I. TO BECOME A SERVANT WAS TO BECOME A PROSELYTE.  Whoever of the strangers became a servant, he was required to abjure idolatry, to enter into covenant with God[A], be circumcised in token of it, be 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?  Were they 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 become a servant, was to become a proselyte.  Did God authorize his people to make proselytes at the point of the bayonet? 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? the sure and sacred passport to the communion of the saints?

[Footnote A:  Maimonides, 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.”—­Maimon, Hilcoth Miloth, Chap. 1, Sec. 8.