power, would tend with still greater force to make them humane in their dealings with the slave.
It appears also from Levit. xxv. 49 that the slave might legally acquire property, since it is there said that “if he be able he may redeem himself.”
If the book of Job may be taken as in any measure an index of Hebrew sentiment, the laws of the Hebrew Commonwealth were not without effect in training its members to look on the bondman not as a thing, but as a person possessing rights, and having claims to justice. “If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant when they contended with me; what then shall I do when God riseth up? and when He visiteth, what shall I answer Him? Did not He that made me in the womb make him? And did not One fashion us in the womb?”[1]
An eminent writer speaking of Roman slavery observes, that “in earlier times religious considerations had exercised an alleviating influence, and had released the slave and the plough-ox from labour on the days enjoined for festivals and for rest.” “Nothing,” he goes on to say, “is more characteristic of the spirit of Cato and those who shared his sentiments than the way in which they inculcated the observance of the holyday in the letter, and evaded it in reality, by advising that while the plough should certainly be allowed to rest on these days, the slaves should even then be incessantly occupied with other labours not expressly prohibited.”[2]
Perfect rest from labour on every seventh day was se-
