surely be put to death.”  See Numb. xxxv. 31.  Even in excusable homicide, a case of death purely accidental, as where an axe slipped from the helve and killed a man, no sum of money availed to release from confinement in the city of refuge, until the death of the High Priest.  Numbers xxxv. 32.  The doctrine that the loss of the servant would be a penalty adequate to the desert of the master, admits the master’s guilt—­his desert of some punishment, and it prescribes a kind of punishment, rejected by the law, in all cases where man took the life of man, whether with or without intent to kill.  In short, the objector annuls an integral part of the system—­resolves himself into a legislature, with power in the premises, makes a new law, and coolly metes out such penalty as he thinks fit, both in kind and quantity.  Mosaic statutes amended, and Divine legislation revised and improved!

The master who struck out the tooth of a servant, whether intentionally or not, was required to set him free for his tooth’s sake.  The pecuniary loss to the master was the same as though the servant had died.  Look at the two cases.  A master beats his servant so severely, that after a day or two he dies of his wounds; another master accidentally strikes out his servant’s tooth, and his servant is free—­the pecuniary loss of both masters is the same. The objector contends that the loss of the slave’s services in the first case is punishment sufficient for the crime of killing him; yet God commands the same punishment for even the accidental knocking out of a tooth!  Indeed, unless the injury was done inadvertently, the loss of the servant’s services is only a part of the punishment—­mere reparation to the individual for injury done; the main punishment, that strictly judicial, was, reparation to the community for injury to one of its members.  To set the servant free, and thus proclaim his injury, his right to redress, and the measure of it—­answered not the ends of public justice.  The law made an example of the offender, “those that remain might hear and fear.” "If a man cause a blemish in his neighbour, as he hath done, so shall it be done unto him.  Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.  You have one manner of law as well for the STRANGER as for one of your own country.”  Lev. xxiv. 19, 20, 22.  Finally, if a master smote out the tooth of a servant, the law smote out his tooth—­thus redressing the public wrong; and it cancelled the servant’s obligation to the master, thus giving some compensation for the injury done, and exempting him from perilous liabilities in future.

OBJECTION III. Both the bondmen and bondmaids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you, of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.  Moreover of the children of the strangers 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 inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever.  Lev. xxv. 44-46.