which the wrath of
God is revealed from heaven, is, by their dreadful ingenuity,
enthroned as the object of Heaven's sanction and protection ;
it is the all-deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that
perish, when the truth is thus held by them in unrighteous-
ness, and the unrighteousness is presented as the truth.
UNIVERSALITY AXD rARTICULARITY OF THE STATUTE.
An attempt has been made to deny the universality of the
first grand enactment against stealing a max, by an appeal to
the other and second statute in Deuteronomy, xxiv. 7, where
the application is directly to the Hebrew man. " If a man be
found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel,
STEALING A HEBREW, STEALING A MAN. 231
and niaketh merchandise of him, or selleth him, then that
thief shall die, and thou shalt put evil from among you." As
if Jehovah could have taught that it was evil to steal a Hebrew,
but not evil to steal a man ! As if, in the sight of God, the
stealing of a Hebrew was a crime worthy of death, while the
stealing of a man might be permitted with impunity ! This
attempted evasion is almost as detestable as the other, that
the only thing criminal is the stealing of a slave from his mas-
ter, while the stealing of a man from himself, being only the
making of a slave, is not only no sin and no evil, but a
benefit to society, and an act of missionary intelligence and
mercy.
This statute, which was passed concerning the Hebrew forty
years after the other concerning the man, and without any
connection with or reference to the first, as we have already
noted, had a special object, which confirms and strengthens
the principle. It can not possibly be regarded as a statute of
limitation or interpretation merely, much less of abrogation,
as if the specific abrogated the general. Rather, if any such
reference were supposed, might it be contended that it having
been found in the course of forty years that the first and gen-
eral law might have been claimed as applying only to the
stranger or the heathen, and not to the stealing of a Hebrew,
whose servitude, even if stolen, could not last more than six
years (so carefully by law was this adjusted), it was found
necessary, for greater security and definiteness, to add the
second enactment, specifying also the Hebrew. But here
again, any limitation of the first statute by the second is for-
bidden in the same chapter, by the application of verse 14 :
"Thou shalt not oppress a hired servant that is poor and
needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that
are in thy land within thy gate." Nov/ if a hired servant that
was not a Hebrew could not be oppressed, any more than a
native, much more could not such a one be stolen with im-
punity, or the thief escape the penalty. He would not be
232 UNQUESTIONABLE MEANING OF THE LAW.
•
permitted to plead that, because there was a law against steal-
ing a Hebrew, therefore the law against stealing a man was
null and void.
Whether of thy brethren or of strangers, the oppression was
alike sinful, alike forbidden. But the greatest of all oppres-
sion was that of stealing a man and making a slave of him;
and if this was forbidden on pain of death in regard to a He-
brew, it was equally criminal and forbidden in regard to the
stranger ; if a crime worthy of death when committed against
a servant, then not less a crime when perpetrated against a
freeman. The stealing of an African was as sinful as the steal-
ing of a Jew. The stealing of an Egyptian would have come
under this penalty of death for punishment as certainly as the
stealing of a son of Abraham. Ye shall have one manner of
law, as well for the stranger as for your own countryman — a
most humane, merciful, and wise provision of a large and im-
partial benevolence and justice, which, if our own enlightened
country and government had followed, we should not now
have been laden with the iniquity of an accursed jurisprudence,
of the most infamous injustice and cruelty, for keeping four
millions of human beings in perpetual slavery.
If this law had been against stealing Jews, instead of men,
then the apostle, in transferring it, must have said the law was
made for Jew-stealers, not men-stealers, for 'lovdaLovnodia-aTc;,
not dvdpa-odioraig. And so, if the law had been against
stealing slaves, not men, for the protection and sanction of
slave-property, not to declare God's protection of men as hu-
man beings, against theft, or for the security of slave-owners,
and not for the sacredness of men as created in God's image ;
then the apostle, in translating that law into the wider dispen-
sation, and defining its application, must have said, the law
was made for slave-stealers, dovkoTrodioraTg, or 6ovXo~ariaiq,
not men-stealers. The context in Exodus, and context in
Timothy, nail the passages as beyond all disputation referring
to the same law. In Exodus it lies alongside with statutes
PAUL'S REFERENCE TO IT. 233
against man-slayers, cursers, and murderers of father and
mother ; in 1 Timothy the conjunction is the same : " Know-
ing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but
for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sin-
ners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and
murderers of mothers, for man-slayers, for whoremongers, for
them that defile themselves with mankind, for men-stealers,
for liars, for perjured persons; and if there be any other thing
that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious
gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust."
This reference is as clear as the noon. No man can for one
moment doubt the precise law in Exodus, which is referred to
by Paul, in writing to Timothy.* Paul could not, therefore, in
referring to it, have wholly distorted either its meaning or its
application. He could not have made so great a mistake as
that of leveling against the very foundations of slavery and the
slave-trade, a law published originally, and intended of God
for the protection of slave property. He could not have inter-
preted, in behalf of the rights of man against slaveholders,
a law intended of God to secure the rights of slaveholders
* Josephcs, Antiq., book iv., chap. Joscpbus must have used the word
viii., sec. 27. slave instead of A man, had the inter-
There is no question as to the in- pretation of the law been imagined as
terpretation given to this law by the against slave-stealing instead of man-
Jews of Paul's time. Indeed, a man stealing. The late Judge Jay, an
must be almost an idiot to believe, or eminent jurist, philanthropist, and
quite a villain to maintain, that the Christian, speaks, in his admirable
lav,- against stealing a man recognizes Essay on the Mosaic Laws op
the lawfulness and justice of slavery, Servitude, with just severity and
and forbids merely the stealing of a contempt of the "intense baseness to
slave. But to this extreme will the which northern apologists for slavery
defense of this iniquity carry even a will sometimes descend, as strikingly
professed Christian, though against illustrated in a pro-slavery article of
common sense as well as common the American Quarterly Review, for
piety. Josephus quotes the law: "Let June, 1833," in which the impious
death be the punishment for stealing evasion and falsification above noted
a man; but he that hath purloined are resorted to.
gold or silver, let him pay double."
234 APPLICATION TO AMERICAN SLAVERY.
against men. To this extent of infamy and blasphemy against
God the clerical Christian and theological defenders of slavery,
as under God's sanction, are compelled to drive their argu-
ment. The fountains of the great deep of wickedness are
broken up in the defense of this national crime, and the tops
of the highest mountains are so covered by the deluge, that
we have had Christian ministers declaring, in the zeal of their
celestial enthusiasm in the slave theology, that if by a single
prayer they could emancipate all the slaves in the country,
they would not offer it.
APPLICATION OF THIS STATUTE TO AMERICAN SLAVERY.
The application of this statute to the condemnation of
American slavery and slaveholding, as man-stealing, is inevit-
able. It brings not only the whole system, though sanctioned
by human law, under the curse and wrath of God, but those
who, personally and individually, practice it with God's pre-
tended sanction. The taking, the holding, or the selling of hu-
man beings as property, constitutes the very crime which God
himself has set apart, along with the crime of murder, for the
punishment of death. The act of slaveholdiug is this very
crime ; the act of slave-selling is this very crime. It is not
the system merely or generally, but the very act, that God's
wrath is leveled against ; it is not the system of slavery, but
the individual act and practice of slaveholding and selling,
that God has sealed with such terrible reprobation unto death.
It is the personal, individual act and practice of the crime, and
the repetition of it, that makes it a custom; and it is the
framing of laws protecting and sustaining it that organizes it
into what is called an organic sin, an institution, and a system.
The wickedness of the system lies in the continued perpetration
of the act, the crime, by the individual slaveholder. The act
of the crime came before its enactment, in stealing, in holding,
in selling men as slaves. The act ^of slaveholding is the act of
sin. Without the individual slaveholding there could be no
LAW CAN NOT JUSTIFY CRIME, BUT DOUBLES IT. 235
system of slavery ; the Blaveholding goes before the system,
prepares for it, and makes it up.
The slaveholding constitutes that oppression which is the
subject of God's wrath. The slave-stealing, holding, and sell-
ing came before any laws, and against all law, both of God and
man ; afterwards came the passage of laws to sanctify, pro-
tect, and establish the crime. Thus legalized and system-
atized, men think its guilt is canceled, aud that God no longer
looks upon the crime through the medium of his own law
and righteousness, but through the medium of human law,
which thus becomes a vicarious redeemer, to bear the guilt of
the violation of his own law. God's statute, "Thou shalt not
follow a multitude to do evil," is annuled, and the combina-
tion of the multitude, with the consolidation of their crime
into an institution, by means of a body of human enactments
defending it, divests it of the quality of guilt, and puts it
beyond God's reach, secure from his reprobation!
NO SLAVEHOLDER CAN ESCAPE.
But no slaveholder can thus escape the reprobation of the
Almighty. The fact that the crime is erected into a system,
and legalized, so far from removing or diminishing the guilt
of the act of slaveholding, is a terrible increase of the wicked-
ness, over and above that of the individual crime. The crime
of slaveholding still stands by itself under God's wrath ; the
crime of enacting laws in justification and defense of it, the
crime of enthroning it in the place of justice, is also another
and a gigantic guilt by itself, for which God will hold the na-
tion to account, as he holds the individual slaveholder for the
guilt of man-stealing. Human law can not possibly make that
an article of just property, which God has declared to be a
robbery punishable with death. The man who perpetrates
that robbery, in holding a fellow-creature as property, as a
slave, and then justifies it by human law, commits two crimes
instead of one ; the crime of man-stealing first, unaltered by
236 CHRISTIAN SLAVEHOLDING IMPOSSIBLE.
human enactments in its favor ; the crime of preferring man's
law above God's, second, which is deliberate defiance of the
Almighty, and adds to the sin of disobedience that of teach-
ing it as righteousness ; that of teaching that man's law is
obligatory above God's, and that man's law is capable of trans-
figuring into innocence and duty, what God's law has most
explicitly forbidden, as the highest crime.
But there is a still greater exasperation of this wickedness,
that of justifying it in the name of Christianity, that of seal-
ing with the pretended sanction of the cross, under the New
Testament, and as a missionary providence and virtue, that
very crime which God has branded under the Old Testament
by his own law as the highest guilt. The crime of slavehold-
ing received into the church, baj^tized in the name of Christ,
sanctioned as not inconsistent with the Christian profession,
is such a confusion and chaos of impiety with holy things, that
the incongruous monstrosities against which the Levitical
enactments were leveled, are but a type of the blasphemy.
A church is corrupted, its conscience defiled, and its piety
must soon become putrid, that can admit and endure the dis-
cord of such abominable profanations, such abominations of
desolations set in the holy place. Men might as well talk of
Christian murder as Christian slaveholding, and of receiving
the Christian murderer into sacramental and celestial fellow-
ship, as well as the Christian slaveholder.
This conclusion is inevitable the moment the definition of
slaveholding in the Word of God, and in the bare reality of
the crime, is admitted, and the letter and spirit of the Chris-
tian law are applied to it. The language of reprobation, such
as has been employed by Adam Clarke, John Wesley, Dymond,
and others, seems strong and terrible, but who can deny its
justice, admitting the sin to be such a crime as it is described
to be in the book of divine revelation ? The survey of the
system in the slave laws, (see Stroud and Goodell, with de-
cisions,) in the light of the Word of God, is all that is needed.
CHAPTER XXII.
Statute Forbidding the Delivery of Fugitives.— Universality and Meaning of
this Statute.— The Language Considered.— The History as to Servants. —
Heathen as Well as Hebrew Comprehended.— Beneficence of the Statute.
— A Security of Universal Freedom.— Force of the Demonstration Against
the Possibility of Property in Man.
STATUTE FOE THE PROTECTION OF OPPRESSED FUGITIVES.
The Mosaic legislation, the more it is examined, is seen to
be a system of supernatural, divine wisdom. Amidst a con-
geries of particulars, sometimes seemingly disconnected, great
underlying and controlling principles break out, The prin-
ciple revealed in the statute against man-stealing, is the same
developed in the next statute which we are to consider, in the
order of the logical and historical argument from the Old
Testament Scriptures against slavery. The principle is that
of the sacredness of the human personality, which can not
be made an article of traffic, can not be bought and sold, with-
out a degree of criminality in the action like the criminality
of murder. As the sacredness of human life is guarded by
the penalty of death for the crime of maliciously hilling a
man, so the sacredness of human liberty, the property of a
man's personality, as residing solely in himself, is guarded by
the same penalty against the crime of stealing a man. The
theft is that of himself from himself, and from God his Maker.
As murder is the destruction of the life, so man-stealing and
selling is the destruction of the personality, the degradation
of a man into a thing, a chattel, an article of property, trans-
ferred, bartered for a price, as if there were no immortal soul
nor personal will in existence.
The statute in Deuteronomy, xxiii. 15, 10, is properly to be
238 LANGUAGE OF TIIE STATE.
examined next after that in Exodus, xxi. 16, and Deuteron-
omy, xxiv. 7. The whole form of the statute is as follows :
"Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is
escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee,
even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of
thy gates, where it liketh him best : thou shalt not oppress
him." Of the interpretation of this statute, there can not be
the least doubt ; as to its application, only can there remain,
in any mind, some little question.
1. THE LANGUAGE. THE SERVANT TO HIS MASTER; NOT, TnE
SLAVE TO HIS OWNER.
The first thing to be considered is the language : " Thou
shalt not deliver up the servant to his master, "which is es-
caped unto thee from his master." The servant to his master,
v:-in— Vn nas. It is not, the slave to his oioner, or the heathen
slave to his owner, which would have been the proper form
of expression, if either slaves at any rate were under consid-
eration, or heathen slaves alone. The word for servant is the
ordinary 121;, and the word for his master is i^ns, which is
to be compared and contrasted with the word for owner, Vvn,
the latter word being used when a beast or an article of
property instead of a human being is spoken of. The contrast
may be fairly and fully seen, and the usage demonstrated, by
comparing Exodus, xxi. 4, 5, G, 8, with Exodus, xxi. 28, 29,
32, 34, and 30, and likewise Exodus, xxii. 11, 12, 14, 15.
Here, in the first case, where the subject is a human being,
(the servant), the master, y.iK, is spoken of, but never the
oicner. The relations and responsibilities are brought to view
between master and servant, but never between owner and
slave. But in the other eases, where the subject is property,
as an ox, ass, sheep, or article of raiment or furniture, the
oicner, V?5, is spoken of, not the master. The distinction is
one of purpose and care, and not accidental ; and in no case
is any such relation between human beings brought to view
HISTORY IN REGARD TO IT. 239
as of the one being owner of the other, with sanction of such
relation. The history of such relationship is the history of
crime, and the selling of human beings is always a criminal
transaction. The whole transaction of the selling of Joseph
is described as the crime of stealing ; and no person in Judea
could ever have sold any human being, no matter by what
means in his power, without the conviction of doing what was
forbidden of God. Man-selling was no more permitted than
man-stealing. Accordingly, there are no instances of its be-
ing practiced.
Now if there had been in Jndea, from Abraham downwards,
the system of what we call slavery, the system of chattelism,
the purchase, ownership, and sale of human beings as articles
of property, there must have been some traces of such pur-
chase, ownership, and sale, in the history of the people. Their
domestic life is so fully set before us, that if this system were
a fixture of it, the evidence could not fail to have leaked out ;
nay, the proof would have been glaring. If this fixture, with
all its concomitant transactions and habits, had existed, had
been maintained, as a national institute, against the divine
law, we should as certainly have found it in the history and
the books of the prophets as idolatry itself; we do find it in-
stantly recorded, in the only case in which it was attempted ;
and the case in which the crime was completed occasioned
the instant vengeance of God, in the destruction of the Jew-
ish State. But if it had existed by appointment of the divine
law, under the sanction and favor of God, then much more
should we have found some traces of it not only in the law
itself, but in the manners and customs of the people, and in
their historical and commercial records.
2. THE WHOLE HISTORY AN ACCOUNT OF SERVANTS, NOT
SLAVES.
But in the whole history, from that of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, down through the whole line of their descendants, not
240 A DEFENCE FOR HEATHEN SERVANTS.
one instance is to be found of the sale of a man, a servant, or
a slave. The only approximations to such a thing are treated
and denounced as criminal ; as, for example, in Amos, ii. G,
thus saith the Lord, " For three transgressions of Israel and
for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, be-
cause they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair
of shoes." When they obtained servants, or purchased them,
as the phrase was, they purchased their time and labor from
themselves ; but if they attempted to sell them, it could not
be done without stealing them ; it was making articles of prop-
erty out of them ; it was asserting and violently assuming
ownership in them ; it was man-stealing. But if slavery had
been a legal institution appointed of God, a righteous jjolicy
and habit of the domestic life, we should have found some-
where some traces of the transactions by which always it is
attended and maintained. We should have found mention
not only of obtaining servants by contracts made icith them,
but of buying them as slaves from others, and of ownership in
them, and of the sale of them ; and if they were considered in
law as chattels, as articles of property, we should have found
legal provisions for reclaiming and securing them when lost,
fugitive, or stolen ; just as Ave do in the cases of oxen, asses,
sheep, or property of any kind, lost, strayed, or stolen. It
would not be possible, for example, to write the history of
laws and customs in the United States for a single century
without such traces of slavery and of slave-laws coming out.
3. HEATHEN SERVANTS AS WELL AS HEBREW' COMPREHENDED
IN THIS LAW.
When, therefore, we search for such traces in the Mosaic
legislation, what do we stumble upon ? The first thing in
regard to fugitives is this law before us, a law made for their
protection against their masters, and not in behalf of the mas-
ters, or to recover their lost property. The judgment gath-
ered from this law in regard to slavery is in condemnation of
EVERY YOKE TO BE BROKEN^ 241
the whole system, and remains in full, to whatever class of
inhabitants the passage be applied. The question is, wheth-
er its operation was intended to comprehend Hebrew serv-
ants, or heathen servants only ; whether it was a law for
Judea at home, or for the nations abroad, or equally for
both.
1. There is no restriction or limitation expressed; it would
have to be supposed, and a construction forced upon the pas-
sage, which the terms do not indicate, and will hardly permit.
It would be unfortunate to have to treat any passage in this
manner, to make out a case, unless the context required it, or
the history and some more comprehensive laws enforced it.
Compare, for illustration, the command in Isaiah, lviii. 6, 9,
where it is enjoined: "To loose the bands of Avickedness, to
undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that
ye break every yoke." And again: "If thou take away from
the midst of thee the yoke." We might assert concerning
these passages that they referred only to the heathen, Avhereas
it is notorious that they applied to abuses and oppressions
committed not among the heathen, but in Judea itself, by the
Hebrews themselves, and not against strangers only, but
against their own countrymen, as in Amos, ii. 6, and viii. 6,
Jeremiah, xxii. 13-17, and Habakkuk, i. 14-16, and other
places. But when it is said, that ye break every yoke, it is not
meant that the lawful and appointed contracts with Hebrew
servants or others were to be broken up, for those were not
yokes, nor regarded as such ; and it only needed the applica-
tion of common sense to know perfectly the application of the
passage to unjust and illegal oppressions.
But, again, if a stranger or a heathen was thus oppressed
and subjected to the yoke, it applied to him, as well as to the
Hebrew; and the distinction was well known between op-
pressive and involuntary servitude, which was forbidden of
God, and the voluntary service for paid wages or purchase
money, as appointed by the law. The command, to take away
11
242 DEFENCE OF THE FUGITIVE.
the yoke from the midst of thee, applies to every form of
bondage imposed upon any persons whatsoever in the land,
contrary to the divine law, and without agreement on the
part of the servant. The fugitive from such oppression was
to be relieved and protected, and not delivered back to bond-
age. The Hebrew is emphatic, ntna 'q-'ritt "pep— cn, if thou
remove from the midst of thee the yoke; the yoke in thine
own country, not in a heathen country. And so, in the stat-
ute before us, the oppression, the escape, and the protection
are neither, nor all, exclusive of Hebrews.
2. But, second, it is contended by some that this is merely
a law to prevent heathen slaves that were escaping into the
land of Judea from being sent back to their heathen masters.
It certainly comprehends this class of persons, and this would
be an inevitable result of its operation, at any rate, whether
Hebrew servants were excluded or not. But no intimation can
be found, either in the text, the context, or the whole history,
of its application being restricted to the heathen. The word
in this statute used for servant is "isy. It is not a statute con-
cerning the hired servant, the "P5b, nor the six years' hired
servant, who could not be compelled to remain at service any
longer than that period, but was free as soon as his engage-
ment was over. It certainly could not apply to him, for he
received his pay from his master beforehand, and the law
would have been an incentive to dishonesty and villainy, if he
could have received his six years' wages, on entering into cov-
enant of service, and the next week could have decamped from
his master with the money in his pocket, secure against being
retaken. Such a person was not the "ray contemplated in this
law, nor could there have been any danger of its being so per-
verted. At the same time, the proofs are numerous that in
the land of Judea, among the Hebrews themselves, there were,
and would be, persons unjustly held as servants beyond their
time of service, as contracted for, persons oppressed in such
bondage, and for whose protection such a statute as the fugi-
SAFEGUARD FOR THE SERVANTS. 243
tive law before us, might be more necessary than for persons
fleeing from idolatrous masters in heathen lands.
3. In the third place, then, we must remember that there
were servants in Judea, both of the Hebrews and the heathen,
whose term of service was not limited to six years, but ex-
tended, with somewhat more undefined dominion of the mas-
ter, to the jubilee. There were servants of all work, inden-
tured servants, bound, by their own contract, for the whole
number of years intervening between the time of the contract
and the jubilee. These were mostly of heathen families, though
also of Hebrew, and were much more in the power of their
masters for ill treatment and oppression, if they were cruelly
disposed. Now it is most likely that the statute in question
was interposed for the protection of just this class of servants
from the cruelty of their masters; servants, the nature and the
term of whose service was, to such a degree, undefined and
unlimited. There certainly was such a kind of service, and
such a class of servants, to which and to whom the expression
n:??, and service of an ins peculiarly applied. See, for exam-
ple, Leviticus, xxv. 39, 40 : The Hebrew servant, contracting
till the jubilee, shall not be compelled to serve with the serv-
ice of an "OS, the servant of all work, but as a hired servant
and a sojourner. But the term of service was unlimited, ex-
cept by the jubilee; and so, in some respects, was the power
of the master.
The statute before us seems to have been passed for the
protection of such servants from the possible cruelty of their
masters. Although it was not deemed best entirely to abol-
ish that kind and tenure of servitude, but to lay it mainly up-
on the idolatrous nations who were to be conquered by the
Jews ; yet God imposed such protective safeguards in respect
to it as would keep it from being a cruel and unjust treatment,
even of them; such safeguards that the masters should find
kindness toward their servants not only commanded by the
letter and spirit of the law, but the only safe and profitable
244 A STATUTE SECURING FREEDOM.
policy. Therefore it was enacted that, if any servant chose to
flee from a tyrannical and cruel master, and could succeed in
getting away, the master should not be able by law to recover
him, should not be able to force him back ; or, at all events,
that none should bo obliged to return him to his master ; on
the contrary, that those to whom he might flee from the op-
pression of a cruel master, should be bound to protect him,
should not be permitted to deliver him up, but should give
him shelter, and suffer him to dwell in safety, wherever he
chose, without oppressing him.
BENEFICENCE OF THIS STATUTE. A SECURITY OF UNIVERSAL
FREEDOM.
This beneficent statute was, in this view, a keystone for the
arch of freedom, which the Jewish legislation was appointed
to rear in the midst of universal despotism and slavery ; it
formed a security for the keeping of all the other many pro-
visions in favor of those held to labor or domestic service ; it
opened a gate of refuge for the oppressed, and operated as a
powerful restraint against the cruelty of the tyrannical master.
There might be cruelty and tyranny in tthe land of Judea, but
there was a legal escape from it ; the servant, the nry, if men
attempted to treat him as a slave, could quit and choose his
master, was not compelled to abide in bondage, was not
hunted as a fugitive, nay, by law, was protected from being so
hunted, and everywhere, on his escape, found friends in every
dwelling, and a friend and protector in the law.
It is impossible that such a provision as this should be made
only in regard to the heathen slaves of the Canaanites, or of
the nations around Judea, since the Jews were forbidden to
enter into any treaties with the Canaanites, and were com-
manded to bring under tribute of service as many of them as
were spared. Their whole legislation, in regard to all the
heathen, was by no means that of amity with masters or
kings, but of opposition and of jealousy against them. They
NEED OF THIS LAW FOR FUGITIVES. 245
were forbidden to enter into covenant with them. Nor was
there any more need of a statute for not restoring heathen
slaves that had fled into the country of the Hebrews, than
there would be of a law in Great Britain for not restoring the
slaves of Egypt, or of the South Sea islanders, or of the canni-
bals or savages in New Zealand, that had got away from their
masters. But there might be need of such a law among the
Hebrews, to mitigate the evils of servitude, to preserve the
ti», the indentured servant of all work, from cruelty and op-
pression, to prevent his service from passing into slavery, and
to render it for the master's interest to treat him well and
kindly, as knowing that, if he did not, the injured servant
could escape from him, and seek another master, with impu-
nity. So, if he would not lose him altogether, he was com-
pelled to treat him kindly.
There was no such law as this, no such humane statute,
among the heathen; and hence the heathen masters were
ferocious despots and were accustomed to restore fugitive
slaves, even for the support of the system of slavery, that
there might be neither relief nor release from their own au-
thority, nor restraint nor check upon their own cruelty. Ac-
cordingly we see the terror of the Egyptian slave whom Da-
vid encountered after the foray upon Ziklag, lest he should be
sent back to his master, 1 Samuel, xxx. 15. The slave called
himself a young man of Egypt, "^Sto n?;, the servant -ns, to an
Amalekite, 1 Samuel, xxx. 11, and his master had left him to
die, because he fell sick. He made David swear that he would
not send him back into that slavery. There was no such sys-
tem of slavery among the Hebrews, and, with this humane
law, there could be none. The operation of this law, in con-
nection with other statutes, was certain, at length, to destroy
all remains of slavery among the people, and to make all with-
in the limits of the Hebrew nation wholly free. To bring
about this desirable end, God so surrounded the system of
servitude with wholesome checks, and entangled and crippled
246 AGAINST PROPERTY IN MAN.
it with such meshes of benevolent legislation, such careful pro-
tection of the servants, such guardianship of their rights, such
admission of them to all the privileges of the covenant, such
instruction of them, and such adoption of them at length as
Hebrews, even when they were foreigners at first, that, in
that land, among that people, there could be no such thing as
that system of injustice, cruelty, and robbery, which Ave call
slavery. It did not, and it could not, exist.
FORCE OF THE DEMONSTRATION FROM THIS. STATUTE AGAINST
THE POSSIBILITY OF PROPERTY IN MAN.
This law, like the grand statute against man-stealing, strikes
at the principle of property in man. It shows that God would
not permit human beings to be regarded as property, as slaves
in our day are considered property. Even if they had been
called slaves, it is clear that their masters were not considered
to be their owners, for they could take themselves off at pleas-
ure, if oppressed, and nevertheless no wrong was charged
upon them for thus escaping from bondage. They did not
belong to the master in such manner that wherever found he
had a claim upon them, and they must be given back. When
they fled away, they were not considered as having stolen
themselves ; and the man who found them neither acquired
any claim over them himself, nor was under any obligation to
the master to return them or to inform against them. The
master, in such a case, was not the owner.*
* Saalschutz, Das Mos. Recht, laws of other ancient and modern
Laws of Moses, Vol. II., ch. ci., p. States, where bondage and slavery
C97. lie remarks that as the laws have prevailed at the absolute will of
were successively published, they the master. Slavery, in the sense of
took under their protection, in every opposition to freedom, he says is not
relation, the manly worth and feeling found in the Mosaic polity, nor has
of those who served ; and the people the Hebrew language any word for
were forbidden from delivering up the slave. Compare, for the system and
fugitive, on any consideration, or from its details, Stroud, Slave Code, and
doino- according to the customs and Goodell, American Slave Laws.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Demonstration Continued Against Property in Man.— Difference Between Mas-
tership of Servants and Ownership of Sheep.— Benevolent Intention of the
Statute Protecting the Fugitive. — Violation of it by the Fugitive Slave
Bill of the United States.— Historical Illustrations of the Statute.— Its
Violation by the Jews, and Their Punishment.
DEMONSTRATION AGAINST PROPERTY IN MAN.
The prodigious power of demonstration in this statute
against the possibility of property in man can not be seen but
on a close comparison of it with the divine laws concerning
the restoration of lost or stolen articles of property. The
statute in regard to a man escaping from thralldom was ex-
plicit : TlIOU SHALT NOT RESTORE HIM TO HIS MASTER. Owner
there was none; no such possibility was admitted.
But in regard to a thing, the statute was equally explicit,
the contrary way : Thou shalt restore all manner of lost
things, whether found or stolen. All manner of property
was to be restored ; but no human being, for a man could not
be property. Examining these statutes, it will be seen at once
what a difference is made between the mastership of a man
over his servants, and oiciiershi}) over his cattle, his lands, his
houses, and all riches. Exodus, xxiii. 4 : "If thou meet thine
enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it
back to him again." So in Deuteronomy : " Thou shalt not
see thy brother's ox or his sheep go astray, and hide thyself
from them ; thou shalt in any case bring them again unto thy
brother. And if thy brother be not nigh unto thee, or if thou
know him not, then thou shalt bring it unto thine own house,
and it shall be with thee until thy brother seek after it, and
248 RESTORATION OF PROPERTY.
thou slialt restore it to him again. In like manner shalt thou
do with his ass ; and so shalt thou do with his raiment ; and
with all lost things of thy brother's, which he has lost and
thou hast found, shalt thou do likewise ; thou mayest not hide
thyself." Deuteronomy, xxii. 1-3.
Now as to the force of this demonstration that men can not
be property, that men-servants and maid-servants were not
and could not be the property of their masters, it makes no
difference whether this statute be restricted to the heathen or
not. It was incumbent on the Jew, if he saw the ox or the
ass, even of his enemy, even of a heathen, or a stranger, going
astray, to inform him of it, or bring the animal back: it be-
longed to the man who had lost it, from whose power it had
escaped. But if the servant of the same man, worth to him
fourfold, escaped from him, and the Jew knew it, there was
not only no obligation to let the master know, or to help re-
turn the fugitive, but a direct command from God not to do
this, but on the contrary to aid and protect the fugitive. It
is impossible to deny or condemn more forcibly the assump-
tion of property in man. Yet that is the assumption on which
slavery is grounded, and if God condemns the one, he does
the other.
It is plain that if a slave were a thing, or if there had been
such a thing as a slave recognized, such a possibility as that
of property in man, there would have been no withdrawing
that kind of thing, that kind of property, from under the op-
eration of these laws ; the obligation was universal, of restor-
ing all lost things, and the law would inevitably have read,
Thou shalt especially restore unto his owner his lost slave. In-
stead of that, it reads, Thou shalt not restore him, nor oppress
him. It' he could have been property, then he would have
been the most valuable of all property, and the men detaining
him from his owner would have been the greatest of all
thieves. If he could have been property, as an ox or a sheep
is property, then the obligation to restore him to his owner
PROPERTY IN MAN IMPOSSIBLE. 249
would have been as much greater as a man is more valuable
than a sheep.
But lie could not be ; the claim of property in man was in-
admissible, it was piracy, it was man-stealing ; and he that
stole, sold, or held a human being as a slave, was inevitably to
be put to death. The claim of property in man was such a
crime that any connivance with it was worthy of death ; and
any legal toleration or establishment of its possibility, would
be a wrong against man so immeasurable, and a sin against
God so infinite, that to admit it even by implication in a just
code was impossible. God forbade the very supposition of
property in man.
GRANDEUR AND BENEVOLENCE OF THIS STATUTE.*
This glorious fugitive law, enshrining this majestic impossi-
bility of property in man, stands by itself in the divine code,
terse, whole, angular and perfect, as well defined and indis-
putable as a diamond in its setting. It is a suitable companion
for the law against man-stealing, completing the demonstration
against slavery, and with the running fiery commentary of the
prophets, denouncing this and every form of oppression, will
for ever remain among the most convincing proofs of a divine
revelation. What enmity and treachery towards God, what
wanton malignity towards man, are involved in the attempt
to prevent and falsify the meaning, or to deny the application
and authority of these sacred statutes ! He that labors to
hide or strike away such radiant seals of divinity in the Scrip-
tures is worse than an infidel.
VIOLATION OF THIS STATUTE BY THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL
OF TUE UNITED STATES.
It might have been supposed that every Christian State
would rejoice in such legislation, and copy the same in its own
jurisprudence. For the Hebrew statute, as revealed and en-
joined directly from Jehovah, must inevitably contain, it can
11*
260 HUMAN LAW DEFYING GOD.
not be denied, the exposition and concentration of perfect
justice and benevolence ; an example of the will of God and
the way of righteousness in this thing, for all generations and
all nations. It is a fountain star, an orb of light divine, hung
in the firmament of God's own legislation for his own people,
the object of all that legislation being to train them more
and more perfectly for his service, to bring them more com-
pletely away from the example and the power of human
depravity, and to prepare them to reflect, as in a mirror,
the glory of his truth, righteousness, and goodness in the
world.
Now, in the place of that orb of light, the United States
government and people have hung up, in the fugitive slave
bill, in the firmament of their legislation, a perfect orb of cru-
elty and darkness. It is one of the most complete and finished
examples ever known on earth of a Christian nation deliber-
ately ignoring and defying the instructions vouchsafed from
heaven, and in the very face of those divine teachings on a
subject of universal and fundamental morality between man
and man, proceeding on principles contrary to the divine be-
nevolence, and enacting laws contrary to the divine law ; just
as absolutely contrary as they possibly could be made. If the
intention had been absolute, to contradict Heaven, and thwart
the purposes of God, the statute could not have been more
cunningly contrived.
The divinely revealed statute was enacted by command
of God to shield the weaker party from cruelty and op-
pression. The statute of this Christian country was enacted
by inspiration and command of the oppressor, to secure and
establish him more completely in his oppression, and to ren-
der it impossible for the victims of such oppression to
escape.
God's statute was framed that if the victim should escape,
he should not be recaptured. The statute of this Christian
republic was passed, that if the victim should escape, Christian
HEREDITARY CRUELTY BY LAW. 251
men should be forbidden to aid him, and compelled to bring
him back again to bondage.
God's statute sympathizes with the oppressed. This Chris-
tian statute sympathizes with the oppressor. It was rightly
declared by a slave commissioner and judge, in the act of sen-
tencing a fugitive under this law, that there being no principle
of Christian charity in it, no appeal could be taken to Chris-
tian charity against it.
Cod's statute was framed to prevent the possibility of a
covenanted and voluntary service passing into the enforced
and involuntary servitude of slavery. The statute of this
Christian nation was framed to prevent slavery from the pos-
sibility of any alleviation, or transformation into free, volun-
tary, just and righteous service.
God's statute was framed to prevent the possibility of build-
ing upon the service of a freeman a claim to the service of a
slave, or upon a contract with the parent a claim to the serv-
ice of the child. The statute of this Christian country was
framed to subject the man, once stolen, to hopeless bondage,
and the parent to the operation of a compound oppression,
that, through him, descends with aggravated power upon his
children and his children's children.
This hereditary cruelty is the most infernal feature of its
infamy and wickedness. For this law, by the most infamous
fraud and robbery ever perpetrated under heaven, taking
advantage of the wrong, that in acknowledged defiance of
natural right, and common justice and humanity, gave posses-
sion of the parent, fastens, through him, and without shadow
of law, whether in letter or in spirit, nay, against both the
spirit and letter of the Constitution, its teeth upon his off-
spring.
Under cover of the phrase, persons owing service and es-
caping shall be returned to the party to whom such service is
due, the parents themselves are not only returned to the op-
pressor from whom they had escaped, but the torture of this
252 PERVERSION OP THE CONSTITUTION.
oppression, the complicated flings of this viper-knotted scourge
of law, strike and are riveted within the sacred vail of un-
born life. The pincers and forceps of the demon of slavery
are the instruments by which, under this Christian legalized
surgery of hell, the pledges of the slave-mother's love are
born into the world. The brand of this cruelty is burned in
before the chattel-babe has seen the light, and the Constitu-
tion, perverted for this purpose, descends upon that stamp,
under forgery of service due (!!!) under soal and sanction of
the Supreme Court of Justice ; and the whole power of the
government is flung down upon it, to send the image and su-
perscription through all generations. Under forgery of service
due, the Constitution is distorted into a vast piracy ; and un-
der such torture and perversion, the government and people
have concocted a law diabolically contrary to the divine law,
and subversive of every principle of Christian morals, every
instinct of natural humanity, and every obligation of Christian
charity. It is a law affirming that slavery is service due, and
that the returning of stolen property to the thief becomes,
when the article stolen is a human being, a national obliga-
tion !
With the infamous crime of child-stealing foisted into it,
the Constitution itself becomes a kidnapping instrument ; and
if there were anywhere on earth a constitution made for such
villainy, a constitution concentrating, justifying, and perpetu-
ating such a crime, it would be the enemy of the human race,
and ought to be outlawed from human society, broken up and
destroyed, as you would a den of pirates. There is no such
iniquity in our Constitution, there never was designed to be,
there never can be ; and yet the slaveocracy have succeeded
in boring a place for it, and laying the eggs of the monster ;
and the Fugitive Slave Bill hatches it into life, full grown.
By this perversion of the Constitution, and this enactment
fostering and securing it, we have become, not so much a na-
tion of man-stealers as of child-stealers, infant-thieves. "When
CHALLENGE BEFORE JUDGES. 253
the Roman Church commit this sin against a single Jewish
child, it is an outrage on the moral sense of the world ; but
when the church of the slaveocracy practice it on the children
of millions, then it is God's grand providential missionary in-
stitute!
ILLUSTRATIONS AND PROOFS OF GOD'S STATUTE FROM THE
HISTORY.
We may add that, if the servant in any class, either the
its, or the T^to, had been regarded as property, and if the
law against the recapture or restoration of fugitive servants
was intended only with reference to foreigners, and did not
apply to the Hebrews, then must the exception necessarily
have been made clear in such a statute as Deuteronomy, xxii.
1-3. " All lost things" of his brother's, a Hebrew was bound
to restore ; and if slaves were property, and the Hebrews had
held slaves, then inevitably must lost or escaped slaves have
been enumerated as among the things to be restored. Com-
pare Exodus, xxii. 9 : " For all manner of trespass, whether it
be for ox, for ass, for sheep, for raiment, or for any manner of
lost thing, which another challengeth to be his, the cause of
both parties shall come before the judges, and whom the
judges shall condemn, he shall pay double unto his neigh-
bor." If men had not been forbidden thus to challenge the
fugitive, nny, the escaping servant, as their property, a like
provision must inevitably have been made for trying this claim
also before the judges. But in the whole history of the He-
brews, there are no instances on record of the reclamation of
fugitive slaves in their country, under their laws. There are
cases mentioned of servants escaping ; and the statute itself
was the supposition that they would escape, and formed a pro-
tection and a safeguard for them ; but there is never a case
named, nor any intimation of any such event, of a master
hunting for slaves, going in search of, or reclaiming, his run-
away property, in the country of the Hebrews. There are
254 NABAL'S complaint TO DAVID.
instances of men going from Dan to Beersheba to hunt up
and reclaim an ox or an ass, but never a hint of any such thing
as a man hunting, or reclaiming, or recapturing, a fugitive
servant.
And yet, from incidental testimony, the more striking be-
cause it falls out naturally in the course of the history of
David, we said that it was no uncommon thing for servants
to escape, and to be going at large, unmolested. Nabal's
complaint to the messengers of David proves this: "There be
many servants, tr-ry, nowadays, that break away every man
from his master," 1 Samuel, xxv. 10 ; and the manner of the
complaint argues the anger of Nabal because such a thing
could be, and the servants get off with impunity. But no in-
stance can be found of any man undertaking, with marshals,
or otherwise, to recapture them. There is no hint of any jposse
comitatus at the disposal of the master for this purjxise. Had
there been such a thing as a Fugitive Slave Law against the
slave, instead of one for his protection, Nabal's language would
rather have been that of threatening, than complaint. " You
rogues, if you do not take yourselves off, I will have you ar-
rested as fugitive slaves, such as you doubtless are, you va-
grant rascals. I will have you lodged in the county jail, and,
if your master does not appear, you shall be sold to pay the
jail fees." But Nabal's language is that of " a son of Belial,"
who is furious because there is no help for such insubordina-
tion against tyranny.
THE CASE OF SHIMEI, CURSING AND SLAVE-HUNTING.
The case of Shimei must be considered in illustration, be-
cause, at first thought, it might seem to be an exception, and
might appear as an instance of reclamation. 1 Kings, ii. 39,
40. Two of the servants, b^-.s?— >:», of Shimei ran away to
Achish, king of Gath, son of Maachah, and from thence infor-
mation came to Shimei ; and in his blind haste to recapture
these runaways, forgetting or despising his oath to Solomon,
SHIMEI AND HIS SERVANTS. 255
he saddled his ass and went to Gath, and found his servants,
and brought them back to Jerusalem. It is no wonder, from
the description given of Shimei's cursed manners and dispo-
sition, that his servants, even purchased, as they may have
been, from the heathen, could not endure his service, but pre-
ferred to run away even into a heathen country ; and it is not
a little singular that the first and only instance of a slave-
hunter figuring in sacred history is that of this condemned liar,
hypocrite, and blasphemer. But he captures his servants in
the country of the Philistines, and not in a land under Hebrew
law. Doubtless, they were foreigners and heathen, not He-
brews, or they would not have fled away to Achish, king of
Gath ; they would have been secure against Shimei's claim in
their own country, but there was no law for the protection of
slaves in the land of the Philistines ; and, although they im-
agined themselves more secure from pursuit there, especially
as they must have known that their master himself was a pris-
oner of state within certain limits in Jerusalem, yet the rage
of Shimei defeated their calculations, and they were brought
back. It may have been by some friendship of Achish with
Shimei, and a spite against king Solomon, that this was ac-
complished, which made king Solomon the more ready to in-
flict upon Shimei, without any further reprieve, the sentence
he had brought upon himself.
The history in 2 Chronicles, xxviii. 8-15, has an important
bearing in illustration of this and other statutes, especially
those for the protection of the Hebrews from becoming slaves.
The kingdoms of Judah and Israel were at war, and the latter
had taken captive of the former two hundred thousand, whom
they proposed to keep for bondmen and bondwomen, the
ordinary fate* of those taken captive in war. But the fierce
wrath of God was instantly threatened, if they carried this
intended crime into execution ; and some able and patriotic
leaders of the tribe of Ephraim resisted the proposition with
such effectual energy, that the men of the army left the cap-
256 EVASIONS OF THE LAW.
tives to their disposal; whereupon they generously clothed
and fed them, and carried them back free to their own coun-
try. The intention had been, contrary to the divine law, to
bring them into bondage in a manner expressly forbidden. It
is to be feared that in some instances the legal prohibitions
against such slavery had already been set at defiance both by
rulers and people in the two kingdoms ; but never yet had
the attempt been made in so bold and public a manner, and
on so huge a scale, to override the laws.
VIOLATIONS OF THE LAWS BY OPPRESSION.
There are very decisive intimations, however, that look as
if this iniquity of a forced and continued bondage, by which
the Jewish masters retained their servants contrary to law,
had become, at a later period, one of the great outstanding
crimes of the nation. After the divulsion of the kingdom into
two, those persons unjustly held in bondage would be likely
to take refuge from cruel taskmasters in one kingdom by flee-
ing into the other ; and the law in Deuteronomy was unques-
tionable and explicit : " Thou shalt not deliver unto his mas-
ter the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee.
He shall dwell with thee where it liketh him best. Thou
shalt not oppress him." Contrary to this great statute of Je-
hovah, there may have been compacts or compromises between
the two kingdoms for the delivering up of such fugitive ; or
if not between the kingdoms, at least between confederacies of
masters. But whatever fugitive slave laws might be j)assed,
or compacts entered into, they were all as so many condemned
statutes, judged and condemned beforehand by the law of
God, and to be held null and void by those who would keep
his commandments. Nevertheless, with the example once set,
first in one kingdom then in the other, of such unrighteous stat-
utes, it might become comparatively easy, through powerful
interests, by the combination of large holders, or of those who
could profitably become slave-masters by trading with the
ENACTMENTS AGAINST THE DIVINE LAW. 257
heathen, not only to evade the divine law, but at length to get
statutes passed, though manifestly and directly contrary to it,
for the protection of slave property, or to assist in retaining or
recovering such property. There might be enactments for
the interests of the masters, s tting at naught all the pro-
- visions of the divine law for the limitation of servitude, the
preventing of slavery, and the protection and emancipation of
indentured servants.
That some such form of oppression began to be prevalent
soon after the separation of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel,
the tenor of the Prophets and the Psalms, from Joel to Mala-
chi, leads us to suppose. It is probable that this legislation
for the masters, this care for their interests and their favor,
this oppression of those whom they held in bondage, and this
disregard of the divine law in their behalf, are referred to by
the prophet Amos, especially in the fourth chapter of his
prophecy, where God rebukes the princes, the rulers, and the
wealthy and great men, for oppressing the poor and crushing
the needy, but saying to their masters, Bring business and
wealth, and let us trade and drink together, Amos, iv. 1.
Compare also Amos, ii. 6 : "They sold the righteous for silver,
and the poor for a pair of shoes." Scott's note on the first of
these passages presents the case in a manner not improbable :
"They crushed and trampled on their unresisting brethren,
and sold them for slaves. Having made the iniquitous bar-
gain, perhaps, on low terms, they required from the purchaser
in this slave-trade to be treated with wine." It may have been
partly in reference to such sins as these, that the rebuke of
God by the prophet Micah was directed, that " the statutes of
Omri were kept, and all the counsels of the house of Ahab,"
Micah, vi. 16. For, immediately after that indictment, it is
asserted that " men are hunting, every man his brother, with a
net ; and the prince asketh, and the judge asketh, for a re-
ward, and the great man uttereth his mischievous desire ; and
so they wrap it up, the best of them being as a briar, and
258 GLARING GUILT OF OPPRESSION.
the most upright sharper than a thorn-hedge," Micah, vii.
2, 3, 4.
It was in reference to such iniquity, this great and glaring
guilt of oppression especially, that many passages in the
Prophets and the Psalms were written. " Woe unto them
that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness
which they have prescribed, to turn aside the needy from
judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my
people," Isaiah, x. 10. "He looked for judgment, but behold
oppression," Isaiah, v. 7. " Hear the word of the Lord, ye
rulers of Sodom ; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people
of Gomorrah. Your hands are full of blood. When ye make
many prayers, I will not hear. Put away the evil of your do-
ings. Seek judgment; relieve the oppressed," Isaiah, i. 10-
17. "Woe unto them which justify the wicked for reward,
and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him.
Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame
consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and
their blossom shall go up as dust, because they have cast
away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of
the Holy one of Israel," Isaiah, v. 23, 24. Compare Jeremiah,
vi. 6, and vii. 5, 6, and xxii. 17.
THE GREAT ILLUSTRATIVE RECORD IN JEREMIAH.
It is in the light of such historic references, showing to
what a degree the Jews had corrupted justice, and set up op-
pression, in a system of precedent and law, in contempt of
the divine law, that we come to the consideration of the great
illustrative record in Jeremiah, xxxiv. The progress of the
iniquity and the ruin therein recorded had been gradual, from
father to son, from generation to generation, Jeremiah, xxxiv.
14 ; but at length it arose to the crisis of an open, combined)
and positive rebellion against God, in entirely trampling under
foot the great ordinance against Hebrew slavery, contained in
Exodus, xxi. 2, and confirmed and guarded by other statutes.
TERRIBLE RECORD IN JEREMIAH. 259
The crime of injustice and rebellion was the more marked and
daring, because it had been preceded by a fitful penitence and
acknowledgment of the oppression, and acceptance of the law
as righteous, and a return to its observance, with a new cove-
nant to that effect. So the whole people, princes and people,
loosed their grasp upon the servants they had been unjustly
retaining in bondage, and for a season, at the word of the
Lord, let them go. But, on reflection, they felt that it was
too great a sacrifice of power, and relinquishment of property,
to which they would not submit. " So they turned, and
caused the servants and the handmaids, whom they had let go
free, to return, and brought them into subjection for servants
and for handmaids," Jeremiah, xxxiv. 11. Then came the
word of the Lord, and its execution followed, as the lightning
doth the thunder: " Because ye have not hearkened unto me,
in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every one
to his neighbor, behold I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the
Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine ; and
I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the
earth," Jeremiah, xxxiv. 17.
It throws a solemn light of additional warning upon this
transaction, to compare with this chapter of Jeremiah, the
cotemporary prophecy of Ezekiel, in the twenty-second chap-
ter of that prophet. As men gather silver, brass, iron, lead,
and tin, into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon
it, to melt it, so God informed Ezekiel that he was now gath-
ering the whole house of Israel, that had become dross, priests,
princes, prophets, and people in the midst of Jerusalem, to
pour out his fury upon them, and melt them as refuse metals
in the midst of the fire. The indictment of their wickedness
in this chapter, issued just three years before the prediction
of Jeremiah, in the thirty-fourth of his prophecy, closes with
these words: " The people of the land have used oppression,
and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy ;
yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. And I
260 LESSON OF GOB S VENGEANCE.
sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge,
and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not
destroy it, but I found none. Therefore have I poured out
mine indignation upon them ; I have consumed them with the
fiie of my wrath ; their own way have I recompensed upon
their heads, said the Lord God."
Almost at the same moment, and in view of the same pre-
dicted event, though residing at so wide a distance from each
other, these two prophets were charged with God's denunci-
ation against the same sin of oppression, as the one climac-
teric occasion and cause of the destruction of the nation. God
refers the }>eople back to the first covenant of freedom in Ex-
odus, xxii., abolishing and forbidding slavery for ever ; and
the violation of that covenant, in the attempt to establish
the forbidden sin, is distinctly and with sublime and awful
emphasis, marked by Jehovah in his one, final, conclusive rea-
son for giving over the nation into the hand of their enemies,
and sweeping the whole community into bondage. It would
not be possible to transmit, in historic form, a more tremen-
dous reprobation of the sin of slavery, and of slavery as a sin.
From Ezekiel, xxii., and Jeremiah, xxxiv., this lesson stands
out as the one grand lesson of God's vengeance in the cap-
tivity.
TESTIMONY OF COTEMPORARY PROPHETS.
Miciiaelis, on this historic passage, supposes that for some
considerable time this oppression, this violation of God's cov-
enant in depriving the servants of their freedom, had been
going on ; but that king Zedekiah, terrified by Jeremiah's
2>reaching, and by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, had agreed
with the princes and people to repent of this their wickedness,
and had accordingly, for a little season, set their servants free,
as God had commanded. But then, reflecting on the profit-
ableness of such property, and the vastness of the sacrifice of
power and gain in relinquishing it, they concluded that they
TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHETS. 261
would not do it, and accordingly reenslaved their servants as
their property for ever. For this renewed crime, against which
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and other prophets had been thundering
the word of the Lord, God's wrath arose without remedy, and
he swept the whole race away.
With this view of the case, the prophets all agree, and many
passages become plainer in the light of the closing develop-
ment of the great tragedy. For example, Jeremiah, v. 20-31,
manifestly refers to the progress of this iniquity: "For among
my people are found wicked men ; they lay wait as he that
setteth snares ; they set a trap, they catch men. They judge
not the cause of the fatherless nor the right of the needy. The
prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their
means." Also, Jeremiah, vi. 6 : " The city is wholly oppres-
sion in the midst of her ; cast a mound against Jerusalem, the
city to be visited." Also, Jeremiah, vii. 4-17 : "If ye oppress
not the stranger, the fatherless and the widoAV, then may ye
dwell in the land ; but otherwise, I will cast you out of my
sight." Also, xxi. 12: "Execute judgment in the morning,
and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, let
my fury go out like fire and burn that none can quench it, be-
cause of the evil of your doings." Also, xxii. 3-13-17 : " Ex-
ecute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled
out of the hand of the oppressor ; and do no wrong, do no
violence to the stranger. Woe unto him that buildeth his
house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong ; that
useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him
not for his work. Did not thy father do judgment and justice,
and then it was well with him ? He judged the cause of the
poor and needy ; then it was well with him ; was not this to
know me, saith the Lord? But thine eyes and thy heart are
not but for thy covetousness, and for oppression and violence.
Therefore are they cast out into a land which they know not."
The particular sin, and the particular punishment, oppres-
sion and the retribution, are here developed.
262 TESTIMONY OF THE TROPIIETS.
On a comparison of Ezekiel, xviii. and xxii. the same great
facts are manifest. One of the characteristics of a man of true
piety, a just man before God, is repeatedly stated as being the
hatred and avoidance of oppression ; " hath not oppressed
any, hath spoiled none by violence, hath executed true judg-
ment between man and man." But on the other hand, the
characteristics of a wicked man, and the sure conditions of
God's wrath, are, "if he have oppressed the poor and needy,
spoiled his brother, cruelly oppressed any." In the twenty-
second chapter, the princes and the people are arraigned as
having done this, among other wickedness: "In the midst
of thee have they dealt by oppression with the stranger ; in
thee have they vexed the fatherless and widow ; in thee have
they set light by father and mother; in thee are men that
have carried tales and taken gifts to shed blood, and thou
hast greedily gained by extortion. The priests have violated
my law. The princes are like wolves ravening the prey, to
get dishonest gain. And her prophets have daubed them with
untempered mortar, divining lies. The people of the land
have used oppression and exercised robbery, and have vexed
the poor and needy ; yea, they have oppressed the stranger
wrongfully : therefore have I consumed them with the fire of
my wrath."
