incumbrance, before entering upon its possession and control.  But it was that of the head of a family, who had known better days, now reduced to poverty, forced to relinquish the loved inheritance of his fathers, with the competence and respectful consideration its possession secured to him, and to be indebted to a neighbor for shelter, sustenance, and employment.  So sad a reverse, might well claim sympathy; but one consolation cheers him in the house of his pilgrimage; he is an Israelite—­Abraham is his father and now in his calamity he clings closer than ever, to the distinction conferred by his birth-right.  To rob him of this, were “the unkindest cut of all.”  To have assigned him to a grade of service filled only by those whose permanent business was serving, would have been to “rule over him with” peculiar “rigor.”  “Thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant,” or literally, thou shalt not serve thyself with him, with the service of a servant, guaranties his political privileges, and a kind and grade of service comporting with his character and relations as an Israelite.  And “as a hired servant, and as a sojourner shall he be with thee,” secures to him his family organization, the respect and authority due to its head, and the general consideration resulting from such a station.  Being already in possession of his inheritance, and the head of a household, the law so arranged the conditions of his service as to alleviate as much as possible the calamity which had reduced him from independence and authority, to penury and subjection.  The import of the command which concludes this topic in the forty-third verse, ("Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor,”) is manifestly this, you shall not disregard those differences in previous associations, station, authority, and political privileges, upon which this regulation is based; for to hold this class of servants irrespective of these distinctions, and annihilating them, is to “rule with rigor.”  The same command is repeated in the forty-sixth verse, and applied to the distinction between servants of Jewish, and those of Gentile extraction, and forbids the overlooking of distinctive Jewish peculiarities, the disregard of which would be rigorous in the extreme.[E] The construction commonly put upon the phrase “rule with rigor,” and the inference drawn from it, have an air vastly oracular.  It is interpreted to mean, “you shall not make him a chattel, and strip him of legal protection, nor force him to work without pay.”  The inference is like unto it, viz., since the command forbade such outrages upon the Israelites, it permitted and commissioned their infliction upon the Strangers.  Such impious and shallow smattering captivates scoffers and libertines; its flippancy and blasphemy, and the strong scent of its loose-reined license works like a charm upon them.  What boots it to reason against such rampant affinities!  In Ex. i. 13, it is said that the Egyptians, “made