Finally, the Strangers, whether servants or masters, were all protected equally with the descendants of Abraham.  In respect to political privileges, their condition was much like that of unnaturalized foreigners in the United States; whatever their wealth or intelligence, or moral principle, or love for our institutions, they can neither go to the ballot-box, nor own the soil, nor be eligible to office.  Let a native American, be suddenly bereft of these privileges, and loaded with the disabilities of an alien, and what to the foreigner would be a light matter, to him, would be the severity of rigor.  The recent condition of the Jews and Catholics in England, is another illustration.  Rothschild, the late banker, though the richest private citizen in the world, and perhaps master of scores of English servants, who sued for the smallest crumbs of his favor, was, as a subject of the government, inferior to the lowest among them.  Suppose an Englishman of the Established Church, were by law deprived of power to own the soil, of eligibility to office and of the electoral franchise, would Englishmen think it a misapplication of language, if it were said, the government “rules over him with rigor?” And yet his person, property, reputation, conscience, all his social relations, the disposal of his time, the right of locomotion at pleasure, and of natural liberty in all respects, are just as much protected by law as the Lord Chancellor’s.

FINALLY.—­As the Mosaic system was a great compound type, rife with meaning in doctrine and duty; the practical power of the whole, depended upon the exact observance of those distinctions and relations which constituted its significancy.  Hence, the care to preserve inviolate the distinction between a descendant of Abraham and a Stranger, even when the Stranger was a proselyte, had gone through the initiatory ordinances, entered the congregation, and become incorporated with the Israelites by family alliance.  The regulation laid down in Ex. xxi. 2-6, is an illustration.  In this case, the Israelitish servant, whose term expired in six years, married one of his master’s permanent female domestics; but her marriage did not release her master from his part of the contract for her whole term of service, nor from his legal obligation to support and educate her children.  Neither did it do away that distinction, which marked her national descent by a specific grade and term of service, nor impair her obligation to fulfil her part of the contract.  Her relations as a permanent domestic grew out of a distinction guarded with great care throughout the Mosaic system.  To render it void, would have been to divide the system against itself.  This God would not tolerate.  Nor, on the other hand, would he permit the master to throw off the responsibility of instructing her children, nor the care and expense of their helpless infancy and rearing.  He was bound to support