On a comparison with other cotemporary prophets, Zecha-
riah, Zephaniah, Ilabakkuk, and, somewhat later, Malachi, we
meet with astonishing illustrations ; as, for example, where God
reminds Zechariah of his former commandment : " Execute true
judgment, and show mercy and compassion every man to his
brother ; and oppress not the widow nor the fatherless, the
stranger nor the poor ; and let none of you imagine evil
against your brother in his heart. But they refused to hearken,
and made their hearts as adamant against the law, lest they
should hear ; therefore came a great wrath from the Lord of
hosts, and he scattered them with a whirlwind among the na-
tions," Zechariah, vii. 7-14.
SLAVE JUDGES EVENING "WOLVES. 263
The testimony of Zephaniah is to the same point : " Woe
to the oppressing city ! Her princes within her are roaring
lions ; her judges are evening wolves ; they gnaw not the bones
till the morrow." The same terrible facts of oppression and
cruelty, unjust judgment, violence, and compulsory servitude
without wages, are disclosed in Habakkuk ; the violence of the
land, the city, and all that dwell therein.
It is the iniquity of oppression, in the shape of unrequited
and unjustly compelled servitude, the oppression of the stranger
in the same way ; the defrauding him of his rights, the per-
version of law and of just judgment in regard to him, and the
trampling upon him and his children with hereditary cruelty,
that are distinctly described as having brought down the
wrath of God without remedy. And these are precisely our
sins; and there are some expressions in these indictments
and catalogues of crime fearfully descriptive of the state of
jurisprudence and of social manners in the United States.*
* For example, her judges are slavery, on the ground of pretended
evening wolves. One needs only to service due, when it could be proved
read the published account of the that the child was not only in no sense
atrocious injustice and cruelty perpe- a fugitive, but had never been a slave I
tratcd by one of the judges of Mary- A' hyena should be set in bronze as
land, under the Fugitive Slave Bill, the image of such American justice ;
against a mother and her child, re- and the statue of an evening wolf
manding them both into slavery, re- would be a fitting monument for a
fusing the introduction of proof that man capable of a decision so mean,
even if the mother had been a slave, so detestable, so superfluously cruol
the child was not a runaway, and was and barbarous,
free 1 Condemning them both to
CHAPTER XXIV.
Recapitulations of Statutes. — Four Forms of Statute Law Rendering Slavery
Impossible. — Climax in the Law of Jubilee. — Universality of this Law for
all the Inhabitants Demonstrated. — Liberty Throughout the Land. — If not
for All, Then a Premium on Slavery. — Analogy of Other Statutes. — Proof
From the Prophets. — Leading Idea in the Law.
We have now to consider the institution and the law of the
jubilee, as the completion of the system of social benevolence
and freedom embodied in the Mosaic statutes.
Meantime we have before us, even if we stopped short of
that, a body of laws embracing, as thus far traced, beyond all
comparison, the most benign, protective, and generous system
of domestic servitude, the kindest to the servants, and the
fairest for the masters, ever framed in any country or in any
age. The rights of the servants are defined and guaranteed
as strictly, and with as much care, as those of the employers
or masters. Human beings could not be degraded into slaves
or chattels, or bound for involuntary service, or seized and
worked for profit, and no wages paid. The defenses against
these outrages, the denouncement and prohibition of them,
are among the clearest legal and historical judgments of God
against slavery. The system of slavery in our own country,
even in the light only of these provisions, holds its power by
laws most manifestly conflicting with the divine law, and
stands indisputably under the divine reprobation.
FOUR FORMS OF STATUTE LAW RE^TDERING SLAVERY
IMPOSSIBLE.
Four forms of statute law combined, in this divinely-ordered
social arrangement, to render slavery for ever impossible among
a people regardful of justice and obedient to God. First.
FOUR IMPOSSIBILITIES OP SLAVERY. 265
The law of religious equality and dignity, gathering all classes
as brethren and children of one family before God. Instruc-
tion, recreation and rest were secured in the institution of the
Sabbath, and its cognate sacred seasons, following the same
law; and freedom, not slavery, was inevitable.
Second, by the same system, the original act of oppression
and violence, which has been the grand and almost ouly source
of all the slavery in our own country, wTas branded and placed
in the catalogue of crime, on a level with that of murder, to
be punished by death. It requires no particular acuteness of
vision to perceive that what was an injustice to the parents,
worthy of death, can not be transformed, in the next genera-
tion, or the next after, to a righteous institution, sacred by
the grace of God. By covenant, the curse of the Almighty
is upon it.
Third, the right of possession to himself, is recognized as
resting, by the nature of humanity and the authority of God's
law, in each individual ; and the sac-redness of the human per-
sonality is demonstrated by the same law to be such, that a
human being can not, but by the highest violence and crime,
be degraded into an article of pi*operty and merchandise.
From the Mosaic statutes, it is indisputable that such is the
judgment of God ; and the successive history, which takes its
course and coloring from them, or from their violation, con-
firms the demonstration. From the statutes and the history
together it is as clear that slavery is a moral abomination in the
sight of God, as it is from the history in Genesis that the in-
iquity of Sodom and Gomorrah was a sin. The destruction
of Judah and Jerusalem for the iniquity of oppression, in this
particular form, of a forced involuntary bondage, was a more
stupendous and enlightening judgment by far, all things con-
sidered, than the overwhelming of the cities of the plain with
fire. How can it be possible for any unprejudiced reader of
the word of God to avoid acknowledging our own condemna-
tion in this licrht ?
2G6 LAW OP JUBILEE CONSIDERED.
Fourth, the protection, by statute, of the servant escaping
from his master, instead of any provision for the master's re-
gaining possession of the servant, was another interposition in
behalf of the weaker party, in the same design of rendering
slavery impossible, and is another plain indication of the judg-
ment of God as to the iniquity of American slavery, and of
the laws for the support of it. The Hebrew system was so
absolute and effective a safeguard against oppression, and ren-
dered any form of slavery so impracticable, and in its legiti-
mate working would have so inevitably subdued the slavery
of all surrounding nations to its own freedom, that it stands
out as a superhuman production, the gift of God, The wis-
dom and benevolence of the Almighty appear in it to such a
degree, in comparison and contrast with the habits and mor-
als of the world, that the claim of the Pentateuch to a divine
inspiration might, in no small measure, be permitted to rest
upon it.
TIIE LAW OF JUBILEE. — UNIVERSALITY OP ITS APPLICATION
DEMONSTRATED.
We come now to the consideration of the law of the jubi-
lee, in Leviticus, xxv. 10, 35-55. This great statute of per-
sonal freedom was as follows: "Ye shall hallow the fiftieth
year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the
inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you, and ye shall
return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every
man unto his family." Liberty throughout the land unto
all the inhabitants tueeeof. The expression is chosen on
purpose for its comprehensiveness. It is not said to all the
inhabitants of the land, being Hebrews, Or such as are He-
brews, which restriction would have been made, had it been
intended ; as is manifest from the case in Jeremiah, xxxiv.,
where the restriction is carefully and repeatedly announced.
But the phrase all the inhabitants of the land, seems to have
an intensity of meaning, comprehending, purposely, all, whether
LIBERTY THROUGHOUT THE LAND. 267
Hebrews or not; it being well known that many of the in-
habitants of the land were not Hebrews. This phrase, the
inhabitants of the land, had been frequently used to describe
its old heathen possessors, the Canaanites, and others, as Ex
odus, xxiii. 31, xxxiv. 12, and Numbers, xxxii. 17, xxxiii. 52. It
is used, Joshua, ii. 9, vii. 9, ix. 24, in the same way. It is never
used restrictively for Hebrews alone ; not an instance can be
found of such usage in the Mosaic books. It is used in Jeremiah,
i. 14, an evil on all the inhabitants of the land, and in Joel, i.
2, and ii. 1, let all the inhabitants of the land tremble. In this
statute in Leviticus, it is the whole number of inhabitants of
the land, held in servitude, that are included. Ye people of
Israel shall do this, shall proclaim liberty to all the inhabitants
of the land.
And proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabit-
ants thereof The Hebrew is as follows : y^a n'-ii- cr.N-jy*
rpr^-ViV, and preach freedom in the land to all the dwellers
thereof The expression is emphatic : the proclamation to be
made throughout the length and breadth of the land, not to
those only who inhabited it as Hebrews by descent, but to all
that dwelt in it. Had it been intended to restrict the appli-
cation of this statute, the class excluded from its application
would have been named ; another form of expression would
have been used. Had it been intended to make a law broad,
universal, exceptional in its application, no other phraseology
could be used than that which is used. If it had been a form
of class-legislation, it must necessarily have been so worded
as to admit of no mistake. But the expression employed is
found, without exception, in all cases, with an unlimited, uni-
versal meaning. It is never used where a particular class alone
are intended. The proof of its usage, and the demonstration
from its usage may be seen by examination of the following
passages.
Isaiah, xviii. 3: All ye inhabitants of the world, and dweller's
on the earth. y-K ■'ssw'i Van ■,5>f"'~ ^ . Here are two words
2G8 LIBERTY TO ALL INHABITANTS.
used as synonymous. The first is the word employed in the
law under consideration, from the verb att% with the meaning
to continue, to dwell, to inhabit • and this is the word ordi-
narily employed to designated the whole people inhabiting a
country. The second is from the verb yzti, to encamp, to rest,
to dwell, employed much less frequently, as in Job, xxvi. 5,
the waters and the inhabitants thereof, dn"»M:to> b^tt. Also,
Proverbs, i. 33 ; viii. 12; x. 30. Psalm xxxvii. 29; cii. 28.
In Isaiah, xxxii. 16 ; xxxiii. 24, and in Joel, iii. 20, and some
other places, as in Psalm lxix. 35, both these verbs are used
interchangably. But the verb yzxa is used exclusively in a
number of passages which speak of God as dwelling among
his people, or in his temple. And hence the use of the word
Shechinah, firsts, the tabernacle of God's presence. In Isaiah,
xxxiii. 24, we have the noun yzxo for inhabitant, and the verb
ay"> for the people that dwell. But the noun ■jtttj is very seldom
used, while the participle from sen is employed in more than
seventy passages to signify the inhabitants of the land, or of
the world, without any restriction. For example :
Leviticus, xviii. 25 : The land vomiteth out her inhabitants,
Judges, ii. 2 : Make no league with the inhabitants of the
bind. y-iNr; impV.
Psalm xxxiii. 8 : All the inhabitants of the world, ^sr? "qaji-fes.
Psalm xxxiii. 14: All the inhabitants of the earth, yz^
Isaiah, xxiv. 1, 5, G, 17 : Inhabitants of the earth ; also, xxvi.
9, inhabitants of the world, V=n i;x-\
Jeremiah, xxv. 29, 30 : Inhabitants of the earth, and Lam-
entations, iv. 12, of the world.
Joel, ii. 1 : Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
And so in multiplied instances. There is no case to be
found in which this expression signifies only a portion of the
inhabitants, or a particular class. Of the two words to which
NO EXCEPTION WHATEVER. 269
we have referred, the form "jsy would most prohably have
been employed, if only a j>ortion of the inhabitants, and not
all classes had been intended. There would be just as good
reason to restrict the denunciation in Joel, ii. 1, or i. 2 : Give ear
all the inhabitants of the land, to a particular and limited
class, as to restrict the expression in which the law of jubilee
is framed.
IF ANY EXCEPTION, IT MUST HAVE BEEN STATED.
Indeed, according to the universal reason of language, and
especially according to the necessity of precise and accurate
phraseology in the framing of laws, had the blessings and
privileges of the jubilee been intended only for native-born
Hebrews, or guaranteed only to such, the expression univer-
sally employed on other occasions when that particular por-
tion of the inhabitants alone are concerned, would have been
employed on this. There being such a well-known phrase,
capable of no misunderstanding, the law would have been
conveyed by it. The phrase must have been the common one,
of which one of the earliest examples is in Exodus, xii. 19?
Wtso Vki'»,>. wy. : The congregation of Israel horn in the land.
In Exodus, xii. 48, the distinctive expression, to particularize
the native Hebrew, is used along with yns, thus, yyvn cntN the
horn in the land, the native of the lajid of Hebrew birth or
origin.
Whenever there was danger of misinterpretation, misap-
plication, or confusion, as to the class intended by a law, this
phrase was employed, and the distinction, whatever it was,
which the law intended, was made plain ; or, if there was dan-
ger of making a distinction where none ought to be made,
that was equally plain. For example, Leviticus, xvi. 29, the
fast and Sabbath of the day of atonement being appointed, its
observance is made obligatory on the stranger as well as the
native Hebrew, by the following words: sss'na -i:.n nari'i rt^T«H:
Both the native horn and the stranger that sojourneth among
270 ALL INHABITANTS OF THE LAND.
you. So in Leviticus, xviii. 2G : " Ye shall not commit any of
these abominations, neither any of your own nation, nor any
stranger," nam hir^n. Again, Leviticus, xix. 34 : As one born
among you shall the stranger be that dwelleth with you,
nsn t=V n-r,' D5» i-ntsn ; and it is added, Thou shall love him
as thyst If, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Again,
Leviticus, xxiv. 1G: He that blasphemeth the name of the
Lord, as well the stranger as he that is bom in the land,
rntso nas. And Leviticus, xxiv. 22: Ye shall have one man-
ner of law, as tvell for the stranger as for one of your own
country, ft-rs^s naa.
So in regard to the passover, Numbers, ix. 14: Ye shall
have one ordinance, both for the stranger and for him that
was bom in the land, y-xn i-r^y* -\ih\ The same in regard to
atonement for sins of ignorance, and punishment for sins of
presumption, Numbers, xv. 29, 30, two instances of the same
expression, employed where there was any danger of a misap-
plication or insufficient application of the law. In the first in-
stance, the expression, Him that is bom among the children
of Israel, VkSw*; ism rr-TKH, is set over against the stranger
that sojourneth among them. In the second instance, the
comparison is more concise : Whether the bom in the land or
the stranger, nsr— ,S5 rntsn—j pa. Joshua, viii. 33, affords a
striking example, where, to prevent the expression all Israel
from being restricted so as to exclude the stranger, it is
added, As well the stranger as he that was born among them,
iTrtNa las. The expression all Israel not being necessarily so
universal as the expression all the inhabitants of the land, its
enlarged meaning is defined ; and just so if the expression, all
the inhabitants of the land, had been used in any case where
not all the inhabitants of the land, but only all the native Is-
raelites were meant, the restrictive meaning must have been
defined; otherwise, it would inevitably include both the na-
tive and the stranger, both the n^t* and the na.
This word mts, used to designate the native Hebrew in
NONE TO BE RETAINED IN SERVITUDE. 271
distinction from the stranger or any foreigner, is a very strik-
ing one, from the verb rnt, to rise, to grow, or sprout forth,
as a tree growing out of its own soil. It is used in Psalm
xxxvii. 35, to signify a tree in full verdure and freshness ; in
the common version, a green bay-tree, y.'^ rnt»i. It is thus a
very idiomatic and beautiful word for particularizing the Israel-
ite of home descent, the child of Abraham. There can not be
a doubt that this expression must have been used in framing
the law of jubilee, had it been intended to restrict its privi-
leges as belonging not to the stranger, but to the home-born.
IF NOT FOR ALL, THEN A PREMIUM ON SLAVERY.
Moreover, it is obvious that, if this comprehensive and ad-
mirable law meant that only Hebrew servants were to be set
free, but that others might be retained in servitude at the
pleasure of the masters, or, in other words, might be made
slaves, the law would have acted as a direct premium upon
slavery, offering a very strong inducement to have none but
such servants as could be kept as long as any one chose, such
as were absolutely and for ever in the power of the master.
So far from being a benevolent law, it would thus become a
very cruel and oppressive law, the source of infiuite mischief
and misery. If the choice had been offered to the Hebrews,
by law, between servants whom they could compel to remain
with them as slaves, and servants whom they would have to
dismiss, at whatever inconvenience, every sixth year, and also
at the jubilee, it would have been neither in Jewish nor in
human nature, to have refused the bribe that would thus have
been held out in the law itself for the establishment of slavery.
Even in regard to Hebrew apprentices, it was so much more
profitable to contract with them for the legal six years' serv-
ice, than to hire by the day, or month, or year, that we are
informed, Deuteronomy, xv. 18, tliat the nay, the servant of
six years' apprenticeship, was worth double the price of the
"Vby, the hired servant. This difference at length came to be
272 ANALOGY OF OTIIER STATUTES.
felt so strongly, and operated with sucli intensity upon the
growing greed of power and gain, that the Jewish masters
attempted a radical revolution in the law. And what they
would have done, had the law allowed, is proved by what they
did attempt to do against the law, when they forced even
Hebrew servants to remain with them as slaves; and be-
cause .of this glaring iniquity and oppression, in defiance of
the statute ordaining freedom for ever, they were given over
of God to the sword, the famine, and the pestilence. The in-
tention and attempt to establish slavery in the land constituted
the crime for which, and the occasion on which, God's wrath
became inexorable. There is no possibility of a mistake here.
God's indictment was absolute, and we have already examined
and compared the passages.
The motive for this crime was profit and power ; and now
it is clearly demonstrable that, if the people of Judea had had
a race of human beings at their disposal, whom, by their own
law, they could possess and use as slaves, chattels, property ;
and if the law had marked off such a race for that purpose,
and established such an element of superiority and of despot-
ism in the native Hebrew nation, over such a race, consecrat-
ed for their profit to such slavery — it is demonstrable that the
Hebrews would not have degraded any of their own to such a
state. It would have been quite a needless wickedness to set
up slavery as a crime, if they had it already legalized as a
necessary virtue. Their attempt to make slaves of the He-
brews, is a demonstration that they were not permitted, by
law, to make slaves of the heathen.
ANALOGY OP OTHER STATUTES.
The analogy of other statutes is in favor of this interpreta-
tion, nay, requires it. This statute is a statute of liberty going
seven-fold beyond any other ; intended to be as extraordinary
in its jubilee of privileges, as a half century is extraordinary
above a period of seven years. But already, by the force of
A SEVENFOLD JUBILEE. 273
other statutes, a septennial jubilee was assured to the He-
brews ; the law would never permit a Hebrew to be held as
an apprenticed servant more than six years ; in the seventh
he should go free. Every seventh year was already a year of
release to most of the inhabitants of the land, so that the fif-
tieth year, if that jubilee was restricted to the Hebrews,
would have been little more to them than the ordinary recur-
rence of the septennial jubilee. What need or reason for sig-
nalizing it, if it brought no greater joy, no greater gift of
freedom, than every seventh year of release must necessarily
bring? Hut it was a jubilee of seven-fold greater comprehen-
siveness and blessing than all the rest ; and whereas the others
were not designated or bestowed for all the inhabitants of the
land, this teas ; and in this circumstance lay its emphasis and
largeness of importance and of joy.
This constituted its especial fitness as a prefiguration of the
comprehensiveness and unconditional fullness of our deliver-
ance and redemption by the gift of God's grace in Christ Je-
sus. It was a jubilee, not for those favored classes only, who
already had seven such jubilees secured to them bylaw during
every fifty years, but for those also, who, otherwise, had no
such gift bestowed upon them, and could look forward to no
such termination of their servitude. It was a jubilee of per-
sonal deliverance to all the inhabitants of the land, Hebrews
or strangers, whatever might have been the tenure of their
service. The servants apprenticed or hired, were all free to
seek new masters, or to make new engagements, or none at
all, according to their pleasure. The Hebrew land-owners
were to return to the possessions of their fathers, "every man
unto his possession, every man unto his family," Leviticus, xxv.
10. But no man could carry his apprenticed servants, his
B^sy, with him, or his hired servants, except on a new volun-
tary contract ; for all the inhabitants of the land were free.
The clause preceding this statute is an enactment concern-
ing every seventh year, to be observed as a Sabbath of rest
274 PROCLAMATION OF LIBERTY.
for the land, but not necessarily of release for the servants ;
consequently, provision is made in the promise of sustenance
through that year, " for thee, and for thy servant, ^r^y*:!), and
for thy maid, ^MaNVn, and for thy hired servant, tp/'-sVV' all
of each class, being supposed still with the family. But when
the enactment of the fiftieth year as a year of rest is an-
nounced, it being announced as a year of liberty for all the in-
habitants of the land, nothing is again said of the servants of
the family ; neither in regulations as to buying and selling,
with reference to the proximity of the jubilee, is there any ex-
ception made in regard to servants, as though they were not
included in the freedom of the jubilee. But in regard to some
things there are such exceptions stated, as in Leviticus, xv.
30, of a house in a walled city, and verse 34, of the field of
the Levites ; showing that, if any exception had been intend-
ed in regard to servants, it must have been named.
PROCLAMATION OF LIBERTY. PROOF FROM THE PROPHETS.
We come, next, to consider the phrase iVw trx-j?., proclaim
liberty, announce deliverance. The strongest corresponding
passage is Isaiah, Ixi. 1, to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to them that are bound ; to
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. In this passage, it
is called ys — hst», the year of acceptance, or of benefits, or, as
it might be rendered, of discharge. In Ezekiel, xlvi. 17, it is
called by the word with which the law is framed in Leviticus,
nVv:i3 nsti, the year of liberty. And the passage in Ezekiel is
emphatic in more respects than one. 1. It is a recognition
of the year of jubilee at a late period in the history of the He-
brews; it is :ilso a notice of a prince giving an inheritance to
one of his servant*, l^asM iriKV, who might be, not a Hebrew;
bat in the year of liberty, the servants were free, and the in
heiitance returned to the original owner, or to one of his
sons. 2. It is an incidental argument against the existence
of slavery, when we find the servants made co-heirs with the
THE YEAR OF DELIVERANCE. 275
sons. It can not be slaves who would be so ti-eated. 3. Eze-
kiel's designation of the year of liberty corresponds with that
of Isaiah, at a period more than a hundred years earlier. The
allusion, in both prophets, to the jubilee, is unquestionable;
and, in both, the grand designation of the year is that of a
period of universal freedom. In Isaiah it is deliverance to cap-
tives and prisoners, d^oxV. *v>w d^at^. Those that are
bound, includes those under any servile apprenticeship ; but if
any one should contend that it means slaves, then it is very
clear that the jubilee was a year of deliverance to such, and
therefore certainly applied to the heathen, inasmuch as among
the Hebrews there were no slaves, and by law could be none.
But if it was a year of freedom for heathen slaves, admitting
they could be called such, then it was the complete extinction
of slavery ; it was such a j)eriodical emancipation as abolished
slavery uttei*ly and entirely, and rendered its establishment in
the land impossible.
Here we see the inconsistency of lexicographers and com-
mentators between their own conclusions, when they assume
that the jubilee was a year of deliverance to slaves, and at the
same time restrict its emancipating operation to the Hebrews.
For example, under the word i'i'w, we read in Gesenius the
definition of the year of liberty, "ri"WJn n:», as " the year of de-
liverance to slaves, namely, the year of jubilee.'1'' This is
either assuming the Hebrews to be slaves, contrary to the
well-known law which made this impossible, or, of necessity, it
assumes and asserts the application of the law of jubilee to
other classes, namely, of strangers and of the heathen ; and
interprets that law (as, beyond all question, its phraseology
demands) as applying to all the inhabitants of the land. The
Septuagint version of the proclamation is, a<peatv em rijg yrjg
Tract TOig KarotKovctv ain-nv, deliverance to all the inhabitants ;
and the Septuagint version of Ezekiel, xlvi. 17, is, eravg rfjg
d0t'(7ewc, the year of discharge or deliverance; and the He-
brew for the year of jubilee, Va'.**] rw«j, is translated, in the
276 THE YEAR OF LETTING GO.
same version, by erog rrjg d^ascjg and kviavrbc dfaoeoc;, the
year of freeing, of discharging, of letting go.
It is of little consequence whether the Hebrew appellation
was adopted from the instrument, the species of trumpet, used
in making the proclamation of the jubilee, or from the mean-
ing of the root-word, from which the name of that instrument
itself was derived. The Jubel-horn may have been a ram's
horn, or a metallic trumpet. But the name, hz\\ to desig-
nate, repeatedly, a jubilee, and Va'^n, the jubilee, and feato,
in jubilee, and Vnv-n r*\p , the year of jubilee, besides the ex-
pression, rwrt ?5'*a h:», the year of this jubilee, would lead us
more naturally to the verb, feaj, to go, to fioio, to run, as the
origin of the appellation, by its peculiar meaning of deliver-
ance^ freedom, remission, a. flowing forth as a river. This is
the more probable, because the appellation fcaV», jubilee, is not
first given in connection with the blowing of the trumpet, but
with the proclamation of liberty. When the forty-nine years
are passed, "then shalt thou cause the trumpet of rejoicing to
sound — in the day of atonement ye shall make the trumpet to
sound," Leviticus, xxv. 9. The Hebrew, here, is not the trum-
pet, VaV*, of jubilee, as might be supposed from our version,
but, ns>nn yeit-, the trumpet of rejoicing or of shouting for
joy. After this trumpet-sounding, comes the proclamation
of liberty ; and then, first, we have the name jubilee.
The Hebrew, in its connection, is full of meaning :
bth rrrn air-. fesY« r^-i-i-V:^ y-xa "I'l" BhN*>i?s, and proclaim
liberty throughout the land tinto all the inhabitants thereof:
a jubilee it shall be unto you.
The leading idea in the law is that of freedom from servi-
tude, and the proclaiming clause is the proclamation of lib-
erty ; and from that proclamation, and not from the enacting
clauses immediately following, in regard to restitution of prop-
erty and the return to patrimonial possessions, is the name
of the jubilee taken. The trumpet of rejoicing shall sound,
and ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and shall proclaim liberty
THE JUBILEE NOTHING BUT FOR LIBERTY.
277
to all the inhabitants of the land, and this shall be tour
jubilee. And in the year of this jubilee ye shall return,
every man, unto his possession. And so on with the detailed
enactments of the law. It is manifest that this great year is
called the jubilee from its ruling transaction of liberty : that
joyful announcement in the proclamation gives it its reigning
character : it would have been worth little or nothing without
that. It was the breaking of every yoke, and the letting ot
every man go free.'*
* Ejtto's Cyclopedia, Article Ju-
bilee. The law of jubilee was a con-
tinual recognition of God's sovereign
rights, and of the equality of the peo-
ple one with another, in their de-
pendence on him. These laws con-
tinually did, what is needed to be done
at intervals in the best constituted
States, brought back the people and
their constitution to the first princi-
ples of liberty and equality. If, every
fifty years, we could return where
our fathers set out in the Revolution,
there would be no more slavery.
" These laws prevented vast accumu-
lations, restrained cupidity, precluded
domestic tyranny, and constantly re-
minded rich and poor of their essen-
tial equality in themselves, in the
State, and before God. Equally be-
nevolent in its aim and tendency doe3
this institution appear, showing how
thoroughly the great Hebrew legis-
lator cared and provided for individu-
als, instead of favoring classes." "War-
burton adduced this law in proof of
the divine legation of Moses.
CHAP TER XXV .
Specific Enactments of the Jubilee. — First Clause of Personal Liberty. — Ex-
amination of the Hebrew Phrases. — Nature of the Jubilee Contract. —
Manner of Treatment. — Mistakes of Commentators.— No Selling of Chil-
dren for Debt Permitted by Law. — False Statement of Trench. — No Max
Permitted to be Enslaved, or to Enslave Himself.
LAW OF JUBILEE. SPECIFIC ENACTMENTS OF THE LAW.
The enacting clauses from Leviticus, xxv. 39-46, are occu-
pied with the regulation of the treatment of such Hebrew and
heathen servants respectively, as were bound to servitude
until the jubilee. The Hebrew servants so bound were to be
treated as hired servants, not as apprenticed servants ; but
the heathen servants so bound might be employed as appren-
ticed servants, and not as hired servants, up to the period of
the jubilee. And always there was to be maintained this
distinction ; for ever the quality of apprenticeship to the ju-
bilee was to belong to the heathen, not to the Hebrews ; the
heathen were to be the possession of the Hebrews and their
posterity, as an inheritance or stock, from whom, and not ordi-
narily from the Hebrews, they might provide themselves for
such a length of time with apprenticed servants, as well as hired.
Subject always to the law of freedom every fifty years, during
that interval all their apprentices for longer than six years,
all their servants obtained as apprentices till the jubilee,
and to be treated as apprentices up to that time, and not as
hired servants, were to be of the heathen, or the stranger,
for ever, and not of the Hebrew. But every fiftieth year was
a year of jubilee throughout the land for all the inhabitants
thereof, Hebrew or heathen, all the inhabitants, of whatever
SPECIFIC JUBILEE ENACTMENTS. 279
class or station. The heathen apprenticed servant was not
regarded, because obtained of the heathen, as on that ac-
count not an inhabitant of the land ; on the contrary, this
grand statute was evidently made additional to all the other
statutes of relief and release, for the special benefit of all those
whose case the other statutes would not cover.
The chapter of laws in regard to the jubilee is occupied,
first, with specific enactments as to the operation of the ju-
bilee on the distribution or restoration of personal posses-
sions; secondly, with similar specific enactments as to per-
sonal liberty. It is necessary to separate the respective
clauses in regard to liberty, and to analyze them with great
care.
CLAUSE FIRST, OF PERSONAL LIBERTY.
The first clause is from verse 39 to 43 inclusive. We
quote it in our common version, because it is essential at this
point to remark the false sense put upon the law by the use
of the English word bondmen, assumed as meaning slaves.
The effect of this construction is like that of loading dice, or
of forging an additional cipher to a ten pound note, making
it worth, apparently, instead of 10 a 100. The clause is as
follows: "If thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen
poor, and be sold unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to
serve as a bond-servant, but as an hired servant, and as a
sojourner he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the
year of jubilee ; and then shall he depart from thee, he and
his children with him, and shall return unto his own family,
and unto the possessions of his fathers shall he return. For
they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land
of Egypt ; they shall not be sold as bondmen. Thou shalt
not rule over him with rigor, but shalt fear thy God."
We must examine the Hebrew, phrase by phrase. In the
first verse, be waxen floor, and be sold unto thee, ^ — iMs;-. I]*^,
wax poor, and sell himself unto thee. Beyond all cmestion,
280 TREATMENT OF APPRENTICES.
the translation of n=*:i, Nipbal, of lifc (the word here used
for selling), should be, sell himself. 1. JSfiphal, as reflexive
of Ifal, admits it ; 2. The context requires it ; 3. In the
47th verse the translators have so rendered it, if thy brother
sell himself unto the stranger, the Hebrew word and form
being precisely the same, "is*??. The context requires it,
because, being a Hebrew, he could not be sold by another ;
it is poverty on account of which he sells himself, and he is
not sold for debt or for crime ; and if any master had pos-
sessed the power to sell him, his waxing poor would not have
been the reason. His waxing poor is the reason for selling
himself, or, in other words, apprenticing himself, until the
year of jubilee; and by law, no being but himself had this
power over him, or could make such a contract. And it was
perfectly voluntary on his part, a transaction which he en-
tered into for his own convenience and relief.
MANNER OF TREATMENT.
The next Hebrew phrase respects the manner in which the
master to whom he had thus hired himself was to treat him ;
it was a proviso guarding and protecting the poor servant
from a despotic and cruel exercise of authority. It is trans-
lated, Thou shall not compel Mm to serve as a bond-servant ;
but the Hebrew is simply as follows : nhjir— kV iss rnas. u.a,
thou shall not impose upon him the service of a sen-ant, that
is, the hard work of a servant, who, not being engaged vttos,
as a hired servant, by the day or the year, for a particular
service, could be set to any work without any new contract
or additional wages. As we have clearly seen, there is no
term nor phrase in the Hebrew language to signify what we
mean by the words slave, bondman, or bond-servant ; and
there was no law in the Hebrew legislation which permitted
any Hebrew to be, or to be treated as, slave, bondman, or
bond-servant. But a poor man, making a general contract
of his services till the jubilee, might be cruelly treated by his
MISTAKES OF COMMENTATORS. 281
master, "when there had been some proviso specifying and
limiting the power and the manner. Therefore, when it is
said, Thou shalt not impose upon him the service of a servant
(that is, an ta?, hired as a servant of all work), it is imme-
diately added, As a hired servant and as a sojourner he shall
he with thee, Jpe» n.-rv atr.na T»Sfcs ; and this phrase is explan-
atory of the other, and introduced to make the other specific
and indubitable in its meaning. The freedom and indepen-
dence of a hired servant and a sojourner were guaranteed to
the Hebrew servant, although he had engaged to be with his
master as an "ts», until the jubilee.
The proviso is then introduced for his return with his chil-
dren to the possession of his fathers in the year of jubilee ;
and, last of all, it is repeated again (verse 42) that they shall
not sell themselves with the selling of a servant, an -iss, and
the master should not rule over him with rigor, but should
fear the Lord.
CARELESSNESS AND MISTAKES OF COMMENTATORS.
Here we can not but notice the extreme carelessness with
which, for want of examination of the Hebrew and the con-
text, and in consequence, also, of taking for granted the pre-
conceived opinions on this subject, as if slavery among the
Hebrews were a thing not to be doubted, some able writers
have fallen into very gross errors. As an example, we find in
Trench's work on the Parables the following assertion : " That
it was allowed under the Mosaic law to sell an insolvent
debtor is implicitly stated, Leviticus, xxv 39 ; and verse 41
makes it probable that his family also came into bondage with
him ; and we find allusion to the same custom in other places
(2 Kings, iv. 1 ; Nehemiah, v. 6 ; Isaiah, i. 1 ; lviii. 6 ; Jeremiah,
xxxiv. 8-11 ; Amos, ii. 6, viii. 6)."* Singular indeed that this
writer should call Leviticus, xxv. 39, an implicit statement that
by the laws of Moses it Avas allowed to sell an insolvent debtor,
* Trench : Notes on the Parables, p. 127.
282 FALSE STATEMENTS REFUTED.
when there is no reference whatever in the passage or the chap-
ter to any such law, or to any sale for debt, nor any intimation
that any such thing was possible ! The references to the pas-
sages in illustration are instances of mistakes equally gross ; but,
as we have before considered those passages, we shall revert to
only one, that in 2 Kings, iv. 1, because it is often perverted.
There is, in that passage, no mention of any sale, nor any intima-
tion of it ; but it is said, " The creditor has come to take unto
him my two sons to be servants (di-ri-V)." That is, has come
demanding that my two sons be put to service till they Avork
out the debt ; further than this there is no demand ; and as
to any law for the sale of the debtor, it .exists only in the
imagination of the writer ; there was no such law nor per-
mission. But thus carelessly and frequently have assertions
been made and reiterated, of which, if any student wishes to
be convinced, let him turn to Home's Introduction, to the
chapter on the condition of slaves and servants, and the cus-
toms relating to them. He will find, on a single page, almost
as many mistakes and misstatements as there are lines; all
proceeding from the first false assumption, taken up without
investigation, that all the servitude in the Old Testament was
slavery, and that, wherever the word servant occurs, it means
slave. These statements have been repeated so often, that
they have come to be regarded as truisms, and, by possession
and reiteration, are in many minds impregnable.
The implicit statement Mr. Trench might have found to be,
on comparing verse 42 with verse 39, that they shall not be
sold with the selling of bondmen : " Thou shalt not compel
him to serve as a bond-servant ;" and, in the original, he
might have found that it is the sale of the man by himself
which is referred to, and under such circumstances as would
put him in a condition, from being entirely poor, of so great
improvement as to be able himself to buy back his contract
in a short time. The making of the contract of his services,
for a specified time, was said to be the selling of himself; and
THE ERROR AND CORRECTION. 283
the securing a right, by contract, to those services, was the
buying of a servant.
PROOF AND CORRECTION OF THE ERROR.
Even Michaelis, who applies the word slave to the Hebrew
six years' servant, thereby showing that he does not mean
slave, but a voluntary hired laborer, admits that he can point
out no such law in the Mosaic institutes as a law authorizing
the sale of men, women or children for debt.* On the con-
trary, this was an outrage against law, against both the spirit
and letter of the law. This is proved from Nehemiah, v. 5, 8,
where the nobles and the rulers are accused by Nehemiah of
having sanctioned and committed this very oppression ; and
he sets a great assembly against them, and arraigns them for
the crime. His argument plainly is, that their procedure is
contrary to the law of God, for he says, It is not good that
ye do ; ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God ? And it
is added, that they did not attempt to excuse or justify them-
selves. Then they held their peace, and found nothing to an-
swer. The exaction of usury was put along with this crime.
Now if it had been enjoined in the divine law, or permitted,
that a man's children could be sold as slaves for the parent's
debt, then nobles, rulers and usurers would not have remained
quiet under this accusation, would not have failed to justify
* Michaelis, Commentaries, Article proofs, which, on examination, incon-
148, vol. ii. This celebrated scholar trovertibly prove the contrary. In
was one of the earliest writers on the the Bibliotheca Sacra for 1856, in an
Old Testament who used the word article on 1: Aliens in Israel," the writ-
slave to indicate the nature of the do- er declares that one of the kinds of
mestic service among the Hebrews ; service among the Hebrews was " ab-
but after him there was a deluge, and solute and hereditary slavery," and
to this day, professedly critical writ- that "foreigners could purchase He-
ers reiterate the assertion that the brew slaves," and " Hebrews foreign
Hebrews held slaves, and refer to slaves," and among other authorities,
Michaelis for their proof, but not to appeals to Michaelis and the Mishna 1
the Scriptures. They axe also in the This amazing carelessness has become
habit of asserting the existence of a habit. But see, for its correction
slavery, and referring to passages as Saalschutz, Da9 Mosaisclie Recht*
Vol. II., 1U, etc.
284 IMPOSSIBLE PROCEDURES.
themselves by law. But they did no such thing, simply be-
cause they could not ; they knew that their oppressive proced-
ures were contrary to the divine law. Moreover, it is singu-
larly in point, and interesting to note, that certain articles of
property were forbidden to be taken for debt, under any cir-
cumstances, Exodus, xxii. 26, Deuteronomy, xxiv. G, among
which were a man's outer garment or coat, and the upper and
nether millstones ; articles of such necessity to personal com-
fort and the subsistence of the household, that it was not per-
mitted on any account to take them away or sell them. Now
it is impossible that a man's coat should be regarded as dearer
to him or more sacredly in his possession than his children ;
that a law should be framed forbidding his garments and his
household furniture from being attached by the sheriff, but at
the same time permitting the creditor to take his children ;
a law permitting a poor widow to keep in her house the upper
and nether millstones, and a change of raiment, but not her
own children ; a law preventing the creditor from taking away
her household utensils, but allowing him to sell her children,
for whose sake alone her furniture was valuable to hei*, and by
whose help alone she could obtain corn to grind between the
millstones. She could have pounded corn on an emergency
with common stones, but nothing could supply the place of
her children ; and to supjDOse that a divine law could, at one
and the same time, allow her children to be sold by an op-
pressive creditor as slaves, while under the plea of kindness it
would not permit the same oppressor to take her household
furniture from her, is to suppose an absurdity, is to fasten an
inconsistency and rejn-oach upon a divine revelation too crude
and monstrous to be entertained for a moment.
A man that supposed he was commenting upon a divine
revelation would be restrained from such heedless assertions ;
but when the Scriptures fall into the hands of men that have
no more belief in their divine inspiration than they have in
that of the laws of Lycurgus or the poems of Homer, and the
THE FATHERLESS PROTECTED. 285
commentaries and theological decisions of such men are allowed
to direct the opinions of the church, and set the style and
current of theological literature, there is no error or contra-
diction, the prevalence of which can he a subject of astonish-
ment. Mistakes, absurdities, and even injustice and impiety,
may come to he installed and maintained as articles of divine
inspiration. Where would be the vaunted benevolence and
wisdom of the Mosaic laws, where the proof of their having
come from God, if such monstrous abominations of cruelty
as those necessary for the support and sanction of the sys-
tem of human slavery were found, permitted, or enjoined in
them?
Now let it be remembered, in connection with the case be-
fore us, how explicit and benevolent was the divine statute in
Exodus, xxii. 22, 23, also Deuteronomy, xxiv. 16, 17: "Ye
shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. If thou
afflict them in any wise, and they cry unto me at all, I will
surely hear their cry. Thou shalt not pervert the judgment
of the stranger nor the fatherless, nor take the widow's rai-
ment to pledge." It is not to be imagined for a moment that
though the usurer or the creditor was forbidden from taking
the widow's raiment, he might take her children and sell them
for slaves, leaving her hopeless and desolate. If children were
not permitted to be punished for the father's sins, much more,
most certainly, would they not be permitted to be sold as
slaves, as merchandise, for their father's debts.
But the thing was impossible on still another ground. At
the end of every seven years, the creditor was compelled to
make a release, and could not exact the bond, but it was null
and void. At the same time, in that seventh year, every serv-
ant was released and free, on whatever grounds apprenticed.
This was the universal, fundamental law, interwoven in the
very texture of the Jewish constitution, and no custom or pro-
cedure was permitted contrary to it. How then can any man
imagine that such a cruelty as the selling of a widow's children
286 UNJUST LAWS NOT TO BE OBEYED.
by the creditor into slavery for debt could be permissible under
this law ? It could be possible only by the direct violation
of it. Deuteronomy, xv. 1, 2, 9, 12. The statutes of Omri and
Ahab, the express subjects of the divine reprobation, and for-
bidden to be obeyed, may have included such wickedness. It
was under the dominion of their tyranny that the incident in
2 Kings, iv. 1, is reported as having taken place. But what-
ever the transaction there intended, there was nothing of
slavery in it, nor, by the Jewish law, could there possibly be
any approximation thereto. The woman, by direction of Elisha,
sold the oil, and paid the creditor, but she was not permitted
to sell her children, nor indeed is there in the original any in-
timation of any such possibility, the utmost of the danger
there stated being just this, namely, that her dead husband's
creditor had come to take her two sons to be to him for serv-
ants, that is, to work out, by their service, the amount of
debt, but not to be sold in any way. But even for this there
was no law ; it is wholly a conjecture of the commentators,
and can nowhere be pointed out.
On the contrary, in Job, xxiv. 9, the taking of the father-
less child from the mother, and, as Michaelis translates it, the
child of the needy for a pledge, is set down as an act of mon-
strous wickedness, along with other similar piratical crimes, as
the removing of land-marks, stealing of sheep, killing the poor
and needy, and rebelling against the light. The crime of child-
stealing is here catalogued along with that of compelling men
to labor without wages, and that also of murder and adultery,
and the whole description is of the character and habits of
kidnappers and slaveholders in defiance of God's law.
NO MAN PERMITTED TO BE ENSLAVED, OK TO ENSLAVE
HIMSELF.
Here again, Leviticus, xxv. 42, the common version trans-
lates as follows: They shall not be sold as bondmen, although
the verb is the same, and the form is the same (Niphal of itto)
NONE PERMITTED TO BE ENSLAVED. 287
as in verse 39, and afterward 47, where it is rendered sell him-
self. But the Hebrew is simple and clear, nas rnste.B fi-ft"1. n>,
they shall not sell themselves the selling of a servant, that is,
an nss of unlimited contract, and of all work. This phrase,
las n-rwtt, is nowhere else employed. It seems to denote a
venal transaction, as in regard to a piece of goods, or a thing
over which the buyer and the seller have the supreme power.
Such a transaction would have been, in reference to a human
being, a slave trade ; and such a transaction in regard to a hu-
man being, was absolutely and expressly forbidden. The He-
brew people were God's property, and God's servants, and
they should never sell themselves, nor be sold, as the prop-
erty of others. Not only was this transaction forbidden to
any one for another, and to any two for any third party, but
to every one for himself. No man was permitted or had the
right, to enslave himself. The voluntary hiring of himself to
a Hebrew master, or even to a stranger, as we shall see, to
the year of jubilee, was not slavery, nor any approximation
thereto. And to prevent the possibility of its ever passing
into slavery, the proviso was inserted, making it a crime to
apprentice themselves, or to be apprenticed beyond a limited
time.
It is very plain, therefore, that the words bond-servant and
bondman are a wrong and very unfortunate translation, be-
cause they convey inevitably, to an English ear, a meaning
wholly different from that of the original. They seem to
recognize slavery, where no such thing is to be found. By
the central, fundamental law, which we have already exam-
ined, no Hebrew could be made to serve as a bond-servant
or bondman, under any circumstances, but only as an appren-
ticed servant for six years. The object, therefore, of the en-
acting clause which we have now examined was simply this,
namely, that if he became so poor as to be obliged to enter
into a contract for service till the year of jubilee, he should
not be held, even during that time, as an apprenticed serv-
288 CONTRACT OF SERVANTS AND CHILDREN.
ant merely, but as a hired servant and sojourner. And if
the question recurs, In what particular as a hired servant
and a sojourner? the answer is plain: First, in respect to
specific labor, in contradistinction from the obligation of the
servant of all work. The hired servant and the sojourner
could contract for themselves in some particular service, and
could not be commanded to any other without a new agree-
ment ; the servant of all work was of an inferior condition, em-
ployed for any labor whatever of which his master might have
need, or for which he might require him. Secondly, in re-
spect to appointed wages at specific times, which wages must
be continued, although the contract of service was till the year
of jubilee; and this in contradistinction from the condition of
the servant whose purchase-money, or the payment of his
services and time, for whatever period engaged, was all given
to himself at the outset, and who could, consequently, after-
wards have no claim for any thing more. We have already
illustrated this distinction in the consideration of Job, vii. 2,
where the servant, the "iss, who had already received his
money for his time and services, beforehand, according to the
ordinary six years' contract, earnestly desireth the shadoic, but
the hired servant, the "vsto, looks for his wages, desires his
wages, which are the result of his accomplishing as an hireling
his day. No servant, or "ra», served without payment for his
work ; but the ordinary isy had received his payment before-
hand, or when the contract was made; and the distinctive
meaning of that word excluded the idea of periodical wages
after the work was done.
Once more, we must remark on this clause the provision in
regard to the Hebrew servant, for himself and his children.
It presents a case in which, being hired until the jubilee, he
might have children born to him during his period of service
as contracted for. These children were born in his master's
house, in his master's family, but they belonged to himself,
not to his master. They were not slaves, and could not be,
WRONG TRANSLATION OF TERMS. 289
any more than himself. Yet they were examples of the
rrn "»■»!>?, the bom in the house, as in Abraham's family, and the
trained ones, as in his household, and t^s— »sa, the sotis of the
house, as in Ecclesiastes, ii. 7. They were not bondmen, and
could not be made such, or held as such, but by law were free.
The fact of their being born in the house of their master while
their father was in his service did not give the master the
least claim upon them as his servants, Avithout a separate vol-
untary contract, or payment for their services. All were born
free, and their freedom could not be taken from them, neither
could they be made servants at the will of the master alone ;
nor could the father sell them, though he might apprentice them
for a season, yet never beyond the period assigned by law.*
UNAUTHORIZED TRANSLATION OP TERMS.
This being the case, it is greatly to be regretted that our
translators, for want of an English word which would express
the difference between a hired servant, the T>sto, and an ap-
prenticed servant of all work, the iay ; and also for want of a
word answering to the extremest meaning of the same word
iny, which neve)' meant among the Hebrews a slave, should
have taken the words bond-servant and bondman, as well as
the word servant, to translate the same Hebrew word for
servant, giving it thus a meaning which it can not bear in the
original, and at different times meanings directly opposite.
* Blackstone's Commentaries on ing for its similarity with that of serv-
the Laws of England, vol. L, p. 425. ants among the Hebrews. It might
— This great writer describes three with just as much propriety be as-
classes of servants, acknowledged by serted that the intra mania servants
the laws of England. First menial in England were slaves, as that the
servants, so called from being intra sons of the household in Judea were
mcenia, or domestics ; second, appren- slaves. The domestics in Judge
tices, so called from apprendre, to learn, Blackstone's own family could be
usually bound for a term of years ; proved to have been slaves by the
third, laborers, who are hired by the same method in which those in the
day or the week, and do not live intra famUy of Abraham have been as-
moenia, as part of the family. sumcd as such.
The classification here is very strik-
13
290 BONDMEN FOR SERVANTS.
We have before noted some of the reasons why they took
this course ; as, for example, because the unpaid servitude
into which the Hebrews were compelled in Egypt is designated
by n^y rnh?. ; and it is said, Remember that thou icast an nay
in Egypt. Our translators said, Remember that thou wast a
bondman in Egypt ; but truly the word would have been
more fully rendered by the phrase an oppressed servant,
because, as we have seen, the Hebrews were not slaves in
Egypt, were not held as such ; a fact which makes God's pro-
hibiting of the Hebrews from laying the same oppressive serv-
itude upon others much more significant. This bond-service
they were forbidden by law from imposing upon their own
servants, who never were, and never could be, what in com-
mon usage Ave understand by the word bondmen.
But seeing the word repeatedly used to describe a class of
servants among the Hebrews, what other conclusion can the
mere English reader adopt, unless he goes into a very critical
comparison of passages, than that such servants were slaves ?
Yet the very word thus translated is the word used for na-
tive Hebrew servants, who sometimes, as this law of jubilee
under consideration proves, were held in servitude just as long
as any servants of the heathen or of strangers could be, that
is, until the jubilee, but could not, under any circumstances,
be slaves. We have sometimes admitted the word bondman
as the translation of nay, in our argument, to describe the rig-
orous rule which the Hebrews were forbidden from using in
regard to their servants ; but it is inapplicable as the true
translation of the word, whether the servants designated are
Hebrew or adopted heathen.
We might suppose that our translators had followed the
Septuagint translation ; but the Septuagint frequently uses
Ttdlc where the English version uses bondman, for the same
word nay ; as, for example, Deuteronomy, xxviii. 68 : Ye shall
be sold for bondmen and bondwomen, Septuagint, TraiSag teal
Txaidionae, Hebrew, ri'Visc^i dtnay. In Deuteronomy, xxiii. 15 :
THE SEPTUAGINT VERSION. 291
TIiou shall not deliver unto his master the servant who hath
escaped, the English version and the Septuagint agree, and
the word is translated servant and -rzalda, for the Hebrew -.29.
But in Deuteronomy, xv. 15 : "Remember that thou wast a
bondman in Egypt," the same Hebrew word is translated
bondman, and Septuagint oIkettjc. The same in Deuteron-
omy, vi. 21. But now in Leviticus, xxv. 55, the same Hebrew
word is translated by the Septuagint, in the same verse, both
olaerai, and Traldeg, but in our English version, servants, not
bondmen. Singular then it is, that in Leviticus, xxv. 44, Both
thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, ^Mes*5 Spaa^, is translated by
the Septuagint Kal txoic teal natdiaKr], and precisely the same
words at the close of the same verse are translated dovXov nal
dovXnv.
This use of terms by the Septuagint translators proves, as
we shall see in the argument from the New' Testament, that
the occurrence of the Greek words for slave does not neces-
sarily indicate slavery, they having been applied, by very com-
mon usage, to describe servants, of whom it is known posi-
tively that they were free, and never had been, and could not
possibly be, at any time, slaves. Just so the Greek term for
slavery is applied to a service which is known to have been a
free service, proving that no argument can be instituted for
the existence of slavery, merely from the use of that term.
The person called a dovlog may have been a free servant, and
the service called dovXeia may have been a voluntary, free,
paid contract.*
* Josephus, Antiq., B. 3, Ch. xii., the sale of a Hebrew to the stock of
Sect. 3, and B. 16, Ch. i., furnish in- the stranger's family. For an exam-
stances of the usage of dovlevu and pie of the unauthorized use of terms,
dovleiav for free service. In the first and of error thereby perpetuated, see
of these cases Josephus uses the Michaelis, Laws of Moses, Vol. II.,
phrase employed in lev. xxv., 47, Art. 115. " Whoever devoted him-
though of the same stock, that is, the self to God became a slave of the
native Hebrew stock. It illustrates sanctuary 1" '
the meaning of what is described as
CHAPTER XXVI.
Second Clause op Personal Liberty. — Servants op Strangers. — Septuagint Trans-
lation op the Verse. — Manner in which the Hebrews Might Obtain Serv-
ants of the Heathen. — Third Clause op Personal Liberty. — Recruiting
Classes for Servants. — Impossible to Make Them Slaves. — Oppression of
Them Forbidden.
CLAUSE SECOND, OF PERSONAL LIBERTY.
This verse, Leviticus, xxv. 44, constitutes the second clause,
as to personal liberty, in the law of jubilee. The English
translation is, Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which
thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about
you • of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. We
must compare this with the Hebrew in full, and the Hebrew
with the Septuagint, and we shall see an important difference
from the true meaning of the original. The Hebrew is as follows :
riEso nay sspp, literally, And thy man-servants, and thy
maid-servants, which shall be to you from among the na-
tions that are round about you, of them shall ye obtain man-
servant and maid-servant.
The meaning of this, at first sight, would seem to be : he
shall be permitted to obtain (or purchase, according to the
Hebrew idiom for a contract made with a servant), from as
many servants as may be with you, from among the nations
round about you, men-servants, and maid-servants, or, the
man-servant and the maid-servant. The Hebrew construction
does not read, that " ye shall purchase of the nations that are
round about you," but, " of the servants that have come to
you from among those nations." Ye may take such as your
PROVISOS UNDER THE JUBILEE. 293
servants, making with them such contracts of service as you
choose.
