And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him:  yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee.  Take thou no usury of him, or increase:  but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee.  Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.  I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.  And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant:  But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubilee:  And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return.  For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt:  they shall not be sold as bondmen.  Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor; but shalt fear thy God.—­Leviticus xxv. 8 et seq.

Fenton, “Early Hebrew Life,” has, I think, given the clue through the difficulties of the jubilee-year legislation.  He traces the early communal character of Hebrew society, its gradual break-up under the encroachments of manorial lords, and the natural efforts of the people to regain their communal rights.  “But how remedy the evil?  How restore to the communities their old rights and privileges, without unduly trenching upon rights and possessions that had since been acquired?  The year of Jubilee is the Hebrew solution of the problem,” (p 71).  It was a compromise; the old seventh year communal right adjourned to seven times seven years, and enlarged.  Fenton quotes a curious survival, in the borough of Newtown-upon-Ayr, of this very compromise between the old and the new social systems—­a Scottish Jubilee.

It is a queer sign of the disproportionate development of individual religion in our current Christianity, that this social and economic legislation should have been so spiritualized away as to leave no consciousness of its original character in the minds of those who sing in our prayer-meetings that “The year of Jubilee is come.”

[54] The Dialogues of Plato:  Jowett’s edition, II. 106.

[55] Matthew Arnold in Contemporary Review, xxiv. 800; xxv. 508.

[56] The Friend:  Essay x.

[57] Sacred Books of the East:  I. ix. et seq.

[58] Confessions of Augustine:  Book X. Sec. vi.

[59] Exodus, xx. 31.

[60] Richard Hooker:  Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I., ch. xvi.  Sec. 8.

[61] Le Page Renouf:  Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 250.

[62] Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 279.

[63] God in Christ, p. 93.