VI.  The Mosaic system enjoined the greatest affection and kindness toward servants, foreign as well as Jewish.

Lev. xix. 34.  “The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shall love him as thyself.”  Also Deut. x. 17, 19.  “For the Lord your God * * REGARDETH NOT PERSONS.  He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and LOVETH THE STRANGER, in giving him food and raiment, LOVE YE THEREFORE THE STRANGER.”  So Ex. xxii. 21.  “Thou shalt neither vex a STRANGER nor oppress him.”  Ex. xxiii. 9.  “Thou shalt not oppress a STRANGER, for ye know the heart of a stranger.”  Lev. xxv. 35, 36.  “If thy brother be waxen poor thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a STRANGER or a sojourner, that he may live with thee, take thou no usury of him or increase, but fear thy God.”  Could this same stranger be taken by one that feared his God, and held as a slave, and robbed of time, earnings, and all his rights?

VII.  Servants were placed upon a level with their masters in all civil and religious rights.  Num. xv. 15, 16, 29; ix. 14.  Deut. i. 16, 17.  Lev. xxiv. 22.

III.—­DID PERSONS BECOME SERVANTS VOLUNTARILY, OR WERE THEY MADE SERVANTS AGAINST THEIR WILLS?

We argue that they became servants of their own accord.

I. Because to become a servant in the family of an Israelite, was to abjure idolatry, to enter into covenant with God[A], be circumcised in token of it, bound to keep the Sabbath, the Passover, the Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles, and to receive instruction in the moral and ceremonial law.  Were the servants forced through all these processes?  Was the renunciation of idolatry compulsory?  Were they dragged into covenant with God?  Were they seized and circumcised by main strength?  Were they compelled mechanically to chew, and swallow the flesh of the Paschal lamb, while they abhorred the institution, spurned the laws that enjoined it, detested its author and its executors, and instead of rejoicing in the deliverance which it commemorated, bewailed it as a calamity, and cursed the day of its consummation?  Were they driven from all parts of the land three times in the year to the annual festivals?  Were they drugged with instruction which they nauseated?  Goaded through a round of ceremonies, to them senseless and disgusting mummeries; and drilled into the tactics of a creed rank with loathed abominations?  We repeat it, to became a servant, was to become a proselyte.  And did God authorize his people to make proselytes, at the point of the sword? by the terror of pains and penalties? by converting men into merchandise?  Were proselyte and chattel synonymes, in the Divine vocabulary?  Must a man be sunk to a thing before taken into covenant with God?  Was this the stipulated condition of adoption, and the sole passport to the communion of the saints?