But this being a proviso under the law of jubilee, the refer-
ence naturally is to contracts of service until the year of jubi-
lee. It might possibly have been argued or imagined, from
such laws as that in Deuteronomy, xxiii. 15, 16, concerning
servants that had escaped from their masters, that it was not
permitted to take the heathen servants for apprentices, or to
put them under contract until the year of jubilee. This law
gives such a permission. It can not mean that your men-
servants and your maid-servants thus legally bound, shall be
only of the heathen ; for the preceding clause is an enact-
ment respecting the treatment of the Hebrew servants so
bound ; nor is it imperative, as if it had been said, " Of them
only, ye shall buy bondmen and bondmaids," or, "Ye shall
have your bondmen and bondmaids (using our version) only
from the heathen." But the statute is permissive — ye may ;
it is allowed you by law to make what contracts of service
you please, with servants from the heathen, or the nations
round about you, limited only by the law of jubilee.
Now, that this is the meaning of this clause, is rendered
somewhat clearer by the Septuagint translation of this 44th
verse : Kal iralg teal TraidtoKT] oaot dv y£vG)vrai ooi, d~b tgjv
idvojv oool kvkX(x> gov elalv an' avruiv KTrjoecrde dovXov ical
6ovXr]v, literally, " And servant, and maid-servant, as many as
there may be to you from the nations round about you, from
them shall you procure bondman and bondwoman." We use
the words bondman and bondwoman, not because dovXov, and
dovXrjv, necessarily mean that and that only, but to preserve
the contrast manifest in the Septuagint translation of this
verse. Now it seems clear that the Septuagint translators
have conveyed the literal construction of the Hebrew, except
only in the use of these latter words, more truly than our
English translators. But we do not insist upon this, as if it
were in the least degree essential to the argument ; for it
294 MANNER OF OBTAINING SERVANTS.
makes very little difference whether the law says, " Ye may
procure from the nations round ahout you, servants and men-
servants," or, " Ye may procure from as many servants as may
come to your country from the nations, your men-servants and
maid-servants." The contract in either case was of voluntary
service, and not involuntary servitude or slavery.
This law gave no Hebrew citizen the power or the privilege
(even if it could have been considered a privilege, which it
was not), of going forth into a heathen country and buying
slaves, or of laying hold on any heathen servants and compell-
ing them to pass from heathen into Hebrew bondage. But
it did give permission to obtain servants, on a fair and volun-
tary contract, from among them, limiting, at the same time,
the longest term of such service by the recurrence of the ju-
bilee. Such permission by statute was not only expedient, and
for the sake of the heathen, benevolent, but circumstances
made it necessary.
MANNER OF OBTAINING SERVANTS.
The heathen round about Judea were idolatrous nations.
Now the Hebrews were so defended and forbidden by law
from entering, with the Canaanitish tribes especially, into any
treaties of fellowship and commerce, of relationship and inter-
course, socially or otherwise, that there seemed a necessity
of inserting this article in regard to servants, as an exception.
The Hebrews might obtain servants of the heathen, might
employ them as servants of all work, and by the longest con-
tract. They were thus prepared for freedom, and made free.
But as to making slaves of them, there could be no such thing;
there was no such sufferance or permission. There were no
slave-marts in Israel, nor any slave-traders, nor slave-procur-
ers, nor go-bcttceens of traffic in human flesh. The land of
Canaan itself was given to the Hebrews for a possession, but
never the inhabitants, nor the inhabitants of heathen nations
round about them.
HEATHEN NEVER GIVEN FOE SLAVES. 295
How then should Hebrew householders or families get
possession of heathen servants as slaves ? Who, at liberty to
choose, would bind himself and his posterity to interminable
slavery ? Even supposing it possible for Hebrew masters to
make such a foray into a heathen neighborhood, and bind a
heathen bondman as their slave, and bring him into Judea for
that purpose ; at the moment of his transfer into Judea, he
came under all the protective and liberating provisions of
the Hebrew law ; he was encircled with the safeguards and
privileges of religion, and was brought into the household
and congregation of the Lord ; he could flee from an unjust
master ; and no tribe, city, or house in Judea was permitted
to arrest or bring him back as a fugitive, or to opjjress him,
but all were commanded to give him shelter and to protect
his rights.
The whole body of the Hebrew laws, as we have examined
them, demonstrates the impossibility of importing slavery into
Judea from the heathen nations round about the Hebrews.
It is monstrous to attempt to put such a construction as the
establishment of perpetual bondage upon the clause in the law
of jubilee under consideration. The respective position of the
Jews and the nations round about them, renders this construc-
tion impossible. But the language itself forbids it. It is not
said, " The heathen are given to you for slaves, and ye may
take them and make bondmen of them ;" which is the con-
struction put by the advocates and defenders of slavery upon
this passage; but, " Ye may procure for yourselves servants,
from among the servants that may be with you from the na-
tions round about you," upp dn»a, from them ye may obtain,
not, them ye may take. If the word be translated purchase,
or buy, then, as we have clearly demonstrated, it means no
more than an equivalent paid for services to be rendered dur-
ing a period specified in the contract. Nothing more than
this can possibly be drawn from this clause.
296 BIGHTS OF THE CHILDREN" OF STRANGERS.
CLAUSE THIRD, OF PERSONAL LIBERTY.
We pass then to the third clause, contained in the 45th
and 46th verses, in our common version rendered as follows :
" Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn
among yon, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that
are with you, which they begat in your land ; and they shall
be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance
for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession ;
they shall be your bondmen for ever." Here this clause, in
the original, stops, and the next passes to a wholly different
subject, the treatment of Hebrew servants bound to service
till the year of jubilee. But in our version this clause is made
to take up what seems, more accurately, to be a part of the
next, and verse 46 is completed with the following paragraph,
as if it belonged to the preceding and not the succeeding
clause : " But over your brethren, the children of Israel, ye
shall not rule one over another with rigor." There is nothmg
in the construction that forbids this connection, but the con-
text, as we shall see, would seem rather to appropriate this to
the next following clause.
The class here marked as the recruiting class for servants for
the Hebrews, consists of the children of descendants of sojourn-
ing strangers, and of their tamilies begotten in Judea. The
Hebrews might obtain of them servants, whose service was
purchased on such a contract that, up to the year of jubilee, it
lasted from generation to generation as a fixture of the house-
hold ; the claim upon such service, by the original agreement
or terms of purchase, constituted a possession and inheritance,
from the parents who had made the bargain to the children
for whom, until the jubilee, it was made. That this was a vol-
untary contract on the part of the servants, and that it did
not and could not involve any approximation to what Ave
call slavery, nor constitute them bondmen, an examination of
their condition by law, as a class of inhabitants, will clearly show.
EIGHTS OF HEATHEN FAMILIES. 297
RECRUITING CLASSES FOR SERVANTS.
Two classes are clearly defined in the two clauses of the
law now under consideration, the second clause contained in
verse 44, and the third clause in verses 45 and 46. The first
class was of the nations surrounding the Hebrew territory, in
our translation, the heathen round about. But because they
were heathen, they were not therefore the selected and ap-
pointed objects and subjects of oppression ; the Hebrews were
not, on that account, at liberty to treat them with injustice
and cruelty, or to make them articles of merchandise. Nay,
they were commanded to treat them kindly. The fact that
many of them were hired servants, proves incontestably that
they were never given to the Hebrews as slaves, and that no
Hebrew master could go forth and purchase any of them as
such. They could not possibly be bought without their own
consent ; and, in thus selling their services, they could make
their own terms of contract. The 44th verse can not pos-
sibly mean a purchase of slaves from third parties, but only
the purchase of the labor of free servants, that is, the acqui-
sition of service rendered by voluntary contract, for a specified
consideration paid to the person thus selling his services for a
particular time. There is no definition of the time. There is
no qualification in this clause giving the right to hold heathen
servants in any longer term of bondage or servitude than He-
brew servants ; there is no permission of this kind in regard
to the heathen that icere round about them, there is no line of
distinction, making slaves of the heathen, and free servants of
the Hebrews.
How could there be ? # The fugitive slaves from heathen
masters were free by Hebrew law, the moment they touched
the Hebrew soil. The heathen households, or families that
remained among the Hebrews, or came over into their land,
were to be received into the congregation of the Lord, after
the process of an appointed naturalization law, and, when so
13*
298 NO SLAVE MART POSSIBLE.
received, were in every respect on a footing of equality with
the natives as to freedom and religious privileges. How then
could such families, or their servants, be a possession of slaves ?
The children begotten of the Edomites and Egyptians, for ex-
ample, were to enter into the congregation of the Lord in the
third generation.
The children of Jarha, the Egyptian, the servant of Sheshan
a Hebrew, were immediately reckoned in the course of She-
shan's genealogy, 1 Chronicles, ii. 34, 35. Ruth, the Moabit-
ess, was immediately received as one of God's people, and
Boaz purchased her to be his wife. He could not, because
she was a heathen,* have taken her to be his slave. Nor could
any heathen families, coming into the Hebrew country, engage
in a slave-traffic, or set up a mart for the supply of slaves to
the Hebrews. In the Hebrew land they could no longer have
slaves of their own ; for by the law of God, as plain and incon-
trovertible as any of the ten commandments thundered upon
Sinai, a heathen slave was free, if he chose to quit his master :
no master could retain him a moment, but by his own con-
sent. Much less, then, could such families have had slaves for
sale. The Hebrews could have no heathen servant, but by
contract with the servants themselves ; and that renders what
we call slavery impossible.
IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE THEM SLAVES.
But if this were impossible in regard to servants coming
to the Hebrews from the heathen round about Judea, much
more in regard to the second class, namely, the children and
families of the stranger sojourning in Israel, and their poster-
ity. This sojourning was a voluntary and an honorable thing.
And their condition was better ascertained, defined, and se-
cured than that of the class named in verse 44. They were
families of proselytes. They could not be tolerated in the
country at all, except on condition of renouncing their idola-
try, and entering into covenant to keep the law of God. They
NO OPPRESSION OF THE STRANGER. 299
had entered into the congregation of the Lord, or would have
done so before a single jubilee could be half way in progress.
In regard to this class, as also the other, express laws were
passed in their favor, protecting and defending them. Their
rights were guaranteed by statute. They were as free as the
Hebrews, and wei'e to be treated as freemen. They had the
same appeal to the laws, and the judges were commanded,
Deuteronomy, i. 16 : "Hear the causes between your breth-
ren, and judge righteously between man and his brother, and
the stranger that is with him," tDiN—'pa \-\z "pw vhx- pia, between
man, and his brother, and his stranger. They entered into
the same covenant with God at the outset, Deuteronomy, xxix.
10-13 : "All the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives,
and thy stranger fa"^ ) that is in thy camp, from the hewer
of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water, that thou should-
est enter into covenant," etc., — "that he may establish thee for
a people unto himself" And again, Deuteronomy, xxxi. 12,
13 : " Gather the people, men, women, and children, and thy
stranger (spjjl), that is within thy gates, that they, and their
children may hear, and learn, and fear."
The Sabbath, and all the many and joyful religious festivals,
with all the privileges of the people of God in them, were
theirs to observe and enjoy. The greatest and most careful
benevolence was enjoined toward them. " Thou shalt neither
vex a stranger nor oppress him, for ye were strangers in the
land of Egypt," Exodus, xxii. 21. " Cursed be he that per-
verteth the judgment of the stranger," was one among the
twelve curses, Deuteronomy, xxvii. 19. In the very chapter
next preceding this chapter of the law of jubilee, it is enacted,
that " ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the
stranger as for one of your own country ; for I am the Lord
your God," Leviticus, xxiv. 22. These injunctions were en-
forced in various forms, and with much emphasis and repeti-
tion. "The Lord your God loveth the stranger; love ye
therefore the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of
300 LOVE HIM AS THYSELF.
Egypt," Deuteronomy, x. 17, IS, 19. "Thus saith the Lord,
execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the
spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, and do no wrong, do
no violence to the stranger," Jeremiah, xxii. 3. If, in defiance
of these statutes and precepts, they had attempted to bring
the strangers into subjection as slaves and articles of property,
on the ground that they were heathen, it would have been re-
garded as man-stealing, and any single case of such crime
would have been punished with death.
OPPRESSION OF THE STRANGER FORBIDDEN".
In Isaiah, Ixvi. 6, V, the sons of the stranger are brought
under a special covenant of blessing from Jehovah, to make
them joyful in his house of prayer — "the sons of the stranger,
that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love
the name of the Lord, and to be his servants." Moreover, in
the last indictment of God against the Hebrews, in which
Ezekiel just before the captivity of Judah and the destruction
of Jerusalem, enumerated the l-easons why God finally poured
out his wrath upon them, the last crime mentioned, as if it
were the one that filled up the measure of their iniquities,
was the oppression of the stranger, Ezekiel, xxii. 29. " The
people of the land have used oppression, and exercised rob-
bery, and have vexed the poor and needy, yea, they have op-
pressed the stranger wrongfully." Also, in the prophecy of
Zechariah, after the captivity and destruction of the city, " the
word of the Lord came to all the people of the land," refer-
ring to God's former commands, "to execute true judgment,
and show mercy, and oppress not the stranger," and declaring
that for such oppression, and for not executing judgment and
mercy, God had " scattered them as with a whirlwind among
the nations," Zechariah, vii. 9, 10, 14. Finally, in the nineteenth
chapter of Leviticus, the same ehajiter that contains the pre-
cept, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, there stands out
this conclusive, emphatic, comprehensive law : " If a stranger
STRANGERS ARE SOJOURNERS. 301
sojourn with you in your land, ye shall not oppress him ; hut
the stranger that dwelleth with you shall he unto you as one
horn amongst you ; and thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye
were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your
God," Leviticus, xix 34.
Now it is incredible, impossible, that this very class of per-
sons, thus protected and favored of God, and commended to
the favor and love of the Hebrew people, could have been at
the same time selected as the subjects of bondage, and ap-
pointed as a class on whom the Hebrew masters might exer-
cise the tyranny of perpetual slavery. It is impossible that
they could have been doomed and treated as an inheritance
of human chattels. Yet this is the argument, and this the
monstrous conclusion of those who would restrict the applica-
tion of the free law of the jubilee to persons of Hebrew birth,
and who contend that in the 45th and 46th verses of this
chapter, there is a wholesale consignment of the heathen to
the Hebrews as their chattels, their slaves.
Let us examine the Hebrew of this clause. The first phrase
essential to be marked, is the designation of the class from
whom servants may be taken, of the children of the strangers
that do sojourn among you, cstes t^n biati'iriij isatt. The
same expression is used in Leviticus, xxv. 23 : Ye are stran-
gers and sojourners with me, d-csnrn d-<-s. Job uses a word
derived from the same verb, iw, from which this noun, Q-na.
is derived, to signify a dweller in the house : They that dwell
in my house, and my maids, ijnrnoij'i iinid vnA, Job, xix. 15. So
in Exodus, iii. 22 : Every woman shall borrow of her that so-
journeth in her house, srjia nisto. So also in Genesis, xxiii. 4,
the words na, stranger, and atcto, sojourner, are almost synony-
mous. They are thus used, Psalm xxxix., "I am a stranger
and a sojourner with thee," atihpijpas isbN is. The same words
are used, Leviticus, xxv. 47, in the next clause of the law
under consideration, if a sojourner or stranger, aw'tin na,
(stranger and sojourner). One might be merely a stranger
302 NOT FAMILIES IN BONDAGE.
passing through the land, but not a sojourner, because not
making any stay in the land ; but the sojourners, settling in
the country, were called the strangers of the land, and their
children are the class designated in the verse before us, their
descendants generally.
Of them shall ye but/, and of their families that are with
you, which they begat in your land. This is an additional de-
scription. Their families that are with you, eras' "jwk bfthewtr,
i. e., separate and independent families, living by themselves,
settled in the land under protection of its laws, and in the
enjoyment of its privileges; not families in bondage, nor in
any way under tribute, but free families, under protection of
Jehovah. Of these, begotten in the land, and consequently
citizens, proselytes, covenanters, with all the Hebrews, a nat-
uralized part and parcel of the nation, might the Hebrews
buy, ('3J?P is the word used), obtain, by purchasing their serv-
ices, servants for themselves, as in the verse preceding, try,
n*:^, the serving man and serving woman, the servant and
maid-servant.
MEANING OF THE PHRASE, THEY SHALL BE YOUR POSSESSION.
Then it is added, and they shall be your possession, wzh *•>»£
n-jnxV, they shall be to you for a possession ; that is, the serv-
ants so obtained by purchase of their services on contract for
time, shall be your possession ; not the families, not the race
of sojourners, but such of the children or descendants of the
sojourners, or members of their families, as might enter into
such contract of service for money; as, in Ezekiel, xliv. 28,
God says of himself, that he is the possession of the priests, the
Levites, e>wh» ■»i», lam their possession. Still it is not abso-
lute; they shall be to you for a possession, not absolutely
your f)OSsession. Nor is it any stronger than where it is said
in Exodus, xxi. 21, of the servant purchased, that is, appren-
ticed according to the legal contract, for money paid before-
hand to the servant for his services, that he is his master's
SERVICE A POSSESSION, NOT SERVANTS. 303
money, for lie is his money, vttn b&bb rs. He might be a He-
brew servant, and yet be called, in this sense, his master's
money, his master's possession, his services belonging to his
master for so long a time as might have been specified in the
terms of the contract. But the servant himself was never, and
could not be, the property of the master, though he might be
bound for a term of service, extending from master to son, as
would be the case, if bound until the jubilee. It would be re-
garded in the light of a long lease, conveyed for an equivalent,
in consideration of which, though the servant making the con-
tract was not the master's property, yet the service, promised
and paid for teas. And this claim, up to its legal expiration,
would with propriety be spoken of, be described, as convey-
able from the master to his children, for any period within the
limit of its legal conclusion at the jubilee. If the master who
made the contract with the servant died, while any part of
the contract remained unfulfilled, the claim belonged as an in-
heritance, or family possession, to his children after him.
For example, if, during the first year after the year of ju-
bilee, when many new contracts would be made, and house-
holders would be looking out for servants on the most profit-
able terms, a master could agree with a servant, could hire or
apprentice him, could buy him, as the Hebrew phrase is ordi-
nary translated, from a family of strangers or sojourners, to
serve in his household till the next jubilee, this would be an
engagement for at least forty-seven years. Now suppose such
a master to be of the age of fifty, and at the head of. a family,
the contract would bind this servant, in effect, as a servant to
the children of the household ; and supposing the master to
die at the age of seventy-five, the claim upon his services
■would descend as a possession, as an inheritance to the chil-
dren for some twenty-two years longer. The servant might
be said to belong to the family still, for that period of the un-
fulfilled engagement. It was an engagement which had bound
the servant, in Hebrew phrase, for ever.
304 MEANING OF THE FOE EVEE-CONTEACT.
But this phrase, in respect to legal servitude, is absolutely
and beyond dispute, demonstrated to mean a period no longer
than to the jubilee. Two prominent instances, in the case of
Hebrew servants, put this beyond possibility of controversy,
showing that the for ciw-contract, cVi'V, had always its termi-
nation, by the law of jubilee, at that period; nor could any
contract override that law ; nor was there ever a pretense, be-
cause the servant was bound to his master, technically, for
ever, that therefore he was bound to him beyond the jubilee,
or was not to be free at the coming of the jubilee. One of
these cases is that of the Hebrew servant renewing his con-
tract with his master to the longest period, Exodus, xxi. 6 :
His master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall
serve him for ever, bhith Snass. But at the jubilee, on the sound
of the trumpet, he was free, and must return to his own fam-
il}r, he and his children with him.
The second instance of this illustration of the usage and
meaning of the word and the law, is in Deuteronomy, xv. 17,
comprehending the Hebrew men-servants and maid-servants
under the same rule. At his own agreement and desire, the
Hebrew servant has his ear bored, and is bound until the long-
est period ever admitted by the law : And he shall be thy serv-
ant for ever, cssV "iss ^h fi*u\ And also unto thy maid-servant
thou s/talt do likeicise. Nevertheless, at the jubilee they were
to be free ; this contract, which was said to be for ever, termi-
nated by a law that lay at the foundation of the whole system
of Hebrew jurisprudence and polity, at the jubilee; it could
not be made to run across that limit ; no one could be held in
servitude, no matter what were the terms of his contract, be-
yond that illustrious year of liberty.
A similar usage and illustration are found in 1 Samuel, xxvii.
12: "And Achish believed David, sa}ing, He hath made his
people Israel utterly to abhor him ; therefore he shall be my
servant for ever, eV-y nzvh ^ rrrv, he shall be to me for a serv-
ant for ever?"1
CONTRACT WITH LEVIATHAN. 305
In the book of Job there is another illustration, xl. 28 — in
our translation, xli. 4 : " Will he make a covenant with thee ?
wilt thou take him for a servant for ever ?" The phraseology
here is strikingly illustrative ; for it seems to be drawn from
the very contract made with servants who were willing to
enter into the longest apprenticeship, and the manner of seal-
ing it, that is, by boring the ear of the voluntary bondman.
" Can any man bore the nose of leviathan with a gin, and take
him in his sight ? Canst thou bore his jaw through with a
thorn ? Will he speak soft words unto thee ? Will he make
a covenant with theet^isv rp-.a rhsvi :? Wilt thou take him
for a servant for ever, nV-.» i%£> hsri^P?" It is to be marked
that the word here translated take, is a synonyme of that for
purchasing or buying the contract with a servant: "Wilt
thou buy him for a servant for ever ?" In buying a servant,
the covenant or contract was made with himself, not with a
third party. Hence the condition here referred to, for the
possibility of taking leviathan for a servant — " will he enter
into covenant with thee ?" Thou canst take him for thy serv-
ant in no other way. Will he agree with thee to be thine, W,
thy bounden servant of all work, for thyself and thy family ?
Wilt thou bind him for thy maidens ? Will he consent to be
a fixture in thine household ?
COMPLETENESS OF THE DEMONSTRATION.
Nothing is requisite, nothing needed, to strengthen this dem-
onstration. It is as clear as the noon that the longest period
of servitude among the Hebrews was entered into by volun-
tary contract, and was terminated by the jubilee. Hebrew
servants were apprenticed for ever, and so were a possession,
an inheritance, until the jubilee, but never slaves. The chil-
dren of strangers and sojourners, in like manner, were appren-
ticed for ever ; and in like manner were a possession, but never
slaves. With Hebrew servants the long term was the excep-
3 06 THE INHERITANCE FOR CHILDREN.
tion, and the ordinary terra was six years ; and even during
the long terra, they were to be treated as hired servants,
rather than as apprentices, though they were legally bound.
With servants from the heathen, or from the families of
strangers, the long terra of apprenticeship would seem to have
been the ordinary term, and the six years, or less, the excep-
tion ; and during the long term there was no such legal pro-
visions for them as for the Hebrews, requiring that they should
be treated as hired servants. But the advent of the jubilee
put an end to both periods and both kinds of servitude, and all
were free, all the inhabitants of the land. We shall advert to
some of the reasons for the difference that was made between
the Hebrew servants and those from the families of sojourners,
or of proselytes, or from the heathen. But we are now pre-
pared to consider the 46th verse, the remainder of the third
clause of the jubilee-enactment, in its true meaning. In our
version it runs thus: And ye shall take them, as an inherit-
ance for your children after you, to inherit a possession : they
shall be your bondmen for ever.
Taking the Hebrew, phrase by phrase, it is as follows: And
ye shall take them as an inheritance, crs cnVhrrni. The verb
is Hithpael of hrii, to receive, or to inherit, and with b following
it, is rather transitive than active; so that instead of meaning,
" Ye shall take them for an inheritance," it rather means,
"Ye shall leave them behind as an inheritance," Ye shall be-
queath them as an inheritance ; or, Ye shall possess them to
be bequeathed. Gesenius renders the phrase thus : JEosque
possidt bitis r< Unqut ndos filiis vestris post vos, Ye shall %)os-
sess them to be left to your children after you — to your chil-
dren after you, to inherit a 2)ossession / not than for a posses-
sion, but, simply, to inherit a possession / that is, the right
to their services during the legal, contracted period. The
Hebrew phrase is, nthx tve~h, to occupy a 2>ossession, to re-
ceive as heir a 2)ossession. Compare Genesis, xv. 3,4; xxi.
10; Jeremiah, xlix. 1, 2 ; Numbers, xxvii. 11 ; xxxvi. 8.
CONTRACTS OF NATURALIZATION. 307
The next phrase, translated, they shall be your bondmen for
ever, contains no word for " bondmen," but is as follows in the
original : nasri cr-s chyh,for ever on them ye shall lay service,
or from them ye shall take service / or, as in similar passages
it is sometimes translated, shall serve yourselves of them.
Compare Jeremiah, xxx. 8 ; xxv. 14 ; xxii. 13. In this last
passage in Jeremiah, this form of phraseology is applied to
the serving one's self of his neighbor without Avages. And
so, Exodus, i. 14, all their services which they served upon
them, era snar—iteN Er^'a?— Vs. The same phrase would be ap-
plied to designate the employment of a Hebrew servant, the
ordinary six years' servant, so that there is no meaning of a
bondman, or of bond-service, connected with it. It means, " Ye
may have them for your servants for ever ;" that is, as we have
seen, for the longest permissible and legal time of contract.
Or, the qualifying epithet of duration may belong to the
previous phrase, to inherit a possession for ever ; and then the
phrase of service would stand alone, of them ye shall serve
yourselves. It makes little or no difference with whichsoever
member the word of duration, cVi», be coupled. Whether ap-
plied to the individuals, as a class, or to the service contracted
for, as a possession, it is clearly limited by the statute itself, as
in Deuteronomy, xv. 17, and in Exodus, xxi. G. It is simply
the permission to engage, and keep until the jubilee, servants
from among the heathen and from the families of sojourners in
the land. Such contracts should be binding in law, and in fact
they served to incorporate the strangers and sojourners more
immediately and closely with the people, and constituted a
process of naturalization eminently wise and favorable, consid-
ering the character and habits which those born and bred in
heathenism, and but recently come to sojourn in the Hebrew
country, must have assumed. This would seem to be one of
the reasons for the difference put by law between the nature
and extent of the lease by which Hebrew servants might be
hired, and that by which the heathen might be bound ; the
308 CONTRACTS WITH SERVANTS THEMSELVES.
former being by law always treated as hired servants, even
when bound till the jubilee, but the latter subjected accord-
ing to the letter of the contract.
RESULTANT POINTS CONCLUSIVE AND DEMONSTRATIVE.
Two points in this examination deserve a most emphatic re-
gard. First, the unfortunate, unauthorized introduction of the
word bondmen in our English translation, without any word
corresponding to it in the original, can not but lead the mere
English reader to a false conclusion. This is one of the sources
of error on this subject. The difference between the phrases,
they shall be your bondmen and of them ye shall obtain your
service, or from them ye shall serve yourselves, might be all the
difference between slavery and freedom. The phraseology in-
dicating slavery produces a most deplorable falsehood ; and
when the effect is to load a divine revelation with the reproach
of a wicked institution, or to provide the slaveholder with an
anodyne for his conscience, preventing a conviction of the
greatness of his crime in holding his fellow-creatures in bond-
age, and the apologists for slavery with the argument of its
being appointed and sanctioned of God, no reprobation is suf-
ficiently severe for such perversion of the word of God. If it
be deliberate, the whole curse at the close of the New Testa-
ment comes down upon the person who is guilty of it; if it be
carelessness, the sin is little less: the result, every way, is
beyond measure injurious.
Second: the reference in Job to the bargain with levia-
than, as entering into a contract or covenant of service, the
contract being with leviathan himself, and not with any
third party, supposed to have any ownership or authority
for such a transfer or sale ; the contract being voluntary, and
no supposition of its being attainable or customary in any
other way ; is one of the most important of the illustrations of
truth concerning this subject in all the current of the Scrip-
tures. It is the more forcible, because incidental. It is like a
THE CONTRACT WOTI LEVIATHAN-. 309
clear, transparent window, through which the light floods the
whole apartment. There could have been no such illustra-
tion as this employed concerning slavery, in which there is no
bargain even with the slave ; no agreement, no persuasion,
nor any attempt at persuasion, nor any need of it ; but a bar-
gain and sale over the head of the slave, without any consul-
tation of his will or wishes ; and with no more possibility of his
interposing any obstacle or opposition against being so bound,
so transferred, so bought and sold, than if he were a stick of
wood or a wheelbarrow ; no more will of his own, no more
consultation with him as to the bargain ; no more supposition
of any obstacle or difficulty to be overcome on his ]:>art than
if he were the skeleton of a mastodon or a whale, to be trans-
ferred from Judea to the British museum.
The illustration is of a man endeavoring to persuade another
to be his servant, to enter into a contract of service for the uses
of his household ; it is a household servant himself, with whom
the contract is supposed to be made, and not a slave-dealer, or
an owner or master of the man. It is the servant himself, who is
supposed to have the whole and sole power and right of mak-
ing the contract ; and the possibility of referring to a third
party, or a party that has the power of compelling the servant
into such contract, or of making it for him, or against his will,
or without his voluntary permission and engagement, is not
mooted. It is not supposed that there exists any such possi-
bility. It is supposed that the only mode of getting a servant
is by applying for his services to himself, and making the con-
tract or covenant with him, persuading him to enter into it ;
and if that persuasion be not successful, there is no other mode
of effecting the bargain, no power that can compel the servant
into it.
The freedom and naturalness of this illustration make it very
powerful ; it is a most convincing refutation of those who say
that Job and the patriarchs bought their household servants
as property ; for men never use persuasion with an article of
310 VOLUNTARY TENURE OF SERVICE.
property, nor solicit of a chattel the favor of entering into an
agreement of service. It is clear and convincing against the
supposition of property in man, showing, most conclusively,
that that was not the ground nor tenure of domestic servi-
tude, but that such service was a voluntary thing on the part
of the servant ; just as voluntary with him, as the agreement
to take him for a servant was on the part of the master. As
an illustration of the freedom of the social state, and its sep-
aration from the oppressive despotism of slavery, it corre-
sponds perfectly with every reference to the same subject in
the book of Job, showing a domestic constitution, and style
and spirit of social equality and kindness, incompatible with
the existence of slavery, and not admitting its supposition.
The language employed in regard to this voluntary con-
tract, this persuasion of the servant himself to enter into a
covenant of service, is similar to that used in regard to Abra-
ham's getting his servants, and the Hebrews generally theirs.
The word is somewhat different from that in Exodus, xxi. 2, in
regard to obtaining a servant, but there translated, If thou
buy a servant, and also in Ecclesiastes, ii. 7, I got me servants
and maid-servants, and also in Genesis, xvii. 23, and other
places, where the souls or servants of Abraham or others are
spoken of as gotten with money, or bought with money, that
is, gotten by the same persuasion and contract with the serv-
ants themselves as is here described as a voluntary contract
with the servant alone, and not with any third party. The
phraseology here used, Wilt thou take leviathan for a serv-
ant ? will he make a covenant of service with thee ? might
have been applied, for example, to the contract of Abraham
with his head servant, the major dorno of his house : Wilt
thou take this Eliezer of Damascus to be the steward of thine
house? Will he enter into covenant with thee ? Thou canst
get him only by a bargain with himself; thou canst buy him
for thy servant in no other way ; only by persuading him canst
thou take him, for he is his own master, and free to engage
job's servants voluntary. 311
with whomsoever he pleases. And so of every one of Abra-
ham's servants, as well as Job's ; and so of all the servants
ever described as employed among the Hebrews, whether
native or of strangers ; the " possession" of them was a posses-
sion of their services merely as an equivalent for money paid
to themselves.
The culminating and conquering point in this illustration is
that of its being employed with reference to the longest
period of service possible, that is, the period to the jubilee,
and styled for ever. This kind of service also, this, which was
to be for an inheritance of a possession for the children of the
family, is proved to have been as voluntary on the part of the
servant, whose services were thus engaged as a family heri-
tage, as on the part of the master or householder engaging
them. Wilt thou take him for a servant for ever ? Will he
make this covenant with thee ? Canst thou buy him, canst
thou persuade him by money to be such a fixture in thine
household, bound, for so long a time, to thee and to thy chil-
dren ? Nothing can exceed, nor can any thing evade, the
demonstrative power of this illustration against slavery, and
in proof of freedom.*
* Compare Rosenmueller on Job stead of being at the disposal of tho
xl, 28, the pactum or covenant, as in master, to be used by him as his prop-
Deut. xv., 17 ; also Saalsciiutz, erty, to be maltreated and put to
Laws of Moses, Yol. II., devotes a death at his pleasure, to be tasked,
paragraph to the consideration of the tortured, bought and sold, as a brute
impossibility of slavery, in the sense beast, the servant was protected by
of that word in modern times, and law from all injustice, was shielded
among other people, prevailing among from the tyranny of the master, and
the Hebrews, and the impropriety of from every one of the abuses of which
the word slavery, as applied to their slavery, and especially American
system of domestic service. Every slavery, is the monstrous accumula-
element of injustice and oppression tion. There could consequently be
inhering in slavery was most care- no slaves among the Hebrews. Com-
fully and distinctly forbidden, and in- pare Jay on Hebrew servitude.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Case of Tm: Native Hebrew Selling Himself to the Stranger. — To the Stock of
the Stranger's Family. — Meaning of this Phrase and Contract. — Proof from
it Against Slavery. — The Hebrews, in Such a Case, as much an Inherit am a
and Possession for Strangers, as Strangers for Them. — Slavery Impossible in
Either Case. — The Jubilee Statute a Naturalization Law. — Argument from;
the After History.
We are not left to conjecture in regard to the meaning of
the phrase inherit a possession, or receive an inheritance for
your children after you. We have it most happily demon-
strated as not indicating any such thing as slavery or invol-
untary service, by the case of Hebrews themselves engaging
to become just such an inheritance for the children of the
stranger, in the family of the stranger. But they could not be
slaves ; they were neither permitted to enslave themselves nor
others. Yet they could engage their services, in a voluntary
contract, for so long a period, that the contract, the time, the
service engaged, might legally and justly belong to the chil-
dren of the master engaging and paying for them, till the whole
contract was fulfilled.
FOURTH CLAUSE, OF PERSONAL LIBERTY.
The meaning of the verse before us is settled entirely be-
yond question by the next clause in the enactment, where the
phrase, a possession and inheritance for your children after
you, is defined and explained by a phrase in the 47th verse,
where the case is supposed of a native Hebrew selling himself
to a stranger or sojourner, to be taken in the same manner as
an inheritance for their children after them ; the Hebrew sell-
ing himself for a servant to the stock of the stranger's
family. Here is the whole meaning of the preceding con-
CONTRACT WITH THE FAMILY STOCK. 313
tract as applied to servants from the families of the strangers
and sojourners selling themselves to the Hebrews until the
jubilee, that is, to the stock of the Hebrew's family. If such
sale on the part of the Hebrew servant did not constitute him
a bond-servant or slave, neither on the part of the heathen
servant did it constitute him a slave ; and if such sale, by
which the Hebrew servant became an inheritance belonging
to the stock of the stranger's family, did not interfere with
the law of jubilee, by which every inhabitant of the land was
free in the fiftieth year, neither did it so interfere on the part
of the heathen servant, when he had become an inheritance
belonging to the stock of the Hebrew's family.
"VVe suppose this fourth clause, in regard to Hebrew servants
and their treatment, to commence with the last paragraph in
the 46th verse ; and so commencing, it reads as follows :
" Moreover, over your brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall
not rule one over another with rigor. But if a stranger or
sojourner wax rich by thee, and thy brother that dwelleth by
him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger or sojourner
by thee, or to the stock of the stranger's family, after
that he is sold, he may be redeemed again," etc. The Hebrew
here for the sale is -it-es, as in Exodus, xxi. V, and Leviticus, xxv.
39, 42, translated in verse 39 be sold, but in verse 47 sell him-
self which latter is the true translation. But the phrase most
important to be considered is the stock of the stranger's fam-
ily, -ia nciBtitt npyV -DtaS}, i. e., if he sell himself to the stock, or
family tree, of the stranger, to the trunk of the family of the
stranger. The meaning is exactly that of the phrase in the 4Gth
verse, " an inheritance for your children after you to inherit
a possession." The apprenticeship is to the stock of the family
for the whole number of years to the next jubilee.
CASE OF THE POOR HEBREW CONTRACTING FOR SERVICE WITH
THE STRANGER.
The case in this clause is of a Hebrew waxing poor, and
14
314 HEBREW'S CONTRACT TO THE JUBILEE.
selling himself on this long lease of his services, limited only
by the jubilee, to the family of some rich stranger. He is
said to have sold himself, in this transaction, to the stock of
the family ; that is, he has made a contract to abide in the
family and serve them, and their children after them, until
the jubilee. This is precisely what the strangers were sup-
posed to do, when they were taken as an inheritance for the
Hebrews and their children after them. They sold themselves
to the stock of the Hebrew family, that is, they made a last-
ing contract for service, not to be interrupted till the jubilee,
unless they were redeemed, brought back again before the
conclusion of the contract. A relative might redeem the
Hebrews thus sold, or, if they were able, they might redeem
themselves, that is, might buy back the right to their own
services, for which they had been paid beforehand.
For they had received the money for the whole number of
years remaining, when the contract was made, before the next
jubilee. This is proved by verse 51, and by the provisions of
the enactment regulating the manner of the repurchase. The
serfant redeeming himself was to reckon with his master, and
pay back part of the money for which he had sold himself, ac-
cording to the number of years remaining of his unfulfilled
contract up to the jubilee. If more years remained, he would
have to pay more, if less, less, as the price of his redemption.
And the reckoning was to be year by year, according to the
reckoning by which the yearly hired servant was paid for his
services ; for the peculiarity of the treatment of a Hebrew
servant bound to his master's family until the jubilee, was just
this, that he should be treated as a yearly hired servant would
have to be treated ; this is apparent from verses 50 and 53,
compared with verse 40. It seems to have been considered a
generous and gentle treatment of the servant on this long
contract, if he were treated as a hired servant, a i -5b, but if
not, then this long contract was a rigorous rule. It was en-
acted in behalf of every Hebrew servant that during this long
TREATMENT UNDER THIS CONTRACT. 315
contract he should be with his master as a yearly hired serv-
ant, nstps ntv iistes, and that his master should not rule with
rigor over him. But no such specification was made in be-
half of the heathen servant, or the servant from the families
of the sojourners and strangers, and in this important respect
the native Hebrew was preferred before the foreigner, and
greater privileges were secured to him by law. Indeed, the
specific clauses of enactment in this jubilee chapter, from verse
38 to the close, are occupied mainly with establishing these
distinctions between one and the same class of Hebrew and
heathen servants, namely, those whose lease of service ex-
tended to the jubilee.
In this view, it is not important whether the latter half of
the 46th verse, which we have preferred to read as the open-
ing or preamble of the fourth clause, be joined to what UHlows
or to what precedes. In our translation it belongs to what
precedes, and the Hebrew conjunction has been translated
but instead of and ; so giving the force of contrast, as if the
families of strangers might be subjected to a more rigorous
service than of native Hebrews. In the respect which we
have pointed out, this is true ; but the word bondmen in the
preceding part of the verse so translated, not being in the
original, nor any thing to justify it, a wrong impression is
produced ; it is made to appear as if the heathen might be
used as bondmen or slaves, but the Hebrews not ; whereas,
there is -no consideration of the state of a bondman or slave
at all, nor any possibility of such state admitted, but only a
specification of the respective manner in which the Hebrew
and heathen servant, under the same contract as to time,
should be treated during that time. Over such servants of
the children of strangers as the Hebrews might buy, they
might rule for the whole period of the contract, without be-
ing obliged to treat them during that time as hired servants
must bo treated ; " but over your brethren, the children of
Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigor." That
31 G NOT TO BE RULED WITH RIGOR.
this is the only point of contrast is proved by the 53d verse :
" As a yearly hired servant shall he be with him, and his mas-
ter shall not rule over him with rigor in thy sight."
MEANING OF THE PHRASE, RULE WITH RIGOR.
This phrase, rule over him with rigor, as in verses 53, 46,
and 43, thou shalt not rule over him with rigor, '.n n«nry- s&
tjTjBS, is found only in this chapter of Leviticus, and in con-
nection with this law of jubilee. But in the first chapter of
Exodus a similar phrase is employed, descriptive of the rig-
orous service imposed by the Egyptians on the children of
Israel in the time of their oppression : They made the chil-
dren of Israel to serve with rigor. All their service, wherein
they made them serve, teas xoith rigor, cri2 nzs -a-x tn-bi— Vs
jj-E2. Any such oppressive rule was forbidden ; it was a
crushing oppression, from which God had delivered them, and
they were defended by special edict, from ever exercising the
same upon others. It only needs to repeat, in this connection,
the benevolent command in the nineteenth chapter of Leviti-
cus: " If a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall
not oppress him, but the stranger that dwelleth with you shall
be unto you as one born amongst you, and thou shalt love
him as thyself, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt,"
and to connect with this the statute in Leviticus xxiv. : " Ye
shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for
one of your own country," and we shall feel it to be impossi-
ble that, in one and the same breath of divine legislation, an
oppressive treatment, forbidden for the Hebrews, was permit-
ted and appointed for the strangers.
If it had been plainly said, Ye shall not oppress the children
of the Hebrews, but ye may oppress the children of strangers,
what must have been thought, what would have been said, of
such legislation, so contradictory in itself, and so glaringly in-
consistent with previous legislation in regard to the same class?
Yet this is the very inconsistency, and contradiction, and moral
OPPRESSIVE TREATMENT FORBIDDEN". 31?
obliquity, implied and involved in the assertion of those who
contend that the forbidding of a rigorous treatment of the He-
brew servants, licenses and authorizes, and was intended so to
do, an oppressive treatment of the heathen servants, even as
slaves. Never was a more monstrous argument instituted,
subversive of the very first ideas of the divine benevolence
and justice taught in the Mosaic books themselves, as well as
in all the other Scriptures. The argument could hardly have
been proposed, had it not been for the use of the word bond-
men in our English version, in the 46th verse of this chajiter,
where there is no such word, nor any thing answeriil^ to it, in
the original Hebrew. And even in the margin our translators
have put the more literal and truthful rendering, so that a
careful English reader may see that there is no such word as
bondmen in the text.
THE CROWNING STATUTE OF PERSONAL LIBERTY IN THE
JUBILEE LAW.
The jubilee statute, the great crowning statute of universal
personal liberty, was passed for all the inhabitants of the land,
and no statute of limitation or exception was, at any time,
afterwards added ; but only statutes were added specifying
the manner of treatment up to the time of release. But if
there is nothing in the great jubilee statute itself that limits
it, expressly and undeniably, then it must be interpreted in
accordance with the humane and free spirit of other Hebrew
legislation on the same subject. It should be our desire not
to give to despotism, but freedom, the benefit of any doubt.
Were it not for a desire to interpret the statute as against
universal freedom ; and were it not for the careless assump-
tion that slavery existed among the Hebrews, it could never
have been so interpreted. Men have looked through the glass
of modern slavery, and the history of ancient, to find the same
system among the Hebrews. But, in reality, there is found a set
of laws and causes to prevent and render it impossible, and at
318 COMMON LAW AGAINST SLAVERY.
length to break it up, all over the world. The system of He-
brew common law would, by itself, have put an end to slavery
everywhere. The Hebrew laws elevated and dignified free
labor, and converted slave labor into free.
Slavery could not be utterly abolished in any other Avay
than by a system of such laws. A people must be trained for
freedom. The heathen slaves could not be admitted to dwell
among the Hebrews, except in such subjection, preparatory
to complete emancipation. The subjection itself was a volun-
tary apprenticeship, and not involuntary servitude ; and by
reason of«the privileges secured, and the instruction enjoined
by law, it was a constant preparation for entire emancipation,
a constant elevation of character ; and then, every fifty years,
the safety of complete emancipation was demonstrated. The
jubilee statute can not be understood in any other light. But
when the vail of prejudice is taken away, it is especially by the
tenor of the Hebrew laws in regard to slavery, that the beauty
and glory of the Hebrew legislation, its justice, wisdom, and
beneficence become more apparent than ever.
This law of heathen servitude until the jubilee, was a natu-
ralization law of as many years' duration as would elapse be-
fore the next jubilee. It was so many years' probation of
those who had previously been idolaters and slaves, for free-
dom. It was a contrivance to drain heathenism of its fecu-
lence. The heathen slaves were in no condition to be admit-
ted at once to the privileges of freedom and of citizenship
among the Hebrews. They needed to be under restraint, law,
and service. They were put under such a system as made
them familiar with all the religious privileges and observances
which God had bestowed and ordered, a system that admitted
them to instruction and kindness, and prepared them to pass
into integral elements of the nation. It was a system of eman-
cipation and of moral transfiguration, going on through ages ;
the taking up of an element of foreign ignorance, depravity,
and misery, and converting it into an element of native com-
NATURAL AND JUST DISTINCTIONS. 319
fort, knowledge, and piety. And the statute of the jubilee,
the statute of liberty to all the inhabitants of the land every
fifty years, was the climax of all the beneficent statutes by
which the sting was extracted from slavery, the fang drawn ;
and by this statute, in conjunction with all the rest, the He-
brew republic was to hold to the world the glory of an exam-
ple of freedom and equality, in marvelous and delightful con-
trast with the system of horrible oppression, cruelty, and
bondage, everywhere else prevailing.
The distinction between the tenure and the treatment of
Hebrew servants and foreign, was not arbitrary. It grew
naturally out of God's whole revealed and providential sys-
tem, as well as being in conformity with the necessity of the
case. But if there had been no necessity, it was only in keep-
ing with the favor of God toward his own chosen people, that
the servants from among the heathen might, if they were
willing, be held for a period much longer than the servants
from among the Hebrews, and in a less exalted and more gen-
eral service than their own. A Hebrew servant was free
every seventh year; a heathen servant might be held by a
contract for a much longer time, for the whole time remaining
to the jubilee. It would have been a strange thing, a solecism,
if there had not been some such distinction. Yet the distinc-
tion itself was voluntary ; that is, it was at any heathen serv-
ant's option to make a contract for the whole period to the
next jubilee, or not. If, rather than make such a contract, he
chose to return to the heathen country, he was at perfect lib-
erty to go ; and if he staid, and could find any master to take
him as a hired servant, and not as a servant of all work, till the
jubilee, there was no law against that : he was at liberty to
hire himself out on the best terms, and to the best master that
he could find. So much is indisputable, and so much is abso-
lutely and entirely inconsistent with slavery.
320 HISTORIC JUBILEE ARGUMENT.
GENERAL ARGUMENT FROM THE AFTER-HISTORY.
The argument and evidence from the after-history of the
Jews, in regard to the unlimited application of the law of ju-
bilee to the strangers as well as native Hebrews, is nearly as
demonstrative and irresistible as that from the statute itself.
It is clear that if the heathen had been given and appointed
of Jehovah to be taken as perpetual slaves by the Hebrews, a
race of slaves must have been constituted, who would have
increased, in the course of a few centuries, to the number of
hundreds of thousands, even to millions. But that no such
race wras ever in existence is equally clear, not the least trace
of them being found in the sacred records. Had there been
such a race in the time of Jeremiah, the Jewish masters would
not have been so eager to convert their Hebrew servants into
slaves. That conspiracy against the law indicates that they
had, at that time, very few heathen servants. Indeed, by the
natural process of the law of jubilee, in connection with other
statutes, each generation of heathen servants, instead of being
perpetuated and increased, passed into free and integral ele-
ments of the Hebrew State ; so that, after the lapse of no very
long period, the supply of heathen servants must have been
greatly diminished, and almost the only prevailing form of
service must have been the six years' period, as appointed in
the twenty-first chapter of Exodus.
If the Hebrew families and masters could, by law, have
held as many heathen as they chose for slaves, and the chil-
dren born of such slaves followed the condition of their par-
ents, then nothing could have prevented such a set of men
as were .ready to undertake and carry through a revolution
from freedom to slavery in respect to their own countrymen,
from buying and breeding heathen slaves without limit, espe-
cially if God's law for the land had absolutely given and be-
queathed the heathen to them for that express purpose. This
would have been such an establishment of slavery by the
SLAVERY A CLIMACTERIC CRIME. 321
divine law, as would have rendered inevitable and permanent
the most diabolical and venal licentiousness and cruelty that
ever, in any systematic shape, has cursed the earth. But, by
the law of the land, after an appointed time, the strangers and
sojourners, and children of strangers from among the heathen,
all became denizens, citizens, proselytes, and could claim the
privileges of Hebrews. By the time one season of jubilee had
been run through, they would " enter into the congregation
of the Lord ;" and thus slavery was effectually and for ever
prevented, both by law, and the practical working of the insti-
tutions of society. Hence the grasping avarice of the Jews
turned at length against their own native servants ; and
hence their daring and cruel attempt to change, by violence,
those fundamental and far-reaching statutes of freedom and
a free policy, appointed for them by Jehovah.
To those who have not examined the subject, it seems
strange that not the sin of idolatry, but the sin of slavery,
the violation of the law of freedom, should have been marked
of God, among the catalogue of Jewish crimes, as the one
decisive act of wickedness that filled up the measure of their
iniquities, and brought down the wrath of God" upon them
without remedy or repeal. But the wonder ceases, when the
nature of the crime is taken into consideration. Being a
crime concocted and determined by all the princes, priests,
ami people, together with the king, it was really making the
whole nation a nation of men-stealers ; and man-stealing was a
crime appointed in the law of God to the punishment of death ;
so that the adopting of it by the government and the people,
was an enshrining of the iniquity in public and most glaring
defiance of God's authority, in the form of their state policy.
They had thus contrived, as they imagined, a security even
in the midst of their oppression, against punishment. It was
doing that, as a corporation of usurpers, in safety, which they
could not have done as individuals without exposure to the
penalty of death. But though hand join in hand, God's ven-
14
322 god's swift vengeance.
gcance is but the surer and more terrible. And the sword of
God came down upon them in the very midst of this appall-
ing crime, as swift, almost, as the lightning.
Beyond all question there were many who lent themselves
to this iniquity for the sake of gain and power, who never
were guilty of the sin of idolatry; they would have abhorred
that wickedness, as worse than any sacrilege ; and the sin of
idolatry was not, at that time, adopted by the government
and the nation, in open defiance of Almighty God. But the
sin of bringing free servants into a forced, involuntary servi-
tude, the sin of changing freemen into articles of property,
the sin of stealing men from themselves, and chattelizing them
in perpetual slavery, was so chosen and adopted ; and God's
extremest wrath came upon the whole nation in consequence.
Many at that time were strenuous for rites, but not for right-
eousness ; for the law as to religious ceremonies, but not for
humanity and justice; for sacrifice towards God, but not
mercy nor common honesty towards man. They would kill
an ox for worship, and steal their neighbor's wages, and slay
his freedom, in the same breath. They "trusted in oppres-
sion and perverseness, and staid themselves thereon ;" and
these are crimes, the lurid light of which burns in the pages
of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, and others, in such a
manner, that we see how the nation went into the establish-
ment of slavery against the repeated warnings and denunci-
ations of God's messengers, in every faithful, free pulpit all
over the land. Amazement at God's wrath, as if slavery
were, in his sight, a guilt greater than idolatry, passes, under
these circumstances, under a true knowledge of the case, into
amazement at God's forbearance, and at the infatuation of the
Jewish people.
They were deliberately inaugurating a crime, as their chosen
state policy, which they knew would increase in a numerical
ratio from generation to generation. If it could have been
restricted to the first persons stolen and deprived of their
NATIONAL SIN SO MUCH THE GREATER. 323
liberty, the iniquity would have been comparatively small.
But for two immortal beings forced into this cbattelism, there
would be five others stolen and forced, in like manner, by the
next generation ; the guilt of oppression on the one side, and
the sufferance of cruelty on the other, enlarging as it ran on
into posterity. Now to set agoing such a system of injustice,
which was to branch out like the hereditary perdition from
the depraved head of a race, increasing as the Rio de la Plata
or the Amazon ; to set a central spring of thousand other
springs of domestic and state tyranny coiled, and coiling on,
in geometrical progression ; and a central fountain of thousand
other fountains of inhumanity and misery; and to do this in
opposition to the light of freedom and religion, and of laws in
protection of liberty, given from God, and maintained by him
for a thousand years, was so extreme and aggravated a pitch
of wickedness, that it is not wonderful that God put an instant
stop to it, by wiping Jerusalem and Judea of their inhabitants,
as a man wipeth a dish and turneth it upside down ; it is not
wonderful that we find the king and the nation cut off at once,
by this enormous crime, from all possiblity of God's further
forbearance.
That evil of such a crime was the greater, because, while it
is enlarging every year, both in guilt and hopelessness, it seems
lessened in intensity, as it passes down into posterity. Pos-
terity are content to receive and uphold that slavery as a com-
fortable domestic institution, which, at the beginning, was
acknowledged as a glaring crime. The sons of the first men-
stealers would, with comparatively easy consciences, take the
children of those whom their parents had stolen, and claim
them as their property, being slaves born. But, in tact, in. a
nice adjustment of the moral question, we find that the guilt
'is doubled ; because, while the parents may have been stolen
only from themselves, the children are stolen both from the
parents and from themselves. The stealing and enslaving of
the parents could create no claim upon the children as prop-
324 INCREASING BY PROGRESS OP AGES.
erty, nor produce any mitigation or extenuation of the sin of
stealing- the children also and holding them as slaves. And so
the guilt runs on, nor could the progress of whole ages dimin-
ish it, or change its character.
