relations of a community, rather than to the services of individuals, is a fair inference from the form of the expression, “THEY shall be your possession.  Ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children to inherit them for a possession.”  To say nothing of the uncertainty of these individuals surviving those after whom they are to live, the language used, applies more naturally to a body of people, than to individual servants.

But suppose it otherwise; still perpetual service could not be argued from the term forever.  The ninth and tenth verses of the same chapter, limit it absolutely by the jubilee. “Then shall thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month:  in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout ALL your land.”  “And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto ALL the inhabitants thereof.”

It may be objected that “inhabitants” here means Israelitish inhabitants alone.  The command is, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto ALL the inhabitants thereof.”  Besides, in the sixth verse, there is an enumeration of the different classes of the inhabitants, in which servants and strangers are included. “And the Sabbath of the land shall be meet for YOU—­[For whom?  For you Israelites only?]—­for thee, and for thy SERVANT, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy STRANGER that sojourneth with thee.”

Further, in all the regulations of the jubilee, and the sabbatical year, the strangers are included in the precepts, prohibitions, and promised blessings.  Again:  the year of jubilee was ushered in, by the day of atonement.  What was the design of these institutions?  The day of atonement prefigured the atonement of Christ, and the year of jubilee, the gospel jubilee.  And did they prefigure an atonement and a jubilee to Jews only?  Were they the types of sins remitted, and of salvation, proclaimed to the nation of Israel alone?  Is there no redemption for us Gentiles in these ends of the earth, and is our hope presumption and impiety?  Did that old partition wall survive the shock, that made earth quake, and hid the sun, burst graves and rocks, and rent the temple vail?  And did the Gospel only rear it higher to thunder direr perdition from its frowning battlements on all without?  No!  The God of OUR salvation lives.  “Good tidings of great joy shall be to ALL people.” One shout shall swell from all the ransomed, “Thou hast redeemed us unto God by thy blood out of EVERY kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.”  To deny that the blessings of the jubilee extended to the servants from the Gentiles, makes Christianity Judaism.  It not only eclipses the glory of the Gospel, but strikes out the sun.  The refusal to release servants at the sound of the jubilee trumpet, falsified and disannulled a grand leading type of the atonement, and thus libelled the doctrine of Christ’s redemption.