The Israelites were commanded to offer them a suitable inducement, and then leave them to decide.  They might neither seize them by force, nor frighten them by threats, nor wheedle them by false pretences, nor borrow them, nor beg them; but they were commanded to BUY them[A]—­that is, they were to recognize the right of the individuals to dispose of their own services, and their right to refuse all offers, and thus oblige those who made them, to do their own work.  Suppose all, with one accord, had refused to become servants, what provision did the Mosaic law make for such an emergency?  NONE.

[Footnote A:  The case of thieves, whose services were sold until they had earned enough to make restitution to the person wronged, and to pay the legal penalty, stands by itself, and has nothing to do with the condition of servants.]

X. INCIDENTAL CORROBORATIVES.  Various incidental expressions corroborate the idea that servants became such by their own contract.  Job. xli. 4, is an illustration, “Will he (Leviathan) make a COVENANT with thee? wilt thou take him for a SERVANT forever?” Isa. xiv. 1, 2 is also an illustration.  “The strangers shall be joined with them (the Israelites) and they shall CLEAVE to the house of Jacob, and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord, for servants and handmaids.”

The transaction which made the Egyptians the SERVANTS OF PHARAOH was voluntary throughout.  See Gen. xlvii. 18-26.  Of their own accord they came to Joseph and said, “There is not aught left but our bodies and our lands; buy us;” then in the 25th verse, “We will be Pharaoh’s servants.”  To these it may be added, that the sacrifices and offerings which ALL were required to present, were to be made VOLUNTARILY.  Lev. i. 2. 3.

The pertinence and point of our Lord’s declaration in Luke xvi. 13, is destroyed on the supposition that servants did not become such by their own choice.  “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.”  Let it be kept in mind, that our Lord was a Jew.  The lost sheep of the house of Israel were his flock.  Wherever he went, they were around him:  whenever he spake, they were his auditors.  His public preaching and his private teaching and conversation, were full of references to their own institutions, laws and usages, and of illustrations drawn from them.  In the verse quoted, he illustrates the impossibility of their making choice of God as their portion, and becoming his servants, while they chose the world, and were its servants.  To make this clear, he refers to one of their own institutions, that of domestic service, with which, in all its relations, incidents and usages, they were perfectly familiar.  He reminds them of the well-known impossibility of