Now, although never a word should have been found bear-
ing on this subject in the New Testament, it is manifest that
a large space is given to it in the Divine revelation, and if there
is any silence in the New Testament, it is because so much and
so plainly was spoken in the Old. Tt may be said, If ye hear
not Moses and the prophets, neither will ye be persuaded
though one rose from the dead. If the Pentateuch and proph-
ets be received as the word of God, we need no further tes-
timonial or expression of God's judgment against slavery.
And it is a fearful thing for any man to endeavor to distort
the tenor of this revelation from justice to injustice, from kind-
ness to oppression, from the advocacy of freedom to the sanc-
tion of slavery. Let no man, because slavery is the sin of his
own country, therefore seek to defend it from the Scriptures,
handling the word of God deceitfully, acting with it as a dis-
honest dealer with a pack of cards, or a gambler with loaded
dice. Strangely intense must be the prejudice that, for the
sake of shielding slavery from being reprobated as a sin,^vould
rather rejoice to have found it commended and commanded
in the Avord of God, than admit the demonstration that it
stands in the condemnation of the Almighty.
The word of God is as an electric or galvanic battery, com-
posed of many parts, all of them being directed to the object
of overcoming and removing sin, and establishing love to God
and man as the rule and habit on earth as in heaven. Then
what a piece of villainy it is towards mankind as sinners, to
draw off, as it were, over night, the power from any part of
this battery, its power to rouse the conscience, its power to
startle the moral sense into the noting and abhorring of moral
abominations long practiced as forms of social expediency and
luxury. Both historical and preceptive, the word of God is a
GUILT OF CONCEALING GOD'S WOED. 325
warning against sin ; many things in it are light-houses on
dangerous reefs. Therefore, no greater treachery is possible,
nor more malignant treason against mankind, than to creep
into one of these light-houses, and under pretense of being its
keeper, to put out its light ; or, still worse, to put up the sig-
nal of its being a safe harbor, when the man or the nation that
makes for it will inevitably be dashed in pieces.
In the face of danger and death, God's ministers were com-
manded to speak all the words of the Lord to the guilty peo-
ple, to the nation, the cities, the king, the princes, the proph-
ets, and the priests. " Diminish not a word ; if so be they
will hearken, and turn every man from his evil way, that I
may repent me of the evil which I purpose to do unto them,
because of the evil of their doings." And again : " It may be
that they will hear, and return, that I may forgive their
iniquity and their sin." And again, in regard to the prophets
that withheld the truth, " They walk in lies ; they strengthen
also the hands of evil doers, that none doth return from his
wickedness. But if they had stood in my counsel, and had
caused my people to hear my words, then they should have
turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their
doings."
"What could be more impressive than these warnings, in re-
gard to the guilt of concealing God's word because of the fear
of man, and on account of the popularity of sin ? The very
purpose for which a divine revelation Avas given is prevented,
and its accomplishment made impossible, by such treachery ;
and therefore our blessed Lord, in the very opening of his
own ministry, declared, in regard to all the commands in the
Old Testament, in the law and the prophets, that whosoever
should break the least of them, and teacii men so, which he
would do by denying, perverting, or concealing them, should
be excluded from the kingdom of heaven.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Comparison of Roman and American Slavery. — The Climax of Immorality in the
Sanction of Slavery under the Gospel.— The Laws of God in the Old Testa-
ment in full force in Judf.a under the New. — Oppression Sinful in itself. — What
is Sinful under the Old Testament, Sinful also under the New. — Impiety of
Making the Gospel the Minister of Sin.
It is wonderful and fearful to see how the persistent indul-
gence of any sin, under the light of the gospel, conducts back
the soul at length, as it were blindfold, into a worse darkness
than that of heathenism ; worse by contrast with light, and
worse because committed against light, and without the ex-
cuse of darkness. The practice of slavery, under the light
of the gospel, has at length carried a whole Christian com-
munity, with the sanction of the church of God, to the main-
tenance of a system, as divine, which reproduces the most
atrocious features of Roman slavery. The product of a cor-
rupt Christianity, the result of the truths held in unrighteous-
ness, and of that judicial blindness which follows, is much
worse than the product of heathenism, even in being only the
same; for it is accompanied with a conscience seared as with
a hot iron. The old Greeks and Romans, in the absence of a
divine revelation, did not see the cruelty and wickedness of
slavery, but they never attributed the system to the benevo-
lence of God, never dreamed of asserting that it was one of
the activities of the divine attributes, or proofs of a preemi-
nent piety. In the United States, a Christian people, under
the light of a divine revelation, explicit in regard to this very
form of oppression, adopt, cherish, applaud and pray over it,
yea, give thanks to God for it, not only as the most perfect
state of human society, and not antagonistic with the divine
ROMAN AND AMERICAN SLAVERY.
327
■will, but as of direct divine appointment and support, as being
the completest and most comprehensive providential mission-
aiy institute.
And what is this institute? What is the gehenna of disci-
pline on earth, by the passing of the soul through which,
God's providence is impiously affirmed to have appointed the
African race to salvation, and constituted the kidnappers and
slaveholders of the United States his ordained and sancti-
fied missionaries? It is the reproduction of the most bar-
barous system of slavery ever endured in the pagan world.
The reader has but to consult the customary authorities, and
he will be appalled at the exactitude of the sameness of Ro-
man and American slavery.*
Whether we take the definition of slavery from the es-
sence of the crime of man-stealing, the claim of property in
* See Stroud and others on the
laws relating to slavery. Among the
Eomans, more particularly, slaves
were held, pro nullis, pro mortuis,
pro quadrupedibus, for no men, for
dead men, for leasts, nay, were in
a much worse state than any cattle
whatever. They had no head in
- the state, no name, no tribe, or reg-
ister. They were not capable of be-
ing injured, nor could they take aught
by purchase or descent ; they had no
heirs, and could make no will. Ex-
clusive of what was called their pe-
culium, whatever they acquired was
their master's ; they could neither plead
nor be pleaded for, but were entirely
excluded from all civil concerns ; were
not entitled to the rights of matri-
mony, and therefore had no relief in
case of adultery ; nor were they prop-
er objects of cognation or affinity.
They might be sold, transferred, or
pawned, like other goods or personal
estate ; for goods they were, and as
such they were esteemed. — Com-
pare Fuss, Taylor, Becker, Es-
CHENBEBG, Horxe, and others.
Compare the accounts of these au-
thorities with the slave laws of the
Southern States, or with the elaborate
reports of State trials, revealing the
rjature of slavery, as, for example, the
striking case of Bayley versus Poin-
dexter, in Virginia. Compare also
the modes of punishment, the consti-
tuted scourgers and torturers. The
burning of slaves to death is certain-
ly worse than the feeding of fishes
with their flesh, which is the climax
of horror, in the judgment of Seneca,
on the cruelty of Vedius Pollio. But
in the Roman Pandects burning alive
is also mentioned as a punishment.
Compare, on the point of the negation
of marital rights, and the impossibility
of relief in the case of adultery, the
judgment of the court in the trial of
Sickles, in "Washington, and the oppo-
site conclusion of a similar trial of a
black man at the same time in Balti-
more.
328 THE NEW TESTAMENT VIEW.
man", which, wherever assumed and enforced, though under
sanction of law, constitutes the pretended owner of such pre-
tended property a manstealer ; or from tile elementary
crimes against God and man involved in it and resulting from
it, but dignified by some with the nomenclature of abuses of
slavery; or from the rigid terms of the slave code itself; we
find it alike incompatible with Christianity, and reprobated
and forbidden by it. There is no such oppression or sin ad-
mitted or tolerated in the Bible. There is no term for it in
the Hebrew Scriptures ; but the reality of it, as described by
its elements, is forbidden on pain of death.
We have seen the proof of all this in the Mosaic laws, il-
lustrated and enforced in the Prophets. Now in entering
upon the New Testament, we come directly from the latest
utterances of divine inspiration in the Old, not to find those
utterances disregarded, or denied, or repealed, not to find
ourselves confounded by a system of social wickedness re-
ceived into Christ's church, and taught by his apostles, against
which every attribute of God had been pointed from the be-
ginning. We find the divine law in full force, with all its pre-
cepts of benevolence^ and all its penalties. The laws against
stealing and making merchandise of men, the laws against
oppression, the commands to love thy neighbor and the stran-
ger as thyself, to break every yoke, to deliver the oppressed,
to betray not the outcast, to shelter the fugitive, were familiar
to the Jews, were read in the synagogues.* Our blessed
* Piudeaux's Connexion, vol. i., p. they had not before. After that cap-
309. — " If it be examined into," says tivity, and the return of the Jews
Prideaux, " how it came to pass that from it, synagogues being erected
the Jews were so prone to idolatry among them in every city, to which
before the Babylonish captivity, and they constantly resorted for public
so strongly and cautiously, even to worship, and where every week they
superstition, fixed against it after that had the law and the prophets read
captivity, the true reason hereof will unto them, and were instructed in
appear to be, that they had the law their duty, this kept them in a thor-
and the prophets every week read ough knowledge of God and his laws .
unto them after that captivity, which The threats which they found in the
THE NEW TESTAMENT RULE 329
Lord, in the very first public announcement of his Messiah-
ship, robed himself in these very Scriptures, and placed upon
his own head this crown ; himself the promised Deliverer, the
Consoler and Redeemer, to break every yoke, and fulfill the
"acceptable year," the jubilee year, of the Lord.
There was no slavery in Judea ; there could not have been,
except by the renewal and successful accomplishment of a
crime, the very attempt at which had been followed of God
with the captivity of the whole people, accompanied by
sword, famine and the pestilence. There was now no more
need of mentioning slavery by name than there had been in
the Old Testament ; but it was anew forbidden in its ele-
ments, and finally rendered impossible all over the world, by
the injunctions of divine inspiration upon masters. Render
UNTO YOUR SERVANTS THAT WHICH IS JUST AND EQUAL, is the
great law of Christian abolitionism.
Now what could be thought of a Christian man's mind or
piety if such a man were asked whether oppression was to be
regarded as a sin against God, and should make answer that
it could not be regarded as sinful in itself, but only in its cir-
cumstances, only in its abuses ? What are the abuses of
oppression? It "will be acknowledged that oppression is for-
bidden in the word of God. "We are instructed to pray for
deliverance from oppression, because it is a state so hostile to
a life of piety, so unfavorable to the keeping of God's com-
mands. What is true of oppression in any of its forms must
be true of the highest degree of oppression. If it is oppres-
prophets against the breakers of the stated reading services. And Paul
lawa deterred them from transgres- disputed and taught incessantly in
sing against them." their synagogues, and afterwards dai-
The same may be said of the en- ly in the school of Tyrannus. The di-
tire ceasing of any violation of the rect testimony of God against slavery
laws against slavery. James informs could neither have been unknown
us that Moses had of old in every nor passed by in silence, neither could
city those that preached him ; and it the rights of servants, as protected in
was not on the Sabbath merely, but the Old Testament, have been ignored
three days in the week, that they had in the New.
330 GOD'S .LAWS IN THE OLD
sion to compel a man to serve without wages, it is certainly
a still greater oppression to sell him for money. If it is op-
pression to take away a man's property, it is still greater op-
pression to use the man himself as property, to convert him
into merchandise for another's profit, and to make it impos-
sible for him to possess any thing in his own right. If op-
pression is forbidden at all in the word of God, then this
highest kind of oppression is forbidden. And if it be a sin
in itself, a sin per se, to take away a man's wages, or to de-
prive him of any of his rights, it is not less a sin per se to take
away all his rights, to reduce him to such a condition that by
law he has no rights, can plead none, but is a mere thing, a
chattel, at the disposal and for the profit of his owner.
Now, by what defiance of God and his truth and righteous-
ness, or by what moral insanity, or by what judicial blindness
of depravity, dare men aver, or can they aver, that while op-
pression is forbidden of God, slavery is not ; that while the
oppression of a man is sinful, the holding of him as a slave is
not sinful? How can any man, not an idiot, affirm that while
oppression is denounced of God, slavery is commanded ? or
that while in the Old Testament slavery is forbidden, and
every one of its elements reprobated as under God's hatred
and wrath, in the New Testament it is sanctioned and legal-
ized as under God's favor ? If this extreme slander were true,
then would the old dispensation, under the law, be proved
more benevolent and kind, more loving and merciful, more
just and righteous, than the new, under the gospel.
Under the Old Testament dispensation men were forbidden,
on pain of death, to take, hold, or sell human beings as prop-
erty. The taking of a man as a slave, against his own con-
sent, was the stealing of him, not from another person, but
from himself. Under the new dispensation it is affirmed by
some that all this crime is not only not forbidden, but sanc-
tioned, and that those who committed it, instead of being ar-
raigned as criminals, were permitted to continue in it, to hold
CONFIRMED IX THE NEW. 331
slaves, and, of course, to do every thing with them that hy the
law of slavery may be done, to hold them or to sell them as
property at the master's sole will and pleasure ; and that such
stealers, holders and sellers of men as property were received
into the Christian church, this their wickedness not being for-
bidden, but received and sanctioned along with them.
Under the Old Testament dispensation the right of servants
to escape from bondage was admitted, and men were forbid-
den to return them into bondage when so escaped, but were
commanded to aid and to shelter them, and not to oppress
them. It would be oppressing them in the highest degree to
return them into bondage; and the law of God that they
should not be so returned proved that no creature had any
right of ownership in them, but that they themselves had the
most perfect right of ownership in themselves, and the right
to take themselves away, to assert and take their own free-
dom. To take this right away from them, and deliver them
up into slavery, would be again the crime of stealing them.
Under the new dispensation it is asserted by the apologists
for slavery under the gospel, that slaves must not escape from
their masters, that they have no right to their freedom, that
if they do escape they must be captured and sent back into
slavery, especially if their owners were members of the Chris-
tian church. It is asserted that both they, as slaves, and their
masters as their owners, were together members of Christian
churches, and being such, having been admitted as such, the
law of Christianity sanctions slavery as right, and forbids the
slave from escaping and the Christian from sheltering him if
he escapes.
The amount of this is, that while, under Moses, under the law
of God as given by Moses, oppression was forbidden as* sinful,
under Christ oppression is baptized and sanctioned as a Chris-
tian grace. Under Moses the worst kind of oppression, that of
slavery and the man-stealing, by which slavery is created and
maintained, was branded as a crime to be punished by death.
332 LAW AND GOSPEL ALIKE.
Under Christ and the gospel the injunction against it is re-
moved, and it is not only consecrated by the Christian sacra-
ments, the seal of the church's sanction being put upon it, but
it becomes sinful for Christian men to speak against it as sin.
The gospel of Christ becomes, in fact, a deliverance to do thoso
very abominations which the law of God punished with death ;
a license of selfishness and cruelty, a freedom to sin, and to
violate the law of love. The slaveholders in the Christian
church, and they who sanction this crime as consistent with
the gospel, as a crime admitted without rebuke into the
churches of the New Testament, do really declare that the
law was imperfect, but that Jesus was made a surety of a
better testament, a high priest of good things to come, of a
temple of liberty for the enslaving of men, into which we
have boldness to enter as into the holiest, and to take our
slaves with us, Christ having brought in this better hope, this
diviner freedom, blotting out the hand-writing of ordinances
that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out
of the way, nailing it to his cross.
It is claimed now, that whatever might be the meaning,
or necessity of the Mosaic laws against slavery, or in behalf
of escaping servants, and against any claim of their masters
for their restoration ; and whatever might be the inspiration of
the Prophets and the Psalms against kidnapping and catching
men, or holding and selling them as merchandise, or the com-
mands of God to give liberty to the enslaved, to break every
yoke, and let the oppressed go free ; that, nevertheless, under
the new law of love in the New Testament, Christ and the
gospel, replace and sanctify the bonds, and forbid them to be
broken ; admitting into the Christian church those very op-
pressors that under the law were excommunicated from it,
and those very realities of oppression that under the law Avere
branded as crimes worthy of death.
It is averred that Christ's own silence on the subject of
this sin gives consent to it. Christ Avas silent in regard to the
LAW AND GOSPEL ALIKE. 333
sin of sodomy, in regard to infanticide, in regard to idolatry ;
and by this method of reasoning, not only is the law of God
against these crimes abolished, and the crimes themselves
made innocent by such silence, but he that speaks against
them, when Christ did not, is himself guilty of a presumptu-
ous sin, and may think himself happy if he is not struck with
some divine judgment.
Now, dreadful as the blasphemy against the divine inspira-
tion of the Old Testament has been, in asserting that slavery
was sanctioned of God there, the blasphemy against Christ is
worse, in asserting that the cast off vices under God's repro-
bation in the laws of Moses and the prophets have been taken
up, endorsed, patronized and received to Christian communion
and credit, in the teachings of Christ and the apostles. What
a signal and an execrable impiety, to contend that he who an-
nounced the great rule of life, Whatsoever ye would that man
should do to you, do ye even so to them ; and declared con-
cerning the law, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, that
upon this, along with the law of supreme love to God, hang
all the law and the prophets, would and did at the same time
admit into the Christian church, and sanction by his gospel,
and establish as a custom of Christian life, the greatest viola-
tion of that law!
To maintain that Christ and his apostles would set up as a
Christian institution, what Moses and the prophets had for-
bidden on pain of death, what they had put in the same cat-
egory of sin with the worship of Moloch, of Baal, of Dagon,
what they had classified with sodomy and matricide, is to
introduce into divine revelation a profaneness and confusion
worse than that which is denounced of God in the 18th of
Leviticus and the 27th of Deuteronomy. As the land itself
vomiteth out her inhabitants guilty of such defilement, so the
unsophisticated moral sense, in the least degree enlightened
above the ignorance and darkness of savage life, would reject
a revelation burdened with such enormities, especially a gospel
334 LAW PREACHED BY THE GOSPEL.
that pretending to remove men's sins, introduces a system of
avarice and cruelty, and admits iniquities as elements of Chris-
tian grace and fellowship, that even a previous, imperfect and
preparatory system of religion cast out as abominable in God's
sight. In truth, the gospel could not be received as of God,
could not but be rejected, under such burdens of impiety, if
the moral sense of men did not assure them that the lcj:>rosies
thus foisted into the authority of God's word are a corruption
of its purity.
In the first preaching of the gospel, the word of God in the
Old Testament was the standard of Christ and the apostles.
It was their storehouse of proofs, texts, doctrines, arguments.
Our blessed Lord himself was wont to answer questions of
conscience and of casuistry by a direct appeal to the Old
Testament Scriptures. What is written in the law ? How
readest thou ?
Furthermore, the apostle informed Timothy that he must
take the law in its particulars, and aj>ply it to men-stealees,
and to any other thing contrary to sound doctrine, accord-
ing to the gospel. Nothing could be plainer. True gospel
preaching was that which applied the law to the consciences
of men to bring them to Christ.
The disciples everywhere were commanded to search the
word of God, and to hold fast what they found there. The
oracles of God were to be consulted, that they might know
his will, and approve the things that were more excellent,
being instructed out of the law, and able to reprove the
darkness of the world and the sins by which it was filled with
unrighteousness.
It was the prayer of our Lord Jesus, Sanctify them by thy
truth; thy word is truth. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the
poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach
deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the
blind ; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the
LAW PREACHED BY THE GOSPEL. 335
acceptable year of the Lord." It is impossible tbat he should
habitually, in the synagogues, expound such passages as the
Cist chapter of Isaiah, and instruct his disciples to preserve
a politic silence as to the sins which those passages rebuke, as
to tlie oppressions which they forbid, since it was plain to all
that the 58th and 59th chapters particularized the very sins
of which the 61st proclaimed the remedy. He never taught
his disciples to be afraid of announcing to the whole world
under the gospel any thing that the prophets were command-
ed to communicate under the law. On the contrary, " What
I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light, and what ye
hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. And
fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the
soul."
He would not permit his preachers to consult human preju-
dices, or to take human laws or customs for their guide in
preaching. He would not suffer the word of God to be made
of none effect by human precept or tradition. " In vain do
they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments
of men." The teaching of human slavery, the admission of
it into the church of God, the implication of its just authority,
would have set the gospel against the law, the morality of the
New Testament against that of the Old, the conscience in-
structed by the ajiostles against that instructed of God in his
word. The admission of human slavery, the wickedest crea-
tion of human law, is one of the most dreadful examples on
record of making the word of God of none effect, not merely
by the power of tradition, but the licensing of crime ; one
of the most sweeping and destructive instances ever known
of the corruption of piety and the debasement of God's wor-
ship, by teaching for doctrines the commandments of men ;
nay, it is the doctrines of devils set in the place of God's
teachings ; for human slavery, in its perfection, defiles and
destroys all the commandments of the decalogue. If there
were this fatal incongruity and opposition between the Old
336 CONCEALMENT FOEBIDDEN.
and New Testaments on so vital a question as that of the na-
ture of sin or its treatment ; if the Old were distinguished hy
the fear of offending God, but the New by the fear of offend-
ing man ; if the Old spoke out fearlessly against men's sins,
while the New took up the line of a cautious policy, making
the great rule of preaching the truth to be the rule of giving
none offense to any man, and carefully concealing such truths
as might produce disturbance ; then would the proof of a di-
vine inspiration be greatly weakened, if not wholly destroyed,
and one half of God's word would be effectually neutralized by
the other. But there is no such imperfection, no such contra-
diction.
On the contrary, Paul expressly denounces all such carnal,
fearful, dishonest policy, abhorring either the concealment or
corruption of the word of God, by flattering words and the
cloak of covetousness. " We have renounced the hidden
things of dishonesty ; not walking in craftiness, nor handling
the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the
truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in
the sight of God." It was the very object of God, by the
power of the truth, with the Holy Spirit, to produce a fear-
less, holy, testifying church ; and he committed the truth
to his people, with the assurance of the Holy Spirit to accom-
pany it, that they might conquer the world in righteousness.
What a monstrous conclusion, therefore, to suppose that
through the fear of persecution or disturbance God would
have the preachers of the gospel keep back or veil the
righteousness of his word ! How absurd to suppose that
the work of the new inspiration would be to make men
afraid of the old ! that the work of the Comforter would be
to teach men to hide what God had revealed, and to keep
back, from a cunning expediency, through fear of trouble,
what he had instructed the old prophets to proclaim in the
face of death !
CHAP TER XXIX.
The Argument op Silence Considered.— The Same Argument as to other Monstros-
ities Under Roman Law. — Infanticide. — Wives as Property.— New Testament
Reprobation op Slavery from the Old. — The Divine Reprobation of American
Slavery, and Light as to our Duty.
From the large space given to the denunciation of the sin
of oppression in the Old Testament, and from the fact of the
crime of slavery having been extirpated from the land of
Judea, we should not expect to find it often referred to, or
by name prohibited, in the New Testament. If Ave should
find a perfect silence in regard to it, this silence could not be
pleaded in its favor. If the Saviour never encountered it,
there would be no occasion for him to denounce it by name.
It would be a monstrous conclusion to aver, on this account,
that he did not agree in the reprobation of it by the word of
God in the Old Testament. If the mere absence of a pro-
hibition of any sin by the Saviour and his apostles is to be
taken for a justification of it, thei'e is almost no crime that in
some form may not be justified. When John was beheaded
by Herod, the disciples of the murdered prophet took up his
body and buried it, and went and told Jesus. Not a word
did he say in condemnation of that murder. Are we there-
fore to conclude that an oath to commit murder, and a murder
committed for the keeping of such an oath, are right, or that
in a ruler they are excusable or acceptable before God, or that,
when we see such crimes committed, we are to keep silence
in regard to them, and on no account to rebuke them ? Or
would it be proper to conclude that Christ and his apostles
never taught any thing against particular sins but what is
recorded in the New Testament ?
338 INIQUITIES OF ROMAN LAW.
The three great relations in private life, says Blackstone,
are, 1. That of master and servant ; 2. That of husband and
wife ; 3. That of parent and child. He then goes on to con-
sider the responsibilities and duties, the rights and obligations
of all these parties.*
Under the Roman law, slavery being legitimate, the slave
had no rights, and the master could treat him as a thing or a
brute beast at pleasure. Under the same law the husband
had almost unlimited control over the wife, exercising the au-
thority of an absolute despot, even in the matter of life and
death. By the same system the power of the father over his
children was that of the master over his slaves ; he could sell
his children, could imprison, scourge or punish them in any
manner, however atrocious, even after they were grown up.f
He might decree them to death when born, if he preferred
not to rear them, infanticide being thus as legitimate an ele-
ment of paternal authority as the breeding of slaves is of the
domestic slavery in the United States. The children were
considered, like slaves, part and parcel of the goods of their
father, so that they might be disposed of by him just like
slaves or cattle. With respect to the right of sale, they were
in a worse position than even slaves, in that they were re-
leased from his power only after a thrice repeated act of sell-
ing. Likewise, " as any thing became a person's property, by
being possessed by him for a certain space of time, so a wife
became the lawful property of her husband." He could re-
pudiate her at pleasure.;];
Now, in every one of these relations, the Roman laws and
customs stood point blank opposed against the divine law.
In neither of them could any other rule be right than that of
a divine revelation. In every one of them there is clear and
explicit instruction in the Old Testament. If now, in the New
* Blackstone's Comm., cli. iv.
f Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. xliv.
X Fuss' Roman Antiquities. Sec. 82, 476, 481.
SILENCE CAN NOT SANCTION SIN. 339
Testament, the filial relation or the marriage relation is recog-
nized as of God, and its duties are enjoined under his au-
thority, while, nevertheless, the sacred writers are perfectly
silent as to the abuses of those relations, and the crimes com-
mitted against them under the law of the Romans, will such
silence answer for the allowance and sanctification of such
abuses ? Can an argument be sustained that because neither
our Lord nor the apostles denounced the despotism of the
father 0ATer the child, and of the husband over the wife, there-
fore the divinely appointed paternal and marital authority in-
cluded and sanctioned that despotism ? Could it be argued,
because wives are commanded to obey their husbands, that
therefore the Roman institution of marriage was ordained of
God ? or because children are to obey their parents, therefore
the fathers have the right to sell or put to death their chil-
dren ? No more can an argument be sustained that because
our Lord and his apostles taught servants to obey their mas-
ters, therefore they were the property of their masters ; or
because our Lord and his apostles did not say that Roman
slavery was wrong, therefore both it and American slavery
are right, and have the sanction of the Almighty.
Yet this very argument of silence is relied upon for the
defense of slavery, as being a system not inconsistent with
Christianity ! It is affirmed that the Lord Jesus Christ did not
rebuke slavery, and therefore it is presumption in any human
being to denounce it as sin. Neither did the Lord Jesus re-
buke idolatry. These apologists for slavery probably are not
aware that never in one of the evangelists is to be found a
word against idolatry, no testimony of Christ against it, nor
any direction to preach his gospel against it. Does this prove
that therefore idolatry is not inconsistent with Christianity,
or that because Christ did not denounce idolaters, therefore
it is presumption in us to proclaim the gospel against them ?
Does this prove that true piety includes idolatry as one of its
elements? Just as clearly it proves this, as our Lord's
340 SILENCE NO SANCTION OP SIN.
silence on the subject of slavery proves that the true divinely
appointed system of domestic service includes the right of
property in man, the right of holding men as slaves.
The most earnest defenders of the Bible against the charge
of sanctioning slavery, instead of throwing themselves upon
the truth, instead of demonstrating the reprobation of slavery,
have resorted to the supposition of a most unworthy expedi-
ency in concealing the judgment of God against this sin.
Even Mr. Barnes has intimated that if the apostles had pro-
claimed in so many words that slavery was a heinous sin in
the sight of God, they would have been regarded as disturb-
ers of the public peace, etc. If it had been conceded to be a
wrong, then the apostles might with true expediency have de-
nounced it as sinful, for it would be plain that it could not be
tolerated for a moment. But it is argued that while it was
not yet admitted to be wrong, it was expedient for them to
avoid its repx-obation !*
Now it is unaccountable that the great fact should be so com-
pletely overlooked, that in the very reference of their hearers
to the word and will of God, on this subject, they did repro-
bate slavery ; they could not possibly avoid it. They did this as
plainly as they reprobated murder. Paul did it when he in-
structed Timothy how to preach the gospel. He referred him
back to the law of God against men-stealers. He referred him
to that law as in full force. Indeed, to what and to whom does
our Lord Jesus himself continually refer all men, as the rule
of duty, the guide of life, under all circumstances ? to the
Old Testament Scriptures, to the law of God, to the words
of God by Moses and the prophets. When a man became a
Christian, if he were a Jew he knew that slavery was for-
bidden ; if he were a Pagan, he was referred to the word of
God for instruction. He could not be a Christian without
studying that word, and in it he would find that the oppres-
sion of his servants in any way was forbidden of God, and
* Barnes on Slavery, page 291, etc.
THE RULE AND THE EVIDENCE. 341
that the holding of them as slaves, as property, was forbidden
on pain of death.
Men say, " Show us some instances of dealing with slave-
holders in the apostolic churches. If we only had one such
case it would be a guide."
The epistle to Philemon is precisely such a case. It was
given for that very purpose. If Onesimus were once a slave,
then it is incontrovertibly a declaration that he could no longer
be held as such. If Philemon had been a slaveholder while a
Pagan, it is plain that he could not be such as a Christian.
If men will resist such evidence, or distrust it, in support
of a practice known to be wrong, stronger evidence would be
of little avail. It is one of the qualities of divine light not
to force itself upon the soul ; but if, having eyes, men see
not, and ears, they hear not, neither will they be persuaded
though one rose from the dead.
God did rebuke and forbid this iniquity plainly enough.
And now for men to say, It is not set down by name, there-
fore it is not sinful, argues not doubt, but obstinate blind-
ness.
When the crime of slavery disappears from the world it
will not be imagined that the Bible ever sanctioned it in any
way. It is not named by name in the New Testament, neither
is it in the Old Testament ; but the act in the Old Testament
is denounced, and this edict against it is referred to in the
New. One whole epistle on this subject is enough ; and if
in any previous epistles it had not been referred to, it would
be because the divine Spirit knew that that epistle was to be
added. The principles laid down forbade slavery utterly, and
rendered it impossible. What need of any thing more ? In
the first churches not a slaveholder was to be found. Jewish
masters were not slaveholders, and they certainly did not be-
come such on becoming Christians.
To teach a sin as expedient, or to leave a gross iniquity
doubtful, would be to destroy the possibility of holiness.
342 RIGHTEOUSNESS IMMUTABLE.
God will beax* with a small amount of piety ; but he will not
endure a corrupted piety, a perversion of it. He can save by
a little truth ; but he will not endure error in the place of
truth. He can endure with much long suffering the vessels
of wrath fitted for destruction ; but when sin comes to be
vaunted as holiness, when it is taken into the church, it is
death. If a wickedness be fallen into, but admitted, con-
fessed, it may be pardoned ; but when it is taught as of God,
when doctrines of devils are boasted to have the sanction of
the Saviour, then indeed it is time for God to work. If the
foundations be destroyed what can the righteous do ?
Here then, in the Old and New Testaments, we find, on this
subject, the leading elementary statutes laid down, the neces-
sary result of God's own justice, and the determination of what
is just and right among men. It is impossible that these
principles can be just and righteous in one age, and unjust,
unrighteous and impracticable in another, or just and right-
eous for the government of a nation of two millions of
people, but unjust and unrighteous for a nation of thirty
millions. It is impossible that what in God's view was just
and benevolent between man and man eighteen hundred years
before the coming of Christ, can be unjust and unbenevolent,
or its obligation nullified, eighteen hundred years after Christ.
But if there were any doubt, the matter is decided by distinct
reference to these very laws as our rule of duty under the
gospel ; and the Old Testament Scriptures, in all their parts
and detail, are said to have been given and written for our in-
struction, and to be profitable for our discovery and applica-
tion of God's righteousness.
And when an apostle by divine inspiration commands mas-
ters everywhere to give unto their servants that which is just
and equal, it is not merely that which the natural conscience,
uninstructed by the divine word, affirms or intimates to be
just and equal, which would be a rule unreliable, uncertain
and variable in the extreme, differing according to every
THE WORD FOR AiL TIME. 343
man's moral character and notions of exj^ediency, but that
which the word of God declares and defines to be just and
equal, that which the Old Testament Scriptures reveal and
enjoin on this very subject as the will of God. And the very
first article of that justice and equality or equity is, that no
man shall hold or treat any other man as property, that no
human being shall make merchandise of man. And a second
great ruling article of justice and equality from masters to
servants is, that no man shall use his servant's service with-
out wages, stipulated wages, according to mutual bargain
and agreement, on grounds of equality and justice on both
sides.
It is beyond question that the minuteness and particularity
of detail in the statutes and commentaries of the Old Testa-
ment, on this great commanding subject of human economy
and morals, were intended for all future time, and not for the
Jews or the Jewish dispensation merely. Not more certain is
it that the profound and inexhaustible mines of coal, now
being wrought for the wants of the world's inhabitants, were
laid up by creative and forseeing wisdom for the supply of
those wants, and were designed to be used, as men are now
using them, for the progress of civilization and social comfort,
than that the instructive, comprehensive, far-reaching princi-
ples and laws in reference to domestic service, inwrought in
the revelation of the Old Testament, were set there for the
instruction and guidance of this present age. And they are
as much more important for our instruction and guidance
now, and as much more obligatory on us for examination and
obedience, than upon the Jews merely, as the character and
welfare of a hundred millions of people are more important
than of two millions. And the great obligation of righteous-
ness resting now upon the church of God and the ministry is
that of promulgating anew and enforcing in all their spiritual
and universal authority these denied and impiously violated
344 A RACE OF STRANGERS.
principles and laws of common morality and justice from
man to man.
We have among us a people branded as a strange race, a
race set apart by our laws, prejudices, judicial decisions, for
moral assassination and destruction ; a race crushed beneath
the most horrible, hopeless, galling system of perpetual slavery
the world ever knew ; a race consigued by our very religion
— perverted for the purpose — as the subjects of avarice and
rjroritable lust ; a race dehumanized, disfranchised of the very
personality of manhood, for the purposes of uttermost and
unimpeded oppression ; branded by law as things, that they
may not have the rights and protection of persons, but ad-
mitted by a fiction as persons, that they may be the subjects
of such punishment and injury as mere things could not be;
persons when their owners can be benefited by the fiction,
things when themselves could have any defence against their
owners, by being considered as persons.
"We have this race of strangers, stolen at first, flung by
piracy upon our shores, as smuggled goods might be thrown
upon the beach by smugglers, to be snatched up and sold by
shore thieves, complex in the crime ; stolen at first, propa-
gated afterwards, and the race a stolen race ; every babe new
born, new stolen, branded from the birth as property. We
have this race, from whom we tear by human law the divine
seals of marriage, and of parental and filial love and obliga-
tions ; burning and searing from out even the mother's soul,
by the sacrament of property, by the hot iron of that con-
viction from the birth of belonging to another, even the ma-
ternal instinct, so as to reduce it to the level of the mere
animal impulse "of the hen or the partridge."* We have this
race, whom we have so unnaturally defrauded even of the intelli-
gence in which brutes might be nurtured, and so violently and
perfectly divorced from that which belongs to their very nature
by the ordinance of God as his children, that when they grow
*See the testimony in the South Side View of Slavery, by Rev. Dr. Adams.
OTJE DUTY TO THEM.
345
up under our nurture and admonition, under the training of
the slave system, they are not able to conceive the nature of
the parental or the filial relation, or the meaning of the sacred
■word father !*
"We have this race, concerning -which, the sentiment of per-
verted justice, the instruction issued from the highest tri-
bunal of justice in our country, is just this, that black men
have no rights that white men are bound to respect ; and the
social despotism and practice growing out of this judicial in-
struction, the practical treatment of this devoted race, is the
carrying into demonstration of the theory that they are stuff
only for slaves, the lineal, legitimate subjects of interminable,
nnalleviated, remorseless cruelty, hopeless because hereditary,
and remorseless by the very aid of the church and its minis-
ters sanctifying it with unction, in the name of the Lord ;
pacifying and stupifying men's consciences with lies, daubing
the walls and palaces of this iniquity with their untempered
* Adams' South Side View.— The
infamous maxim, partus sequitur ven-
trem, is a manufacture of heathen
slave law, adopted from Paganism,
and baptized by slaveholding church-
es in the name of Christ. It is as-
serted by Christian theologians to be
a maxim of nature, justice, religion
and divine providence 1 Tet the very
code of Roman law, out of which this
diabolic doctrine is drawn, to be trans-
figured with the sacredness of the
Christian religion, contained also the
admission that " all men by the law
of nature are born in freedom ;" and
slavery was defined as being " con-
trary to natural right," and capable
of being constituted only by positive
law against the law of nature and of
right. Moreover, " in order to deter-
mine the question of a child's free-
dom or servitude, the whole period of
gestation was taken into view by the
Roman jurists; and if at any time
between conception and birth the
mother had been for one instant free,
the law, by a humane fiction, supposed
the birth to have taken place then,
aud held the infant to be free born."
From all such mixtures of humanity,
the slave laws of Rome, as adopted
by a Christian people, are purified,
and no instinct of benevolence is
suffered to co-exist with them ; and
that which even the natural con-
science of a Pagan condemned as
against nature and right, is declared
to be the perfection of righteousness
both natural and divine. — Report of
Synod of North Carolina on Slavery*
1851 ; Southern Presbyterian Re-
view, 1857; Gibbon's Decline and
Fall, chapter xliv. ; Edwards on
Roman Slavery, Bib. Rep., vol. G, p.
419; Becker, Rom. Ant., Slavery,
Bib. Sacra, vol. 2. Potter, Gr. Ant.
346 A RACE OF STRANGERS.
mortar, and promising peace and prosperity in such wicked-
ness.
We have this race, a race ot strangers, and it is inevitable
that we ask what are the principles and rules of conduct which
God would have us adopt towards them. What is our duty
to them in God's sight ? We turn to the Old Testament for
light, and Ave find it written, " The stranger that dwelleth
with you shall be unto you as one born among you ; and
thou Shalt love him as thyself. Cursed be he that per-
verteth the judgment of the stranger."
We then say, by the logic of the gospel, by the inevitable
enlargement, advance and comprehension of love from the
Old Testament%to the New, that whatever obligations of
tenderness, charity and kindness were imposed of God in
reference to strangers upon the Hebrews, are double upon
ourselves ; for all are one in Christ, and all brethren, neither
Barbarian nor Scythian, nor bond, nor free, being any other
than brethren, to be loved and treated alike as we, in similar
cases, would be treated ourselves. Would we be held our-
selves as slaves ? Would we, under any circumstances, con-
sent or be willing to be the property of other men, as our
owners ? If not, the logic of the gospel, the logic of love,
declares our condemnation, if we hold others in slavery. Out
of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant.*
* On the wickedness of the maxim, spared to raise a cry against Mr. Wil-
partus sequitur ventrem, See Stroud, berforce and the other friends of the
Laws relating to Slavery, ch. L, and slaves in this country. It has become
Prop. 12, p. 99; also Goodell's extremely difficult to counteract the
American Slave Code, 83 and 248. effects of this powerful combination.
Compare a passage on the atrocity of No man can venture to write in de-
slave legislation, in the diary of Sir fence of the negroes without exposing
Samuel Romilly (Memoirs, vol. hi., himself to a prosecution." This was
pp. 337-343). "No pains have been written as late as 1818.
CHAPTER XXX .
With the Old Testament in Existence, ant new Command against Slavery Uk-
necessakt.— The Absence of Slavery the Natural Result of the Old Testament
Laws.— But if Slavery Had Been Sanctioned of God, it Would Have Filled
the Land.— TnR Jurisprudence of the Land Would Have Been Occupied with
it.— The Gospels Would Have Been Filled with Proofs and Pictures of it.—
A State of Morals Would Have Been Found Such as Grows Out of it.
We shall show that no argument can be set up in behalf
of slavery from the Greek words used to describe the cus-
tomary domestic service, as it was encountered by our Lord
and his disciples in Judea. With the Mosaic laws and the
prophets as the rule of faith and practice for the nation, and
with the instructive record in Jeremiah xxxiv., slavery could
not be tolerated. It can not be denied that the laws against
man-stealing, holding and selling, were in full force. The laws
against making merchandise of man prevented every possibil-
ity of the slave traffic, which certainly did not exist. The law
forbidding the restoration of fugitives was equally sacred,
equally binding, and there is no proof of its having been dis-
regarded or obsolete. The laws for the benevolent treatment
of strangers were the same as at the beginning ; precepts as
well known as any in the decalogue, and very distinctly re-
ferred to by our Saviour.
It was therefore not necessary in the Gospels to issue any
new commands against the crime of slavery, with the pages
of the prophets and the law blazing with denunciations against
every one of its elements, and the original crime of slave-
making condemned, along with the crime of murder, to the
punishment of death. The possible existence of slavery
under the Gospel, among those who admitted the authority
348 JUDEA FREE FROM SLAVERY.
of the Scriptures, was not even supposed ; and the instruc-
tions given to masters in the New Testament rendered such
an enormity as a Christian slaveholder, a man claiming prop-
erty in man, and yet pretending to be a Christian, impos-
sible.
From the latest utterances of Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Zecha-
riah, Nehemiah and Malachi, under the solemn impression
produced by their assurances of vengeance from the living
God against an oppressing nation and people, we should ex-
pect to find just what Ave do find in Judea, under our Lord's
ministry, an entire absence of any indication of the existence
or the practice of slaveholding. We should expect to find
the very system of hired labor, and of voluntary domestic
service, which we do find. Our Saviour no more encounters
slavery than he does idolatry in the land. And the fact of its
absence from Judea, the fact of the singular freedom of this
people from this one sin, with all its train of abominations,
while the whole Roman world was filled with it, and groaning
under its 'oppressions, would of itself go far to prove that it
must have been, forbidden in the Jewish law. Nothing less
than the strictest divine prohibition could have kept it out,
could have kept the avaricious nobles and landholders from a
traffic so lucrative as that in slaves, from a claim so infernally
attractive as that of property in man.
If God had, by divine revelation, given over a race of hu-
man beings into the possession of another race, to be enslaved
by them, and their posterity converted into chattels, stamped
and used as property, bought, sold, conveyed as merchandise,
put into social pens, or contuberniums, and propagated as the
most valuable of all stock ; the stock, its increase, and the
privilege and the right of breeding, being constituted and
transmitted as an inheritance for the children and children's
children, of the dominant race, to the latest generation, thus
appointed as slaveholders by the Almighty ; if such had been
the will of a pretended divine revelation, accepted as such,
JUDEA FREE FROM SLAVERY. 349
there would have been some trace left of the operation of such
an edict, such a will ; there must have been some remnant of
an estate so vast, so inalienable, so multiplying.
A property thus sacred and self-propagating, devised and
appointed of God as a legacy to his own chosen people, could
not be, or become, like other riches, which take to themselves
wings ; they could no more fly away and disappear, or evap-
orate, than the landed estates of Judea could go off in ele-
mental smoke, or the mountain ranges of Horeb and Sinai
could soar away on wings as eagles. The land would have
been full of this heaven-sanctioned human wealth ; for of all
kinds of wealth and modes of money making, this would have
constituted the sole exception to the great and terrible
rule, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of
a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of
heaven.
Although a merchant with his camel could not, yet a drove
of slaves, a procession reaching from the open door of the
ark on Ararat to the river of Egypt and the last day, would
be " bound for the kingdom," and the owner would drive in,
as God's under shepherd, in the care of a property more sa-
cred than the cattle on a thousand hills. The love of money
in this shape — an inheritance devised of God and sent down
to posterity, and his own people constituted his trustees and
owners for themselves and for their children — so far from
being the root of all evil, would be the spring perennial of
ever growing good.
It is impossible, under these circumstances, but that such a
vine, so planted of God, and cultivated under his command
and blessing, must have filled the land with its fruit, must
have been like the vine which he brought out of Egypt, send-
ing her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river.
The hills would have been covered with the shadow of it, and
the boughs thereof would have heen like the goodly cedars.
For God himself, having prepared room before it, and issued
350 JURISPRUDENCE OF SLAVERY.
orders for its treatment, would have caused it to take deep root,
and to fill the land. And every owner, every heritor of such
consecrated property, every trustee for his children of such
investments in the merchandise of immortality, would have
been seized and inspired with a holy greed of gain, a sancti-
fied and sanctifying avarice of such possessions.
It is impossible that under such securities and safeguards,
such insurances not only of the property in perpetuity, but
such guarantees for its demaud, such provisions for a never-
failing ambition after it, such pledges for a perpetual high
rate of such stock in the market, such a commanding high
price, and contrary to the rule of money among the Hebrews,
such a living inalienable usury reverting to the owner ; it is
impossible that this species of property, of all others, should
have ceased out of existence.
And if it had not ceased, but, according to the pretended
sanction and command of God, had gone on increasing from
generation to generation, then there would have been some
evidence of its existence. A continually increasing body of
jurisprudence would have been requisite in regard to it; just
as, in our own country, the growth of such jurisprudence has
filled the land, and overtopped and borne down all other laws
as inferior, till in the short space of less than a century it asserts
and holds supremacy in the United States Supreme Court of
Justice, and interprets and commands the Constitution. A
system of legislation for it, not against it, would have been
seen, not only at its foundation, but growing up from it,
springing out of it, necessitated by it, every step of the
way.
There never yet was a nation in which slavery was a funda-
mental institution, sanctioned, admired, venerated and profit-
able, and boasting of the seal of heaven, where it did not
enlarge and increase ; never one, where its patronage and
care did not constitute and occupy the ruling policy; never
one where its laws did not stand out unmistakable and severe ;
NOTHING OF IT IN JUDEA. 351
never one where its existence and its progress were not pal-
pable, as a matter of undeniable history.
But in the Jewish state there is no such race, nor any trace
of its existence ; there is no such legislation, but the contrary ;
there is no such history, nor any appearance or action of the
institution or element of slavery, or the propagation or in-
crease of a slave population. There are none of the inevitable
and unmistakable signs, concomitants and consequences of
such an institution ; no markets for human beings, nor mer-
chandise in them, nor any traces of the existence or acknowl-
edgment of such property, in any transactions of wills, invest-
ments, exchanges, appraisements, mortgages, sheriffs' sales,
settlements of estates ; not to speak again of what in the very
constitution of the Jewish State was rendered impossible,
the hunting for fugitives, the provisions against their es-
cape, the securities for their recapture, trial, and return into
slavery.
Much use has been attempted of the argument of silence,
alleged especially in the New Testament. But this argument,
in view of the certainty that if slavery had been a thing sanc-
tioned of God it must, by the fifteen hundredth year of the
Jewish State, by the process of patronage and propagation
through fifteen centuries from Moses to Christ, have filled the
land, comes to be of prodigious power against the possibility
of its existence. There would be no possibility of writing five
books of Greek, Roman, or Egyptian history, so frank, une-
laborate, unaffected, so full of pictures of every-day life, such
a series of photographs of customs, laws, social, domestic and
civil manners, institutions and observances, so artless, so with-
out concealment, so self-evidencing in reality and truth, and
so full of knowledge and instruction as the Gospels, and the
Acts of the Apostles, without the omnipresent and prominent
institution and customs of slavery in those countries coming
out, and the sentiments, morals and manners produced by it,
as well as the laws governing it, and keeping down the vie-
352 INCREASE OF IT IN ROME.
tims of its cruelty. There would be no possibility, if it had
been an ordinance appointed of God, and existing fifteen hun-
dred years, of having it left in doubt, or capable of being
brought in question, whether it was a reality in the land, or
whether Christ and his apostles approved or disapproved
of it. Silence in regard to it, and the exclusion of its evi-
ence from the pages of such historic volumes, could only be
effected by stratagem, by art, and maintained for a pur-
pose, by a violence of concealment contrary to historic
truth.
Before the Grecian and Roman empires have attained one
half the duration of the kingdom of the Jews, the germ of
slavery has grown among them from a seed to a forest.
Without being divinely planted or appointed, without any
assertion or pretence on the part of historians or commen-
tators on the laws and institutions of those States, of its ever
having been revealed from heaven as a divine inheritance, or
a social oppression agreeable to the divine will, slavery runs
on as if it were indeed divine, and it only takes a few centu-
ries to absorb nearly all forms of domestic service in the un-
paid, enforced, unmitigated condition and institution of abso-
lute chattelism. Slavery characterizes and fills the country,
through the enforced ignorance and immorality of the slaves,
and inevitable pride, luxury and cruelty of their owners, with
all its peculiarities of law, licentiousness, despotism, and every
abomination. Its presence can not be concealed, and its pro-
gress is as the slow consuming stream of lava down garden
slopes and vineyards to the sea.
According to Gibbon, the number of slaves in the Roman
empire had increased, under the reign of Claudius, till it
equalled the number of free inhabitants. From the time of
Augustus to Justinian there may be reckoned three slaves to
one freeman, so that, out of a whole population of twenty-eight
millions in Italy, twenty-one millions may be set down as
INEVITABLE RESULTS OF SLAVERY. 353
slaves. The prodigality of wealth in this single species of
property (revealed from heaven as an abomination worthy of
death) came to be, where a divine revelation was unknown,
almost incredible. Ten and twenty thousand slaves were
sometimes owned by one person.
Out of all this there "grew what might have been expected,
under the darkness of Paganism, but what must have been still
worse had the sin been perpetrated along with Judaism, and
what must be worse than either, if it be maintained under the
light of Christianity, a state of society unexampled since the
deluge, for its revelry, abandonment and wantonness of de-
pravity. Inhumanity and cruelty in sentiment and on princi-
ple carried to an art ; the tenderness even of woman's nature
changed into a fiendlike insensibility, or even delight, in the
infliction of pain on others; inventions of new atrocities, subtle
and devilish, cruelties practiced for mere variety of recrea-
tion ; man-stealing, sodomy, pederasty, all those iniquities
and abominable hideous caricatures and deliriums of depravity
hinted at in the Epistle to the Romans ; fornication and adul-
tery established in a svstem of law, in the forbidding of the
matrimonial contract among slaves, just as at the South ; all
the tempests and fermentations in the State, and in social life,
consequent on such abominations, and developed in history ;
rebellions, insurrections, devastations, servile wars, vast mas-
sacres, tortures, crucifixions, amphitheatrical butcheries, gladi-
atorial wholesale murders for the people's sports ; luxury,
idleness, dissolution, along with the malignity and cruelty of
fiends, taught and fostered both in the higher and lower
classes ; barbarity and licentiousness perfected into a science,
but the victims of such ferocity and lust unconsciously revenging
themselves, as a dead body sometimes does upon its dissect-
ors ; fatal diseases fostered and festering, pestilences raging in
the body, as well as sins gangrening in the soul, and making
society a mass of moral putridity and misery. Such was the
result of slavery in Rome ; such would have been its re-
354
INEVITABLE RESULTS OP SLAVERY.
suit in Judea, had it ever been established and perpetuated
there.*
* Consult, for proof in detail, Smith's
Roman and Grecian Antiquities, ed.
Anthon ; Gibbon's Decline and Fall ;
Becker, Roman Antiquities; Fuss,
Roman Antiquities, Part I ; Edwards,
Roman Slavery ; Eschenberg, Greek
and Roman Antiquities ; Grote, His-
tory of Greece; Archb. Potter,
Arclueologia. When any master
was murdered by a slave, it was a
law in Rome that all the slaves who
wore under the roof of the deceased
at the time of the murder should be
put to death, and all who had received
their freedom. An instance of the
execution of this decree to the letter
occurred in the year 61, the very
year, it is supposed, of Paul's arrival
at Rome. The whole body of slaves
belonging to Pedanius, amounting to
at least four hundred, and including
many women and children, were sac-
rificed, though confessedly innocent ;
a most frightful example of the atroc-
ity of the laws which regulated the
relations of slave to master, and, it
may be added, of the wickedness and
atrocity of the relation itself, of which
all cruelties aad depravities of life
and morals are but the natural result.
The law under which they were put
to death was passed by the Senate
(see Tacitus, Ann. B., 13, 33) some
three years previous. The populace
opposed the execution, but the ma-
jority of the Senate maintained it, and
Nero lined the streets with troops to
keep down the mob. Tacitus gives
the speech of Caius Cassius, one of
the senators, against repealing or sus-
pending the decree, His arguments
were worthy of the slave democracy
of modern times. " At present," said
he, " we have in our service whole
nations of slaves ; the scum of man-
kind, collected from all quarters of the
globe. Who can hope to live in se-
curity among his slaves, when so large
a number as four hundred could not
defend Pedanius Secundus ?" The
argument was that the four hundred
innocent should be put to death, to
strike terror among the millions. Tac-
itus, Annals, B., xiv., 42, 45. Com-
pare Tholuck, Nature and Moral In-
fluence of Heathenism ; Stroud's
Slave Laws, ch. ii., Of the Incidents
of Slavery; Becker, in Bib. Sacra,
vol. 2 ; Kitto, Cyclop. Bib. Lit. Art.
Slave. Neander, Ch. Hist., v. i.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Examination of Greek Usage in the New Testament. — Terms of Service and
Servants derived from the Hebrew, with the old free Hebrew Meaning,
and not the meaning of slavery. — usage in the gospel of matthew.
In the examination of passages in the New Testament
bearing on this subject, especially those in which the Greek
terms for servants, servitude, slaves or slavery occur, we have
to bear in mind that, while the language of these terms was
Greek, the signification was to a great degree Hebrew. The
ideas for those terms, as they lay in the Hebrew mind, were
different from the same in the Greek mind, so that the He-
brew law and idea govern the Greek words, not the words
the idea. It was an inevitable result of the discipline of the
Mosaic laws, with the instructions of the Prophets, that the
conceptions of the Jews, as to social life and liberty, were so
far raised above those of the whole world beside, that neither
the language of the Greeks nor of the Romans was adequate
fully to convey them. Neither the Greek nor Roman term
for wife could convey the sacredness of its meaning in God's
Word.
