Lot and his household.  Besides, there was neither “constitution” nor “compact,” to send back Abraham’s fugitives, nor a truckling police to pounce upon them, nor gentlemen-kidnappers, suing for his patronage, volunteering to howl on their track, boasting their blood-hound scent, and pledging their honour to hunt down and deliver up, provided they had a description of the “flesh-marks,” and were suitably stimulated by pieces of silver.[A] Abraham seems also to have been sadly deficient in all the auxiliaries of family government, such as stocks, hand-cuffs, foot-chains, yokes, gags, and thumb-screws.  His destitution of these patriarchal indispensables is the more afflicting, since he faithfully trained “his household to do justice and judgment,” though so deplorably destitute of the needful aids.

[Footnote A:  The following is a standing newspaper advertisement of one of these professional man-catchers, a member of the New York bar, who coolly plies his trade in the commercial emporium, sustained by the complacent greetings and courtesies of “HONORABLE MEN!” “IMPORTANT TO THE SOUTH.—­F.H.  Pettis, native of Orange County, Va., being located in the city of New York, in the practice of law, announces to his friends and the public in general, that he has been engaged as Counsel and Adviser in General for a party whose business it is in the northern cities to arrest and secure runaway slaves.  He has been thus engaged for several years, and as the act of Congress alone governs now in this city, in business of this sort, which renders it easy for the recovery of such property, he invites post paid communications to him, inclosing a fee of $20 in each case, and a power of Attorney minutely descriptive of the party absconded, and if in the northern region, he, or she will soon be had.

“Mr. Pettis will attend promptly to all law business confided to him.

“N.B.  New York City is estimated to contain 5,000 Runaway Slaves.

“PETTIS.” ]

Probably Job had even more servants than Abraham.  See Job. i. 3, 14-19, and xlii. 12.  That his thousands of servants staid with him entirely of their own accord, is proved by the fact of their staying with him.  Suppose they had wished to quit his service, and so the whole army had filed off before him in full retreat, how could the patriarch have brought them to halt?  Doubtless with his wife, seven sons, and three daughters for allies, he would have soon out-flanked the fugitive host and dragged each of them back to his wonted chain and staple.

But the impossibility of Job’s servants being held against their wills, is not the only proof of their voluntary condition.  We have his own explicit testimony that he had not “withheld from the poor their desire.”  Job. xxxi. 16.  Of course he could hardly have made them live with him, and forced them to work for him against their desire.