with horror. And by the way, it is a curious fact for those to explain who find, in the deliverance from Egypt, the parallel of the modern anti-slavery successes, that this deliverance from Egypt was simply the deliverance from political bondage of a nation of slaveholders, who came forth bringing their slaves with them. The true parallel to the redemption from the bondage of Egypt would then have been found, should God, in His providence, give deliverance to a slave-holding nation of people from political subjugation, and attempted extirpation, in face of the prejudices of the whole world. It but tends to confuse and darken the minds of the people touching this entire section of the inspired history, thus absurdly to find its parallel in the personal emancipation of even thousands of slaves.*

* Besides the obvious facts in the whole history of Israel in Egypt, from which the ordinary reader must infer, on a little reflection, that they lived there as a nation; that the bondage was not a personal bondage, in which the individual Israelites were slaves to individual Egyptians, but a political bondage, in which the Egyptian power operated on the body politic through the "officers or political representatives of the Israelites, and therefore the Hebrew institution of slavery might still exist.-I may cite in support of this view, the following passage from perhaps the ablest of all cotemporary writers on the Bible history.

"It is a gross mistake to suppose that the two millions were all the direct descendants of Jacob. When Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt, they must certainly have taken with them all their men-servants and maid-servants as well as all their cattle. We know that Abraham had 318 servants, fit for war, and trained to arms; his nomadic household must have contained, therefore, more than a thousand souls. Jacob again, who inherited all these, brought with him from Syria so many men-servants and maid-servants, and so much cattle, that when he was afraid of an attack from Esau, he divided them into two armies. With such data as these, then, we are justified in assuming that the number of those who went down with Jacob into Egypt was not limited to his sixtysix children and grandchildren, but consisted of several thousand men-servants and maid-servants." Kurtz's Sac. His. vol. 2, p. 149. Even the "New American Cyclopedia" suggests:

66 The Jews had some form of slavery from the time of Abra

It has been shown also in these expositions how, fifty days after this first Passover, when this Church, prepared for the great solemnity by a synod or council of its elders, stood before Mount Sinai to hear directly the very voice of her Lord and Head utter the great covenant of the Law, two of the precepts of that Law recognized the propriety of the relation of master and slave within the Church itself. In the fourth commandment masters are required to see to it that their slaves shall keep holy the Sabbath as well as themselves and their children. In the tenth commandment, forbidding even unlawful desires of another's property, slaves are enumerated among the representative articles of property which men shall not covet66 nor his man-servant nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's."*

The conclusion is thus reached, beyond all possibility

ham, with whom their historical existence commenced. Their own long enslavement in Egypt was of a political and personal (?) nation -and probably did not prevent them from holding slaves."

*That this is no novel construction of the law, will be seen from the following citation from old commentators :

"Nor thy man-servant, &c." Thou shalt neither enjoin labor upon them nor permit them to labor. This is to be understood of those who are not Jews, for all who were Jews were forbidden in the preceding clauses. Poli Synopsis, Ex. 20: 10.

"Thou shalt not covet--his man-servant nor his maid-servant." In these words of the law the lordship and property of the things which it is not lawful to covet are specially established, as also SLAVERY AND THE POWER OF THE MASTER. Poli Synopsis, Ex. 20: 17.

“Nor thy man-servant nor thy maid-servant.”—This is to be understood, according to the Jews, not of hired servants, concerning whose rest from labour a man was not bound, but of such as were born in the house, and bought with their money, and of such man-servants as were circumcised and in all things professed to be proselytes to the Jewish religion. Dr. Gill, Com. Ex. 20: 10.

"Thou shalt not covet-nor his man-servant nor his maid-servant "-WHICH ARE HIS PRINCIPAL GOODS. Bishop Patrick, Com. on Ex. 10: 13.

of doubt that anterior to the civil code of Moses the relation of master and slave was recognized in the Church of God as such. If it seem to you that unnecessary pains have been taken to establish this conclusion, you have only to reflect a little on the important bearing which it must have on the interpretation of this civil code of Moses, and its no less important bearing upon the interpretation of the New Testament teaching concerning slavery. In fact, nothing has tended to obscure and confuse the views of Christians on this whole subject more than the current fashion of partial examinations of the Scriptures-the Old Testament without reference to the New, or the New Testament without reference to the Old; and of ignoring the distinction between what was ordained in the Church, as Church, and what was temporarily ordained in the Hebrew State that peculiar civil organization of a nation for the sake of preserving and perpetuating the Church, under the Divine Legation of Moses. Out of this common blunder springs the current very fatal heresy that, somehow, the Old Testament is not "gospel" to us, nor binding on us in the same sense that the Evangelists and Apostles are; that the religion taught in the Old is not as pure and benevolent as that taught in the New Testament; from which will follow inevitably, in the popular mind, the impression that pure and true Christianity began only with the New Testament; and then, that somehow the God of the Old Testament Church is not the same as the God of the New-at least not of the same ethical attributes, or else that "all Scripture (if that term includes Moses and the prophets) is" not "given by inspiration of God.”

SECTION II

Rationale of the Mosaic civil law. slavery in the proper sense at all. Hebrews to slavery not founded but of a special religious faith.

The bond-service of Hebrews not The prohibition against reducing on the ground of natural right,

It has been shown further in the course of our expositions, that, besides mediating a church covenant of redemption, whose seal was the Passover, and the ethical covenant of the moral law, as the Church's rule of life, and also delivering an elaborate ritual of worship whereby to teach atonement for sin by blood as the means of deliverance from the penalties of the ethical law, it was the mission of Moses to organize the Hebrew patriarchy into a free, constitutional commonwealth. Hence the system of constitutional law, the general principles of which were illustrated in the discourse of last Sabbath evening; and the civil law respecting persons and things, now to be expounded. It has been shown that the civil constitution given by Moses, like every other national constitution, contains certain germinal principles, according to which its several provisions are developed; that the fundamental principle of this constitution is that Jehovah is not only the God of their religious worship, but, at the same time, the Theocratic King of the nation-His palace the Tabernacle or Temple-His throne the Ark of the Covenant overshadowed by the Cherubim-His courtiers the Priests, His vicegerent the Judge or King; and that He is really the proprietor of the soil of the nation, which He has directly interfered, by supernatural power, to obtain for the people, as an inheritance, according to the covenant with Abraham. And not only is He the owner

of the soil, but also of the persons upon it, by virtue of having delivered them from the bondage of Egypt. That, while this is the general theory of the constitution, it has also a fundamental aim and end of expediency; even to keep alive among the several families of the nation the hope of being in the line of the descent of Messiah, who is to come, and so to preserve these families distinct that in subsequent ages the line of Messiah can be traced back through all the centuries, as Matthew and Luke have done, in order to demonstrate that His descent is exactly according to the prophets.

Hence, as we have seen, the reason of that peculiar landlaw forbidding the alienation of land from the family to whom it was originally given, by sale of it in fee simple; permitting only the alienation of the leasehold till the semicentenary Jubilee, when all lands must revert to the families originally holding them; by which arrangement the records through which the land-titles are traced become at the same time official records of the family genealogies, generation after generation.

Hence also that peculiar Levirate law-directly contrary to the general law (Lev. 18: 16) forbidding marriage between near relatives-requiring a man to marry his childless brother's widow, under penalty of disgrace, that the family-name and land-titles may not become extinct. (Deut. 25: 5-10.)

Hence also the law, which stands here at the very head of the civil code-the first "of the judgments which thou shalt set before them." "If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve, and in the seventh shall he go out free for nothing" (Ex. 21: 1, 2); or, as repeated, more in detail, in Lev. 25: 41, "shall 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."