The signification of such terms inevitably comes from the
Hebrew through the Greek of the Septuagint translation, and
is to be corrected by the Hebrew. " All the world," remarks
Lightfoot, " that used the Old Testament at those times (unless
it were such as had gained the Hebrew tongue by study) used
it in the translation of the LXX., or the Greek — the quota-
tions of the penmen of the New Testament out of the Old
Testament might be examined by the Greek Bible."* The
* Lightfoot, vol. xii., 587, vol, iii., 62, 310. Coxybeare and Howsox, L,
pp. 11, 32, 43. Hug., Intr. N. Test. Alford, N. T. int.
356 NEW TESTAMENT USAGE.
terras for servants, servitude, bondage, et cetera, were the old
Hebrew terms, drawn through the medium of the Septuagint
translation, and possessing the old Hebrew signification. The
The Septuagint translators sometimes used SovXog for nsy,
sometimes rrcug, sometimes olkbtt]c. But there was no Greek
word for servant answering to the Hebrew "lay, free from the
possible signification of bondage, in the way of chattelism, or
human beings held as property. The Septuagint translators
having applied dovXoc so freely as the rending of t^v, which is the
word for a free Hebrew servnnt, dovXoe mnst have come to
be as common a usage in Judea to signify free Hebrew ser-
vants, as it was in classic Greek to signify slaves. The ordi-
nary meaning of it, therefore, in the New Testament, is not a
slave, but a laborer for wages on a voluntary agreement. The
comparison of passages proves this.
" Besides the writers of the New Testament," says Pro-
fessor Planck, " the Alexandrian interpreters have also trans-
ferred from the Hebrew usits loquendi new significations to
many Greek words. The cause of this some have supposed
(and not without a semblance of truth) to lie in the poverty
of the Hebrew ; whence it has happened that since one word
in that language often serves to express several ideas, the
same variety of signification has been transferred to a Greek
word, which perhaps properly corresponds to it only in one
signification."* It is not so much a proof of poverty in the
Hebrew tongue as of freedom and nobleness in the people,
and righteousness in their laws, that the language had no
word for slavery. The Greek word for slave and slavery,
being used by the Septuagint interpreters to translate the
Hebrew words for servant and service, received thenceforward
from the Hebrew a meaning of freedom, which they did not
bear in what is called classic Greek. Consequently, the same
Greek words which, outside the New Testament, might mean
slave and slavery, can not be proved to possess that meaning
* Planck. Greek Style of the New Testament. Bib. Rep., vol. i, p. 686.
NEW TESTAMENT USAGE. 357
in it, but are rather proved to possess the Hebrew idea, which
they must have been used to convey. The general presump-
tion in regard to the word dovXoq, in the New Testament, is
that it means a free servant, such as the Jews were accus-
tomed to, such only as the law of God permitted, suoh as was
familiar in the social life and households of the country. For
it is taken from the Hebrew vocabulary, with the Hebrew
meaning, and the meaning of slavery can not be supposed or
admitted, without positive proof in the context, or in the na-
ture of the particular case. General instructions to servants,
and to masters in regard to the treatment of servants, must
inevitably mean such kind of servants as the law of God per-
mitted, and not slaves, which the law of God forbade. It
would be as absurd to suppose the Bible issuing instructions
to slaveholders for the treatment of slaves, as if they could
righteously hold slaves, as it would to suppose similar instruc-
tions given to horse thieves for the treatment of their stolen
property, or to fornicators for the treatment of their mis-
tresses, as if fornication and horse-stealing were no crimes.
That may be said in regard to the word dovXoq, and kindred
terms in the New Testament, which has been beautifully and
truly remarked by Professor Tholuck concerning some other
phrases in Greek, used for religious ideas, that " in connection
with the Christian dispensation they are all surrounded with
new light, and advanced to a higher sense. The lexicographer
of the New Testament has, therefore, first of all, to make the
Old Testament idea the object of his research, and to express
it exactly ; then, by a careful comparison of the parallel pas-
sages, and from the consciousness of Christian feeling, to ob-
tain a clear view of the Christian signification ; and finally to
point out what is the point of connection between the idea of
the New Testament and that of the Old."*
* Tholuck on the Lexicography of volume of the Biblical Repository,
the New Testament. The article pp. 552-568.— Also Dr. Robinson,
translated from the Latin by Dr. Philology of the N. T. Bib. Rep.,
Robinson, is to be found in the first vol. 4.
358
NEW TESTAMENT USAGE.
EVIDENCE FROM THE GOSPEL OP MATTHEW.
The first occurrence of the subject of service, in any form,
is in Matthew viii. 5-13, the application of the centurion to
Jesus for the healing of his servant. The word here used
three times for the servant in question, is irate, answering to
the Hebrew ">??, naar, boy, or youth. Bloomfield remarks on
the passage, that rralg is often used, both in the classical and
The reader may consult, also, on
this subject, in the same volume,
J. A. II. Tittman's admirable article
on the grammatical accuracy of the
writers of the New Testament. He
here remarks on the importance of
Ernesti's direction " to inquire re-
specting words and phrases express-
ing things about which the Greeks
were accustomed to speak ; and first,
■whether such single words are spoken
in the same sense in which the
Greeks used them." This article was
published in the first volume of the
Biblical Repository, in 1831. See
also in the same volume the article of
Haiin on Interpretation.
Likewise, Prof. Turner's Lectures
on the Claims of the Hebrew Lan-
guage and Literature. He remarks
that " the Greek of the New Testa-
ment is Hebraistic." " If words oc-
cur in the New Testament, the mean-
ing of which is modified by that of
analogous words in Hebrew, it be-
comes necessary for every one who
would thoroughly comprehend his
Greek Testament to study his He-
brew Bible."
See also Hug on the Prevalence of
the Greek Language in Palestine in
the age of Christ and the Apostles
Hug's Introduction to the New
Testament. "In the holy city itself
whole congregations of Jews who
spoke Greek were established." Bib.
Pep., vol. L, p. 530-552.
Also J. A. H. Tittman. Causes of
Forced Interpretations of the New
Testament. See particularly the re-
marks on the word <5u<aioc and its
cognates. K The Alexandrine dialect
was the language employed by the
Greek interpreters of the Old Testa-
ment." " The style of the New Tes-
tament is mixed and made up of
words and idioms borrowed from sev-
eral languages, and particularly from
the Hebrew." The importance of
the true historical as well as the gram-
matical interpretation is noted. Bib.
Rep., vol. i., pp. 470-487.
Pfanukuche. Aramean language
in Palestine in the age of Christ and
the Apostles. The writer notes "the
unexampled firmness with which the
Palestine Jews, after their return
from the Babylonish exile, remained
faithful to their ancient manners and
customs." Also, under the dominion
of the Romans in Palestine, " the en-
tire internal administration of the gov-
ernment, the courts of justice, etc.,
remained without any important
change ; the nation were permitted
to retain their code of laws, so insep-
arable from their religions." Bib. Rep.,
vol. L, p. 33.
Consult also Prof, Tholuck on tho
Method of Theological Study and In-
terpretation. Bibliotiieca Sacra,
vol. i., pp. 200, 3-40.
Also Prof. Stuart on the meaning
of Krptoc. Bib. Rep., vol.L, p. 736
EVIDENCE FKOM MATTHEW. 359
Hellenistic Greek, for dovXog, servant, like pner in Latin. It
is manifest that there is no indication of slavery here.
In Matt. ix. 38, "The laborers are few ; pray that he would
send forth laborers ;" the word used by our Lord is epydrai,
answering to the Hebrew "i£s>, ovedh, a working man ; the
Greek word here certainly meaning servants, hired laborers,
but not slaves.
Matt, x., 23, " The servant is not above his lord; enough
for the servant that he be as his lord ;" dovXog is used in both
cases ; no meaning of slavery attached to it, but signifying a
free, voluntary service, the service of Christ.
Matt.'xii., 18, "Behold my servant, whom I have chosen,
my beloved," etc., o irate \iov ; in the Hebrew, "hs*, my ser-
vant.
Matt, xiii., 27, 28 ; the parable of the householder sowing
good seed. "The servants said unto him," dovkol, with no
indication of any but free service.
Matt, xviii., 23-35 ; the parable of the king and the wicked
servant, who owed ten thousand talents. Here the words
used are dovXog and ovvdovXog, employed nine times, but with
no signification of slave or slavery, since it is the king who
takes accounts of servants entrusted with the disbursement of
vast sums of money, and who have fellow-servants owing them
in like manner, in accounts of business. It is not a process
of servitude, but of official business, or mercantile transac-
tions, here brought to view, and of debts among freemen
under responsibilities to the law. Bloomfield remarks on the
word dovkwv, here used, that it does not mean slaves, but
officers in the receipt or disbursement of money, of what sort
it is not certain.
Matt, xx., 1-16. — Here we have an important passage, the
parable of the householder hiring his laborers for his vineyard.
It is in the market place that he hires them, going forth,
morning, noon and afternoon, for that purpose ; and the rep-
resentation intimates that there were many standing idle,
3 CO USAGE IN MATTHEW.
waiting to be hired, offering their services. There is no hint,
no intimation of there being any such thing as slavery known,
any such servants as slaves to bo bought and worked as prop-
erty, without wages. There is no slave-market, and the ser-
vants are hired from themselves, and neither bought nor hired
from any third persons. There is no such possibility or cus-
tom conceived of. These servants were freemen, who hired
themselves out, and this, manifestly, was the prevailing, cus-
tomary style of service, just as in England at this day, or in
free New England, where no such thing as slavery is known.
And the master of the vineyard agrees with the servants
for so much by the day, and in the case of the latest hired,
he promises to give to them whatever is just as their icages.
He does not intimate that he will give them a peck of meal a
week, and a fustian jacket and trowsers, and that the provis-
ion of such food and clothing as he chooses for them will be
wages sufficient for their work. Whatsoever is just, I will give
you. Upon this very principle, and with a view to this very
passage, the injunction was issued by the apostle, " Masters,
give unto your servants that which is just and equal ;" such,
wages as their labor demands, such as will be a just equiva-
lent for thek work.
The word used in this parable is epydrai, workmen, labor-
ers, as in Matt, ix., 38.
Matt, xx., 26 ; " "Whosoever will be great among you, let him
be your minister," didaovoc, servant, "and he that will be first
among you, let him be your servant," dovhog, servant of all
work y not necessarily slave ; and tho exigency of the case
forbids that our blessed Lord could have commanded any of
his disciples to be as slaves one to another, as chattels, as each
other's property. Call no man master in such a sense. It
was not that kind of miserable, utter degradation, at the will
of another, that was here enjoined, but humility, and the ser-
vice of love, as in Galatians, Ye are called unto liberty by
love, to serve one another, not to be one another's slaves. A
THE HOUSEHOLDER IX MATTHEW. 301
free service is here enjoined, the service of freemen and not
of slaves, the service of voluntary love, in lowliness of mind,
each esteeming others better than themselves.
Matt, xxi., 33-42 ; the parable of the householder planting
a vineyard, and building a tower, and tetting it out to hus-
bandmen, and then sending his servants to collect his rents ;
Tovg dovXovg, the servants, used three times, verses 34, 35, 30.
It certainly does not mean slaves, for the scene of the parable
is in Judea, the vineyard is a Jewish vineyard, the servants
are supposed to be Jews, and not enslaved heathens ; and the
whole parable is as truly a representation of social life, in the
relation between masters, or employers, and those employed
by them, as the preceding parable of the householder going
forth tx> hire workmen for his vineyard. There was not an
individual who heard this discourse of -Christ who could have
understood him to mean any other thau hired servants, ser-
vants on wages, but not slaves. The householder sent these
servants to the husbandmen, to receive of the fruit of the
vineyard. They were entrusted with the collection of the
rents in the productions of the land leased, or rented.
The householder being a Jew, the demonstration is perfect,
his servants being Jews, that they could not be slaves, and,
therefore, the word SovXovg is demonstrated as possible to be
applied, as beyond all question it was applied, to such servants
as were free servants, and not slaves. The Jewish law forbade
any Hebrew from being held as a slave, over and above the
principles and statutes, that, likwise, strictly applied, would
forbid holding any human being as a slave.
Matt, xxii., 2-14. Here the parable is of the king who made
a marriage supper for his son, and sent forth his servants to
summon the invited guests to the wedding. The phrase used
for servants is rovg dovXovg, and it is employed five times, in
verses 3, 4, 6, 8, and 10. There is no reason to suppose that
it means slaves ; and in the 13th verse the word employed ia
dianovoic, attendants or servants, just as diaicovog and dovkog
10
3C2 FAITIIFUL AND WISE SEEVANTS.
arc interchanged in the preceding case, Matt, xx., 26, " Then
said the king to his servants. Bind them hand and foot," etc.
These last would be more likely to be slaves than the first ;
yet the word in the last case is didnovoc, and in the other
dovXog. There is no proof whatever that slaves are here in-
dicated ; but if they were, it is not a scene in Judea, but
abroad, in the dominions of some oriental potentate.
Matt, xxiii., 12. "But he that is greatest among you shall
be your servant," 6idnovoq ; a repetition of the injunction of
humility in Matt. 20 : 26, and the word employed signifying a
free, voluntary laborer or attendant.
Matt, xxiv., 45-51. "Who then is a faithful and wise ser-
vant, whom his lord hnth made ruler over his household," etc.
Here the words employed are dovhog and ovvdovXovg, ajid the
word dovXog is employed four times, in verses 45, 46, 48 and
50. There is no meaning of slave in it, for, again, it is sup-
posed to be a scene of household life among the Jews, who
kept no slaves, and at whose feasts and scenes of recreation
and enjoyment the very relatives and members of the house-
hold thought it no degradation to serve with the servants, if
there were need of such service, as in the case recorded in
John xii., 2, where " they made him a supper, and Martha
served." The servants in this case are faithful and wise, types
of the willing and faithful disciples and servants of the Lord,
voluntary servants and not slaves. The good and the bad are
contrasted, and their responsibility to their Lord is solemnly
set forth.
So in Luke xvii., T, where our Lord was speaking to the
Jews, to his apostles, and generally to the disciples (it was in
the neighborhood of Jerusalem), "Which of you having a
servant ploughing, or feeding cattle," etc., dovXov and SovXol ;
and the service is signified by the word dta/covei, not dovXevei.
The agricultural lite and service of Judea, as in the days of
Boaz, with the picture of his servants at their work, was a life
of free service ; there were no slaves. There is no evidence
FREE SERVICE. 3G3
of any change for the worse, in this respect, from the time of
Boaz to the days of our Lord Jesus.
Matt, xxv., 14-30. This is the parable of the man travel-
ing into a far country, and calling his servants, and delivering
to them his goods, his money, to trade with for him in his
absence. The words here used are dovXog and Sov Aoi'c, em-
ployed six times, in verses 14, 19, 21, 23, 26 and 30. It was
not the employment of slaves to invest capital, and make
money thereon, or to act as brokers, or exchangers, or com-
mission merchants. There is no proof here that slaves were
meant, or were in the minds either of the speaker or the
hearers. On the contrary, as our blessed Lord was discours-
ing of things familiar to his hearers, and which were well
understood as illustrated by things familiar to their own ob-
servation, the presumption is that neither he nor they referred
to, nor would think of, any other kind of factors or servants
in such commission business than voluntary, free servants, em-
ployed for wages, on a compact of their own.
Matt, xxvi., 51 ; "Struck a servant of the High Priest."
Here the word used for servant is dovkov, certainly not a
slave, for the Jewish priests kept no slaves ; the law did not
permit it. This man was a Jew, and could not possibly have
been a slave. ]STo Hebrew could be, or could be held, as a
slave, and this man was certainly a free servant, follower, re-
tainer, perhaps one of the vrr^perai, or officers of Judas'
band. Yet he is called a dovXoq, and the case is proof abso-
lute that the use of that word does not of itself prove the
existence of slavery.
Matt, xxvi., 58. Peter, in the high priest's palace, went
in and sat with the servants, to see the end. Here the word
used for servants is vrrrjperojv, used of the same class and con-
dition as the word douAoc, in verse 51. It is said to mean
here the ministers, attendants, or beadles of the Sanhedrim.
But the Sanhedrim had no slaves. The servant of the high
priest, whose ear Peter cut off, may have been one of these
364 VARIETIES OF SERVICE.
very officers, one of the vrrrjperaL There is no evidence to tho
contrary.
The fiovXot were a more generic class, the vmjpRrai, specific ;
and in John xvii., 18, we have the two together. " And the
servants and officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals ;
for it was cold ; and they warmed themselves ; and Peter
stood with them, and wanned himself." But again, in verse
26, the kinsman of Malchus, the servant of the high priest,
whose ear Peter cut off, is called one of the servants of the
high priest, elg tu>v dovXcov. And in the third verse Judas
is said to have received a band and officers from the chief
priests and Pharisees, comprising the whole rabble that rushed
upon Jesus in the garden, and whom Peter encountered with
his sword. The dov^og, whose ear he cut off, would appear to
have been one of the virrjperai, but neither of these were
slaves.
Generally the attendants upon any work, the working
agents, were called vrrnpirai,. John xviii., 30, our Lord says,
"If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants
fight" — i'-iiptrai. But our Lord's disciples and servants are
called dlatiovot, dovXoi, or vm\pkrai, the words being inter-
changeable, as for example, John xii., 26, ray servant, diaicovog ;
John xiii., 16; Luke xvii., 10; John xiii., 16, and xv., 15 ;
the servant not greater than his lord — not servants but friends
< — we are unprofitable servants, dovXoi — and so in other places.
Luke i., 2, ministers of the word, vm]pt:rai. In Liddell and
Scott, vmjpt:T?ig is set down as a laborer, helper, assistant, ser-
vant, underling, inferior officer. " In Xenophon, vmjpzraL
were a number of men in immediate attendance on the gen-
eral, as aides-de-camp or adjutants. Cyr. 2, 4, 4; 6, 2, 14,
etc., etc." Compare Matt. xx. 26, page 360.
Mutt, xxvi., 69. Peter sitting in the palace, a damsel,
ncudioiin, comes to him. She is called, in Mark xiv., 66, one
of the maids of the high priest, fiia tCjv rraidioictiv, and in
Luke xxii., 56, a certain maid, ~aidionr}, and in John xviii.,
USAGE IN MARK. 365
16, 17, her that kept the door, the damsel, -nai$ioKr\ r\ dvpwpog.
" The word properly signifies a girl ; but, as in our own lan-
guage, it is often, in later Greek, used to denote a maid ser-
vant. The office of portei*, though among the Greeks and
Romans it was confined to men, was among the Jews generally
exercised by women." — Bloomfield in loc.
See also Acts xii., 13, 14. There the doorkeeper, or the
servant whose business it was to attend upon the door, was a
Jewish damsel, iraiS'ioni], named Rhoda, herself one of the
disciples, and on such terms of intimacy with the circle of
brethren and sisters praying in the house, that she ran back
instantly among them, and told them that Peter had come,
and was at the gate, knocking ; so intimately acquainted with
Peter that she knew him by his voice, as he stood outside the
gate and demanded admittance, and so full of joy at his ar-
rival that, actually forgetting to open the gate, she ran into
the midst of the prayer-meeting with the news. Now these
maids, or damsels, whether of the high priests, or of the dis-
ciples, in their families, were not slaves, but answered to the
condition of the free maid servants under the Mosaic laws in
the Old Testament.
USAGE IN THE GOSPEL OF MARK.
Mark, i., 20. They left their father Zebedee in the ship
with the hired servants, fuodurcdv. No slaves here ; yet ser-
vile work to be done by servants for wages. The difference
between jxtodojrog and dovXoq may have been the same as be-
tween the Hebrew T|S'», hired servant, and the t35>, servant,
neither being slaves, but free.
Mark ix., 35. If any one will be first among you, he shall
be last of all, and servant of all, didaovoc; ; in other places, as
Matt, xx., 26, 6ovi,og.
Mark x., 43. Whosoever will be great among you, shall be
your minister, didaovog ; and whosoever will be the chiefest
among you, let him be the servant of all. dovXog.
3GG USAGE IN MARK.
Mark xii., 2, 4 ; the parable of the husbandman letting out
the vineyard, and sending Lis servants to receive the fruits,
as in Matt, xxi., 34. The word for servant is dovXov, certainly
not a slave, the same being of a Jewish husbandman.
Mark xiii., 34. The Son of man on a far journey, giving
authority to his servants, and to every man his work ; dovXoig,
not slaves in a Jewish household.
Mark xiv., 54, 65. Peter sitting with the servants, and the
servants smiting Jesus, virnptrai.
We may note in this gospel, as in Matthew's, concerning
the application of dovXog to denote the affectionate, voluntary
servant in the household of faith, in the family of Jesus, that
our blessed Lord never would have employed a word so base
as that of slave to signify a relation so free, honorable, volun-
tary and glorious as that of the Christian brother, the loving
servant for Christ's sake, in Christ's love, the child of God,
the happy, willing, loving servant of the Saviour. God is not
a slaveholder, but a Father. Satan is the great slaveholder,
but God rejects the service of a slave, and will have only the
voluntary, loving service of a freeman. The Greek word
dovXog, employed by the divine Spirit in the New Testament
to signify a servant of God, and applied even to the divine
Redeemer in his work of matchless, voluntary love, received
its elevated meaning from the Hebrew -ray, and is no more to
be debased writh the idea of slavery than the Hebrew law
and language itself. The word dovXog is a Hebrew proselyte,
and has been baptized, and thus only is admitted into the
Christian family, its Pagan wickedness being washed away.
CHAPTER XXXII .
Evidence from Luke. — Pictures op Free Jewish Households. — Pakarle of the
Prodigal Son.— Nothing of Slavery to be Met with.— Only Free, Voluntary
Service, as Under the Old Testament Laws.
In the first chapter of Luke we find dovXr) used for maiden
and handmaiden of the Lord, certainly not slave, (i. 38, 48.)
And ~at.6ug, child (54), for his servant Israel, and the same
(69) for his servant David. Ch. ii., 29. "Lord, now lettest
thou thy servant depart," etc., dovXov oov, not thy slave. Luke
vii. 2, 3, 7, 10, the centurion's servant who was sick. Here
the word used in verses 2, 3, 8 and 10, is dovXog. But in verse
7, the centurion himself speaks, and calls his servant rralg fiov.
It has been contended that being a centurion he must have
had slaves ; but even if he had, there is no proof of it, and no
proof that this irate, was a slave, or that there was a single
slave in his household. The word -rate is proof absolute that
the word dovXog does not necessarily indicate a slave. We
find -rralg and dovXog often used indifferently. In Matthew,
viii., 5-13, in the same case, the centurion uses the word naig
in verses 6, 9, and his servant is not called dovXog at all ; and
the sacred historian uses the word naXg, not dovXog, in verse
13, his servant {jraXg) was healed the same hour.
Now the argument here is triumphant, so far as the proof that
dovXog may be used as signifying the same with rralg, that is,
may be used of a free servant, and does not necessarily imply
a slave. There is no proof whatever that the servant of this
centurion was a slave, but every indication to the contrary.
Supposing this man a proselyte, then his household must have
been ordered according to the Jewish law, according to God's
368 USAGE IN LUKE.
covenant with Abraham. But his servant may have been a
freeman, and freemen were still termed dovXog, so that this
Greek word may mean a free person.*
Luke x., 2, 1, laborers for the harvest ; and, " The laborer
is worthy of his hire," epyardi, kpydrnc. The occurrence of
this proverb intimates a state of society in which the working
class are all hired laborers, workers for wages, servants, not
slaves. It is a proverb that grows out of the custom of free
and not slave labor ; but it comes directly from the word of
God, and in connection with the Old Testament laws on this
subject, it here proves that involuntary servitude, unpaid la-
bor, the labor of slaves without hire, is wrong. It is a sin
against God, the denunciation of which covers every case.
" Wo to him that useth his neighbor's service without wages,
and giveth him not for his work." If it was not permitted to
take a man's service without wages, much more not to take
himself as a chattel, a slave. If it was forbidden, in every
case, so to oppress a man as to compel him to labor without
hire, much more was it forbidden, much more was it criminal
in the sight of God, and a much greater cruelty against man,
to degrade the man himself to the condition of a horse, or an
ox, compelling him to labor perpetually without wages, as a
slave.
In other words, if to steal the man's wages was forbidden,
how much more to steal the man himself. And especially
when, as in the case of American slavery, the stealing of the
man is followed by the stealing of his children, and his chil-
dren's children, to all generations, as a legal consequence and
necessity, the children of the stolen parents being affirmed to
have been born in slavery, and therefore having no right to
any other status, that statics itself being affirmed, even by di-
vines, to be the holy providence of God, irreversible and right-
eous ! "What exasperation and complication of iniquity !
* Eschenberg. Grecian Antiquities, § 99. Edwards. Slavery in An«
cient Greece. Bib. Rep., voL 5.
SERVANTS AT THE WEDDING. 369
Luke xii. 37-47, the parable of the servants waiting for
the Lord's return from the wedding. Blessed are those ser-
vants, or dovXoi ; and the word servants is used six times in
that form, dovXog. That it does not mean slaves is very clear
from the 3 7th verse, where it is said that their Lord would gird
himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and come forth
and serve them. The ot\;ov6juoc in this parable, the faithful
and wise steward, verse 42, is called, 43, 45, 40, SovXog, and
his fellow servants are called, verse 45, naldag aai naidiotcag,
and the household described being a Jewish family and house-
hold, the words used mean just what the same words would
mean in the Old Testament, a household of free servants, with
the head servant, or steward, over the Avhole. Such an office,
as far back as the days of Abraham, was that of the eldest ser-
vant of his house, Eliezer of Damascus, Gen. xv. 2 and xxiv. 2.
Always, in all Hebrew families, it was a free and honorable
office and service, and the stewardship was over free ser-
vants, according to the strictness of the Jewish law, and not
slaves.
Our Lord depicted, in this parable, a family under that law,
and not a Greek or Roman family or household, not the do-
mestic institutions of any heathen nation, but of the Jews ; and
of the Jews as subject to the Mosaic laws, and maintaining
them. The responsibility of the servants, and of the steward
as a faithful and wise servant over the rest, was what Peter
and the other disciples, who asked if the parable applied pai--
ticularly to them, could well understand, in the system of free,
voluntary Hebrew service, but nowhere else ; and nowhere
else could any original be found of the grateful, affectionate
communion and relation of mutual confidence, labor and re-
ward, between the master of the household and his servants.
If the household service of the Hebrews had not been a free
service, if their servants had not been voluntary servants for
wages, those customs would have been totally unfit for an
illustration of the service of the Saviour and of the household
370 SERVANTS OF THE PHARISEES.
of faith. The service and responsibility of freemen, working
for reward, and not of degraded chattels without wages, were
as necessary for the ground-work of these beautiful parables
as the system of Jewish sacrifices was essential for a prophetic
illustration of the atonement by the Messiah.
The same is true of the domestic pictures contained in the
fourteenth chapter, which are all Jewish, founded on the very
scenes beheld by the Saviour in the house of one of the chief
Pharisees, with whom he was a visitor. The whole parable,
verses 16-24, is of Jewish life. It is a Jew, like the Pharisee
that had invited our Lord, Avho is supposed to have made a
great supper, and bidden many ; and the servants whom he
sends are Jewish servants, who could not possibly be slaves ;
there could be no such thing as slavery in existence in a Jew-
ish household, under the law of God.
It is not a luxurious, proud Roman noble's household of
chattel slavery and pomp that our blessed Lord is here de-
scribing, but a household of which the very family in whose
presence he was teaching, at whose board he was sitting, of
whose hospitality he was partaking, formed the counterpart ;
and he was appealing to their own well-known and familiar
habits and usages. In this parable, as in the preceding, the
word SovXog is the word employed for servant, as it is the
Greek word commonly used in the Septuagint translation of
the Old Testament, where the servants of the Hebrews are
mentioned ; and it means the same kind of servant here that it
does there, the free Hebrew servant, but not the slave. The
word dovhog no more means slave in New Testament Greek
than it meant slave in the Greek of the Septuagint, where it
was employed to denote the voluntary, free, hired and paid
servants in the families of the Hebrews.
Luke xii. 36-47. " Blessed are those servants, dovXoi,
whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching." The
description is of free servants, not slaves, these latter not be-
ing the subjects of reward for good behavior. It is a pic-
PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL SON. 3*71
tore of free Jewish service, and the word dovlog is used in
verses 37, 38, 43, 45, 46, 47, six times. A peculiarity in this
parable, or rather a peculiar proof of the freedom of all this
service, is the fact that the word okovo/ioc, that faithful and
wise steward, a freeman, unquestionably, is used as synony-
mous with dovhog, and dovXog as a synonyme of okovo/ioc, af-
fording another demonstration of dovAoc as not necessarily
meaning a slave, but employed to designate a voluntary paid
servaut.
Luke 15: 11-32, the parable of the prodigal son. Three
things of great importance are to be marked in this parable.
First, the servants in this household are fuadioi, hired servants.
They are all such ; there is no hint of any other ; for not only
is it the exclamation of the prodigal, "How many hired ser-
vants of my father have bread enough and to spare," but,
when in the agony of self-abasement, he deems himself un-
worthy of so much as the lowest place, and selects the most
inferior station in his mind, as the only thing he could dare
ask for, he says, " Make me as one of thy hired servants !"
Second, these hired servants are called generically dovXoc ;
a distinct proof, added to many others, demonstrating that
dovXog does not necessarily mean slave, but may mean a free
servant, and generally in the New Testament does mean such,
being generally used for the servants among the Jews, who
were all free. " But his father said to his servants,'''' dovXovg,
verse 22. Again, in verse 26, the same dovloi, servants, are
called TTcuduv, certainly not slaves ; the eldest son describes
them as ncudow, servants.
Third, the eldest son describes his own service of his father
under the word 6ovXevo), which, had it been used respecting a
servant, it would have been contended was a proof positive of
the servant being a slave. But here the service of a free per-
son, and not only a free person but a son, and not only so, but
the eldest son and heir, is called dovXevetv ; showing that no
argument can be instituted either from the use of this verb or
372 FREEDOM OF THE SERVANTS.
from the corresponding noun, to prove that the service indi-
cated is that of slavery. It may be that of persons perfectly
free. The Septuagint uses the word dovXevoei in Ex. xxi., G,
and elsewhere of the service of a Hebrew, voluntary and free.
Fourth, to these considerations it may be added that when
the prodigal son was reduced to misery in his wanderings
into a far country, he went and joined himself (i:aoX/i>'j6)j),
engaged himself, bound or apprenticed himself, to a citizen of
that country, who sent him into his fields to feed swine. This
was analogous to the case supposed in Lev. xxv., 47, of a He-
brew falling poor, and selling himself to a heathen. If the
transaction had been described in the customary language of
the country of old, it would have been that his employer
bought him, and that he sold himself. If that citizen had de-
scribed the transaction, he would have said, " I have purchased
me a new swine-herd to-day ; I met a wandering Jew, and
bought him for so much money, and sent him at once to feed
swine." Yet the purchase was a voluntary contract, as vol-
untary on the part of the prodigal selling himself as on the
part of the farmer hiring, or as the Hebrew phrase was, buy-
ing him. The whole parable is a most striking picture of a
state of society where freedom and not slavery prevailed.
The /uoOioi, the hired servants, did not have to pay their own
board out of their wages, nor was it considered that they had
just and equal w7ages, because they had an allowance for their
food, and sufficient sackcloth for their garments. They had
food enough and to spare, besides their just and equal wages.
The poor miserable prodigal, even after his engagement as
a swine-herd, was still a free servant, on a voluntary engage-
ment, although perhaps his master would have described him
as being his money, and as having been bought by him. Yet
he was at perfect liberty to leave his service, and return to
his home if he chose, as the result proves. His master had
no power or claim over him as property, and no hint is given
of any imagination or purpose of sending a marshal or a blood-
THE UNJUST STEWARD. 373
hound after him as a fugitive slave. lie takes his line of
inarch direct for his father's house without so much as con-
suiting with his master.
Luke xvi., 1-13, the parable of the rich man who had a
steward, the unjust steward. Compare the oltcovopog in this
parable with that in chapter xii., 42, and it is found that the
office is the same, and the servant holding it is beyond ques-
tion a freeman, as among the Jews he never could be other-
wise, for they received their customs neither from Greeks nor
Romans, nor any other Pagans, but from Moses and from
God.
That the steward here was a perfectly free servant, is plain
from his very trial and dismissal by his master, his employer,
and his own complaint, that having had the stewardship taken
away from him, he was no longer in his master's employment,
no longer had any claim of salary for service, no longer, there-
fore, any means of subsistence ; for he was not accustomed to
labor, he was too proud to beg, and, being turned out of his
stewardship for malversation of office, no other man would
hire him. Now there is nothing described of this steward
peculiar ; such as he was, except, it is to be hoped, his rascal-
ity, such were all stewards, such they always had been, from
the time of Abraham's Eliezer, who was no more a slave than
this man in our Lord's parable was a slave. The office and
the service were always those of freemen. Yet the service
is referred to under the word dovheveiv, proving that that
word in the New Testament means a free service, and not
the service of a slave.
This is strikingly confirmed by our Lord's own argument
inverse 13, "No servant can serve two masters; for either
he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to
the one and despise the other. Ye can not serve God and
Mammon." Ye can not 6ov Xeveiv God and Mammon.
Here (verse 13) the word for servant is olictT?]^, and its appli-
cation is generic, all sorts of servants ; yet in all cases it is sup-
374 CHOICE OF EMPLOYERS.
posed to be a free service, a service of voluntary choice and
contract, for upon that point the pith and gist of the argument
depend. The service supposed is not a compulsory one, about
which the servant can have no will nor choice, nor about his
master, or the choice of a master ; as it is well known no slave
is ever consulted as to whether he will choose to serve his own
master or prefers to run away, or enter into the employment
of another. This attribute of choosing one's employer is the
attribute of a freeman, not of a slave. And while the word
used is olntrng, which here certainly means a free servant, and
is taken generically for all servants, the word descriptive of
the service is dovXeveiv, which, therefore, can not possibly here
mean slave-service, or to serve as a slave.
It is, therefore, proved that a man might be held dovXeveiv
to perform the office of a dovkog, and yet be a free servant,
free to choose his service and his employer, free to continue
in his employer's service, or to quit it, and bind himself to
another, or, in the language of the parable, hold to another,
just as he pleased. Nothing can be more satisfactory than
this demonstration ; the more so because it is generic, intended
purposely to cover all cases, and the same word, used to sig-
nify the service of man, is also used to signify the free volun-
tary service of God, and that word is SovXeveiv. If the argu-
ment had been concerning slavery or slaves, it would certainly
have run in this style, namely, that no man can serve two mas-
ters, for he is the property of one only, and has no will or
choice of his own.
The possibility of a question between the service of two
masters, the possibility of hesitating or doubting, is founded
on the fact of being able to choose, the fact of the service be-
ing voluntary, and not compulsory, a compact with one of the
two, which can not be made with both. Being made, the
whole service of the man choosing that master belongs to him,
and on the part of a faithful servant will be given to him, for
it can not be given to two, and especially if the two are op-
FREE HOUSEHOLD SERVANTS. 375
posed, the servant must inevitably be loyal to the one and
opposed to the other.
Luke xvii. 5-10. The apostles, in answer to their prayer,
" Lord, increase our faith," are addressed by our Lord with
the apothegm, or illustration of the way in which their faith is
to be increased by working. " Which of you, having a ser-
vant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him, when he
has come from the field, go and sit down to meat ?" etc., etc.
Here the word for servant is dovXog, and it is employed three
times, in verses 7, 9, 10, and the word for service is not
dovXeveiv, but diatcovei, verse 8. Several things of importance
in the argument are gathered here.
1. These dovXoi were of the same class with the oiKtrai
mentioned in the preceding chapter as free servants. They
were oherai, servants belonging to the house, and employed
to wait upon table. But they were also dovXoi, employed as
plowmen and herdsmen, laboring in the field and in the care
of the flocks. They were \ucQioi, hired servants, although at
the same time dovXoi, as in the parable of the prodigal son ;
and they were olne-ai, house servants, at the same time, their
service in the house being a diaitoviav, or ministry personal at
the table of the master.
2. These are supposed to be servants of the apostles; that
is the very case put by our blessed Lord ; and, therefore, from
the necessity of the case they could not be slaves, for no He-
brew could either be a slave himself, or hold others as slaves,
as property. This was forbidden in their law, and our Lord
would no more have supposed the possibility of one of the
apostles holding slaves than of his having a dozen wives.
3. The apostles are called dovXoi., and are put upon the same
level, as to our Lord, with the servants of their own house-
holds, that is, persons engaged to a voluntary service, which
they rightfully owe, not as being property or chattels, but as
having chosen their own lord and master, on being chosen by
376 NO PROPERTY IN SLAVES.
him. The whole argument from this case is of extraordinary-
power.
Luke xviii. 22-29, and xix. 8, are passages presenting some
interesting considerations bearing on our investigation. " Sell
all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor," was our blessed
Lord's command to the rich ruler. It is manifest that human
beings could not have been included by our Lord in this
man's property, by the sale of whom, and distribution of the
profits, he was to have treasure in heaven. And so, when he
said, " There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or
brethren, or wife, or children for the kingdom of God's sake,"
there is no enumeration of slaves as any part of the man's
possessions to be relinquished, as there must have been if they
were the most valuable of his properties. And just so in the
case of Zaccheus, " Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give
to the poor ; and if I have taken away any thing from* any
man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold," it is not to
be supposed here that this converted man gives the half of his
slaves, or the profits of their sale, to the poor, or that he has
any slaves among his property. The incidental argument
against the possibility of slavery is worth noting in these
graphic pictui-es of society.*
Luke xix. 13-22. In this passage we have the parable of a
nobleman going into a far country, to receive a kingdom, and
to return. And he calls his servants, dovXovg, or ten of his
servants, and commands them to take charge of his business
(occupy) till he returns. " The word [UpayfiaTEvaaaOE) sig-
nifies literally and in the classical writers, to be engaged in
business ; but here it is used as a deponent in the sense to do
business with by investment in trade." The noun is used
both in the classical writers and the Septuagint to denote a
* The case may remind us of the holder, was accustomed to pray,
anecdote concerning a slave owned " Lord, bless our slave Tom, espe-
by two men, one of whom, being cially my half of himl"
professedly a devout Christian slave-
AovXog NOT A SLAVE. 377
merchant. But the term in Matthew is epyafrodai. — Bloom-
field, in loc.
When lie returns, he reckons with his servants, these mer-
chants in charge of his property, dovXovg, verse 15. Well
done, good servant, dovXe, verse 17; and he gives him au-
thority of over ten cities, and the next over five. Then in
verse 22, Thou wicked servant, dovXe.
It is to be remarked here, 1. It is a clear case of the word
dovXog not meaning a slave. It is not to be pretended that
these servants, dovXoi, were slaves. The business committed
to them, the occupations in which they were engaged, and the
governments with which they were intrusted, forbid any such
supposition.
2. The answer of the servant with the one talent would
have been impossible to put into the mouth of a slave to his
master. It is the answer of a man who conceives himself at
liberty to refuse the service, if he pleases, and to give what
reason he pleases. And accordingly the punishment here is
merely the taking away of the commission and the property
from him, and bestowing it upon another, while the unwilling
servant is dismissed. He is not treated as a slave.
Luke xx., 9-12. A certain man planted a vineyard, etc., the
parable of the wicked husbandman. At the season he sent a
servant, verse 10, dovXov, and verse 11, another servant,
dovXov. Here the husbandman is a Hebrew, the scene being
of Jewish life and occupation, and the servants such as the
Jews were accustomed to employ, such, for example, as we
find in the beautiful descriptions of rural life in the book of
Ruth. There is no possibility of construing dovXov in this
place as meaning slave. It has the same sense, borne by the
same word, in the multitude of cases in the Septuagint, as in
the New Testament, signifying a servant, but not a slave.
Luke xxii., 2G, 27. " He that is chief as he that doth serve.
Foi: whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that
serveth ? But I am among you as he that serveth," dianov&v.
378 AovAof; not a slave.
Compare John xiii., 16. The servant is not above his master,
dovXoc; being used the same as dtanovog, and in this case the
signification of slave in either passage impossible. Compare,
also, Phil, ii., 7. " Took upon him the form of a servant ," cer-
tainly not of a slave, but a servant, who voluntarily endures
" for the joy set before him."
Luke xxii., 50. A servant of the high priest, dovXov. Com-
pare Matt, xxvi., 51, and John xviii., 10. The servant in this
case being a Jew, Malchus by name, we have another demon-
stration of the employment of the Greek word SovXoq to sig-
nify not a slave, but a free servant. For such Malchus cer-
tainly was.*
Luke xxii., 56, 57. "But a certain maid beheld him,"
(naidioKy). The word here employed is the same used in
Luke xii., 45, the men servants and maidens, in John xviii.,
17, in Acts xii., 13, in Matt, xxvi., G9, in Mark xiv., 60, 69.
That it here means a free servant, certainly not a slave, is ren-
dered probable by the style of Peter's address : " Woman
(yvvcu), I know him not." This was the manner in which our
Lord addressed his own mother at the marriagef (John ii., 4),
and on the cross (John xix., 26). It is not the mode of ad-
dressing slaves, not the word that Peter would have used,
had it been a slave he was answering.^ Compare the cases
of its use in Matt. 15., 2S, Luke xiii., 12, John iv., 21 ; xix.,
26; xx., 13, and 1 Cor. vii., 16. The manner of address is
that of courtesy, kindness, respect.§
HaididKi] is used so often, in the Septuagint, of free maid-
ens (as in Ruth iv., 12, of the wife of Boaz), that its use in
the New Testament (especially Gal. iv., 22-31) must be judged
accordingly. Only in Acts xvi., 16, is there any application
of it to a slave, the slave only of a heathen.
* See Lightfoot on the passage, \ See yvvai, as used by TTerodotus,
works, vol. xii. p. 39?. Thalia. 134.
f Bloomfield, on John, N. T. § Alford, N. T. Note on John
"A form of address used even to the i., 4. Also Eobixson, Lex., in verb.,
most dignified persons." yvvr/.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Evidence from the Gospel of John and Acts of td:e Apostles.
John ii., 5, 9. The marriage at Cana, and the servants.
His mother saith unto the servants, Sia/covoic, verse 5. But
the servanij§ knew, Stdnovoi, verse 9. Here, also, it is a Jew-
ish household. There are no slaves in the family, but the
usual retinue of servants on a bridal occasion. Had the word
SovXol been used, the meaning would have been the same, not
slaves, but the servants, hired as free servants, according to
the Jewish law.
John iv., 36. " And he that reapeth receiveth wages." The
reapers were not a peculiarly privileged class of laborers or
servants, but were on the same level with all other workmen.
The receiving wages is named as a matter of course. The
possibility is never even intimated of men being compelled to
work without wages, and wages are the certain mark of free-
dom and free labor.
John iv., 40-51. The nobleman at Cana, whose son was sick
at Capernaum. The term for nobleman is BaoiktKog, courtier,
nobleman, according to Robinson and others, " but whether
holding any office or not," says Bloomfield, " or whether a
Jew or a foreigner, is uncertain." "The man seems to have
been a Jew." — Alford, in loc. Capernaum was some twenty-
five miles from Cana, and while he wras returning home, the
servants of his family met him, SovXot. In Cana the servants
are called didtcovoi, in Capernaum, dovXoi. Being both Jew-
ish families, the servants were doubtless free in the one case
as in the other. There was a synagogue at Capernaum where
380 USAGE IN JOHN.
our Lord publicly taught, and where this whole believing
family may have heard him.
John viii., 34, 35, 36. The servant of sin, SoiiXog. We were
never in bondage to any one, said the Jews, but are the chil-
dren of Abraham. How then sayest thou, Ye shall be made
free ? So far as the state of slavery is here brought into view,
it is with reprobation and horror of it, as a state to which no
man could be justly assigned but for crime. Our Lord's ar-
gument is, that freedom from earthly bondage is indeed a
blessing, but that a man might be what is called a free man,
and free born, as they claimed to be from Abraham, and yet
the slave of sin and Satan. But there was another and a
higher freedom, the spiritual, by the truth and the love of it,
and obedience to righteousness ; and if the Son made them
free, then they would be free indeed.
John x., 12, 13. "The hireling fieeth because he is a hire-
ling," ^uoOcorbg, a hired servant. Compare Luke x., 7, " the
laborer is worthy of his hire." It is clear that those employed
in the class of employments here designated were not slaves,
but free hired servants. Compare Luke xvii., 1, " which of you,
having a servant, dovXov, feeding cattle," etc., Troifiacvovra,
feeding sheep, from which it appears that the hou.se servants
and the field servants were of the same grade, and were hired
servants, and not slaves. The argument is very forcible.
John xii., 2. At Bethany, where they made for our Lord a
feast, and Martha served, diquovei, did the work of an attend-
ant, a servant.
John xii., 20. " Where I am, there shall my servant be,"
dtanovog. The word is used to signify a free service, and not the
service of a slave. But the word dovXog being employed in the
same connection, for the same service, also means a free servant.
John xiii., 10. The servant is not greater than his Lord.
Here the word used is dovXog, and the service is the dianoviav,
or ministry, the doer of which is called, in verse 20 of chapter
xii., diaKovog, not a slave, but a free servant. Our blessed
USAGE IN JOHN. 381
Lord himself performed the work of a servant in washing his
disciples' feet. And on that occasion he said, I am among
you as one that serveth, ScaKov&v. Luke xxii., 27. " And if
I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought
to wash one another's feet. For the servant, dovXog, is not
greater than his master." Nothing can be clearer than that
the word here does not mean a slave, but a free, voluntary
servant.
John xv., 15, 20. " I call you no more servants, SovXovg, but
friends. The servant, dovXoc, is not greater than his Lord."
Compare John xii., 26, and Matthew x., 25. The comparison
of passages proves incontrovertibly that it is a free, voluntary
service, and that the word dovXog is used concerning such a
servant, and not to signify a slave.
John xviii., 10, 18, 26, 36. Peter struck a servant, dovXog,
of the high priest. The servant's name was Malchus. In
verse 26 one of the servants, dovXov, the kinsman of Malchus.
In verse 18, the servants, SovXoi, and the officers, vmiptrai.
In verse 3, a band and officers of the priests and Pharisees.
Malchus was one of these, and is called dovXog. He could not
have been a slave, and so here is another incontrovertible in-
stance in which the word dovXog is applied to a person beyond
controversy a free man. The name of the servant of the high
priest is Jewish, as noted by Lightfoot, " Malchus, a name
very much in use among the Jews, Neh. x., 4, 27."* Malchus
and his kinsman being Jews, could not possibly have been
slaves, but, though called SovXoc, were freo men in the condi-
tion of servants.^
* Lightfoot, Hebrew and Talmud- ever, obtained the rights of citizens,
ical exercitations on John. Works, The word, therefore, could not mean
v., 12. slaves, exclusively. Esciiexberg, Gr.
\ In confirmation of this and the Antiq., 99.
preceding testimony as to usage, wo " Slaves," says Archb. Potter, " as
have the knowledge that freedmen long as they were under the govern-
themselves, among the Greeks, were ment of a master, were called oucerai,
still termed ihv/.oi, and seldom, if but after their freedom was granted
382 USAGE IX ACTS.
EVIDENCE FROM THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
Acts ii., 44, 45. "They had all things common. — And they
sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men,
as every man had need." There were thousands in this com-
munity, and they were speedily increased by thousands more.
If slavery had been an institution of God, slaves would inevi-
tably have been among the most valuable of the possessions
of these men. Did they sell their slaves, and put the money
into their Christian treasury ? Did Barnabas do this ? It is
well known that the early Christians applied their offerings
sometimes to the purchase of their brethren out of heathen
slavery. Did they regard them in the church as goods and
chattels ?* The absurdity of the supposition is palpable.
Acts ii., 18. And upon my servants and handmaidens will
I pour out my Spirit, dovlovc and 6ovXae, certainly not slaves-
Acts iv., 25, thy servant David, iraidoe.
Acts iv., 29. Grant unto thy servants, SovXolc, not slaves,
for they are the servants of the Most High.
Acts x., 7. The case of Cornelius, the centurion in Cesarea :
" Two of his household serva/its," oI.ketuv, by no means nec-
essarily slaves/ and as to " those who waited on him? it is
noted by Bloomfield that centurions were allowed to use some
of their soldiers in the capacity of domestics. — BLOOMFiEivn,
in loc. If this man were a Jewish proselyte his household were
under the law of the Jewish Scriptures. Compare Luke xvi.,
13. This word oiKerrjq is employed in the Septuagint where
slave could not be meant. Robinson gives as its just meaning
them, they were dovloi, not being, among the Christians as the sale of a
like the former, a part of the master's slave, hut that the masters set them
estate, but only obliged to some small free. He enjoins the purchase and
services. Potter, Antiq. of Greece, completion of their freedom, and giv-
vol. ii., page 78. ing them trades, that they might sup-
Xkaxder, Church ITist. Works of port themselves. Slavery, he says,
Christian Piety, vol. iii., 35G. would cease if there were a true
* Ciirysostom, cited in Neander, Christian feeling. Neander. Life
affirms that there was no sucli thing of Chrysostom, 414.
USAGE IN ACTS. 383
a house companion. Liddell and Scott, an inmate of one's
house, with instances of its being used for the free women and
children, and ojyposed to dovkoe.
Acts xii., 13, 14. "And as Peter knocked at the door of the
gate, a damsel came to hearken, named Rhoda. And when
she knew Peter's voice, she opened not the gate for gladness,
hut ran in and told how Peter stood before the gate." (See on
31att. xxvi., 69, page 364.) This damsel, -xaidiotcr], was a ser-
vant in a Jewish family, but not a slave. She was a Christian
servant, and the familiarity and affectionate intimacy and
equality of her intercourse in the household, with her joyful
recognition of Peter by his voice, and her subsequent conduct,
are characteristic of freedom, not slavery.
Acts xvi., 16, IV. The damsel, TTaidlotcn, possessed with the
spirit of divination, following Paul and Silas, and crying,
These are the servants of the Most High God, dovkoi. It was
a pagan, heathen city, where this transaction took place ; and
this damsel is said to have brought much gain to her masters,
who were ignorant idolaters, practicing both slavery and div-
ination, as well as idolatry, for gain. She was doubtless a
miserable slave, held in common by them, and exhibited for
the gain of such a diabolical development. In exorcising her
of the demoniac possession, Paul reduced her price, ^o that,
comparatively, she was worth nothing to her masters, ;vho
drew Paul and Silas unto the market place, with the accusa-
tion of being troublers of the city. As in the uproar against
Paul at Ephesus, the trade was troubled, and no crime could
be greater than a reduction in the price of this stock, or the
shaking of its permanence and security in the service of Satan.
John Brown entering into the city could not have produced
greater terror and wrath than Paul and Silas, delivering this
poor slave from the thraldom of Satan, and restoring her to
her senses.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Evidence fiiom the Epistles to tiie Romans and Corinthians — Usage of words
in these Epistles— Moral Argument from both.
Romans i., 1. Paul, a servant of Christ, dovXog. Compare
2 Cor. iv., 5 ; 1 Cor. vii., 22 ; Gal. i., 10 ; Phil, i., 1 ; Col. i., 7 ; iv.,
1 ; 1 Thess. iii., 2 ; 1 Tit. i., 1 ; Phil. i. ; James i., 1 ; 2 Peter i., 1 ;
Jude i. ; Rev. i., 1. The Lord Jesus not being a slaveholder, and
having declared the sense in which his apostles, ministers and
disciples are his servants, that is, his freemen, serving him
from the heart, choosing him, and cleaving to him, by divine
grace, willingly, as their Lord and Master, the word SovXot
applied to them, or dovXog to any one of them, can not prove
that they were slaves, but proves only that this word was in-
controvertibly in use to designate free persons, as, indeed, the
instances of its usage abundantly demonstrate. God would
never have chosen, to signify the exalted, holy, voluntary,
loving service and adoration of a free heart toward the Sav-
iour, a word that meant the chattelism of beasts, the compul-
sory service of a slave.
Rom. vi., 16-22. "To whom ye yield yourselves servants to
obey, (SovXovg and dovXoi ecg v7raKo/)v,) his servants ye are, to
whom ye obey, dovkoi, whether of sin unto death, or of obe-
dience unto righteousness." This is an exceedingly important
passage, even to the end. Several things are to be consid-
ered : 1. The service to which this word dov/iog and the word
vnaKoijv are applied, is voluntary, of free choice, whether the
service is that of Satan or of God. Ye yield yourselves ser-
vants.
USAGE IN KOMANS. 385
2. There is the privilege with the ability of changing both
the service and the master at pleasure, and entering into a
new engagement, freely, voluntarily.
3. When this change is made, it is called becoming the ser-
vants of righteousness, or, as in verse 19, yielding your mem-
bers as servants to righteousness, a voluntary act.
4. The servants of sin are called free from righteousness,
and the servants of God are called free from sin, showing the
service, either side, a voluntary service.
5. The word for obedience and service thus rendered is in
verses 16 and 17 vnaKovo), and in verses 18 and 22 SovXevu.
