[Footnote A:  Maimonides, who wrote in Egypt about seven hundred years ago, a contemporary with Jarchi, and who stands with him at the head of Jewish writers, gives the following testimony on this point:  “Whether a servant be born in the power of an Israelite, or whether he be purchased from the heathen, the master is to bring them both into the covenant.”

“But he that is in the house is entered on the eighth day, and he that is bought with money, on the day on which his master receives him, unless the slave be unwilling.  For if the master receive a grown slave, and he be unwilling, his master is to bear with him, to seek to win him over by instruction, and by love and kindness, for one year.  After which, should he refuse so long, it is forbidden to keep him longer than a year.  And the master must send him back to the strangers from whence he came.  For the God of Jacob will not accept any other than the worship of a willing heart”—­Mamon, Hilcoth Mileth, Chap. 1st, Sec. 8th.

The ancient Jewish Doctors assert that the servant from the Strangers who at the close of his probationary year, refused to adopt the Jewish religion and was on that account sent back to his own people, received a full compensation for his services, besides the payment of his expenses.  But that postponement of the circumcision of the foreign servant for a year (or even at all after he had entered the family of an Israelite), of which the Mishnic doctors speak, seems to have been a mere usage.  We find nothing of it in the regulations of the Mosaic system.  Circumcision was manifestly a rite strictly initiatory.  Whether it was a rite merely national or spiritual, or both, comes not within the scope of this inquiry. ]

II.  We argue the voluntariness of servants from Deut. xxiii. 15, 16, “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee.  He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him.”

As though God had said, “To deliver him up would be to recognize the right of the master to hold him; his fleeing shows his choice—­proclaims his wrongs and his title to protection; you shall not force him back and thus recognize the right of the master to hold him in such a condition as induces him to flee to others for protection.”  It may be said that this command referred only to the servants of heathen masters in the surrounding nations.  We answer, the terms of the command are unlimited.  But the objection, if valid, would merely shift the pressure of the difficulty to another point.  Did God require them to protect the free choice of a single servant from the heathen, and yet authorize the same persons, to crush the free choice of thousands of servants from