[Footnote C:  Kuinoel on Acts.]

[Footnote D:  Heinrichs on Acts.]

[Footnote E:  Acts xx. 34, 35; 1 Thess. iv. 11]

[Footnote F:  See Kuinoel’s Prolegom. to the Gospel of John.]

[Footnote G:  Mark i. 19, 20.]

Slavery among a people who, from the highest to the lowest, were used to manual labor!  What occasion for slavery there?  And how could it be maintained?  No place can be found for slavery among a people generally inured to useful industry.  With such, especially if men of learning, wealth, and station “labor, working with their hands,” such labor must be honorable.  On this subject, let Jewish maxims and Jewish habits be adopted at the South, and the “peculiar institution” would vanish like a ghost at daybreak.

5.  Another hint, here deserving particular attention, is furnished in the allusions of the New Testament to the lowest casts and most servile employments among the Jews.  With profligates, publicans were joined as depraved and contemptible.  The outcasts of society were described, not as fit to herd with slaves, but as deserving a place among Samaritans and publicans.  They were “hired servants,” whom Zebedee employed.  In the parable of the prodigal son we have a wealthy Jewish family.  Here servants seem to have abounded.  The prodigal, bitterly bewailing his wretchedness and folly, described their condition as greatly superior to his own.  How happy the change which should place him by their side!  His remorse, and shame, and penitence made him willing to embrace the lot of the lowest of them all.  But these—­what was their condition?  They were HIRED SERVANTS.  “Make me as one of thy hired servants.”  Such he refers to as the lowest menials known in Jewish life.

Lay such hints as have now been suggested together; let it be remembered, that slavery was inconsistent with the Mosaic economy; that John the Baptist in preparing the way for the Messiah makes no reference “to the yoke” which, had it been before him, he would, like Isaiah, have condemned; that the Savior, while he took the part of the poor and sympathized with the oppressed; was evidently spared the pain of witnessing within the sphere of his ministry, the presence of the chattel principle; that it was the habit of the Jews, whoever they might be, high or low, rich or poor, learned or rude, “to labor, working with their hands;” and that where reference was had to the most menial employments, in families, they were described as carried on by hired servants; and the question of slavery “in Judea,” so far as the seed of Abraham were concerned, is very easily disposed of.  With every phase and form of society among them slavery was inconsistent.