Here, then, is another case of the verb dovXevo) being applied
to the service of a freeman, as well as the noun dovXog to the
quality and state of a freeman. Compare Luke xv., 29,
where the son says to his father, These many years do I serve
thee, dovXevo), the service of a freeman ; and Luke xvi., 13 ;
No servant can serve, SovXevetv, two masters ; ye can not
serve, dovXeveiv, God and Mammon. Also note in this con-
nection the fact of dovXot and \iioQtoi, being applied to the ser-
vants of the same household, as equivalent terms. The proofs
of this usage, as taken from the Septuagint, and intimating the
same views in regard to slavery in the New Testament as in
the Old, are multiplied.
6. The wages, finally, are mentioned. The service is a ser-
vice on wages, which is the service of a free, hired servant,
and not a slave. The wages of sin is death ; the service vol-
untary ; the wages earned and paid. AovXog, dovXevo, and
dijjoivia (wages) are here applied to one and the same system
of voluntary, paid labor. Compare 1 Cor. xix., 19, For
though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself ser-
vant unto all that I might gain the more ; edovXooa, made
myself a servant, yet, at the same time, eXevdepog, a free
man. Compare also Rom. vii., 6, we are set free from the
law, that we should serve, (dovXeveiv,) in newness of spirit.
There can be no question, therefore, that the words dovXog
17
386 USAGE IN CORINTHIANS.
and dovXeveiv are both used of a free service, the voluntary
service of a freeman.
Rom. xiv., 14. "Who art tliou, that judgest another man's
servant ? o'tKir-qv. To his own master he standeth or falleth.
It is the servant of God that is here spoken of, and the ser-
vice a free service.
Rom. xvi., 1. Phebe, a servant of the church, didnovov*
EVIDENCE FROM FIRST CORINTHIANS.
1 Cor. iv., 1,2; ministers of Christ and stewards, vTTTjperag
and olKovdjxovg. It is required in stewards that a man be
found faithful, olnovuixoi. Compare Luke xii., 42, 43, that
faithful and vnse steward, ol/covo/wg. Blessed is that servant,
dovXog, The argument here, from the use of the words, is
plain and powerful. The steward was a freeman, not a slave
(compare Luke xvi., 1), and the word dovXog is used as synony-
mous with okovo/joc, of the same meaning, applied to the
* Stuart on Rom. xii., 7, and xvi., vants {duabus ancillis, quce ministra
1. On the general Greek usage in Ro- dicebantur, the two maid servants, who
mans and the whole N. T. see Tholuck were called deaconesses), " I can not
on this epistle, ch. i. vs. 1, 17 ; ch. ii. easily believe that deaconesses in
V. 13; hi vs. 4, 19; vi. vs. 16-19. Christian churches were slaves. Nor
" The pious Jews loved to use Bible do I think it very likely that they
phrases in speaking of the things of should be domestic or hired servants,
common life." " The Jews in gen- "We now all know what is meant by
eral, and Paul among the rest, were a deaconess, in Christian writings.
fond of Speaking in the language of But I suspect that Pliny was misled
the Old Testament." Ch. ix. vs. 3, by the ambiguity of the Greek word
24, etc; ch. xi. 12; ch. xii. 7. tiianovoc, which is sometimes used for
See also Hug's Introd. to the New slaves, or such as performed the low-
Testament, pp. 13, 15, 26, 339, 361, est services usually appropriated to
541, etc., and Stuart's Notes, 675. slaves. I say I am apt to think that
Also Dr. Robinson's admirable ar- Pliny was not sufficiently aware of
tide on the Philology and Lexicog- the different meanings of the word
raphy of the New Testament, Bib. dianovoc, deacon, in common use, and
Rep., vol. iv., pp. 154-182. in the ecclesiastical sense. Phebe,
Also, on SiaKovor, see Lardner, v. our sister, a servant of the church.
1, p. 45. Lardner quotes the testi- It does not follow that she was either
mony of Pliny, and remarks, concern- a slave or a hired servant to any one
ing his torture of the two maid ser- member of it." Y. vii., pp. 45, 22.
FREEMEN, NOT SLAVES. 387
same free person. TTrrjptrai, oltcovofioi and SovXoi are applied
indiscriminately to signify the servants of Christ, and diaaovog
often in the same way. (See Robinson on the words.)
Here it is proper to note the forced interpretation of bonds-
men applied by some, as for example, Gonybeare and Hoicson,
as the designation in English of the service, office and em-
ployment of the apostles and preachers of the gospel. They
have taken the bad and lowest signification of the terms,
from Pagan usage, in regard to slaves, and applied that slav-
ish signification, to the highest, freest, most honorable and
voluntary commission and work of Christ's servants among
mortals ! They have gone so far as to render 1 Cor. vii., 23,
" Christ's slave, for he has paid a price for you all."* And
they have translated Paul's injunction to use freedom, thus :
" Nay, though thou have power to gain thy freedom, seek
rather to remain content ;" at the same time acknowledging
that " the Greek might be so rendered as to give directly op-
posite precepts." Whence then this preference for slavery,
and this dreadful attempt to foist it in, and fasten it upon, the
blessed words and doctrine of divine inspiration ?
1 Cor. vii., 21-23. "Art thou called being a servant? SovXoc.
Care not for it ; but if thou mayest be made free, use it
rather. For he that is called in the Lord being a servant,
Sovloe, is the Lord's freeman ; likewise also, he that is called,
beiifg free, is Christ's servant, dovXog. Ye are bought (re-
deemed, jjyopdoOn-e,) with a price ; be not ye the ser-
vants, SovXoi, of men ?" The argument here is the same as
that in regard to a wife who is called, but is the wife of an
unbelieving husband. If he be pleased to dwell with her, let
her not leave him, for she may be the means of saving him.
But if he depart, she is not under bondage, she is free from
him, and from all obligation to him. So if a servant is called,
being a servant, he is not to be troubled by that condition of
* Conybeake and IIowson, Life and Epistles of Paul, vol. i., pp. 39, 159,
436, etc.
388 FREE, BECAUSE REDEEMED.
bondage, as if it were obligatory upon him, for if he may be
made free, if lie can be made free, or become free (el ical
dvvaaai tXevdepoc yeveodai), lie is at liberty to avail himself
of that, he is commanded to become free, rather than remain
a slave. Several things are to be considered.
1. It is not merely a permission, but a command, Use it
rather.
2. The reason, the ground, of this command is, that the
slave, when converted, is the Lord's freeman ; but if he uses
the privilege of his freedom from men, he is still Christ's ser-
vant.
3. He is redeemed by Christ, and must not be the slave of
men.
4. If the state of freedom is his privilege and duty, then,
on the other hand, it follows incontrovertibly that it is the
duty of every master to yield to him that privilege, to let
him go free. If, as a Christian, he is free, and is commanded
to use his freedom rather than remain in bondage, then much
more it is the duty of his master, as a Christian, not to re-
strain him of that freedom, not to prevent him from that
duty, not to deny him that privilege. If the state of freedom
is so much better for the servant, or slave, that he is bound
to use it, if he can become free, then by the same obligation
his master is bound to give it to him, as justice and equality,
as his due, bound to do to him as he would have him do to
himself. This acknowledgement, or gift of freedom, is the
first thing considered in the obligation of masters giving to
their servants that which is just and equal. The first thing,
and without which nothing can bo just and equal, is to treat
them as free, to yield to them their freedom, and to deal with
them as free.
5. It is to be marked that while a general command is
issued to converted persons to remain in the same calling in
which they were found when called to the knowledge of
Christ, one exception is made, and only one is mentioned,
DUTY TO BE FKEE. 389
that of slavery. Out of that calling a man is to hasten as
soon as possible, and as being the Lord's freeman ; and for
plaiu reasons, not only of natural and Christian right, but
because the state of slavery is so infinitely disastrous and
degrading to the moral being, so unfavorable to piety, so in-
evitably interfering with a man's duty to God. That a man
may hope to keep his Saviour's commandments, and grow in
grace, he must, as quick as possible, get out of the state of
slavery. If thou canst be made free, use it rather. Deliver
me from the oppression of man ; so will I keep thy precepts.
Deliver me, that I may keep them.*
1 Cor. xii., 13. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into
one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free,
elre dovXot dre eXevdepoi. And whether one member suffer,
all the members suffer with it, verse 26. On this ground par-
ticularly the injunction to remember them that are in bonds
as bound with them, has its special sacredness of obligation, as
a duty devolving on all Christians, and which, if it were to
the letter fulfilled, would, without any other instrumentality,
in the growth of the Christian church, do away with slavery
from the whole world. But, alas! this power is destroyed
by so large a portion of the so called Christian church taking
the side of the oppressor, and instead of remembering them
that are in bonds as bound with them, remembering them
* See Olshausen, Comm. on 1 Cor., Whitby, 'in loc. ''That the charity
ch. vii., vs. 20-24. Also Doddridge, of Christians was employed to buy
Exp. on verso 23. Doddridge ex- their brethren out of slavery we learn
pounds the verse, " Bo not become the from the apologies of Justin Martyr
slaves of men, since so many evils and and Tertullian, who tell us that the
dangers and snares are inseparable offerings at the sacrament were,
from such a situation." Poole, An- amongst others, employed for that
not. gives the same interpretation, use." See also Neander on the
" Make use of thy liberty rather" See Church in Corinth. History of the
also Lightfoot on verse 23. Lie- Planting of Christianity, 2G3, Bonn's
brew and Talmudical Exercitations ed. Also Neander on Slavery.
on Corinthians. Works, vol. xii. p. Church Hist vol. i., p. 372. Gro-
498. See also Patrick, Lowtii and Tiers, Annot on 1 Cor.
390
DUTY TO BE FEEE.
only to confirm their bonds and defend the system of iniquity
as a righteous institution !*
Compare 1 Peter ii., 16. As free, and not using your lib-
erty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants, SovXoi,
of God. Compare also Gal. v., 13, Ye have been called unto
liberty ; only not for an occasion to the flesh, but by love
serve one another. The expression, " whether bond or free,"
does not necessarily refer to slavery, but may mean merely
the customary servitude of a free Jewish family, as well as
the Pasran relations of servitude.
* Bloomfield on Rom. vi., 18.
" Obedience to God is properly not a
slavery but a service."
Olshausen on 1 Cor. vii., 20-24.
" The relation of slavery is certainly
opposed to the spirit of the gospel,
which makes men free ; and Paul
advises also the converted slaves to
seek freedom if they can obtain it
(of course in a lawful and proper
manner), and the free men in no
manner to trifle away their freedom.
At the same time, if this is not pos-
sible, he exhorts them not to vex
themselves about it, since the freeman
is also the servant of Christ. If thou
canst also obtain bodily besides spirit-
ual freedom, do it rather, for the slave
called in the Lord is by the Lord
made free from all outward power,
therefore it is befitting also that he
should be quite free."
Whitby on 1 Cor. vii., 23. "Have
ye been bought with a price ? Are
ye bought out of servitude by the
charity of Christians ? Return not
again to the service of unbelievers."
Calvin, Ad. Cor. 1, cap. vii. ;
Adam Clarke, 1 Cor. vii. li Do not
become slaves of men. I here reg-
ister my testimony against the un-
principled, inhuman, anti-Christian,
and diabolical slave trade, with all its
authors, promoters, abettors, and sac-
rilegious gains, as well as against the
great devil, the father of it and them."
CHAPTER XXXV .
Evidence from the Epistle to tiie Galatians.— Powee of the Moral Argument.
Gal. iii., 28. There is neither bond nor free ; all one in
Christ Jesus ; dovAoc, eXevdepog, not meaning, necessarily,
slave nor free, but if so, then an argument against slavery.
These distinctions were to be done away in the church. Once
obliterated and abolished there, their abolition would speedily
follow in the world, and slavery would cease everywhere,
would no longer be possible any where.
Gal. iv., 7. Thou art no more a servant, dovAoc, but a son.
In connection with this, take the first verse of the same chapter,
" The heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a ser-
vant, dovXog, though he be lord of all." It is evident that the
apostle does not mean by SovXog a slave. He would not say
that the heir differs nothing from a slave ; he would not say
of Christ, the Lord of all, that he differs nothing from a slave.
The meaning of SovXog here is of subjection to law, and to
tutors and governors, till the time of assuming the heirship ;
even as a Hebrew servant, or dwAoc, by the law, though not
a slave, was under subjection to his master, till the appointed
period of such service and subjection was fulfilled. Just so
the Son of God was made under the law, to redeem them
that were under the law, not under slavery, that we might
receive the adoption of sons.
The condition of slavery is not here referred to, neither in
the whole argument that follows, but simply of bondage to
the observances of the ceremonial law, and to the law as a
condition of life contrary to the law of faith. " Tell me,"
392 MAID SERVANT AND MISTRESS.
says the apostle, "ye that desire to he under the law" (it
was a voluntary thing), " do ye not hear the law ?" He then
illustrates the allegory of Ahraham's two sons, the one hy a
maid servant, iraidtOKn, improperly rendered bond-woman,
since that is not the meaning of the Hebrew term, which is
translated by the Septuagint, iraidioift], and by the English
translators, in the first instance, simply maid (Ilagar, Sarah's
maid), though afterwards they translated the very same word
bond-woman, but without any ground in the original for
such change. The mistress would be called eXevdepa, a free
woman, in distinction from the maid servant, not because the
maid servant was a slave, but, by the terms of Hebrew do-
mestic service, "was under subjection to her mistress during
the time of her contracted service. The mistress of a He-
brew household would be called eXevdepa in distinction from
all her Hebrew servants, who would each be called -naidtoKn,
but not slave; and they also would be each eXevOepa, a free
woman, according to the law, when the legal term of service
had expired. Not one thing more than this distinction is here
brought into view, as is manifest from the opening of the
chapter, where the son and heir is represented under the ap-
pointed condition of a servant, until the fullness of time for
release from it.
This is further illustrated and proved by the contrast, under
the flesh, and under the promise. It will not be contended
that Ishmael was a slave ; yet, if it is slavery and slave law
that is here in view, he certainly was, if Hagar was a slave.
But Ilagar was simply a maid-servant, and Ishmael, being her
son, was not entitled to the promise, which belonged to Abra-
ham's seed by Sarah, his wife. Paul compares the condition
of Hagar and her seed with that of the children of the flesh,
who are not the children of God, unless they become such by
faith in the Lord Jesus, but are under subjection to the law,
not as slaves, but by a just and righteous subjection. Mount
Sinai, as a personification of the law, " gendereth to bondage,"
NOT SLAVE AND MISTRESS. 393
and Hagar answers to Jerusalem and the Jews, who are all in
this bondage under the law, until by faith in Jesus they are
redeemed from under the law, and receive the adoption of
sons. " For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one
by a maid-servant, the other by a free woman. But he who
was of the maid-servant was born after the flesh ; but he of
the free woman Avas by promise. Which things are an alle-
gory , — What saith the Scripture ? Cast out the maid-servant
and her son ; for the son of the maid-servant shall not be heir
with the son of the free woman. So then, brethren, we are
not children of the maid-servant, but of the free. Stand fast,
therefore, in the liberty wherewith Chrst hath made us free,
and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Ye
have been called into liberty ; only use not liberty for an oc-
casion to the flesh, but by love serve one another, SovXevere.
If ye be led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law." Note
here the word dovXevere employed to signify the free voluntary
service of love, a service of freedom, not the service of slavery.
Now the arbitrary manner in which the translators of the
Old Testament have put a difference between Hagar in the
16th and Hagar in the 21st chapters of Genesis, may be seen
at a glance. No reason can be given for translating the He-
brew words nr-2«; or n«N by the English word maid in one
chapter and bond-icoman in another, especially considering that
the Septuagint translation TraiSioitn is the same in both cases,
and the Hebrew words are synonymous. (See 1 Sam. xxv.,
41.) In the 16th chapter (1-3) we read as follows : Sarai had
an handmaid. Go into my maid (Sept. TraidiaKT]) ; and Sarai
took Hagar, her maid, and gave her to her husband Abra-
ham to be his wife. Verse 5, I have given my maid; verse
6, Behold thy maid; verse 8, the angel says, Hagar, Sarai's
maid.
In the 21st chapter the word rncN, maid, is rendered bond,
woman (Sept. rraidioKi]) several times. No reason can be given
for such a rendering in English. There is no justification for
394 MORAL ARGUMENT AGAINST SLAVERY.
it, cither in the Old or New Testament. " So, then, breth-
ren," concludes the apostle, we are not children of the bond-
woman (rraidiOKi]) but of the free, eXevOepa." The contrast is
not between slavery (which is the unrighteous bondage of
chattelism) and freedom, but between the righteous obliga-
tions of the law, impossible to be met by nature, and the free-
dom of the gospel, the liberty in Christ by divine grace.
Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath
made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of
bondage. Ye have been called unto liberty, the liberty of
love.
Now the whole moral argument here is overwhelming
against slavery. " Christianity," remarks Neander,* " ef
fected a change in the conditions of men, from which a disso-
lution of this whole relation was sure eventually to take place.
This effect Christianity produced, first of all by the facts to
which it was a witness, and next by the ideas which by means
of these facts it set in circulation. The original unity of the
human race was restored in Christ. Servants and masters, if
they had become believers, were brought together under the
same bond of a heavenly union, destined for immortality. They
became brethren in Christ, in whom there is neither bond nor
free, members of one body, baptized into one Spirit, heirs of
the same heavenly inheritance. Masters saw in their servants
no longer their slaves, but their beloved brethren. Christi-
anity could not fail to give birth to the wish that every man
might be placed in such a situation as Avould least hinder the
free and independent use of his intellect and moral powers,
according to the will of God. Accordingly the apostle St.
Paul, speaking to the servant, says (1 Cor. vii., 21), " If thou
mayst be made free, use it rather."
In the persecution under Diocletian, it appears that in some
instances free-born Christians were made slaves, and put to
the lowest and most degrading of servile employments. A
* Neander's Church History, vol. i., p. 372, Bohn's Ed.
RESCRIPTS OF JUSTICE. 395
part of the persecuting edict ran thus : " In judicial proceed-
ings the torture may he used against Christians, whatsoever
their rank may he ; those of the lower rank to be divested of
their rights as citizens and freemen ; and slaves, so long as
they shall remain Christians, are to be incapable of receiving
their freedom."* This last item would intimate that Christians
had been accustomed to give freedom to the enslaved. We
here see a Pagan emperor divesting men of their rights as
citizens and freemen because of their religion. In our own Chris-
tian country we see the government and the Chief Justice of our
national tribunal administering the same kind of treatment to
Christian men because of their color. Under Diocletian the
rescript of justice ran thus : Christians have no rights that the
Romans are bound to respect. Under the government of the
United States it runs thus : Black men have no rights that
white men are bound to respect. Which is most infamous and
wicked, the ignorant intolerance of the old Pagans or the en-
lightened inhumanity and barbarism of the modern Chris-
tians ?
Some of the commentators seem so enamored of the lan-
guage of slavery that they degrade the illustrations of the
apostles by it. Conybeare and Howson translate ncudaywyoc,
in Gal. iii., 24, as the slave who leads the child to the house of
the schoolmaster^ and they suppose Paul to have been under
such a slave.
" His education was conducted at home rather than at
school ; for, though Tarsus was celebrated for its learning, the
Hebrew boy would not lightly be exposed to the influence of
Gentile teaching, or, if he went to a school, it was not a Greek
school, but rather to some room connected with the syna-
gogue, where a noisy class of Jewish children received the
rudiments of instruction, seated on the ground with their
teacher, after the manner of Mohammedan children in the
east, who may be seen or heard at their lessons near the
* Neander, Church History, vol. L, p. 205.
396 TUE LAW OUR SCnOOLMASTEE.
mosque. At such a school, it may be, he learned to read and to
write, going and returning under the care of some attendant,
according to that custom, which he afterward used as an illus-
tration in the Epistle to the Galatians (and perhaps he remem-
bered his own early days when he wrote the passage) when
he spoke of the law as the slave who conducts us to the
school of Christ."*
There is no ground for such a translation. On the contrary,
it violates both what we know of Hebrew domestic manners,
there being no such thing in any Jewish family as such a slave,
and is contrary to the laws of interpretation in regard to trop-
ical language, such as confessedly that of the apostle here is.
The pedagogue in this passage, and 1 Cor. iv., 15, is certainly
(see Robinson and Bloomfield on the word) a tutor, or teacher,
and tropically the law is so called. To translate the word as
slave, and suppose that Paul's childhood was passed under the
care of such a slave, to and fro from the synagogue, would be
something like supposing from the mention of the lion of the
tribe of Judah, that the families of that tribe kept such a lion,
and were accustomed to regard it wTith particular veneration,
and thence applied the title to their expected Messiah.
Speaking of the relation of Christianty to government, Ne-
ander remarks that " Christianity (in the time of Paul) taught
men to render an obedience that had its root in the love of
God, and pointed ultimately to Him ; therefore a free obedi-
ence, as far removed from a slavish fear of man on one hand,
as from a lawless self-will on the other. The same spirit of
Christianity which taught men to obey for God's sake, taught
also that God should be obeyed rather than man, and that
every consideration, even of property and life itself, should be
disregarded in all cases where human power demanded an
obedience contrary to the laws and ordinances of God. In
such cases the Christians displayed that true spirit of freedom
against which despotic power could avail nothing."}
* Coxtbeare, Life and Epistles of Paul, vol. i., 54.
•f Neander, General Hist, of the Christian Religion and Church, vol., i. p. 359.
MAKES OF THE LORD JESUS. 397
Conybeare and Howson have also rendered Gal. vi., 17, "I
bear in my body the scars which mark my bondage to the
Lord Jesus." And they attempt to justify this translation by
saying that onyfiara signifies literally the scars of the wounds
made upon the body of a slave by the branding-iron, by which
he was marked as belonging to his master.* They think the
scars of the wounds suffered for Christ's sake are to be ren-
dered as such branding-marks of slavery. How strange that
so forced and degrading an illustration should be chosen when
another, so much more natural, and at the same time hon-
orable, was near at hand. We are informed in Lucianf that
the Thracians and others counted these orcyfiara as the badges
of honor among freemen. Archbishop Potter quotes Theo-
doret as of opinion that the Jews forbade the branding of
themselves with stigmata, because the idolaters by that certi-
fication used to consecrate themselves to their false deities. %
The artyftaTa, referred to by the apostle, can not, therefore,
be regarded as a proof of slavery, or its imitation, but of a
voluntary and honorable religious consecration. Such marks
Paul bore about with him, the marks of his consecration to
the service of his Saviour, but not the marks of his having
been branded as Christ's bond-slave. It is also important to
be noted that the onyfiara were branded not upon slaves, as
slaves, but as marks of punishment and disgrace upon thieves
and fugitives.^ But Paul was never a fugitive from Christ's
service.
* Life and Epistles of Paul, vol. ii., % Potter, Grecian Antiquities, vol.
p. 152. ii., 75, 76.
f Luciajt, Syrian Goddess, Works, § See Blair's Inquiry, 48, 110 ; also
vol. iv. Becker, Gallus, 231, Slave Family.
CHAPTER XXXVI .
Evidence from the Epistle to the Ei-iiesians. — Instructions to Husbands and
Wives, Parents and Children. — Roman Laws in Regard to these Relations.
Ephesians i\\, 28. "Let him that stole, steal no more;
but rather lot him labor, working with his hands the thing
that is good, that he may have to give to him that need-
eth." It would be singular, if while such an injunction as this
were supposed to apply to such a thing as a man's purse or
pocket handkerchief, it should have no authority or obligation
in regard to himself, or his own person ; that is, if for a man
to take another's purse should be considered thieving, while
to take the man himself and sell him, should be an honest
transaction, nay, a fulfillment of the law of charity ! When
the apostle says, " Let him that stole steal no more," raen-
stealers as well as money-stealers would be included. And
let men labor themselves rather than steal the labor of others.
Ephesians v., 22. " Wives, submit yourselves unto your
own husbands, as unto the Lord," etc. This passage, as
applied to human society, makes slavery and Christianity in-
compatible. The sacrament of marriage does not belong to
slaves ; if servants can be slaves, they must cease to be hus-
bands and wives ; they can possess none of the privileges,
enjoy none of the blessedness, experience nothing of the in-
violable love and sacredness of this celestial union, nor can
they assume or be bound by its obligations. Human law for
them abrogates or nullifies the divine law, and puts them out
of its authority and protection. It is the judgment of slave
law " that slaves have ?io marital rights? can not contract
marriage, can not, therefore, be guilty of any violation of that
SLAVE LAW AGAINST GOD'S LAW. 399
ordinance by any promiscuousness of concubinage. The dia-
bolical destruction of the institution of marriage by American
slavery, the defiance and violation of God's law, the teaching
and enforcement of concubinage, fornication, adultery, licen-
tiousness, if there were not a single other feature to condemn
it before God and man, would be enough, of itself, to brand
it as sin, and only sin, continually ; demonstrating the system
as nothing but a machinery for the permanent violation of the
seventh commandment, as well as the eighth, and through
them of every commandment of the decalogue.
If the instructions of husbands and wives belong to servants,
then servants must be free, and slavery is condemned by the
Word of God, as not an ordinary crime, but a vast fountain of
wickedness. If they do not so belong, then the obligations
and privileges of the decalogue are not universal, and Chris-
tianity is demonstrated not to be from God, but to be a sys-
tem of gross and shameful respect to persons, making that to
be sin in one class which is righteousness in another, and tak-
ing away the dearest rights of one class to make them the
property of another. A monopoly of the most sacred affec-
tions, sentiments, and passions of life, taken away from the
social existence of four millions, rendering them, by such
fraud, inevitably vicious and miserable, making the state of
social purity and happiness for them impossible, and that mo-
nopoly given to three hundred thousand owners for their
profit, would, of itself alone, if such an infinite monstrosity
were attempted to be palmed off as a divine revelation, prove
the volume containing it to be the product of sin, the work
of the father of lies and murderer from the beginning. To
think of that sacrament of wedded love, which the Lord Jesus
has so infinitely exalted and magnified by comparing it with
his own love for the church, being degraded into a stock-
power, at the command of three hundred thousand merchants
in human flesh, for the breeding of slaves as property !
Let the closing verse of this sacred passage be read and
400 PARENTS AND CHILDREN.
applied to such a system ! " Nevertheless, let every one of
you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the
wife see that she reverence her husband." The impossibility
of such an obligation and such a blessedness for creatures in
the condition of American slaves, under bondage to owners as
their property for their sole benefit, is but one among the ter-
rible consequences of the crime of slaveholding, but one in-
stance or example of the havoc it makes with the holy precepts
of the Word of God. Yet theologians at the North split hairs
upon it on the question whether it be sinful in itself, malum in
6-e, while theologians at the South accept and maintain it as
the righteousness of God, and the most perfect state of human
society, with the maxim partus sequitur ventrem as the Urim
and Thummin of the system on the bosom of its ministering
priests.
Ephesians vi., 1-4. " Children, obey your parents in the
Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and mother. And ye
fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." These sacred
injunctions no more belong to slaves, as property, and are no
more possible to be fulfilled by them than the former. In
slavery children can owe no obedience to their parents, can
not tell, indeed, in many cases, who their parents are, neither
can parents possess any authority, or right of aifection, or of
service, or of instruction, over their children, they being
merely and solely the property of their owners, as mere mer-
chandise, for their sole benefit and pleasure. The effect of
this, in the destruction even of the parental instinct, is impress-
ively demonstrated by Rev. Dr. Adams in his work on the
South Side of Slavery ; as also to such an extreme in the de-
struction of the filial sentiment from the child to the father,
making it absolutely unintelligible, demonstrating the impos-
sibility even of the relation of father being understood by
slave-children, that he could not undertake to speak to a class
of such children in reference to the words, Our Father who
SLAVERY NOT TOLERATED. 401
art in heaven, with any hope of making them comprehend the
the blessed meaning of those words ! It would scarcely be
possible to conceive a more overwhelming demonstration of
the dreadful nature of slavery in itself, but especially as
wrought, concentrated, and established in a system by law
and religion in our own country, vaunted as the most perfect
form of Christian socialism, and the most effective missionary
institute of heaven !
It is not possible that Christianity could ever tolerate such
a system. If we admitted that Christianity tolerated slavery
in order to subvert it, as some have argued, then on the same
grounds we must admit that Christianity tolerated conjugal
slavery, and filial slavery, as well as servile slavery, for under
the Roman law, which prevailed in those lands wherein Chris-
tianity was first taught to the Gentiles, slavery inhered in the
relations of wife and son, as well as in that of servant. But if
the precepts of Christ could not be interpreted into consist-
ency with a Christian's treating his wife as a slave, or treating
his son as a slave, neither can they be interpreted into consist-
ency with a man's treating his Christian brother as a slave.*
Under the Roman laws, " in his father's house the son was
a mere thing, confounded by the laws with the moveables, the
cattle, and the slaves, whom the capricious master might
alienate or destroy, without being responsible to any earthly
tribunal. At the call of indigence or avarice, the master of a
family could dispose of his children of his slaves." But the
condition of the slave was far more advantageous in this re-
spect, Gibbon adds, because the slave was free on being the
first time manumitted ; but the son might be sold by his fa-
ther a second and a third time into slavery. He had the
power of life and death over him ; " examples of such bloody
executions were sometimes praised, and never punished."f
* Dr. Hague, Christianity and Statesmanship.
\ Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xliv.
402 SLAVERY NOT TOLERATED.
Under the same laws the wife was equally the slave of the
husband, " who was invested with the plenitude of paternal
power, so that by. his judgment or caprice her behavior was
approved, or censured, or chastised; he exercised the jurisdic-
tion of life and death ; and it was allowed that in cases of
adultery or drunkenness the sentence might be properly in-
flicted." " So clearly was woman defined not as aperso?i, but
as a thing, that if the original title was deficient she might be
claimed, like other moveables, by the use and possession of
an entire year."*
Now if the relation of slavery is sanctioned, as some have
argued, by the instructions in the gospel to masters and ser-
vants, under the Roman law, so is the power and right of the
father and the husband over the life and liberty of the son and
the wife, as part and jDarcel of the filial and marital relation,
sanctioned by the instruction to fathers and husbands. There
is no condemnation of the Roman law in either case ; no in-
junction forbidding husbands to kill or sell their wives or their
children. Does the fact of the relation of father and son, hus-
band and wife, being recognized in the Xew Testament sanc-
tion or sanctify those enormities, or make the son and the
wife slaves ? No more does the relation of master and ser-
vant being recognized in the Xew Testament make the ser-
vant a slave, or sanction or permit the claim of the master
over him as a chattel, as his property. The same argument of
human law that makes the servant a slaAe makes the sou and
the wife a slave.
" Be ye not the servants of men," says the apostle Paul.
" It is far from his intention," says Lightfoot on the passage,
;' to take away the relation that is between masters and ser-
vants."! But the injunctions upon masters do absolutely
abolish the relation that is between masters and slaves,
* Gibbon, cli. 44. Blair, Inquiry mans. Fuss, Rom. Ant., §§ 83, 84, 8G.
into the State of Slavery among the Ro- f Lightfoot, vol. xii, p. 498.
SLAVERY EXCLUDED FROM TIIE CHURCH. 403
making it impossible for a Christian to hold a slave, or
to treat a human being as property. The true primitive
Christians, acting upon Christ's precepts, must have carried
them into a complete abolition of slavery in their households,
and this example at length produced its effect among all the
races under the Roman empire. Paul's Epistle to Philemon,
as we shall see, was just a development and application of
these principles.
In later times we have some striking testimonies of the
same principles. Neander quotes the Abbot Isidore of Pelu-
sium writing in behalf of a fugitive, and addressing the mas-
ter thus : " I did not suppose that a man who loves Christ,
who knows the grace which has made all men free, could
still hold a slave !" He quotes also from " the venerable
Monk Nilus," citing the example of Job's benevolent and right-
eons conduct to his servants, and demanding compassion for
the race of slaves, " whom the mastership of violence, destroy-
ing the fellowship of nature, had converted into tools." The
essence of slavery is here brought to view, the conversion of
an immortal being into a chattel ; a mastership of violence^
inconsistent with the professions of Christianity.*
Augustine also protested against treating slaves as things.
" The Christian," said he, " dare not regard a slave as his
property, like a horse, or silver, although it may happen that a
horse fetches a higher price than a slave, and still more an ar-
ticle of furniture made out of gold or silver." It is related ot
Eligius, Bishop of Noyon, that " when he heard that vessels
were arrived full of slaves for sale, captives of Roman, Gallic,
British, and Moorish descent, but particularly Saxons, who
were driven like so many cattle, he hastened to the spot, and
sometimes ransomed a hundred."f
At the same time it is scarcely to be doubted that such in-
* jSTeastder, General History of the f Neander's Memorials of Christian
Church, vol. iii., p. 356. Life, pp. 30G, 377.
404 SLAVERY OF SERFDOM.
stances wei*e rare, and indicate the highest Christian con-
sciousness above the corruption of the age. They are as
light-houses upon rocks amidst the sea, and they shine amidst
many abominations. It could not be expected that, while the
corruptions of Christianity were deepening, this great virtue
of the rebuke, resistance and excommunication of slavery
would be maintained, according to the spirit of the gospel.
There came to be, in various parts of the Roman empire and
among its fragments, a race of serfs, adscripti glebce, in France,
England and other nations, treated in almost every respect
like the slaves of ancient Rome. The records of successive
councils of the Christian church, as traced by Guizot (espe-
cially in French history) and by others, show the long contin-
uance of this iniquity in a most oppressive form.* Of the
Roman emperors, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius were the first
who endeavored to abolish the power of life and death held
by masters over their slaves.f This power, even with the
father over his children, was held until the time of Constan-
tine ; and even this emperor allowed parents who were very
poor to sell their infants instantly on their birth.J Meantime
human beings were constantly reduced to slavery by wars,
and the cases of their redemption or deliverance, through the
interference of the church, stand recorded as remarkable ex-
amples. The monastic institutions and spirit were opposed to
slavery, even while in the church it was tolerated. The ordi-
nance of Louis le Hutin, in France (anuo 1315), for the en-
franchisement of the serfs, cited by Michelet and Guizot,§ while
* Guizot, History of Civilization, made in the image of our Lord ought
vol. 2. — Compare Muratori, cited in to be free by natural right, and that
Blair, 238. in no country this natural liberty or
+ Fuss, Ant. Eom., ch. 1, § 54. — freedom should be so effaced or ob-
Blair, Inquiry, 85. scored by the hateful yoke of servi-
t Fuss, ch. i., § 86. tude," etc. (Vol. i., page 398.) " A
g .Michelet, History of France, vol. grand spectacle," exclaims the histo-
L The ordinance of Phillipele Bel, in rian, "to see proclamations made
1311, is still more remarkable. "See- from the throne itself of the impre-
ing that every human creature who is scriptible right of every man to lib-
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 405
it followed the spirit of Christianity, ran before the practice
of Christians. This ordinance begins like our Declaration of
Independence. "Since, according to the right of nature,
every one should be born free, and that by certain usages and
customs, which have been introduced and kept from great an-
tiquity in our kingdom, and by adventure, many of our com-
mon people are fallen into conditions of servitude which
greatly displeases us ; Ave, considering that our kingdom is
called the kingdom of the Francs, and wishing that the
thing in truth should agree with the name, by deliberation of
our great council have ordained, and do ordain, that generally
throughout our kingdom, as far as in us lies, and in our suc-
cessors, such servitudes should be abolished, and that freedom
should be given to all those who are fallen into servitude,
either by origin, or by marriage, or by residence." Centuries
before this, Hilary of Poictiers had said to the emperor, in an
epistle, " The whole labor of your sovereignty should have
for its object to secure for all over whom it extends the
sweetest of all treasures, liberty. There is no mode of ap-
peasing troubles until every one be emancipated from all the
fetters of servitude.'',*
Alichelet refers to the passage of slavery (the canker and
destruction of the Roman empire) into serfdom, or the growth
of serfdom out of slavery, rooting the laborer to the soil. He
cites the Justinian code. "The tenant follows the law of his
erty." The asylum of the churches, In 550, " As we have discovered that
and the freedom bestowed by them, several people reduce again to servi-
were respected long before. Never- tudo those who, according to the cus-
theless, it is proved that serfs were torn of the country have been set at
held as ecclesiastical property, and liberty in the churches, we order that
Christians, who would not suffer Jews everyone shall keep possession of tho
to hold slaves, held them themselves, liberty ho has received, and if this
Yet in a council at Lyons, in the year liberty is attacked, justice must be
567, it is decreed that those wlioneg- defended by the church." Guizot,
lect to restore to liberty those that Civiliz.. vol. ii.
have been made captives by violence * Ages of Faith, vol. i., 232. Gib-
and treason shall be excommunicated, box, ch. 36.
406
RULE OF ST. BENEDICT.
birth ; although in point of condition apparently free-born, he
is the slavo.of the soil on which he is born." " A tenant se-
creting himself, or seeking to desert from his patron's estate,
is to be held in the light of a fugitive slave."* Such is the
serfdom, or slavery, traced by Guizot in the councils of the
church in France through nearly six centuries, from the fourth
to the tenth. f At the same time the example of personal in-
dustry by the monks commences an innovation of free and
voluntary labor, which is to be the basis of a free modern ex-
istence. " The rule of St. Benedict sets the first example to
the ancient world, of labor by the hands of freemen."J
Ephesians vi., 5-9. " Servants (dovXoi) be obedient to
them that are your masters (itvpioig)^ according to the flesh,
with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto
Christ ; not with eye-service, as men-j)leasers, but as the ser-
vants [dovkoi) of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart,
with good will doing service (Sov/Levovreg) to the Lord, and
* Michelet, History of France,
vol. i., 56.
f Guizot, Modern Civilization, vol.
ii., 458-511.
% Michelet, i., 62. "Charlemagne
gratifies his teacher, Alcuin, with a
farm of twenty thousand slaves."
The Crusades began a revolution of
liberty in central France. " The serfs
had their own page of history."
§ Contbeare and IIowson (Life
and Epistles of Paul, vol. iL, p. 422)
assert that " the word nvpioq, Lord,
always implies the idea of servants."
A strange assertion, as see, Rouixsux,
Lex. on the word, No. 3. See also,
in this connection, Prof. Stu.vrt on
the meaning of icvpioc, Bib. Rep., vol.
i., pp. 133-776. Comparison of icvpiog
and <5ec--o7//f, p. 736.
Conybeare and IIowson also trans-
late the word Sov'aoi, here and in 1
Tim. vi., 1, also Colossians and else-
where, as bondsmen, and they have
put in the margin, " duties to slaves."
Thus, in fact, they would take from the
Scriptures what was meant to be the
guidanco of God for servants in all
ages and places, to all time, and re-
strict these precious passages to per-
sons under a temporary and wicked
bondage, forbidden in the word of
God, and destined to be utterly abol-
ished 1 If these passages apply to
slaves, to those who are the property
of their owners, then they have no
application whatever to servants in
England, in Switzerland, in Germany
in Italy, in France, in Sweden, in free
New England ; any where and every-
where in the world, where there are
no slaves, there these instructive pre-
cepts are in effect blotted from the
Bible as superfluous, or indicating
only a wickedness that has passed
away.
MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 407
not to men, knowing that whatsoever good thing any man
doeth the same shall he receive from the Lord, whether bond
or free (sire dovXog elre eXevOepog). And ye masters, do the
same tlnngs unto them, forbearing threatening, knowing that
your master also is in heaven ; neither is there respect of per-
sons with him." Compare Col iv., 1, "Masters give unto
your servants (dovXoig) that which is just and equal, kuowing
that ye also have a master in heaven."
There is no intimation of slavery here, but on the contrary,
the rule laid upon masters forbids the supposition of slavery,
muking it impossible to consider servants as slaves, or to treat
them as such, as property ; the masters being commanded to
regard and treat their servants just as the servants are com-
manded to regard and treat their masters, according to the
will of Christ, with a single and supremo regard to his pleas-
ure. They could neither be claimed nor treated as property
without the most direct violation of the law of God, and dis-
regard of the will of Christ. They could not be claimed as
property without assuming a mastership and command over
them -which Christ alone possessed. The word dovXoq con-
trasted with iXevOeoog by no means proves the significance of
slave, since that was the very mode of comparison and con-
trast become the ordinary Jewish servant, who could not pos-
sibly be a slave, and the freeman. The servant hired for six
years would be called dovkog, in contrast with his master as
EAEvQepog, or with any person not in domestic or household
service. The contrast, bond and free, was a customary eon-
trast between simple service and the state of freedom from
such service, and inasmuch as the word here translated bond
is 6ov?.og, in every other instance in the passage translated
servant, there is no reason for changing this translation. If
it read in English, " ichether servant or free," the whole sense
of the passage would be perfectly conveyed. There is no in-
timation or proof whatever of slavery in the language, while,
408
MASTERS AND SERVANTS.
on the other hand, there is an absolute interdiction of slavery
by the precept, by the whole tenor and meaning.
Adam Clarke's energetic testimony against slavery, under
this passage, is here to be noted. "Though dovXog frequently
signifies a slave or bondman, yet it often implies a servant in
general, or any one bound to another, either for a limited
time or for life.* In heathen countries slavery was in some sort
excusable ; amongst Christians it is an enormity and a crime,
for which perdition has scarcely an adecpiate state of punish-
ment."— Comm. on Eph. vi., 5.
* Thirlwall (History of Greece)
affirms that Aristotle sometimes em-
ployed the "word dovXoi to signify the
whole mass of the people who were
not citizens.
The lato Dr. Thomson, of Edin-
burgh, maintained, with great power of
eloquence, the righteous love of liberty
inspired by the gospel, and tho inhe-
rent iniquity of tho relations of slav-
ery. " I appeal," said he, " to the in-
herent and efficacious power of Chris-
tianity, as determining all in whom it
really dwells to aspire after liberty as
the object of their keen ambition, to
cleave to it as the object of their fond
and decided attachment. If you in-
troduce the principles and sentiments
of Christianity into the heart of any
individual, you introduce into his
heart the very elements of freedom ;
you infuse that which he feels to be at
eternal variance with every species of
bondage ; you prepare him for throw-
ing off the yoke, with an energy
which may be calm and secret, but
which is also potent and irresistible in
its operations. Let his faith be strong
in the truths of revelation, and let
him experience their practical influ-
ence, and the consequence is, that
without waiting to compare what he
is with what he ought to be, or calcu-
lating on the advantages of exchang-
ing the one situation for the other, he
is constrained, as it were, by instinct
to aim at the transition, and to seek
for disenthralment from the tyranny
that presses him to the earth. There
is something within him which is ab-
horrent of whatsoever goes to consti-
tute him a slave. His soul has ac-
quired an elasticity that bids him rise
with tho silent and resistless force of
nature to that place in the creation of
God in which alone, as his congenial
clime, he can breathe, live, and be
happy."
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Epistles to tiie PniLippiANS and Colossians. — That -vrnicn is Just and Equal. —
Nature of the Eule, and its Conclusions, — It Abolishes Slavekt. — Epistle to
the tuessalonians.
Piiilippiaxs i., 1. " Paul and Timotlieus, the servants
(dovXot) of Jesus Christ." (See on Rom., p. 383, and 1 Cor.,
p. 386).
Phil, ii., V, spoken of Christ, who " took upon him the form
of a servant (do-DAov)." Here is an incontrovertible instance in
which (JoC'Aoc can neither mean slave, nor be translated by the
word slave. It would be false to the reality, and a violence
against the meaning*of the passage, to say that our blessed Lord
took upon him the form of a slave. He is said to have been
formed in fashion as a max, not as a slave, and to have humbled
himself as a man, not as a slave. He could not be said, in any
sense, to have taken upon him the form of a slave, unless he
had been born a slave, of a slave mother, according to the in-
famous slave law, '•'•partus sequitur ventrem y" unless he had
been born the property of a slave-owner, the chattel of a mas-
ter, who would have the right by law to have sold him and
his mother together, or him as a child, without respect to his
mother. This, therefore, is a case in which dovXoq does cer-
tainly mean merely and only a person in the condition of a
servant, not a slave. In taking the form of a man, he took
the form of a servant of God, a servant under subjection to
the law of God, but not the form of a chattel of man, a slave
18
410 EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSI ANS.
owned as property by his roaster. Such a sense of the word
is to be rejected with abhorrence.*
EVIDENCE FROM THE EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND
THESSALQNIANS.
Colossians i., 7. " Epaphras, our clear fellow-servant (ovv~
dovXov)." Compare iv., 12. "Epaphras, a servant (SovXog),
of Christ," and iv., 7, " Tychicus, a faithful minister and fellow-
servant in the Lord, diditovog teat cvvdovXoc;."
CoL iii., 11. "Neither Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor
free," dovXog, £Xev6epog. The same remarks apply here as on
Eph. vi., 8. There is no intimation of slavery or its sanction
in the Church, but an exclusion and condemnation of it.f
Col. iii., 1S-24. The same body of instructions as in Eph.
v., to husbands, wives, parents, children, and servants. " Wives,
submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the
Lord." Impossible in the state of slavery. " Children, obey
your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the
Lord." Impossible in the state of slavery. " Servants (dov-
Acu), obey in all things your masters, according to the flesh ;
not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of
heart, fearing God." " For ye serve the Lord Christ (6ov-
Aeuere)." This does not mean ye are enslaved to the Lord
Christ, but ye serve him, as his freemen, from the heart. Com-
* Campbell on the Gospels, Pre- he formed man, made him not bond,
limary Discourses. Dis. iv., vol. i. but free. Behold, slavery came of
Also vol. ii., ch. xx. "It is solely sin. Slavery is the punishmeet of
from the scope and connections that sin, and arose from disobedience. But
•we must judge when it should be ren- when Christ appeared, he removed
dered in the one way, and when in this cause, for in Christ Jesus there is
the other." See also Poole, Aunot. neither bond nor free." Chrysostom
on PhO. Compare Howe on the elsewhere intimates that if a pure
Faithful Servant, works, 965. Christian feeling were prevalent, slav-
\ See Chrtsostom's Homilies, ci- ery would cease. Compare Neander's
ted by Neander, in his Life of Chrys- Church History, vol. iii., p. 356. Also
ostom, pp. 413-416. " There was no Memorials of Christian Life, page
slave in the old times ; for God, when 196.
THAT WHICH IS JUST AND EQUAL. 411
pare the whole with Eph. vi. 5-9, and the remarks on the
meaning of the word dovloq in the same connection there.
Col. iv\, 1. "Masters, give unto your servants (dovXoig)
that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a
Master in heaven." This commandment would abolish slavery
throughout the world. It is impossible to give to a servant
that which is just and equal, and yet treat him as a slave. In
making him a slave, all justice and equality is denied him.
In claiming him as a slave, and treating him as property,
which is the essence of slavery, nothing is given him but
cruelty ; every right of a human being is withheld frcm him ;
nothing but injustice and inequality are forced upon him.
There is no law of justice or equality in behalf of the slave ;
no obligation on the part of his owner toward him is ever pre-
tended, but for his (the owner's) sole benefit. It is even de-
clared that slaves have no marital rights, much less any right
to wages, or any of the privileges or natural possessions of a
freeman. The slave has no right even to his peck of meal a
week, if his owner chooses to withhold it. The plea of justice
and equality toward American slaves is just merely the fanati-
cism of Abolitionism. True; and this is the fanaticism of the
New Testament ; and this one injunction of Paul to masters,
as to the treatment of servants, would break up and abolish the
system of American slavery forever, and prevent the possi-
bility of the crime of slaveholding wherever the law of God is
regarded and obeyed.
For, 1. The very first article of justice and equality toward
a servant requires that he be treated as a human being, and
not as a brute, or chattel, but as a human being having a right
inalienable to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; a
right to dispose of his own services, and a right to a just rec-
ompense therefor.
2. The rule of justice and equality in regard to servants, as
to all classes of men, was to be found in the Word of God, and
not in men's own perverted ideas of self-interest, or the right
412 THE RULE IN" THE DIVINE LAW.
of conquest or of power ; not in any Roman, Greek, or Pa-
gan code of laws, but in the Divine law. This, and this alone,
was the acknowledged guide of the conscience of the Chris-
tian. To this, therefore, he must refer to learn what, in God's
sight, was the treatment of servants pronounced just and
equal, and required of all.
3. The treatment of men as merchandise was forbidden in
that law. To make any man a slave, or to hold him as such,
or to sell him, was forbidden on pain of death. Therefore to
treat a servant as a slave was to be guilty of a crime against
him punishable with death. That which is just and equal
could not be given to him in any way while he was treated as
a slave ; for his very manhood and all its rights were taken
from him.
4. The law of God required that, without respect to per-
sons, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; and what-
soever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
to them." If men would not themselves be made slaves, or
suffer their own children to be made slaves, then they ought
not to make slaves of others.
The consequence is plain, that both by natural right and by
the law of God, to which the apostle always refers as the ac-
knowledged supreme rule of duty, this precept must have
rendered slavery impossible. Had there been not another
word in the New Testament on the subject of slavery, this
one precept would abolish it, would brand it as a crime, would
forbid it as a cruelty and injustice incompatible with Christi-
anity, and which, if any professed Christian were guilty of it,
must exclude him from the Christian church as an extortioner
and a man-stealer.*
* Compare, on page 350, the notice from bondage, " The noble disposi-
of Isidore and Augustine's abhor- tion (a man of noble disposition) frees
rence of slavery, and declarations of those whom violence has made
its incompatibility with Christianity, slaves." Neander, Church History (
Among the works of Christian piety, vol. iii. Chrysostom, rebuking the
Isidore names the redeeming of slaves rich and the nobles, who pretended
epistle to thessalonians. 413
Give unto your servants that which is just and equal,
■was a fit inscription over the gate of the New Testament in
this branch of morals and of domestic economy ; as over the
gate of the Old Testament, the inscription, He that steal-
ETH A MAN, AND SELLETH HIM, OR IF HE BE FOUND IN HIS
hands, shall surely be put to death. Between these two
slavery is abolished for ever.
2 Thes. iii., 10-12. "For even when we were with you,
this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither
should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk
among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busy bodies.
Now them that are such we command and exhort by our
Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat
their own bread." These precepts show that a state of society
was founded and formed by the gospel, in which manual labor
for the earning of one's bread was so far from being incon-
sistent with the dignity and freedom of manhood, that if any
one refused it, and would five without labor, the law of Chris-
tianity itself would leave him to starve in his chosen gentility
and indolence. The publication of this rule may have been
found especially necessary to correct the supposition, that be-
cause masters were forbidden from making slaves of their
to permit a crowd of slaves to follow Horn, in Acts Apost., xi., cited by
them, out of philanthropy, said, " If Neaxder in Life of Chrysostom.
ye cared for these men ye would buy " If any one ask," said Chrysostom,
them, let them leara trades, that they " whence came slavery into the world
might support themselves, and then (for I have known many who desired
give them freedom." The Christian to learn this), I will tell him. Insa-
spirit of Chrysostom revolted against tiable avarice and envy are the pa-
the traffic in human flesh, as well as rents of slavery ; for Noah. Abel,
against slavery. Keferring to the Seth, and their descendants, had not
communion of possessions at Jerusa- slaves. Sin hath begotten slavery ;
lem, the Christians selling their goods, then, wars and battles, in which men
and supposing the possibility of their were made captives." There were
example being followed, he cautions those in Chrysostom's time, as in ours,
the people against imagining any "sale who appealed to father Abraham.
of slaves, for that did not exist in those " But ye say that Abram had slaves.
times, but equitably they were per- Aye, but he treated them not as
mitted to be freo." — Chrtsostom, such."
414 SOCIALISM OF THE GOSPEL.
servants, therefore the servants were released from the neces-
sity of working, or the duty of obeying their lawful masters.
The privileges of the gospel freedom were guarded on all
sides from licentiousness. It was as much the duty of the
servant to work, and to do his work faithfully, as it was of
the master to pay his wages, giving to his servants that which
is just and equal.
The law of love was to bind each class to the other, in mu-
tual dependence and obligation, and all together to Christ.
The socialism of the gospel expels slavery on the one side
and pride on the other ; servility on the one side and arro-
gance on the other ; and the true freedom of the gospel
transfigures society with the happiness and content of heaven.
With what heaven-instructed impartiality does the apostle
apply the principles of justice and of love at one and the same
time to the highest and the lowest. After enjoining a be-
havior from servants towards their masters inspired with good
will, and fraught with deferential observance of duty in sin-
gleness of heart as unto Christ, doing service as to the Lord
and not to men, he adds, And ye masters do the same things
unto them. Where on earth was the character of the servant
and the quality of service ever so exalted, so combined and
dignified, with the highest independence ? It is a picture of
social equality, with the preservation of just distinctions, in
harmony and love, to which there has never been an approach
outside of divine revelation. And, indeed, the wondrous
treatment of the subject, at the same time that slavery is
branded as a crime worthy of death, is in itself a proof of
divine inspiration.
CH APT EH XXXVIII.
Evidence from tiie Epistles to Timothy and Titus.— The Gospel against Men-
stealees.— Its Comprehensiveness and Meaning.— Servants Under the Yoke.—
Believing Masters.— The Law of God in Eegard to them. — Slavery Forbidden
in the Churches.
1 Timothy i., 9, 10, 11. "Knowing this, that the law is
not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and diso-
bedient, for the ungodly and profane, for the murderers of
fathers and murderers of mothers, for man-slayers, for whore-
mongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for
men-stealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be
any other thing that is contrary to souud doctrine, according
to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was com-
mitted to my trust."
Paul is here instructing Timothy how to preach the gospel,
and he informs him that he must do it by the faithful applica-
tion of the law to all the sins forbidden by the law, some of
the worst of which sins he enumerates, and among them the
sin of max-stealixg, referring unquestionably to Ex. xxi. 1(3,
" He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found
in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." That the refer-
ence is explicitly to this law there can be no manner of doubt,
since the context of crimes, murderers of fathers, murderers
of mothers, man-slayers, etc., is the very catalogue in the
chapter of the law in Exodus, in which the crime of man-
stealino; is defined and forbidden.
The apostle declares that it is as much the duty of the
preacher of the gospel to preach against that crime, with and
under the gospel, as it is to preach against murder, adultery,
lying, profaneness, and all other sins. It is the legitimate
416 THE GOSPEL TO ME^-STEALERS.
office of the gospel to proclaim the law against man-stealing,
and certainly to apply it in all its meaning, against every form
of the crime, against holding a man as a slave, and against
making merchandise of him, as well as against the original
stealing of him. The forcible continuance of a man in the
condition of a slave, a stolen man, would be just a repetition
and continuance of the original man-stealing, and, therefore,
the application of this law, under and by the authority of the
gospel, and for the purpose of the gospel, to bring men away
from such sins, and to save them in Christ, must be made to
the slaveholder ; and it would inevitably forbid, break up,
and destroy the crime of slaveholding, as a crime inconsistent
with Christianity, forbidden of God, and set down by him in
the same catalogue with that of the murder of fathers and
mothers.
In this view, a more tremendous passage against slavery
does not exist than this. It binds the preachers of Christ and
him crucified to make the application of the law of God against
this crime a part of their gospel preaching. They can not be
faithful preachers of the gospel without preaching, in the name
and by the authority of Christ and his cross, against this sin
of making merchandise of men, of holding or selling human
beings as property, as slaves. Let the gospel be preached ac-
cording to Paul's instructions, and let the churches apply the
discipline of Christ accordingly to the sinners under this cate-
gory, and slavery would be abolished from our land.
The Greek word for men-stealers is avSparrodcaralg. Lid-
dell and Scott define the word thus : a slave-dealer / also
one who kidnaps freemen or slaves, to sell them again. The
Greek verb, di'dpaTrodi^co, signifies to reduce to slavery, to en-
slave ; in the passive, to be sold into slavery. Dr. Robinson de-
fines the word as follows : a slave-dealer, man-stcaler, 1 Tim.
i., 10; comparo Ex. xxi., 16; Dcut. xxiv., V. — Pol. 12, 9. 2;
Xen. Mem. 1, 2, 6.
The authorities show that the word means a slave-dealer,
AGAINST SLAVE-DEALERS. 417
and also a man-stealer ; and the apostle, by using this word as
a synonyme of that crime which in Ex. xxi., 16 is forbidden
on pain of death, shows that any man making merchandise of
men is guilty of that crime ; the slave-dealer, the slave-trader,
the slave-buyer, the slave-seller is the man-stealer.
The man who sanctions and employs the slave-dealer, re-
ceiving from him a man as merchandise, or putting into his
hands a man to be sold as merchandise, is himself the guilty
party, the man-stealer. Any man who has any thing to do with
the crime, either as go-between, or buyer, or seller of a man,
or holding him as property, is implicated in the guilt of man-
stealing. They who pass laws sanctifying this iniquity only
increase the guilt ; they who practice it under the laws that
sustain it can not extricate themselves in that way from the
crime, but are guilty of it before God. The nation that de-
fends and practices it by law is a nation of mex- stealers'.
The attempt to evade the terrible power of this passage,
by directing it against slave-stealers, as if the stealing of a
slave was what God has forbidden, w-hile the stealing of a man
is not forbidden at all, is futile, because the reference of the
apostle is to the Hebrew law against man-stealing,* and not
to any law against slave stealing, there being no such law.
It was enough to forbid the stealing of a man ; for that pre-
vented the possibility of there being such a thing as a slave
to steal. If there had been such a thing, then the stealing of
a slave would have been a crime simply because it was the
stealing of a man, and not because it was the stealing of a
slave ; the stealing of a man from himself, and not the steal-
ing of a slave from his master. There is no law in the Old
Testament or the New against slave stealing ; there is against
man-stealers. There are no such criminals recognized as
* Grotius, Opera, Comm., in loc. mum est furti genus liominem liberum
Grotins refers to both forms of the law furari. The imagination of slave
in Ex. xxi., 16, and Deut. xxiv., 7. stealing being here referred to did not
He adds that the stealing of a freeman enter into his mind.
is the highest kind of theft. Maxi-
418 AGAINST ALL MERCHANDISE OF MEN.
slave-stealers ; but there are as men-stealers, and it is men-
stealers, and men-merchants, men buyers and sellers that are
condemned to death. And Paul commands that the law of
God and the gospel of Christ be preached against this crime.
It is an argument of wonderful power against slavery.
Adam Clarke's note on this passage is comprehensive.
" AvbpaTTodioTaic;, slave-dealers ; whether those who carry on
the traffic in human flesh and blood ; or those who steal a per-
son in order to sell him into bondage ; or those who buy such
stolen men and women, no matter of what color or what coun-
try ; or those who sow dissensions among barbarous tribes, in
order that they who are taken in war may be sold into slav
ery ; or the nations who legalize or connive at such traffic-
all these are man-stealers, and God classes them with the
most flagitious of mortals."*
Conybeare and Howson (vol. 2, p. 464) translate the word
as Clarke does, slave-dealers. They add, this is the literal
translation of the word. If, then, the gospel of God is to be
preached against slave-dealers, it is because the traffic in hu-
man beings, as property, is condemned of God in his law as a
crime. Any man is a slave-dealer who buys or sells, or buys
* See also Lucian's Dialogues, sold, but thinks himself nevertheless
The Sale of Philosophers. Jasper free."
Mayne's translation, 1G38. Oxford, See also Fuss, Roman Antiquities,
fol., p. 382. "Mercury. You, felloe, ch. i., 53. Also Blair's Inquiry on
with the scrip over your shoulder, the State of Slavey, pp. 32, 52, 45.
stand forth, and walk round the as- The traffic in slaves was carried to a
sembly. 0 yes 1 I sell a stout, vir- greater height in Rome during its
tuous, well-bred, free mortal ! Who days of prosperity and luxury than
buys him ? any where else ; the market being
" Merchant. Do you sell a freeman, furnished from all parts of the world,
Crier ? but chiefly from Greece and Asia, and
" Mercury. Yes ! men free by birth being kidnapped
"Merchant. Are you not afraid he everywhere to supply it. — Potter,
should accuse you of man-stealth, Antiq. Greece, vol. ii., 81, by whom
and summon you before the Areopa- Aristophanes is cited, using the word
gus ? avdpanodioruv for the traffic.
" Mercury. He cares not for being
MEN- STEALING IN THE CIIURCH. 419
and holds a man as a slave ; so that inevitably the slaveholder
comes under this condemnation. And this is Grotius' inter-
pretation of the law.
It would be impossible to set the gospel against slave-dealers
if it were not contrary to the gospel to hold men as slaves, to
make merchandise of men. The only reason for the infamy
attaching to the profession and character of a slave-dealer, is
because slavery itself is criminal and infamous, just as a pimp is
an infamous character, because adultery is infamous. If the hold-
ing of slaves were righteous, the dealing in them would be right-
eous also ; if the slaveholder can be received into good soci-
ety, the slave-dealer is equally worthy of it ; if the slaveholder
can be admitted into the Christian church, the slave-dealer
can also. On the other hand, if slave-dealing is criminal, it is
because slaveholding is a crime, and if the slave-dealer is infa-
mous, the slaveholder is likewise. The apostle, therefore, in
setting up the slave-dealer as a personification of crime and
infamy, along with the murderer, for the condemnation of the
law and the gospel, and thus excluding him from the Christian
church, does the same with the slaveholder, for what belongs
to the one belongs of necessity to the other. If the church
excludes the one, it must the other.
The practice by nations of a crime denounced by the Lord
God as worthy of death in individuals, the sanctioning and
pursuing by law of what God has forbidden under any and all
circumstances, has never on earth been so terribly illustrated
as in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, in the United
States of America. At this day the crime of kidnapping, the
crime of stealing men and convertingthem into property for gain,
is being committed openly by professedly Christian States, with-
out scruple, without compunction, without shame, in unparal-
leled defiance both of God and man. Christian States are by law
doing precisely what the United States laws denounce and pun-
ish as piracy ; seizing free citizens, and selling them as slaves.
The example of a pagan nation before the coming of Christ
420 MEN-STEALING BY THE NATION.
is here followed under the light of Christianity. In pagan
Greece Pericles is said to have proposed a law that only those
who were born of parents that were Athenians on both sides
should be reputed free citizens of Athens. Having prevailed
upon the people to give their consent, little less than five thou-
sand free citizens were at once deprived of their freedom and
sold as slaves.* Our State piety has improved on the obedi-
ence of paganism, and our rulers, under the teachings of the
gospel according to slavery, do not have to ask the people for
leave to sacrifice their liberties, but tirst pass the law, and then
compel the people to obey it.
1 Tim. vi., 2. " Let as many servants (dovXoi) as are under
the yoke (vnb %vybv) count their own masters (deoTrorac) wor-
thy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not
blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them
not despise them, because they are brethren, but rather do
them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers
of the benefit. These things teach and exhort." This passage
is a proof of the completeness of divine inspiration in guarding
against the abuse of doctrines that might have been perverted
to evil, though perfect in good. After the injunctions against
slavery, the reference to the Hebrew law branding it as a
crime worthy of death, and the precept, " If thou mayst be
made free, use it rather," a stampede of slaves from their
heathen masters might have been apprehended, which could
have been attended (before the diffusion and knowledge of
the truth and will of God in Christ concerning it) with nothing
but disaster. The Word of God faithfully proclaimed against
this as other sins, was to put an end to slavery ; and when
heathen masters became Christian, and were acquainted with
the laws of God in the Scriptures, then they would see and
acknowledge the wickedness of this crime.
But until then the converted slaves were enjoined to obey
* Akchb. Potter, Grecian Antiquities, vol. ii., p. 55. Blair's Inquiry.
HEATHEN AND BELIEVING MASTERS. 421
their ignorant heathen masters, so far as they could do it con-
sistently with the law of God and their supreme allegiance to
their Saviour, and as far as possible to honor them, that they
might not suppose that the Christian doctrine was a doctrine
teaching disobedience, idleness, insolence, or pride and insub-
ordination from servants to superiors. To avoid any danger
of such perversion, any occasion of thus blaspheming God and
Christianity, the converted slaves were enjoined even to be
doubly careful and diligent to please their masters, for just
the same reason that a wife was enjoined to use the same
carefulness toward an unbelieving or heathenish husband, in
order that if possible the unbelieving husband, ignorant of the
Word, might be won to Christ by the sweet behavior of the
wife. Just so with the converted slave, and his yet unenlight-
ened, unconverted master. As long as he staid with him, he
must endeavor doubly to honor and to please him, in order to
win him, if possible, to an examination of the religious teach-
ing and spirit which could produce such lovely fruits of pa-
tient obedience and faithfulness.
But it was only in regard to unbelieving heathen masters
that this was spoken. It is such only who are supposed to
continue to hold slaves. For the moment a man came to the
knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus, his eyes were opened
by the word of God to see that the holding of men as prop-
erty, the making merchandise of men, was a crime placed of
God along with that of murder. The moment a man was
converted, the gospel command came also upon him to give
unto his servants that which was just and equal, and he learned
that they were no longer slaves, but brethren beloved, and
entitled to the rights of freemen under God's law. That
which was just and equal involved, first of all, an entire relin-
quishment of all claim of property in them and over them. A
servant under such a master was no longer under the yoke,
but freed from it by having a believing master.
And now, in regard to this class of servants, who knew their
422 SERVANTS UNDER THE YOKE.
freedom by the divine law, and knew that their masters also
knew it, and were forbidden of God to treat them as slaves,
but required to treat them as brethren ; remembering that
the same Lord was their Lord and Master, and no respecter
of persons; in regard to this class, admitted so suddenly into
such an unaccustomed liberty, elevated to such an equality
with their masters in Christ, the danger was of being puffed
up with pride, and despising their masters, instead of render-
ing them due honor and obedience. They were, therefore,
cautioned against despising their masters, because they were
brethren, and being such were deprived by the law of God of
all unrighteous despotic authority over them; and they were
warned to render that obedience now out of love, which be-
fore, beneath the yoke of slavery, they had been compelled to
render out of fear and by compulsion. They must now be
faithful to their masters as to Christ, and out of love to Christ,
rendering them service* because they also were believers in
Jesus, Christian brethren, partakers of his love.
The servants under the yoke could not break the yoke, but
must bear it patiently. But when the law of God came to
the conscience of the master, and when he was converted,
then came the conviction of the criminality of slavery, and the
command to break every yoke, and to give liberty, every man
to his neighbor, and every man to his brother. None but
heathen masters maintained that yoke.* Christian masters
* Compare the Epistle to Philemon presented by the apostle as synony-
for the practical proof of emancipa- mous with being under the yoke ; the
tion. Also the testimonies previously having a Christian master is synony-
adduced. Adam Clarke (Comm. on mous with being freed from the yoke.
1 Tim. vi., 1) remarks that " the word "We find that even among the
dovhoi here means slaves converted slaves there were Christian converts,
to the Christian faith ; and the fwyov, to whom, though he recommends sub-
or yoke, is the state of slavery ; and mission and contentment, yet he inti-
by decjTTOTai, masters or desjiots, wo mates that if they could get their
are to understand the heathen masters freedom, they should prefer it ; and
of those Christianized slaves." he strongly charges those that were
The having a heathen master is free not to become again the slaves
SERVANTS OF CHRISTIAN MASTERS. 423
were required to break it, and it would seem from this very-
text that they did break it ; for this is the very point of con-
trast between believing and unbelieving masters, that while
the latter maintained that yoke of slavery, by the former it
was broken.
The servants of Christian masters were no longer slaves, but
free servants, brethren beloved ; and Christian masters were
no longer slaveholders, but forbidden to be such, and required,
as in the case of Philemon, to regard and treat their servants
no longer as slaves, but above that condition, as brethren in
Christ, and not slaves at all, not permitted to be treated as
such in any way. The law of God forbids it, and how much
more the gospel of Christ, the love of Christ, in addition to
that law, and in fulfillment of it.
Bloomfield remarks on 1 Tim. vi., 1, that " it was obvious
that the spirit of the gospel is adverse to slavery. Indeed,
in proportion as its injunctions are obeyed, it tends to root out
a practice in tchich folly and injustice are alike conspicuous."
This admission is enough. There can not, by any possibility,
be any precept in the gospel of God sanctioning or command-
ing a practice which the spirit of the gospel condemns, a prac-
tice conspicuous for folly and injustice, and known, by the
testimony of the gospel, to be a crime.
Bloomfield adds that "it was natural for persons so ignorant
as slaves to regard the gospel as freeing men from all obliga-
tions intrinsically and fundamental!}'' inconsistent with justice
and equity." And who is there, with a right knowledge of
the law of God, that can regard the gospel in any other way?
No enlightened Christian man can regard as obligatory by
of men, which, in a Christian, would ter of what color or complexion, is a
be a disgrace to his redemption by high offense against the holy and
Christ." just God, and a gross and uuprinci-
" The Christian religion does not pled attack on the liberty and rights
abolish our civil connections ; but of our fellow-creatures. — Clarke on
slavery, and all buying and selling of 1 Cor. vii., 23.
the bodies and souls of men, no mat-
424 SLAVERY INHERENTLY SINFUL.
the gospel what is intrinsically and fundamentally unjust. It
needed not the ignorance of a slave to regard the gospel as
freeing men from such obligations, for it was the enlighten-
ment of every Christian to know that what is in itself intrin-
sically and fundamentally unjust is forbidden by the gospel.
If slavery is " intrinsically and fundamentally inconsistent with
justice and ccpiity," then it is inherently sinful, sin per se, and
only for the sake of honoring Christ, by obedience to heathen
masters, was the relation itself to be endured by the subject
of it, and then only in such things as were not unrighteous
before God.*
Bloomfield says, on Eph. vi., 5, "The apostle does not in-
terfere with any established relations, however morally and
politically wrong, as in the case of slaves." It is a good ad-
mission, that slavery is a relation morally and politically
wrong. But that admission is fatal to the idea that the apos-
tle does not interfere. The gospel is in every part an inter-
ference with whatever is morally wrong, and forbids it. If
there be any thing contrary to sound doctrine, according to
the gospel, against that, says the apostle, our preaching is to
be directed. It being admitted that the relation of slavery
is morally wrong, it is morally impossible that Christians
should be permitted to sustain that relation. It is morally
certain that the gospel forbids it, and that, under the gospel,
* See also Calvin, comra. on Titus ought to allow us to be silent, ichile
ii., 9. He restricts the duty of obe- justice is violated by their froward-
dience to those things that are right ness. For in this case silence is a
(quai recta sunt), and excepts every kind of consent."
thing that is not according to the will See also Neander, Church Hist.
of God (ne quid nisi secundum Deum). Relation of Christianity to Govern-
Also Calvin on Ex. ii., 14. " It is meat. " God should be obeyed rather
the common duty of all believers than man, and every consideration,
when the innocent are harshly treated even of property and life itself, should
to take their part, and as far as pos- be disregarded, in all cases where hu-
sible to interpose, lest the stronger man power demanded an obedience
should prevail. It can scarcely be contrary to the laws and ordinances
done without exasperating those who of God," vol. i., p. 359.
are disposed to evil ; but nothing
NEANDER OX THE RELATION. 425
no person can rightfully be a slaveholder. The relation being
admitted to be morally wrong, it is morally certain that the
early churches could not have permitted slaveholding in their
communion. Hence the power of such a spontaneous testi-
mony as that of Augustine, against treating servants as things,
as property; and that of Isidore, that he did not suppose that
any Christian could keep a slave.
Neander remarks of the relation of slavery, that " a rela-
tion must necessarily fall of itself which is opposed to the
Christian universal philanthropy, and to the ideas spread by
Christianity respecting the equal destiny and dignity of all
men, as created in the image of God, and called to rule over
nature."*
The spirit of Christianity never could abolish that which the
law of Christianity established as just and right. The argu-
ment is absurd, which at one and the same time pretends a
sanction of slavery in the Word of God, and then claims that
if it be let alone, if there be no agitation or disturbance, the
spirit of the gospel will in due time destroy it. If it be sanc-
tioned in the Word of God, then the spirit of the gospel can
not be against it. But both law and spirit condemn and for-
bid it.f
The laws which the great Deliverer and Redeemer of man-
kind gave for the government of his kingdom were those of
universal justice and benevolence, and as such were subversive
of every system of tyranny and oppression. J "To suppose,
therefore, as has been rashly asserted, that Jesus or his apos-
tles gave their sanction to the existing systems of slavery
among the Greeks and Romans, is to dishonor them. That
the reciprocal duties of masters and servants (SovXoi) were in-
* Neander's Memorials of Chris- ness of the impression that slavery
lian Life, p. G2. finds a place in God's Word.
\ Saalschctz, Das Afosaische RecMe, % See the admirable views of the
vol. ii. This German writer on the Christian argument in Dr. Andrew
Mosaic legislation corrects some fun- Thomson's Sermon and Speeches>
damental errors, and shows the false- page 7.
426 EVIDENCE FROM TITUS.
culcated, admits, indeed, of no doubt. But the performance
of these duties on the part of the masters, supposing them to
have been slave masters, would have been tantamount to the
utter subversion of the relation. The character of the existing
slavery was utterly inconsistent with the entire tenor of the
moral and humane principles of the precepts of Jesus."*
But no matter if the character and quality of that slavery
had been less severe ; the relation itself is always inconsistent
with Christianity. Hence the righteous testimony of one of
the very tew ecclesiastical bodies that have at any time spoken
authoritatively and plainly against this sin, " the United Pres-
byterian Church of North America," against the sin of slave-
holding, as " a disqualification for membership in the church
of Christ." " It is the relation itself, which we have examined
in the light of Scripture, and which we have found to be so
inconsistent with it, and not the many cruel laws which
blacken the statute-books of the slaveholding States, and the
many gross and fearful evils that result from this relation."!
"I flatter myself," said the eloquent Dr. Andrew Thomson
of Edinburgh, " that I have said enough to show that those
who take shelter under Christianity, as if that afforded any
countenance to the slave system, are either ignorant or re-
gardless of that revelation of Divine mercy ; that when they
appeal to the Scriptures as sanctioning what they are so un-
willing to renounce, they do nothing less than put a blas-
phemous commentary on the contents of that sacred vol-
ume.'^
Titus ii., 9, 10. "Exhort servants (fiovXovg) to be obedient
unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things,
not answering again, not purloining, but showing all good
fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour
in all things." The same remarks are to be made on this
* Wright, Kitto's Cyclop. Art. Slave.
\ Testimony of the United Presb. Ch. of N. Am., 1858, p. 31.
% Andrew Thomson, Slavery condemned by Christianity, page 91.
EVIDENCE FR01I TITUS. 427
passage as on the passages in Ephesians and Timothy, contain-
ing the same instructions. They are suitable for all time, for
all generations, for all possible conditions of society, to the
end of the world ; for there is no intimation, or indication, or
sanction of slavery in them ; the relation of masters and ser-
vants being intended of God to belong to free Christian soci-
ety, as long as the world stands, but of masters and slaves,
never; this relation being forbidden, not only in the original
law condemning to death the man who holds his fellow-man
as property, but also in the command to masters to give unto
their servants that which is just and equal.
The exhortations to servants to obey their masters no more
intimate that it was right for those masters to hold them as
slaves, than the command to love your enemy intimates that
it is right for any one to be your enemy, or than the command
to bless them that curse you, and do good to those that per-
secute you, intimates that it is light for men to curse you and
to persecute you. It might as soundly and properly be argued
that malignant enemies and persecutors of Christians may
themselves be good Christians, and that the relation of a
cruel enemy and persecutor to the victim of such cruelty was
a Christian relation, as that the holders of Christians as prop-
erty may be good Christians, or the relation of a slaveholder
to the slave a Christian relation.
The old Hebrew law, and not the Roman law, or the Gre-
cian law and custom in Crete or Athens,* is the glass through
which this relation must be viewed. Viewed thus, it is in-
stantly seen to be criminal before God ; it is seen as con-
demned in his Word, and there is no possibility of any thing
forbidden in the moral law of God in the Old Testament be-
ing sanctioned by the gospel in the New. God's Word, and
not the custom or law of society, is the tribunal at which
every custom and law among men must be tried. He who
* Thirlwall, History of Greece, Slavery in Crete, cb. 7, 121, and in Ath-
ens, 187. Grots, Hist. Greece, voL iii., eh. xL
428
SLAVERY AGAINST NATURE AND RELIGION.
appealed for the guide and sanction of his own life to the Old
Testament, and referred to that supreme rule in the words,
It is written, never could have sanctioned in custom that
which God, in writing, had forbidden ; and that God had for-
bidden the claim of property in man is indisputable.* It is
that claim, and the application of it, in law and in practice,
that constitutes the essence of slavery, and without which
slavery could not exist.f
* Blackstone, Commentaries, vol.i.,
B. i., eh. xiv. Repugnancy of slavery
to reason and the principles of natural
law. That such a state should sub-
sist anywhere, he says, is thus repug-
nant. And all the three origins of the
pretended right of slavery, assigned by
Justinian, he shows to be false and in-
iquitous, contrary to the law of nature
and of reason. " Upon these princi-
ples the law of England abhors, and
will not endure the existence of slav-
ery within the nation." It is not to
be endured that a slaveholding Chris-
tianity should set revealed religion
against the natural conscience of man-
kind, or by a false interpretation of
the gospel set that against the law, or
by perversion of both, make each ap-
pear contrary both to God and nature.
f Dr. Andrew Thomson, Sermon
and Speeches. " Shame on those who
have so far taxed their ingenuity, and
so far consulted their selfishness, and
so far forgotten their Christian name,
as to apologize for the existence of
slavery by extolling the incomparable
superiority of spiritual freedom, and
dragging in the aid and countenance
of Scripture, misstated or misunder"
stood. Slavery ! the tempter, and the
murderer, and the tomb of virtue ! It
must be put an end to, and without
delay, for every day's procrastination
only adds to the guilt of those who
indulge in it, and sets at defiance the
very first principles and maxims on
which a true Christian feels himself
constrained to act." (Pages 28 and
40.)
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Evidence from the Epistle of Paul to Philemon.— Supposed Position and Char-
acter of Philemon and Onesimus.— Question as to the Fugitive Hebrew Law.—
Pauls Practical Answer.— Facts from toe Analysis of the Epistle.— Preju-
dices of the Commentators.— Key to the Interpretation of the Epistle.— Its
Demonstration against Slavery.
"Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, unto Philemon, our
fellow laborer, and to the church in thy house." The epistle
was written during Paul's first imprisonment at Rome, and
was sent, together with the epistles to the Ephesians and Co-
lossians,* by Tyehicus and Onesimus, about the ninth year of
the Emperor Nero, or 63 of our Lord.f Philemon's residence
was in Colosse, as appears from Col. iv., 9, where Onesimus,
the servant of Philemon, is said to be one of the Colossians.
Theodoret says that Philemon's house was still standing in
Colosse in his time, that is, in the commencement of the fifth
century.J Grotius supposed that Philemon was an elder in
the church at Ephesus. Michaelis regarded him as a deacon.
Doddridge supposes him to have been one of the pastors of
the church at Colosse, colleague with Archippus.§ Lardner
thinks it not certain whether he were an elder or a private
Christian. If he had been an elder, Lardner thinks he must
have known his duty better than to have needed so pressing
an exhortation to receive a Christian brother. | Paley and
* Paley, Hor. Paul., ch. vi. See % Lardner, Works, vol. vi., 77.
also Kitto, Cycl., Art. Oxesimus. § Doddridge, Preface to Phil and
f But Lightfoot supposes the year Notes. Fam. Exp., 948.
60. "Works, vol. hi., 301. | Lardner, vol. vi., 78, 131.
430 EPISTLE TO PHILEMON.
Lardner suppose that Paul had before known both Philemon
and Onesimus.* And Beausobre and Lardner supposed that
Onesimus' knowledge of Paul, as the friend of Philemon, in-
duced him to visit Paul at Rome.
Paley says that Onesimus was the servant or slave of Phi-
lemon. But Paley's acute observations in the comparison of
the epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, and to Philemon,
make it plain that the two latter, and, perhaps, all three
epistles, may have been intrusted to Tychicus and Onesimus
in one and the same commission ; a thing not very likely if
Onesimus was coming back as a slave to Philemon, to he his
property for ever.f The supposition has been almost universal
that Onesimus was set free by Philemon ; but, in fact, Paul's
own epistle is a rescript for the freedom of Onesimus, if he
had ever been a slave; and the very commission with which
he was immediately entrusted shows that he was considered
as free by Paul and Tychicus and the Colossians. When Ig-
natius wrote his epistle to the Ephesians, about the year 107,
their bishop's name was Onesimus; and Grotius concludes
him to be the same Onesimus who was converted and sent
back by Paul. Lardner thought that some persons might be
unwilling to admit that Philemon himself could have been a
bishop or elder of the church, " because he was a man of sub-
stance, who had one slave at least, or more."J
* Paley. Hor.e Paulina, 229. spring were slaves, following the con-
f Poli, Synopsis, vol. v., 1108. dition of the mother."
"Returned as one free; not as was % Lardxer, vol. vi., 78. It was a
customary with fugitives, to send just and natural conclusion, a Chris-
them back bound, or under a keeper." tian conclusion. But the argument
Again, "Non ut retraction, exfuga, aut is equally forcible against his being a
"at,, sed aut sponte reversum," member of the church, and still main-
of his own accord returning, and not taining the claim of property in man.
as one apprehended in flight. Yet The laws of Christianity forbade that
one of the suppositions made by this claim ; and if those laws were made
commentator concerning Onesimus is known by the apostles, they must
that "he may have been a natural have been respected, at least until the
brother of Philemon, begotten by his corruptions of Christianity carried away
father of a slave girl, for such oil'- its integrity and purity as with a flood.
SUPPOSITIONS AND PREJUDICES. 431
But Macknight supposes that Philemon, on the contrary, had
a number of slaves, on whom, if he pardoned Onesimus too
easily, the escape from punishment for running away would
have had a bad effect. And the methods of punishment were
notoriously dreadful. But Macknight conceives that Paul
presented to Philemon "the obligation he lay under to him,
for having made his unprofitable slave a faithful and affection-
ate servant to him for life. By telling Philemon that he would
now have Onesimus for ever, the apostle intimated to him his
firm persuasion that Onesimus would never any more run away
from him."* And even Doddridge says, "that he might not
only be dear and useful to thee during all the remainder of
his life as a servant, whose ear, as it were, is bored to the door
of thine house (to allude to the Hebrew custom, Ex. xxi., 6),
but a source of eternal delight," etc. And Hug says, " that
Paul was restoring property which was then of considerable
value, and was, moreover, returning it to its owner in an im-
proved condition."! And Poole, in answer to the question,
Why did not Paul in plain terms ask Philemon to emancipate
his slave ? says, " Perhaps it would have been too costly a de-
mand. For slaves were very useful to their masters, and
made a good part of their possessions.''^
Such are some of the preliminary suppositions and prejudices
with which men have set Paul the apostle to the business of
writing a pro-slavery document to comfort a rich Christian
slaveholder with the assurance that his property in human
flesh was more secure than ever. Had this Epistle been ren-
dered through the eye of the Old Testament, under the guid-
ance of which it was written, very different conclusions would
have been drawn from it. Let us examine the proof.
Verses 8-21. "Wherefore, though I might be much bold
in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient, (9.) yet for
* Macknight, Apostolical Epistles, 498.
f Hug's Introd. to the N. T. ; Ep. to Phil., 555.
f Poli, Synop., vol v.
432 LAWS OF ROME AND GOD.
love's sake I rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul
the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ. (10.) I be-
seech thee, for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in
my bonds ; (11.) which in time past was to thee unprofitable,
but now profitable to thee and to me; (12.) whom I have
sent again ; thou, therefore, receive him ; that is, mine own
bowels. (13.) Whom I would have retained with me, that in
thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of
the gospel ; (14.) but without thy mind would I do nothing,
that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but
willingly. (15.) For perhaps he therefore departed for a sea-
son, that thou shouldst receive him forever. (16.) Not now
as A servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, espe-
cially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the
flesh and in tiie Lord. (17.) If thou count me, therefore,
a partner, receive him as myself. (18.) If he hath wronged
thee, or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account. (19-) I,
Paul, have written it with mine own hand, I Mill repay it ;
albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even
thine own self besides. (20.) Yea, brother, let me have joy
of thee in the Lord; refresh my bowels in the Lord. (21.)
Having confidence in thy obedience, I wrote unto thee, know-
ing that thou wilt also do more than I say."
Of this it is to be noted that it is the conclusion and climax
of all Paul's instructions on the subject of slavery. It might
have been asked by the disciples, to whom any of his Epistles
had come, referring to the treatment of servants, " But what
are we to do, under the Roman empire, with the laws of God
in regard to fugitives ?* We are told that if the slave may
* Josephus, Book 6, chap, vi., Jud. of God against ment-stealers, mur-
Bell. — Laws of the Jews. That these derers, and defilers of themselves
laws were still of force, Paul himself with mankind were not abrogated,
teaches in 1 Tim. i., 9, by his refer- neither were those against the betray-
ence to the whole body of moral pre- ers of fugitives ; if the ardpaTrodiarat,
cepts and forbiddings, and his instruc- were objects of the divine reprobation,
tions to have them enjoined in the so were the fugitivarii, the man-hunt-
preaching of the gospel. If the laws ers, the avdpanwayoi. Josephus,
CONCLUSION FEOM PAUL'S ACTION.
433
be made free, be is to use it rather, and that we must not be
the slaves of men. But now suppose he runs away, what are
we Christians to do with him ?
The answer of Paul says, practically, in this Epistle,
1. You are to shelter him, and not to oppress him.
2. On no account give any notice of him, nor betray the
wanderer, but he shall abide with thee, in one of thy gates, in
that place where it liketh him best.*
3. Instruct him in the gospel, and by the grace of God con-
vert him to Christ.
4. If he have had a Christian master, and you are confident
in that master's piety and benevolence, then you may give no-
tice to such a master (and send your letter or message by the
fugitive himself) that you have sent him back to be emanci-
referring to the fact of the Jewish
laws being acknowledged, records a
speech of Titus to the Jews, noting
the liberality of the Romans ia this
respect. " We have preserved to you
the laws of your forefathers, and per-
muted you to live as it should please
you, by yourselves or with others,
permitted you also to collect your sa-
cred tribute."
Now it is not to be supposed that
the laws contained iu the books of
Exodus or Deuteronomy, or in the
twenty-first and twenty-third chapters
of those books, were considered as
abrogated, while those of Leviticus
were enforced; or that, while the
laws against perjurers were binding,
those against delivering up the fugi-
tive, those protecting the fugitive
from oppression and securing his free-
dom, were of none effect. The laws
of Rome can not be proved to have
been considered by Paul and his fel-
low Christians as more binding than
the laws of God.
* Josephus, . Antiq., B. xv., ch. 9.
Josephus remarks concerning Herod,
that " the liberality and submissive
behavior which he exercised toward
Caesar and the most powerful men of
Rome, obliged him to transgress the
customs of his nation, and to set aside
many of their laws."
Suppose such a testimony as this to
have been given respecting Paul, that
judging himself brought under Roman
law, and obliged to cultivate the favor
of the court, and to avoid giving of-
fense, he had been compelled in some
things to set aside and transgress the
law of God, though he had command-
ed Timothy to preach it ! The suppo-
sition is shameful. Yet such, iu fact,
is the course of conduct attributed to
him, in supposing that out of regard to
the Roman law he would set at
nought the Divine law, and at the
command of GYesar return into slavery
a fugitive whom God had commanded
him to protect.
19
434 PAUL'S EIGHT TO ONESIMUS. *
patcd ; that by the law of God his master is bound to receive
Mm, and treat him as a brother, but no longer as a slave ; that
in every respect, just as Paul would have a right to be
treated as a freeman, just so has he. You are to commit the
fugitive to his own care, and not to denounce him to the au-
thorities, nor commit him to the keeping of any marshal. He
is not to be rendered up as if he were a prisoner, or had com-
mitted an offense, but is to be intrusted, as a Christian brother,
and a freeman, Avith the letter missive, demanding his free papers.
These things are clear from the analysis of this Epistle.
Some other things are equally clear.
1. From verses 8-10, the assertion is clear that Paul could
of right, in Christ's name, enjoin upon Philemon by command-
ment the freedom and brotherly kindness which, for love's
sake, he asks for Onesimus.
2. From verse 1 1 the conclusion is clear that slavery is un-
profitable, while freedom and piety are profitable.
3. From verses 11, 15, 16, the conclusion is manifest that
freedom, and not slavery, is the cause of piety ; that not
slavery, but the escape from it, and the hearing of the gospel
in freedom, is the true missionary institute, attended with
converting grace. If Onesimus had remained with Philemon,
and been treated as a slave, there is no proof that he would
ever have been converted. He is said to have " departed"
from Philemon, and getting to Rome he met with Paul, and
being affectionately received and protected by him, he opened
his heart to him, and was converted.
4. From verse 13 it is evident that Paul held that he had a
right to have retained Onesimus, if Onesimus chose to be in
his service, and that he was not bound by any pretended right
of Philemon in him as property, or in his services, against his
own will. " Whom I would have retained with me, that in
thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of
the gospel." If Onesimus had been considered as Philemon's
property, then the very design of retaining him, without buying
PAUL'S VIEW OF PROVIDENCE. 435
him, as well as the having kept him so long, without any no-
tice to Philemon, would have been a dishonesty ; just as much
as if Paul had found a note of a thousand denarii belonging
to Philemon, and had kept it a considerable time, and had
then sent word to Philemon that he would have kept it alto-
gether, but preferred on the whole that Philemon should
have the opportunity of giving it of his own accord.
" But without thy mind," Paul says, " I would do nothing ;»
not because he intimates that that would have been wrong, in
retaining Onesimus; but that it would have deprived Phile-
mon of the privilege of doing of his own accord what Paul ,
could have justly required of him ; " that thy benefit should
not be of necessity, but as it were willingly." Thy benefit,
to dyadov gov, thy privilege of conferring the benefit, thy
good deed, thy benefit both to Onesimus, and to Paul through
him, and thus also a benefit to Philemon himself; thy benefit
in conferring a benefit.*
5. He gives Philemon the privilege of consenting that
Onesimus should become a helper of Paul in the gospel. It
was not, as some have intimated, as a personal servant, that
Paul would have retained him, but as a minister unto him, in
and of the gospel, as Philemon himself, or Tychicus, or Timo-
thy might have been. But he gives Philemon the privilege
of relinquishing all his former claims upon him for service, and
of yielding him up spontaneously, at the claim of duty and of
Christ's love, for Christ's service.
6. In verse 15 Paul intimates that it was by the Divine
Providence that Onesimus " departed from him," for a sea-
son, on purpose that, being converted during his absence, he
might be received back in the eternal relation of a Christian
brother, but no longer as a slave. Paul does not intimate
that Philemon ran away, or that he was guilty of any crime
in so doing, if he did run away, but uses concerning his de
* See Robinson's Lex. K T. on the word, Bloomfield, in loc, Whitby on
the same, Calvin, in Epist. v., 14, Doddridge on the same, Poole, Annot.
436 NO MORE AS A SERVANT.
parture the same language (e%6jp« <?#?/) as is used in Acts i., iv.,
and xviii., 12, of the departure of the disciples and of Paul
from Jerusalem and Athens, and Romans viii., 35, Who shall
separate us from the love of Christ ? It is inconceivable, if
Onesimus was the property of Philemon (and if so, then the
most sacred of all property), and had stolen himself out of
Philemon's power, committing thus the crime of man-stealing,
that Paul should not so much as hint at any thing criminal or
wrong in this action, but should leave it to be considered an
innocent departure. The commentators call it a euphemism •
but Paul was not wont thus to conceal a great crime under
soft and flattering language. Had it been a crime in Onesi-
mus to depart from Philemon, Paul would have stated it.
7. Some other things he does distinctly state, namely, that
Onesimus is to be received back, not now as a servant, oviierc
ug SovXov, no more as a servant, or slave (see Robinson, Lex.,
ovueri, no more, no further, no longer), distinctly, not again as
a slave, no more a slave, but above a slave, a brother beloved.
If Paul sought to express as clearly as possible the fact that
Philemon was to be free, was no more to be a slave, could no
longer be held as such (even if he had been before), he could
not have used more pointed language. The thing is as posi-
tive as words can make it, no longer as a slave. It is an ex-
ample of the impossibility of a Christian being a slaveholder,
and of the manner in which fugitives from slavery were always
to be treated by Christians, as brethren, and not as slaves.
8. To prevent all possibility of doubt, to cut off all oppor-
tunity of evasion by resorting to the pretense that this free-
dom was merely Christian freedom in the Lord, or the privi-
lege of being beloved as a brother in Christ, notwithstanding
the continuance of slavery, it is distinctly added and declared
that Onesimus is to be received by Philemon not merely as by
Paul, in the character of a brother beloved in Christ, but as a
brother also in the flesh ; not as a servant, but above a ser-
vant, a brother beloved, both in the flesh and in the Lord.
A. BROTHER BELOVED. 437
This can have no other meaning than that Onesimus could
no longer sustain the relation of a slave to Philemon in the
flesh any more than in the Lord, but was a brother in both
senses, so that he could not be a slave, nor could Philemon as
a Christian hold him as such any more than he could have
been supposed to hold his own brother as property, or use
him as merchandise.
9. To all this is added another requisition and characteristic
of perfect equality and freedom, "If thou count me & partner
(kocvovov) receive him as myself." For the meaning of this,
compare 2 Cor. viii., 23. " Whether any do inquire of Titus,
he is my partner and fellow-helper." Also Luke v., 10. "The
sons of Zebedee, partners with Simon." Make a common
friend and partner of both of us, him as myself. (See Robinson
on the word and its cognates, in Lex. of N. T.)
10. "If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee aught, put
that on mine account." It is not here asserted that Onesimus
had wronged Philemon. On the contrary, it is very clearly
intimated (as well as in verse 15) that his departure was not a
wrong ; had that been a wrong, it would have been (if Onesi-
mus were of right a slave) the highest kind of robbery, and
Paul could not have questioned it. What an insult it would
have been to send back Onesimus as a criminal, guilty of such
robbery, and at the same time coolly to write concerning him
to his owner, If he hath wronged thee, charge it to me ! If,
according to the interpolations of some paraphrasts, Onesimus
had been the property of Philemon, and the value of that
property had been greatly increased by his conversion (the
presence of the Holy Spirit in him constituting him a much
more precious piece of property than he was before, which is
the hideous sense that some commentators put upon the 11th
verse), then the proposition of Paul to set Onesimus free
would have been just a demand upon Philemon for the sacri-
fice of a considerable sum of money; and on the same princi-
ples of generosity and justice on which Paul offers to pay any
438 ONESIMUS AND TYCHICTTS.
thing that Onesimus might he owing to Philemon, Paul must
also have offered to purchase Onesimus, and pay for him. To
demand that Philemon should give him to Paul, and then for
Paul to offer to jiay a few pitiful dehts that Onesimus was
owing to Philemon, would he somewhat like asking a man to
give you five hundred dollars, and then offering to settle for
him a neglected hill of his last year's water-tax.
11. There is no intimation of Onesimus having robbed Phi-
lemon, and fled from him as a thief. Such suppositions and
assertions are gratuitous and unfounded, as Bloomfield, Mac-
knight and others have noted. There is not the slightest inti-
mation in the epistle to the Colossians, where Onesimus is
mentioned, of any allegation against him, nor of his being a
slave, any more than Tychicus ; but he is mentioned as a faith-
ful and beloved brother, along with Aristarchus, Marcus, Jus-
tus, E]3aphras, " who is one of you" (the very same words used
in regard to Onesimus), in the same epistle in which it is de-
clared that in the church there is neither distinction of Greek
nor Jew, bond nor free, and in -which masters are commanded
to give unto their servants that which is just and equal. One-
simus is no more considered a slave than Epaphras.
12. Paul's confidence in Philemon's obedience is to be noted.
The command was, as well as request, to receive Onesimus,
not as a servant, but as a brother. Paul had no right to com-
mand Philemon to do any thing but what the law of God and
the gospel of Christ enjoined upon him. But in this he makes
no question of his obedience. The dignity of his authority
in Christ is thus united with the persuasive tenderness and
courtesy of Christian love.* That Onesimus was considered
by Paul as free is plain from his being intrusted, along with
Tychicus (both mentioned by name in Col. iv., 7, 9), with the
apostle's letter and messages to the saints and faithful brethren
in Colosse. No difference whatever is put by Paul between
Onesimus and Tychicus. They are both called faithful and
* This point is noted by Paley, in Hona Paulince, with emphasis.
ABSURDITIES IMPUTED TO PAUL. 439
beloved brethren, and it is added, "They shall make known
unto you all things which are done here."
At the same time Onesimus was intrusted with the epistle
to Philemon, and he must have known its contents, and the
conditions on which, with his own consent, Paul was sending
him on this mission. He was free ; nor could Philemon have
retained him as a servant, except with his own and Paul's con
sent ; as a slam he could not have received him at all, but was
forbidden from maintaining any such claim or relation, not
only by the present epistle, but by the principle laid down in
that to the Colossians, iv., 1, Masters, give unto your ser-
vants that which is just and equal. If, as a slave, Paul was
sending back Onesimus, and if, as a slave, Philemon was to
receive him, greatly increased in value, and bound to him for
ever as his property, then the idea of Paul writing a letter to
Philemon, humbly and affectionately beseeching him to do
this for Christ's sake and for love's sake, is one of the great-
est absurdities that could be imagined.
For, consider the case of a slave worth a thousand or fifteen
hundred dollars having escaped from a plantation at the South,
and becoming a Christian at the North, his value being thus in-
creased, say live hundred dollars, would any pious slave-catcher
think it necessary, would the minister of religion, under whose
instructions the slave was converted, think it necessary to write
a humble, beseeching letter, entreating him, for Christ's sake, to
receive back the fugitive as part of his plantation stock, and per-
mit him to work for him without wages as his property? Mean-
time the master has offered publicly a hundred dollars reward
or more to any who would aid him in recovering his valuable
property. How does the system work where we see it in prac-
tice ? Do slave-catchers have to entreat the masters for the
sake of Christ to condescend to receive back their valuable
chattels ? It is ordinarily the case that they are glad enough to
get them, though at the cost of great toil, expense and agitation.
It is not to be endured that such absurdities should be
440 PAGAN INTERPRETATIONS.
fastened upon an inspired epistle, or that conduct, sentiments
and arguments should be imputed to Paul, such as would dis-
grace an intelligent heathen. Yet, so ingrained has the com-
mon mind been with the supposition of the rightfulness of
slavery, the moral sense so poisoned, so drugged with the idea
of slavery being a system sanctioned of God, and through this
incarnation of iniquity in the conscience so deadened to the
shame of such sentiments imputed to the inspired writers, that
even Conybeare and Howson have translated Paul's words
(rendered in our translation, that thou shouldst receive him
for ever) by the phrase, " that thou mightest possess him for
eyer," and in the phrase following, they have interpolated the
words "being thine" (not in the original), and instead of our
common translation, which is " a brother beloved, especially
to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in
the Lord," they have added in the translation " being thine,
both in the flesh and in the Lord."
But these writers have also translated Paul, in 1 Cor. vii.,
21, as enjoining Christians to prefer slavery to freedom, even
if they could have their choice ! Not a few of the commen-
tators have, in respect to this subject, taken their stand point
in the lowest level of Paganism, and have attempted to draw
Christianity down upon that platform. Instead of consulting
the Old Testament Scriptures, and interpreting the New ac-
cordingly, disclosing the elevation of Judean and Christian
society, produced by the Scriptures, and the divine spirit in
them, above that of the whole world besides, they have
adopted one of the worst vices of Pagan civilization as sanc-
tioned of God, and then have put the interpretation of the
gospels and epistles to the torture, in order to accommodate
the Christian Scriptures to that sanction. We might have
said the worst vices of a Pagan barbarism ; for what can be
worse, what more diabolical on earth, than the system of
slavery known to have come to its perfection in Greece and
Rome, to which these interpreters would affix the seal and
PAGAN INTERPRETATIONS. 441
authority of divine inspiration ? They have carried the very
words of the Holy Spirit to be stamped by the depravities of
the Pagan world, and then circulated them, under such an
image and superscription, as the exponents of Christianity.
A consultation of some who have written on this epistle
will give a vivid idea of the deadening and debasing power
of slavery over the conscience and mind, wherever this wick-
edness is defended or excused as right, and maintained as
consistent with the gospel. The distortion and degradation
of the moral sense are incredible. But nothing in this line
could surprise us from writers who could paraphrase the fifth
verse of the sixth chapter of Ephesians thus : "As the gospel
does not cancel the civil rights of mankind, I say to bond-
servants, obey your masters, who have the property op
tour body, with fear and trembling, as liable to be punished
by them for disobedience."* And yet, the very same com-
mentator adds a note on the word man-stealers thus : " They
who make war for the inhuman purpose of selling the van-
quished as slaves, as is the practice of the African princes, are
really man-stealers. And they who, like the African traders,
encourage that unchristian traffic, by purchasing the slaves
whom they know to be thus unjustly acquired, are partakers
in their crime."f But how can slaves be ever acquired in any
other way than unjustly? The purchase of slaves acquired
in war is perhaps the least iniquitous mode of man-stealing ;
but if the traffic be unchristian, it can be so only on the
ground of the fact both of natural justice and divine revela-
* MackhiGHT, Apostolical Epistles, " if any one teach that under the gos-
Eph., ch. vi. pel slaves ought to be made free, he
f M.yckxight on 1 Timothy L, 10. is puffed up with pride, knowing noth-
And yet, on chapter vi, Macknight ing." He renders verse 6, " But god-
reasons as if slaveholding was a right, liness with a competency is great
to which masters are entitled by the gain ;" and according to the scope of
law of nature, or the law of the coun- this reasoning, the paraphrase would
try, which the Christian religion of rightly add that a certain number of
course confirms! And a part of his slaves is the divine idea of a Christian
paraphrase of the third verse is, that competency.
19*
442 PROTECTION OF FUGITIVES.
tion, that human beings can not be property, and that the
treatment of them as such is a crime in God's sight, and by
God's law worthy of death.*
The key to this epistle is in the grand old Hebrew fu-
gitive law in Deut. xxiii., 15, 16. " Thou siialt not deliver
UNTO HIS MASTER THE SERVANT "WHICH IS ESCAPED FROM HIS
master unto thee." Nearly all the commentators have neg-
lected this law, have refrained from referring to it, and have
sought to break open the epistle without using the key, or
with false keys modeled by the slave power, so that they
could rifle its contents by their own private interpretation for
the sanction of slavery. Some have done this ignorantly, in
unbelief; others are still doing it, in the bold avowal of the
opinion that slavery is an institution of God, and that any
shelter given to a fugitive slave is a violation of that religion
and law which says, " Betray not the fugitive ; take away
from the midst of thee the yoke ; give liberty every man to his
brother and every one to his neighbor." Not in the law only,
but in the prophets ; not in Deuteronomy only, but in Isaiah
and Jeremiah and the Psalms, Paul's favorite books of con-
sultation and of study, he would find such passages as the
following, in connection with the statutes against holding and
treating human beings as merchandise, and against oppressing
and defrauding them : " Take counsel ; execute judgment ;
make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday ;
hide the outcasts ; betray not him that wandereth. Let mine
outcasts dwell with thee ; be thou a covert to them from the
* Blackstoxe on the Rights of " Political freedom was a great bless
Persons, B. i., eh. xiv. Also, Intro- ing; but compared with personal, it
duction, Law of Nature and of Revela- sunk to nothing. Personal freedom
tion, sec. 2. See also Tucker's Light was the first right of every humau
of Nature, and Coleridge on Self- being. It was a right of which he
Evident Truths, and the necessity of who deprived his fellow creature was
their repromulgation. Tiie Friend, absolutely criminal in so depriving
Essay 8. Also, Humboldt, Cosmos, him, and which he who withheld was
voL ii., 567, 568, and vol. L, 368. Also, no less criminal in withholding."
Speeches of Fox and Wilberforce.
CARICATUEE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 443
face of the spoiler ; for the extortioner is at an end, the spoiler
ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed out of the land, and in
mercy shall the throne be established."*
Paul could not pass by such passages, nor ignore, nor misin-
terpret God's laws against every form of man-stealing, though
some of his interpreters can. It is a singular example of
blindness and perversion, when the light of the Old Testament
is carefully excluded from an epistle in the New. In every
other case of examination of the meaning of the New Testa-
ment, wherever there is any reference in the subject or the
language to any Old Testament passage, the commentators
have, of course, referred back to it. But in this veiy plain
case of the epistle to Philemon as connected with the law in
Deuteronomy, and the precepts in Isaiah and other books, the
commentators have turned away from that light, and kept it
from the subject, avoiding, with singular pertinacity, all allu-
sion to the appointed mode of treating fugitives in the Old
Testament, while maintaining that they must be punished as
runaway slaves in the New, and that the utmost that the re-
ligion of the gospel could do for them, toward shielding them
from such cruelty, was humbly to beg their masters to refrain
from such punishment ! While the piety of the Old Testa-
ment is thus presented as noble, elevated and humane, that
of the New is caricatured, in contrast, as mean, servile and
oppressive. It is an insufferable slander of dishonesty and
craftiness, a handling of the word of God deceitfully, a de-
basement of the most precious coin of divine inspiration, for
avaricious and inhuman purposes.
Now it would be almost as gross a piece of ignorance or
obstinacy, and of superficial investigation, under the power of
prejudice, for a man to undertake an exposition of the epistle
to the Hebrews, and of the nature of Christ's priesthood,
without referring to the Levitical priesthood and the laws
concerning that, as for a man to expound the epistle to Phile-
* Is. xvi., 3, 4, 5.
444 PAUL'S rilACTICAL INTERPRETATION".
raon without referring to the Mosaic laws in regard to the
treatment of servants and fugitives. It can not be ignorance ;
for some of these very writers, as we have seen, quote, as illus-
trative of Onesimus being received by Philemon forever, (as
they affirm in their slave sense,) the custom of boring the ear
of a Hebrew servant, when he entered into a new contract to
serve his master till the jubilee ; and they intimate that Onesi-
mus was sent back by Paul to have his ears bored and nailed
to Philemon's service as his property for life ! To such an in-
credible length has the prejudice in behalf of slavery gone,
while the provisions in behalf of justice and mercy are con-
cealed or forgotten ! And so the word of God is ingeniously
(and sometimes unconsciously) tortured, to compel some ap-
pearance of the sanction of the greatest iniquity of modern
times !
Paul must have had God's law in respect to the treatment
of fugitives directly before him in the case of Onesimus, and
he could not have avoided consulting it for light. It was a
guide to him in this particular instance ; and his epistle to
Philemon proves him to have acted according to it, under the
confidence of Philemon's own Christian character, committing
to him the performance of the appointed duty of benevolence
to Onesimus as a Christian brother and freeman, jiermitted to
dwell where it might like him best, in that place where he
should choose, and not oppressing him. Paul himself, in the
first place, gives him shelter in his own hired house. He
does not betray him. He does not deliver him up into the
power of his master as a fugitive. He does not send word to
him to come up to Rome, prove property in his slave, pay
charges, and take him away. He kindly protects and in-
structs him. He then at length sends him back, with his own
consent, as a trusted and honored messenger and brother, as
free as Tychicus (Col. iv., 7, 9), with a message for the breth-
ren at Colosse, and a command to Philemon from divine in-
spiration, as well as the affectionate entreaty of Paul's love
ONESIMUS A FREEMAN.
445
concerning his freedom. He does not accuse Onesimus of
running away wrongfully, does not intimate that he commit-
ted any wrong in escaping. He states, on the contrary, that
perhaps it was by the merciful providence of God that he de-
parted from him for a season that he might be received back,
no more as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved.*
He commands Philemon to receive him as he would Paul
himself, as a partner. Whatever Avrong Onesimus may have
done to Philemon, whatever he may have been owing to him,
Paul does not intimate that it was in running away from him,
but during his unprofitable state of bondage to him, which
state now ceases ; and in order that there might be no shadow
of claim remaining from Philemon against Onesimus whereby
he might have said, I will keep you still in bondage till you
work out your debt, Paul takes all Onesimus' debts upon
himself, whatever they might be, and becomes security for
him.f The result is, Onesimus a freeman.^
* Saalschutz, Jfos. Recht Laws of
Moses, p. 715. Saalschutz remarks
upon the singular felicity of the laws
by which, if a heathen slave happened
to have been sold in Judea, he could
escape from his master, and the whole
Hebrew world were forbidden to do
any thing toward bringing him back,
but were bound of God to shelter the
fugitive. It was impossible that Paul
could have despised that law.
f Poli, Synopsis, vol. v., in Epist.
ad Phil. Poole does not once refer to
the law of God forbidding the deliver-
ing up of fugitives, but he does refer
to the Roman law requiring it, and
remarks "that the reason why Paul
was not willing to keep Onesimus
was because of the very heavy penal-
ties of the Roman laws against re-
ceiving or retaining fugitive slaves."
Men would seem to imagine that Paul
was more afraid of breaking the law
of Rome than of God.
% "Wallox, Histoire d'Esclavage
dans TAntiquite, voL iii., ch. 1. This
writer declares that in the example ol
Paul and the precepts of the New
Testament, Christianity had already
accomplished the emancipation of the
slave. "Paul received the fugitive,
taught him, and sent him to his mas-
ter, NO more a slave, but a brother,
equal, both before the world and before
God." The duty and the work of
emancipation are here complete and
perfect.
Josiah Coxder, in his work on tho
Literary History of the New Testa-
ment, p. 440, also affirms that " in the
epistle to Philemon, who has been, by
an absurd abuse of terms, styled a
slaveholder, St. Paul has pronounced a
more emphatic condemnation of slave-
holding by Christians than could have
been conveyed by more direct prohi-
bitions."
CHAPTER XL .
Evidence from Hebrews, James, Peter, and tiie Apocalypse.
Hebrews xiii., 3. " Remember them that are in bonds, as
bound with them." Doubtless, from the phraseology em-
ployed in this passage, and in others where the same words
occur, the primary application of it is to those in imprison-
ment for Christ, or bound icith this chain, (Acts xxviii., 20,) as
was Paul at Rome, or those condemned by their persecutors
to labor in the mines, or under chains ; but in general it com-
prehends those under the galling yoke of slavery, those whose
heathen masters knew no rule of conduct toward their slaves
but that of the supreme ownership and inexorable severities of
the Roman law, by which they were treated not as persons
but as things, as slaves are in America.* These were to be
remembered in prayer, and in every way of possible compas-
sion, just as the Christians themselves, to whom Paul was
writing, would desire to be remembered, if they were in
this deplorable condition, by those who enjoyed the blessed-
ness of freedom. The words employed are 6eauio)v and ovv-
dn6z\itivoi ; but every slave is in a bondage incomparably worse
than was that of Paul, the prisoner of Jesus, and under chains
of ownership as a thing, a chattel, more galling, more dread-
* Compare Stroud, Slave Laws, chapters ii., xvi., xxxvi. Christians
Condition of the Slave in Civil Soci- not put to death were treated with
ety, ch. III., with Fuss, Rom. Antiq., imprisonment, exile, or slavery in the
sec. 54, 55, 56, and Grote, History mines. The mines of Numidia con-
of Greece, vol. iii., pp. 94, 95. Also tained nine bishops in slavery, with
Blair'8 Inquiry of Slavery among the many others. — Cyprian, cited in Gib-
Itomaus, 32, 45. Also Gibbox, Hist., bon. Also Wallon, Hist. d'E sclavage.
RESPECT OF PERSONS FORBIDDEN". 447
ful, more iniquitous, than was that chain which fastened Paul's
wrist, even in his own hired house, to the arm of his Roman
keeper.
James ii., 1. " Have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Lord of glory, with respect of persons." The worst kind
and degree of such respect is that against color, reducing the
colored race to a despised, oppressed, enslaved class, and carried
to such an extreme that the dreadful assertion is not only tol-
erated but defended, that black men have no rights that white
men are bound to respect.* A Christianity that can accept or
endure this as justice will admit and defend any iniquity, any
cruelty against the race so set apart for scorn and oppression,
so condemned to a living death by a public moral assassina-
tion.f It will force upon them a social system that crushes
them into the condition of chattels, in the torture of life-long
labor without wages, under a contempt not felt toward things,
and that animals can not be made to feel. It will force upon
them a church and a religion that by law keeps them in igno-
rance, forbids their being taught to read, excludes them from
the sacrament of marriage, makes the Sabbath a mockery, or
a mere block and pulley for hauling taut and securing the fast-
enings of the system. J This is that respect of persons, forbid-
den of God, but carried in slavery to the extreme of turning
* Sir James Stephens, Slavery in f Contrast this old "West India legis-
the "West Indies, vol. i., p. 3G4. Un- lation, and similar law and usage in
der the section of Maxims of Colonial America, with the law and custom
Slave Law, the author presents some under Louis XI. of France. (See
terrible proofs of the power and prop- Smyth's Lectures on Mod. Hist.,vol. i.,
agation of such caste and prejudice, p. 110.) " An age of superstition and
He cites as the law of usage "that violence." ''In all cases where the
no white person can by any means proofs for and against the serfage are
whatever be reduced to slavery ; but equal, let the decision be in favor of
that every man, woman and child, liberty."
whose skin is black, or whose mother, % Humboldt, Kingdom of New
grandmother, or great-grandmother Spain, vol. i., p. 174, etc., presents il-
was of that complexion, shall be pre- lustrations of the power and misery of
suraed to be a slave, unless the con- slave-caste perpetuated, but he s.iys
trary is proved." that in Mexico the laws are always
448 BILL FOR WAGES KEPT BACK.
persons into things. In the church, by command of Christ,
there was to be neither Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free ;
but all one in him. But slavery denies or destroys even the
fundamental law that God has made of one blood all nations
and races, and substitutes in its stead a discord of partial
cruelty worse than any depraved Manichean imagination ever
attributed to the all-wise Creator and Goveraor.*
James v., 4. " The hire of the laborers kept back by fraud."
The whole of this passage is terrible. The fraud of taking
men and using them as slaves, not only keeping back their
wages, but giving them nothing, and making it a point of law
that nothing is due to them, buying and selling, not only their
labor, but themselves, their bodies and souls, as merchandise,
is the highest possible example of this wickedness. In addi-
tion to all other cruelties, the wages of which they have been
defrauded, but which the eye of Supreme Justice has marked
interpreted in favor of liberty, and the closes the inalienable and incurable
government favored the increase of cruelty and selfishness of the system.
freemen. This was written in 1809. " The first founders of slavery in the
Humboldt gives a description of English as well as Dutch colonics held
what he witnessed of the disregard of it to be incompatible with the condition
color and of caste in the Academy of of a Christian man, and such as pa-
Fine Arts in Mexico, where rank, gans and infidels could alone be law-
color and race were compounded, the fully subjected to." While this prej.
Indian, the Mestizo, and the Whites, udice existed, a man by becoming a
the sons of the lowliest artisans and Christian might possibly escape from
of the highest lords were seated to- the condition of a slave. They there*
gether. (Vol. i., p. 241.) fore, in Jamaica, as early as 1G96,
* Smyth, Lectures on Mod. Hist., passed a law to prevent such a re-
vol. i., 170, refers to "the effect of suit. "Bo it enacted that no slave
habit in banishing all the natural feel- shall be free by becoming a Chris-
ings of mercy, justice, benevolence, as tian." In America there is an im.
in the instances of slave-dealers, etc., provement on this. Be it enacted
as perfectly frightful." Compare that slavery is the highest style of
Wright, Slavery at the Cape of Good Christianity, " undoubtedly good, and
Hope, p. 15, the effect of law and only good; the only good in the
usage sanctioning concubinage and whole affair of negro existence iu
adulter}'. Stephens, Slavery in W. America." — Southern Presb. Review,
I., under the head of Unjust and Mer- May, 1857.
ciless Laws, voL i., sec. 6, p. 208, dis-
GOD'S BILL FOR WAGES KEPT BACK. 449
as owing to them by the law, Give unto your servants that
which is just and equal, make up an account against their op-
pressors for which God alone can bring them to a settlement.
Let any man once compute, if possible, the amount of the
wages of the four millions of slaves in this country, accumulat-
ing for so many years, and kept back by fraud ; the amount
due by the law of justice and equality, according to which God
commands that all servants should be treated. It would
amount, at the lowest rate, to more than the value of all the
real estate of their masters at this hour.
And yet, if they had been treated justly, if their wages had
been paid them, as free laborers from the outset, the wealth
of their masters, the value of the lands, the quantity and worth
of their products, would have been incalculably accumulated.
The North and the South would have been richer by thou-
sands of millions ; for the payment of just wages, and the
treatment of the laborer according to God's laws of freedom
and benevolence, are the only conditions on which the earth
will yield her increase with the security of the divine blessing.
Without these conditions the curse of the Lord, as in this
epistle, is on the held and the wealth of the wicked, and an
eating rust as of fire is in the prosperity and at the vitals of
the nation, whose laws and subjects make merchandise of men.
1 Peter ii., 16. " As free, and not using your liberty for a
cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God."' Com-
pare 2 Peter ii., 19, " While they promise them liberty, they
themselves are the servants of corruption ; for of whom a
man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage."
When the apostle says as free, he speaks in opposition to
slavery, and in perfect correspondence with Paul, in 1 Cor.
vii., 22, 23 (be ye not the servants of men), and Gal. v., 1, 13,
" Ye have been called unto liberty." But it is absurd for any
man who is a slave to sin, to sensual desire, and to angry pas-
sion, to talk about liberty, for he knows nothing of it, and
being conquered by his own corruptions, is by them sold as a
450 THE GENTLE AND TIIE FEOWAED.
slave to Satan, just as men taken captive in war were by the
Pagan nations tasked and sold as slaves. But the servants
of God are redeemed from all slavery, and are bound to hate
every form of it.
1 Peter ii., 18. "Servants (olicerat) be subject to your
masters with all fear ; not only to the good and gentle, but
also to the froward." There is here a similar distinction as
in 1 Tim. vi., 1, 2, between servants under the yoke, and those
that have believing masters. And much the same reason is
given for such subjection as is presented in the first verse of
the next chapter for the subjection of wives to their own
husbands, although such husbands might be unbelieving ; the
reason, namely, of the power of a sweet and loving obedience,
to the honor of God and the gospel, attracting men to him
and to it, winning them by such meek, submissive, holy con-
versation, and bringing them to Christ by the power of such
practical piety, when otherwise they might have continued
ignorant of the word.
Calvin thinks that by the use of the word olice-ai instead
of dovXoi, in this passage, it is probable that free domestics
are to be understood as well as slaves.* But if slaves at all,
then would not the particular proper word have been used in
place of the more general ?f Eusebius, Beza, Cave and others
have supposed that Peter wrote his epistles to Jews ;J if so,
there is good reason why he should not have written to slaves,
since they had none. But Lardner and others believe him to
have written " to all Christians in general ; Jews and Gentiles
living in Pontus, Galatia, CapjDadocia, Asia and Bithynia, the
* Calvin, Comm.in Ep., 1 Pet.,ch. the same book, he uses dovloic in
ii. " Quoniam non hie habetur doi<?.oi, speaking of the punishment of crime,
sed oiKeTai, possumus intelligere li- J Cave, Lives of the Apostles, 211.
bertos una cum servis." " He wrote to the Jewish converts,
f Josephus, Contra Apion, B. 2, to direct them in the relations both
sec. 19, uses for tho Jewish servants of the civil and the Christian life."
the word oiketov. But in sec. 30, of
INNATE HATRED OF SLAVERY. 451
greatest part of whom must have been converted by Pan]."*
Bishop Sanderson argues that Peter was addressing the Jews,f
and showing them "that being iadeed set at liberty by Christ,
they are not therefore any more to enthral themselves to any
living soul or other creature ; not to submit to any ordinance
of man as slaves, that is, as if the ordinance itself did, by any
proper, direct and immediate virtue, bind the conscience.!
But yet, notwithstanding, they might and ought to submit
thereunto, as the Lord's freemen, and in a free manner."
Their native, inexpugnable hatred of slavery, the Jews had
received from the Old Testament, as well as from the law
written on the heart. § But the gospel taught Christian ser-
vants, even when treated as slaves, to be submissive and
gentle, even to the froward, and when under the yoke, for
the sake of the Lord Jesus, and for the honor of his cause.
Love to Christ could unite such submission (in all things in
which it was not contrary to his will) with the most perfect
spirit of true independence, and the most undiminished ab-
horrence of oppression.
* Lardner, vol. vi., p. 260. er more justly be made to give
\ See also Bloojifield, N. T. way."
" Chiefly Jews, but partly Gentiles." § Josephus, Wars of the Jews, B.
\ See Calvin on Exodus i., 17. 7, eh. viii. "We have preferred
"Sustained and supported by the death before slavery," SovXeiac. "We
reverential fear of God, they boldly are bound to die," Eleazer argued;
despised the commands and threat- "but not to be slaves; death is nec-
ening of Pharaoh." Calvin remarks essary, but slavery unnatural and un-
on the wickedness of those, " whom necessary." He was advising, in the
the fear of men instead of God gov- defense of the fortress of Masada,
erns, and who, under pretext of due that they should rather die than yield
submission, obey the wicked will of to the Romans, by whom they would
governors in opposition to justice and inevitably either be put to death or
right, being in some cases the minis- sold as slaves. His speech is a faith-
ters of avarice and rapacity, in others ful demonstration of the love of lib-
of cruelty ; pleading the frivolous ex- erty instilled into the heart by the
cuse that they obey their princes ac- "lively oracles," and which in the
cording to the word of God ; as if Christian would be combined with
every earthly power which exalts it- supreme submission to the will of
self against heaven ought not rath God.
CHAPTER XLI.
Evidence from the Apocalypse. — The Merchandise of Slaves and Souls of meh
in great Babylon. — The Domestic Traffic Worse than the Foreign.
Revelations xiii., 10. " He that leadeth into captivity
shall go into captivity." There is a striking reference in this
to Is. xxxiii., 1 : " Wo to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not
spoiled, and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treach-
erously with thee ! When thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt
be spoiled ; and when thou shalt make an end to deal treach-
erously, they shall deal treacherously with thee." The carry-
ing of men into captivity, the forcing of them into bondage,
the making slaves of them, and compelling them to serve as
slaves, as was done generally with captives in war,* is one of
the gigantic forms of oppression and cruelty on earth most
plainly condemned of God. The horrors and woes consequent
upon it have been interminable.! But if the making of slaves
* Josephus, BelL Jud., B. vi., ch.
8. He speaks of the multitude of
captives being so vast that the price
for them was very low, while the pur-
chasers were few. A very literal ful-
fillment of the prediction in Deut.
xxviii., G8 : " Ye shall be sold unto
your enemies for bondmen and bond-
worn pn, and no man shall buy you."
Josephus calculates the number car-
ried away captive on the taking of
Jerusalem at 97,000, (ch. ix., sec. 3,)
and this, it has been supposed, is a
moderate computation.
f See Wallon, Blair, Stephens,
Brougham, Gibbon, Grote, Xiebuhr,
Fuss, Potter, Burigny, Becker,
and others. The almost inconceivable
miseries and crimes resulting from the
recognition of slavery as a legitimate
status in Greece and Rome, and from
the sale and distribution of captives in
innumerable wars, and from the con-
version of freemen into serfs and chat-
tels, and of free parents into the foun-
tain heads of perpetual streams of slav-
ery, are but partially disclosed by
Grote (Hist. Greece, vol. hi., ch. ii.)
Wallon, (Histoire d'Esclavage, vol.
ii., the chapters on Sources of Slavery,
and State of the Slave under Law,)
Stephens, (Penal Slavery and Max-
MEANEST FORM OF MAN-STEALING. 453
under pretence of conquest over enemies is sinful in God's
sight, how much more the taking and holding of slaves by
individuals for gain, under pretence of having purchased them
with money! The making merchandise of men was a crime
in God's sight worthy of death ; and no man can be a slave-
holder without being guilty of this crime. The slaveholder
kidnaps and carries away captive a human being every day
and hour in which he holds a human being against his own
will as a slave, as property. The Greek word in 1 Tim. i., 10,
translated men-stealers, is rendered in Grotius and others
by the Latin word plagiariis. And the Latin word plagia-
ries is rendered by Facciolatus as one who not only steals,
but retains a freeman in slavery, against his consent, invitum
in servitute retinet. Any man who claims another man as his
property is therefore such a man-stealer, avSpaTrodiorrfi. He
falsely assumes to be the owner of the personality of which
the man himself, under God, is the sole owner. Hence the
word plagiarist in our language, one who falsely proclaims
himself the author of another man's books. Slaveholding is
the plagiarism of immortal beings from God ; and the steal-
ing of the children from their parents, and making merchan-
dise of them, is at once the meanest, most cruel, and yet the
most unnoticed, unrebuked form of this inquity.* The oppro-
brium connected with the word man-stealer ought to rest also
ims of Colonial Slave Law), and other would appoint a day for the public
writers. Incidentally, sometimes, a sale of the captives; then came the
terrible revelation is made. Every strife for the best and cheapest bar-
extreme of severity made possible by gains in wholesale purchases, and then
slave law finds its realization in fact, the slaves were herded in gangs to
and makes a fixture of existence in their various destinations, or city
character. Quot servi tot hostes was a slave-markets.
proverb, or quot hostes tot servi, as * Columella proposed rewards,
many enemies, so many slaves, capable bounties, for the breeding of slaves •,
of another and terrible meaning, after- and the number of vernae, home-born,
ward realized. But this was the war was sometimes almost incredible. See
maxim. Slave merchants followed Blair's Inquiry, and Wallon, His-
the great armies like vultures. After toire, vol. ii., ch. ii. Also Becker's
a battle and victory the general Gallus, 213.
454 OPPROBEIUM OF SLAVEHOLDING.
on the word slaveholder. A man-stealer is any one who
makes merchandise of human beings. A slaveholder is such
a merchant, such a slave-trader. He bought his human beings
as chattels ; he will sell them as chattels. But worse yet, a
slaveholder is one who propagates and perpetuates the crime,
and whereas perhaps he bought the parents, whereas he went
through the formula of purchasing them, and therefore holds
them as property ; he scouts eveu this formula in regard to
their posterity, but seizes, claims, and holds the babes, new-
born, the children, and makes merchandise of them, without
even the pretence of paying a farthing for them.*
Rev. xviii., 13. This was one of the great crimes found in
great Babylon, when the time of her destruction and punish-
ment was come. "The merchandise of slaves and souls of
men," oufidruv uai ipvx&g dv&p&Trov. " The merchants of
these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar
off, for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing." The
reference here is to Ezekiel xxvii., 13, the merchandise of
Tyre, and the merchants of Javan,f Tubal and Meschec, who
traded the persons of men (souls of men) and vessels of brass
in the market. In this slave traded souls are tossed about as
* Plutarch, Life of Cato, relates % Stephanus, Thesaurus. AvSpa-
that he was ia the business of buying TroHia-nc is rendered by Stephanus by
up slaves on speculation, especially the Latin mancipator, whoever re-
youths, from the slave merchants who duces any man to slavery. He adds
bought them at the army auctions ; illustrations of its significance as
he did this in order to increase their those ivho supply slaves to the mer-
value by training them, and then to chants, that is, literally, slave-dealers.
sell them at an advanced rate. Our Thessaly, he states, was full of such
slave-breeding States improve on all men in that business,
these methods, and concentrate them Bretschxeider, on the origin cf
into a home manufacture. the word audpaxodioru, witlj its deri-
f Wallon, Histoire d'Esclavage vation, interprets it thus: hominem
dans l'Antiquite, vol. ii., part ii., capio, et servum vendo, literally, / take
Sources of Slavery. Ionia is referred a man and sell a slave, and he refers
to in the text, and the slaves brought directly to Ex. xxi., 16, and Deut.
thence were highly valued for their xxiv., 7. lie that stealeth, holdeth,
beauty. But Delos became one of or maketh merchandise of a man, shall
the greatest slave marts of antiquity, bo put to death. Sciileusner also
MERCHANDISE OF SOULS. 455
things, and the merchandise of slaves is the merchandise of
souls, n-Ncss, souls of men.
There is no distinction as to guilt, drawn in the Scriptures,
between a foreign and domestic slave-trade. On some ac-
counts the guilt of the foreign seems the blackest, and our laws
have condemned it as piracy. Our laws at one and the same
time brand the bringing of men into slavery as piracy, and
the rescuing of them from slavery at home as piracy and trea-
son. John Brown, as captain of a slaver, bringing a cargo of
slaves to Cuba or Louisiana, would have received a reward.
John Brown attempting to deliver a dozen slaves from slav-
ery, is hanged.* Abroad the slave-trade is denounced as a
traffic of demons ; at home it is extolled as a business that
becometh saints. Abroad it is the instigation of the devil ; at
home it is the climax of social civilization and Christianity,
and tr# missionary providence of God.
But it is must be admitted that if either form of this great
wickedness is crime, the domestic is the worst, because, 1. It
is a breeding, propagating form, with frighful rapidity in the
increase. 2. It is committed and continued under the light of
the gospel, and with pretence of a sanction therein. 3. It is
established by law, which is always an immeasurable exaspera-
refers the word, for illustration, to The jury stood eight for acquittal and
those very passages in the Old Testa- four for conviction, aud doubtless the
ment in the laws of Moses, where man-stealer goes scot free. But in
God sentenced the man-stealer, and proximity with this comes the follow-
the man who made merchandise of ing record of the penalty of death
man, to death. against a poor unfortunate creature,
* There is no instance of any pun- not for any crime before God or man,
ishment ever being inflicted on any but simply for aiding a human being
man for making slaves, or bringing to escape from bondage : " Charles-
them from Africa to this country, ton, South Carolina, January 29.
Near the time when John Brown was Francis Mitchell, porter of the steam-
hanged in Virginia for attempting to res- ship Marion, was yesterday sentenced
cue slaves from slavery, a man named to be hung on the 2d March for as-
Brown was being tried, on a second sisting a slave in his attempt to leave
indictment, in Savannah, for the crime the State !" No language can de-
of bringing Africans into the United scribe the wickedness and injustice of
States and holding them as slaves, such elective and oppressive cruelty.
456 PERVERSIONS OF CONSCIENCE.
tion of any sin. 4. Being so sanctioned, and transmitted le-
gally to posterity, each successive generation of slave traders,
as the masters and owners of property belonging to them by
inheritance, claim an increasing right in such property, and
have less and less conscience of the sin, and lay their grasp
with less and less compunction upon the next crop or genera-
tion of human beings as their possession, and as having been
justly foreordained by them for bondage, and under a benev-
olent providence, born to be the victims of the system of
slavery and of the domestic slave-traffic.
This, with its connections, is the vastest form of merchan-
dise and mercantile speculation, except perhaps the traffic in
hay and cattle, carried on in the United States. All parts of
the nation, north and south, east and west, are fearfully in-
volved in it.* The merchants stand afar off in fear and tor-
ment, in terror of the breaking up of this great Baby^gn. It
is contended by a vast party that the union of the States de-
pends upon the integrity and unassailable security of this
traffic. The complicity in it is as a vein of gangrene running
from head to foot in the body, which can be traced by the in-
flammation and discoloration, and is frightfully diffusive and
malignant.
The palsying and perverting power of this sin upon the con-
science is appalling. Holding the truth in unrighteousness, it
becomes a lie, and men who thus hold it are given over to
strong delusion to believe a he. We have read of a stream
* Extensive mortgages are held on be the consequences. " Why do you
slave property, perhaps at the ex- not emancipate your own ?" was the
treme north. Hence a part of our very natural question of his friend,
sensitiveness. A slave master and " If such are your convictions, why
planter in Louisiana, the ostensible not begin at home?" "Why sir,"
owner of a large number of slaves, was the answer, "they are every one
declared to a mercantile friend his of them 'mortgaged to merchants in
convictions of the wickedness, wretch- New York, and if I should set them
edness, and ruin of the system of free, they would foreclose, and grasp
slavery, and avowed that if he could them instantly, and they would all bo
do it, he would set free every slave in sold under the hammer 1"
the United States, whatever might
SOPHISTRIES OF SLAVEEY. 457
that encrusts every thing that falls in it, or grows by it, with
flint, and just so the instincts of humanity itself, as well as the
precepts of religion, are turned into stone by the flowing of
this infernal fountain over them. The Christian conscience,
steeped in the habits and sophistries of slave-life, comes out a
fossil, on Avhich the slaveholder grinds his sharpest arguments.
The sanctioning and shielding of such abominations can not
possibly be less offensive to God than the suffering that wo-
man Jezebel to teach in the early churches, and to throw the
seduction of her sophistry over the immoralities of paganism.
The ministers of the gospel who listen to these doctrines, and
consent to silence the gospel in regard to them, are infected
by them. The very essence of morality is changed, and the
mind and conscience are defiled. A man lays himself down
to bathe in this stream, and his moral sense turns into adi-
pocire. The finger of slavery presses upon his intelligence and
emotion, and there is no rebound ; the mark stays, as upon an
image of hog's lard ; there is a deep indentation. The man
of adipocire goes into the pulpit ; his very sermons are a dead
tissue ; his conscience, his sentiments, are as lifeless as pale
wax, as smooth, as cold, as susceptible of being moulded to
order for the forms of political expediency.
Rev. xix., 18. Describing the supper of the great God, the
fowls are summoned to eat the flesh of all " free and bond,
small and great." Compare chapter vi., 15, " every bond-
man and every freeman." A southern writer, the author of
what is called a Scriptural view of the moral relations of Afri-
can slavery, adduces these passages in proof " that there will
be bondmen on the earth when the last trumpet sounds.
This fact being admitted, the writer says that " the hope of
liberating all the slaves upon the whole earth must be vision-
ary indeed." The conclusion is this, that African slavery is a
divine institution, and that any scheme of abolition is a wild,
fanatical interference with that which is destined of God to
stand still till the last day.
458 JUDICIAL BLINDNESS.
By this kind of argument the mention of murderers in Rev.
xxi., 8, and whoremongers and idolaters, and liars, proves
that there will be murderers and liars at the end of the world,
and therefore murdering and lying are divine institutions, and
any interference with them in the hope of delivering the earth
from such wickedness is visionary and foolish. A perfect de-
lirium seems to have seized upon the understandings of those
who have consecrated themselves to the defense of this gigan-
tic cruelty and sin ; but it is a Delirium Tremens. Perhaps
they are in the position of those described by Paul in his sec-
ond epistle to the Thessalonians, as wrought upon of Satan
with all deceivableness and unrighteousness, because they re-
ceived not the love of the truth that they might be saved ;
and for the same cause given over of God to strong delusion
to believe a lie, because they believed not the truth, but had
pleasure in unrighteousness. They are an example, such as
we could hardly have deemed possible under the light of the
gospel, of men so lost to all sense of guilt and shame in the
practice and defense of the greatest of national and individual
cruelties, that like the old Jews at the climax of their debase-
ment and crisis of their overthrow, under God's retributive
judgments in the age of Jeremiah, they can deliberately and
defiantly plead that " they are delivered to do all these abomi-
nations.*
* YViiewell on the Elements of losopher and the Christian moralist
Morality, sec. 108, 109, 522, 524. viewing this gigantic iniquity from a
" Slavery is contrary to the funda- point outside its personal sweep, uni-
mental principles of morality." Again, ting in its abhorrence and condemna-
" Slavery is utterly abhorrent to the tion. " A chained slave for a porter,''
essence of morality, and can not be says Hume, "was usual at Rome.
looked upon as a tolerable condition Had not these people shaken off all
of society, nor acquiesced in as what sense of compassion towards that un-
may allowably be. "Wherever slavery happy part of their species, would
exists its abolition must be one of they have presented their friends, at
the greatest objects of every good their first entrance, with such an hu-
man, 522, 529. Compare Hume, age of severity of the masters and
Populousness of Ancient Nations. It misery of the slaves ?" But this
is interesting to note the infidel phi- searedness and stupidity of the moral
DEPRAVITY OF UNJUST POWER. 459
Burke somewhere speaks with contempt of the " exploded
fanatics of slavery," who believed in its indefeasible right.
The career of slavery in this country, and the insolent shame-
lessness with which its doctrines of devils are intruded on
mankind, to the corruption of all religion and confusion of all
morals, would have been a fit subject for Burke's powerful
denunciations. There would be no danger of exaggeration
in the description of this system, and of its effect upon so-
ciety, and of the reign of terror under which it must inevita-
bly bring the whole community, for the support of those in
power, who are the personal managers and leaders of so inso-
lent and savage a despotism, the known policy of which is
" to destroy the tribunal of conscience, and bring to their
lanteme every citizen whom they suspect to be discontented
by their tyranny."*
When the possession of power obtained by such means,
and resting on such personal robbery and destruction of hu-
man rights, is made the interest of a great party, and the ex-
pediency and even sanctity of the system of cruelty and
wrong are maintained for the sake of political supremacy, for
the sake of wielding the patronage and dividing the emolu-
ments of the government of a great nation, the corruption of
such a party must be deep, rapid and frightful, to a degree
never yet demonstrated in history. The depravity of men,
fhe violence of their passions, and the moral atrocity of their
principles, will be developed, along with the haughtiness and
holiness of their professions, as in a hot-house ; for religion
itself, in the most insolent hypocrisy, goes side by side with
this system of the moral assassination of millions, and is even
its pretended foundation to the glory of God. The party so
supported must, in the very nature of things, and by a moral
sense were pardonable in comparison of this system by the Christian relig-
with the defiance of God and of com- ion.
mon humanity, involved in the * Burke's works, vol. 3. Letter to
attempted justification and sanction a Member of the National Assembly.
460 SACRIFICE OF STATE RIGHTS.
necessity arising out of its position, and its means of perma-
nence in power, be a party radically regardless of justice, and
ready, in any emergency, to set precedents of cruelty and
oppression in the place of law, 'and to contrive a machinery
of government, with inquisitorial committees of Congress,
armed with powers, and clamps of federal legislation, breaking
down, one after another, every State right, every personal
protection, all remnant of State sovereignty, by the sheer des-
potism of party organization ; each individual being animated
with the spirit of a slaveholder towards all who oppose the
sin which is the life and soul of such a usurpation. Let this
insolent domination be extended to the pulpit and the free-
dom of the word of God, and all that has ever been recorded
of Star Chamber tyranny in Great Britain would be trifling
in comparison with the consequences of the erection of that
lynch law, that now triumphs in the slave States, into a sys-
tematic politico-ecclesiastical tribunal at the North, under the
plea of peace, piety, and the salvation of the Union. To this
extreme things are rapidly tending, and men, whose daily
boast is of liberty, are forging their own fetters, and burning
incense to this Moloch. They know not what they are pre-
paring for themselves and for their children.*
" The Romans," said Fisher Ames, on a memorable occa-
sion, endeavoring to warn his countrymen, " were not only
amused, but really made vain, by the boast of their liberty,
while they sweated and trembled under the despotism of em-
perors, the most odious monsters that ever infested the earth.
It is remarkable that Cicero, with all his dignity and good
sense, found it a popular seasoning of his harangue, six years
* Burke on the Democratic Tyr- often must ; and that oppression of
anny. Works, vol. iii., p. 146. "In the minority will extend to far greater
a democracy the majority of the cit- numbers, and will be carried on with
izens is capable of exercising the much greater fury, than con almost
most cruel oppressions upon the mi- ever be apprehended from the do-
nority, whenever strong divisions pre- minion of a single scepter."
vail in that kind of policy, as they
DESPOTISM OF THE OLIGARCHY. 461
after Julius Caesar had established the monarchy, and only-
six months before Octavius totally subverted the common-
wealth, to say that it was not possible for the people of Rome
to be slaves, whom the gods- had destined to the command of
all nations. Other nations may endure slavery, but the proper
end and business of the Roman people is liberty."* Such is
the rhetoric, such the music and the melody, such the flattery
and fawning, with which to-day the people of the United
States are offering their wrists for manacles to the despotism
of a more odious and dreadful oligarchy than ever ruled in
Greece or Rome ; the despotism of three hundred thousand
slaveholders, who hold twenty million whites in bondage,
through the enslavement of four million blacks.
* Ames' Works, Dangers of American Liberty.
CHAPTE R XLII .
Appeal of the Moral Argument. — Begun in the Old Testament. — Completed in
the New. — Dreadful Consequences of its Denial. — Atrocities of Slavery and
Slave Law Under the Light of the Gospel.
The moral argument from Scripture on this subject appeals
to the common conscience of all mankind, and at every step
enlists the common sense of humanity in its behalf. The de-
fense of slavery has to be undertaken and pursued against
conscience, against benevolence, against law, natural and di-
vine, against history, against both the letter and spirit of the
Scriptures, against the Old and New Testament theology,
against the gospel, against God. The consentaneousness of
both parts of divine revelation on this subject, in condemna-
tion of this crime, is perfect ; and it is an incidental proof of di-
vine revelation, when an article of morality, conveyed at first
through the medium of the social life of a particular nation,
divinely arranged for that purpose, passes, on the dropping
away of the letter of that law, into a higher universal life and
energy for all mankind, for all nations, as the ripe fruit hangs
upon the tree after the blossoms have vanished, after the
leaves have disappeared, What the law severely and inex-
orably forbade in the Old Testament, the Christian life of the
New renders impossible to a pure Christianity and to all good
men. What the law enjoined of love to the stranger, the
gospel takes up as belonging, in Christ, from each to all, from
all to one another, as one family in him ; and the law of the
spirit of life in Christ Jesus accomplishes, by spontaneous
THE LAW AND THE SPIRIT. 463
Christian, love, what the letter of the antique law could only
indicate and command.*
If on this point the morality of the New Testament were
inferior to that of the Old, while on every other point it is su-
perior ; if on this point the divine standard were changed ; if
there could be such mutability in the elements of justice and the
requisitions of benevolence ; if, when the preparatory dispensa-
tion, the husk, was taken away, instead of disclosing a fruit, it
revealed a poison, or a dry innutritious cob, of less worth than
the husk itself; this would have been an inconsistency fatal to
the claims of a divine revelation. The argument of Paul, in
the second epistle to the Corinthians, stakes the claims of the
ministry of the New Testament on the superiority of the gos-
pel of the New Testament, as a gospel of the Spirit, every-
where and in every particular carrying the letter into life.
The old glory of the letter was to be done away, because the
new ministration of the Spirit, promised by it, growing out
of it, and perfecting it, far exceeded it in glory, as a min-
istration of righteousness, and not of law merely, but of the
fulfillment" of the law, by the glorious energy of the spiritual
life.
If now the life, instead of transfiguring the letter, instead
of throwing back a divine radiance of love upon it, in which
its intended and prophetic glory might be visible, had fallen
below it, had come short of it, this would have been a fatal
failure and contradiction ; much more, if in any important
particular the divine announcement of the letter had been
falsified, abrogated or repealed in the life ; much more, if the
life had taken up into itself, as part and parcel of its own piety,
a practice which the letter had distinctly, and for all mankind,
* Granville Sharpe. Law of argument with great accuracy of
Retribution against Tyrants, Slave- learning and acuteness and power of
holders and Oppressors, pp. 6, 319. reasoning. At the same time an ap-
In this admirable volume the benev- plication, irresistible for its pungency
olent author presses the Old Testa- and faithfulness, is made to the con-
ment historical and legal Scripture science.
464 "WORST CORRUPTIONS OP CHRISTIANITY.
condemned, as involving a guilt, and constituting a crime,
equal to that of murder.
It is not possible, therefore, adequately to describe the mis-
chief and misery inflicted on Christianity by the assertion that
the gospel sanctions slavery. It is inevitably a destruction of
the evidence of divine revelation. This horrible corruption
of Christianity in modern times concentrates the abominations
of all earlier corruptions. Prideaux says, "It may almost raise
a doubt whether the benefit which the world receives from
government be sufficient to make amends for the calamities
which it suffers from the follies and maladministrations of those
that manage it." The same may be said of the iniquity
and madness of those who are undertaking to manage the
Christianity of the gospel as a slaveholding Christianity. It is
a virulent practical infidelity, sustained by crime. They who
support such a Christianity are the infidels ; and they who
deny it are the believers, they who deny and reject with scorn
and hatred such a libel against God, such a monstrous perver-
sion of His Word, and cleave to the letter and spirit of the
law and gospel.*
* Pymoxd, Essays on Morality, ch. a right to be free, that we ought to
xviii. " "Whet her it is consistent with demand freedom. Justice and lib-
the Christian law for one man to keep erty have neither birth nor race,
another in bondage without his con- youth nor age."
sent, and to compel him to labor for Compare Gisborne, on the natural
that other's advantage, admits of no right to freedom, as constituted of God.
more doubt than whether two and A striking passage from Gisborne is
two make four. It were humiliating, quoted in Dewar's Moral Philosophy,
then, to set about the proof that the Sir James Mackintosh, defending the
slave system is incompatible with Missionary Smith, so persecuted for his
Christianity, because no man ques- opinions against slavery in the West
tions its incompatibility, who knows Indies, referred to Dr. Johnson. "Mr.
what Christianity is, and what it re- Smith has expressed the opinion that
quires." — 387. Compare Whewell, slavery never could be mitigated, but
on the immorality of slavery. (Ele- must die a violent death. These opin-
ments, Vol. 1,) and Mackintosh on ions the honorable gentleman calls
the natural right of freedom, Works, fanatical. Does he think Dr. Johnson
Vol. 3, 138. " It is not because we a fanatic, a sectary, or Methodist, or
have been free, but because wo have an enemy to established authority ?
MORALITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 465
Now to suppose that while the letter of the Old Testament
was against the relation of slavery or slaveholding, and re-
quired its abolition, the spirit of the New sanctioned the con-
tinuance of the relation, and only forbade its abuse, would be
to degrade the moral standard of the New below that of the
Old. It is impossible to deny that by the very letter of the
law, " He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be
found in his hands, he shall surely be put to death," the rela-
tion of slaveholding, as a relation in and by which a human
being is claimed as property and treated as merchandise, is
sinful in itself; whether designated as a civil or a moral rela-
tion, it is immoral and unjust, and contrary to God's law, in
and by itself. And this letter of the law is defined, repre-
sented, illustrated and applied, by the prophets, by the moral
teachings of the Old Testament in various forms, and the
spirit in the New Testament is demonstrated as conformable
to the letter in the Old, sustaining it in every part, and carry-
ing into practice its extreme meaning as its right meaning.
What then shall be said of the modern defenders of slavery,
who set the New Testament against the Old, and hesitate not
to declare that Christ and the apostles would not abolish
slaA'ery because it was a civil established relation, not to be in-
terfered with by the gospel, but just and right ! And whereas
Christ declared that he came not to impugn or destroy the
law, but to fulfill, they do, in this important respect, in an ar-
ticle of common morality, appeal to Christ's authority against
the law, maintaining that to be just and righteous, under the
gospel, which by and under the law was the extremest injustice
and wrong.
But after having thus maintained that the relation of slave-
But he must know, from the most deliberate wish for an event so full of
amusing of books, that Johnson pro- horror, but merely to express in the
posed as a toast at Oxford, Success to strongest manner his honest hatred of
the first revolt of negroes in the "West slavery." — Mackintosh's "Works, 3,
Indies. He neither meant to make a 405.
jest of such matters, nor to express a
4GG KELATTON OF SLAVEnOLDING SINFUL.
holding is in itself right, they also argue, with singular incon-
sistency, that Christ and the apostles left it to be done away
by the spirit of the gospel, by the spirit of Christianity in its
onward march and development. But how can the spirit of
Christianity be against a relation and a practice which in it-
self is not wrong, and if not wrong, then certainly just and
right ? If the letter of Christianity is not against slavery,
then its spirit is not. If the spirit of Christianity is bound
to abolish slavery, it is because the law of Christianity rep-
robates and forbids it. And if the spirit of Christianity can
abolish slavery, it can only be by going in God's name and
authority against it, by employing God's word against it.
The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is a continuous line
of living lire against this iniquity. The denunciations of it
are the more terrible and sweeping, because not only the orig-
inal edict described the crime as parallel with murder, but all
its elements in turn, and the crimes resulting from it, are de-
nounced in the same dreadful manner ; so that, in the whole-
sale, and in particular, the application is indisputable, and the
power indefeasible and immeasurable. It only needs that the
church and ministry should make use of this power, and
slavery would speedily be swept from existence.
But in our insane defence of slavery we render it necessary
either to pervert and corrupt both the law and the gospel, or
to forbid their utterance, to silence the church and the min-
istry on this subject, to muzzle the pulpit, and spike the word
of God. What one of the purest and most eloquent of our
country's early patriots predicted on another occasion,* by
this madness " we make what is called law an assassin, we cut
asunder what law ought to protect, and teach the people to
scoff at their morals, and to unlearn their education to virtue."
The debasement of character becomes universal when men
are compelled to cut and square the very teachings of God to
meet the imperious demands of a detestable institution, which
* Fisher Ames. "Works. Dangers of American Liberty.
TESTIMONY OF HUMBOLDT. 467
being in itself sin and inhumanity, requires the disavowal of all
that is holy and human in its supporters, and for their safety
renders essential the abridgement of the freedom of speech
both in the pulpit and in social life. Men submissive to
these vices teach their consciences the art of defending them.
The celebrated Humboldt, in the course of his investiga-
tions in the regions of the Spanish wars and conquests in
America, discovered a document in the will of the great
Cortez, which, he says, is worthy of preservation and promul-
gation to mankind.* Speaking of his slaves, in the thirty-
ninth and forty-first articles of his testament, Cortez adds the
following memorable words : " As it is doubtful if a Chris-
tian can conscientiously employ as slaves Indians who have
been made prisoners of war, and as this point has never been
rightly cleared up till this day, I order my son, Don Martin,
and those of his descendants who shall possess my property
after me, to take every possible information as to the rights
which may be legally exercised towards prisoners. The na-
tives who have been forced to yield personal service ought to
be indemnified, if it shall be decided that those personal ser-
vices ought not to have been demanded." Humboldt adds to
this testimony the following sarcastic words : " We must own
that three centuries later, notwithstanding the civilization of
a more enlightened age, the rich proprietors in America have
less timorous consciences even on a death bed. In our days
it is not the devotees but the philosophers who call in ques-
tion the justice of slavery ."f
But the law of nature and of nations denounces it, as well
as the Word of God, affirming that slavery stands wholly and
* Hcjieoldt, Kingdom of New lowing preamble : " Seeing that in the
Spain, Vol. I., B. 2., ch. vii. beginning God made all men by na-
•j- Thierry, History of the Nor- ture free, but afterwards the law of
mon Conquest, sec. 5, 293, refers to nations brought some of them under
similar testimonies. On the approach the yoke of slavery, we believe it
of death those that held serfs in would be pious and meritorious in the
slavery repented of it as a thing dis- sight of God to liberate such persona
pleasing to God. Deeds of emanci- to us subjected. Know, therefore,
pation were drawn up with the fol- that we have freed and liberated from
408 LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS.
solely upon force against right, and being contrary to nature,
it follows that every moment that it is maintained, the relation
so continued is an ever new and active violation of the law of
nature. It is on this ground mainly that the principle is so
strongly stated in Coke upon the laws of England,* that a
man is to be regarded as impious and cruel who is not in favor
of liberty as against slavery, and that the common law in all
cases gives the right to liberty. When we think of a practice
thus denounced by the law of nature and of nations as a cruel
and impious violation of nature, passing into a habit of life,
and being claimed as a light of property and possession by
Christians, by those who, in addition to the law of nature and
of nations, have the law of God for their guide, we may cease
to wonder at the debasing and terrible effect of such cruelty
and injustice on the character of those who persist in it as
sanctioned by the gospel. The testimony of Hume is striking.
" The little humanity commonly observed in persons accus-
tomed from their iufancy to exercise so great authority over
their fellowr-nien, and to trample upon human nature, were
sufficient alone to disgust us with such unbounded dominion.
Nor can a more probable reason be assigned for the severe, I
might say barbarous, manners of ancient times, than the prac-
tice of domestic slavery, by which every man of rank was
rendered a petty tyrant, and educated amidst the flattery,
submission and lowr debasement of his slaves."! In suc^ a
case, the higher they rose, the lower he descended ; the more
intelligent and valuable they wrerc, and the greater the crowd
of them, the worse the character of the master, who, as their
owner, had illimitable power over them, to use them at his
all yoke of servitude these our knaves, Smyth, Lect. Mod. Hist. Laws of
them and all their children, born or Louis IX., Vol. L, 110.
to bo bora." f Hume's Essays. Populousness of
* Coke upon Lyttleton. Common Ancient Nations. Compare Jefferson
Law is Common Right. Impius et on Virginia, and Becker, Charicles,
crudelis judicandus est, qui libertati Exc. Slaves; and Gallus, The Slave
non fa-vet. Nostra jura in omni casu, Family. Also, Blair's Inquiry, 148.
libertati dant favorem. See also
A BLACKER GUILT THAN MURDER. 4G9
■will, for his gain or pleasure. The French historian of slavery-
has described in an impressive passage the corruption of morals
in the free classes of society in Greece and Rome in conse-
quence of the habits of slavery, and the excitement and accu-
mulation of human depravity under such opportunities of
unrestrained indulgence of the passions.* "To carry this
depravity to the highest pitch, there was only needed in the
bosom of society a creature like a man, but divested by opin-
ion of all moral obligations proclaimed by the human conscience
or predicated upon it. A being whom they could turn to vice
as to virtue without outraging his nature, in whom all ex-
cesses were lawful the moment they were commanded by his
owner. Such a being was a slave, and such depravity did not
hesitate to use him for its purposes." For the details of the
demonstration of such depravity, the very museums of an-
tiquity, as well as the Roman satirists, are open to us.f
When to all this there is added the frightful consideration
that slavery propagates a posterity in its own likeness, that it
secures a system and a supply increasing and perpetual of
such depravities and subjects of depravity, we understand the
grounds of the Divine wrath against it. We can understand
also how a writer like Mr. Coleridge, a consummate master
of language and logic, the logic of living principles, and ac-
customed to philosophical precision as well as power of imagi-
nation in the dress of thought, should have set down slavery
as of blacker guilt than either rapine or murder.J Blacker
guilt, because a fountain guilt ; because it is " the raising up
of the foundations of many generations" in cruelty, in adultery,
in robbery and moral assassination. Blacker guilt, because
neither fraud nor murder, when committed on the first victim,
are consolidated into a system and ratified and protected by
law, and made just and holy for the second generation of
* Wallon. Histoire d'Esclavage, cient Nations, Works, Vol. Ill, and
Vol. II. Compare Stroud, Slave Laws. Tholuck, Moral Influence of Heath*
f Becker. Cbaricles and Gallus, enism.
the Slave, and the Slave Family. % See The Friend, Essay 8, or
Compare Hoie, Populousness of An- Coleridge's Works, Vol. III.
470 LEGALIZED BANDITTI.
murderers upon the second generation of their victims.*
Blacker guilt, because neither fraud nor murder are perpet-
uated by propagation, with the law that the children of the
robbed and murdered follow the condition of their robbed
and murdered parents, and are to be themselves legitimately
robbed and murdered by right of descent, by necessity of the
law of slave generation, partus sequitur ventrem. Blacker guilt
than either murder or rapine, because while rapine and murder
finish their work with their present victims, slavery retains those
victims for the breeding of the crime, and by means of the steal-
ing of babes passes the crime to a new generation under the
form and assumption of virtue, social habit, piety and law !
And therefore has Coleridge declared that the agitating
truths Avith which Thomas Clarkson, and his excellent con-
federates, the Quakers, fought and conquered the legalized
banditti of men-stealeks, the numerous and powerful per-
petrators and advocates of slavery, are to be at all hazards re-
published with a voice of alarm and impassioned warning.
"Truths of this kind being indispensable to man, considered
as a moral being, are above all expedience, all accidental conse-
quences ; for as sure as God is holy, and man immortal, there
can be no evil so great as the ignorance or disregard of them."
CONCLUSION.
The necessity for the repromulgation of these truths, and
of the battle with them against slavery by the Word of God,
is increasing every day and hour in the United States, as a
necessity of our own life and freedom. We are under the
* Dymond. Essays on Morality, even if the parents had been rightfully
eh. xviii., 388. " The sufferer has slaves, it would not justify me in
just as valid a claim to liberty at my making slaves of their children."
hands as at the hands of tho ruffian Compare "Whewell, Elements of
who first dragged him from his home. Morality. " In the eye of morality
Every hour of every day the presont all men are brothers, and the crime
possessor is guilty of injustice. Nor of maintaining slavery is the crime of
is the case altered with respect to making or keeping a brother a slave."
those born on a man's estate. Nay, Whewell presents in a most impres-
ASSASSINATION OF A EACE. 47l
pressure of the rapidly advancing judgment of God, in that
question, " If ye have not been faithful in that which is an-
other man's, who shall give you that which is your own?"
The crime and guilt of slavery are becoming frightfully exas-
perated in atrocity, and complicated, by the laws of the free
States against the negro race, and by the new statutes of slave
States, ordering the sale of free negroes as slaves, on penalty
of quitting the State by such a time specified.
The horrible inhumanity and iniquity created and enforced
by the slave laws of this country, and burned into the col-
ored race, generation after generation, by decisions entitled
justice, are never more painfully apparent than when brought
in contrast with the maxims of English and Common Law in
regard to liberty. By law, in South Carolina, it is always
presumed that every negro and mulatto is a slave, unless
the contrary be made to appear, and the burden of
proof is on the poor creature claimed as a slave. " The
wretch who, by art or force, is enabled to claim him as a
slave, is exempted from the necessity of making any proof
how he obtained him, the unhappy person said to be a slave
being presumed to be so by the law of the land !" Chief
Justice Taylor, of North Carolina, charged, in the case Gobu
vs. Gobu, as correct, " the presumption of every black per-
son being a slave." "It is so," said he, " because the negroes
originally brought into this country were slaves, and their de-
scendants must continue slaves." In 1740, it was enacted in
South Carolina, " That all negroes and mulattoes, who now
are, or shall hereafter be in this province, and all their issue
and offspring, born or to be born, shall be, and they are hereby
declared to be, and remain for ever hereafter, absolute slaves,
and shall follow the condition of the mother."*
sive light the monstrosity, and awful wrongs, lest it should bo supposed
moral consequences, of maintaining that as he may do a wrong, he may
slavery, on the pretence that the negro suffer one." Cli. xxiv., v. 1.
is not of the human family. " Even * Stroud's Slave Laws, ch. hi.,
his crimes are not acknowledged as 122-130. Compare Wallon, Hist.
4*72 JUDGMENT IN THE OTHEE WORLD.
With this atrocious doctrine of presumption against liberty-
there is held forth a perpetual bounty on the crime of man-
stealing, and between law and custom there arises a compli-
cation of wickedness, as the habit of society in a slave State,
■which is frightful to consider, and for the description or sen-
tence of which no language of reprobation can be too strong.
And here are Christian States, so called, deliberately enacting
the very crime of kidnapping, which the government of our
countiy has branded as piracy, and has forbidden in Africa, or
on the high seas, on pain of death. Though the criminals are
never punished, yet the law stands. And now that very crime
of man-stealing, which the government denounces as piracy, and
which God has condemned in the individual as equivalent with
murder, is adopted by the State, and commanded and com-
mitted by law, as an article of State policy ! Such is the latest
form and exasperation of this sweeping and remorseless iniquity.
This State and corporate crime drives many poor creatures
into the shame and misery of selling themselves into slavery,
or permitting themselves to be made slaves, though sensible
that in so doing they give themselves up to the will and ma-
chinery of the system and its managers, to make slaves not
only of them but of their posterity. The crime and its dread-
ful consequences are increased immeasurably by the fatal
brand imprinted on the children. The Christian State com-
pels the man to constitute himself the head of a system of
adultery and cruelty extending to his children and his chil-
dren's children. The seller of himself as a slave inflicts the
same oppression and misery on those who come after him.
But those who compel him into this horrible choice, and those
who defend the infinitely dreadful system, will bear their judg-
ment in the other world.
State of the Slave under Law, and Becker, Hume and others, are almost
Stephen's, of the Slave under Colonial innocent in comparison with the same
Law. The atrocities of Grecian and every day being practised in Chris-
Roman Slavery, as drawn out in Blair, tian America.
.'
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