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To the servant of Jewish birth the year of jubilee brought full restoration to freedom; to the servant of gentile origin the jubilee itself brought no discharge. The Hebrew servant was, like our hired labourers, or rather like a modern apprentice, or like a German redemptioner, held to service only for a limited period; the heathen slaves among the Jews, were, like our negro slaves, held in bondage for life, with a reversion of like servitude to all their descendants, for ever.
Nor were the ministers of religion debarred from the right of holding men in servitude. Thus we read, Levit. 22:10.11, "A sojourner with a priest, or his hired servant, shall not eat of the holy thing, (i. e. the flesh offered in sacrifice,) but if the priest buy any soul with his money, he shall eat of it; and he that is born in his house, they shall eat of it." Here, then, the distinction between hired servants and slaves, purchased or inherited, is clearly laid down; and slaves no less than hired servants, are supposed to be included in the family establishment of the very ministers of God, the priests officiating at the altars of religion. It seems, then, that Moses, the great lawgiver of the Jews, who talked face to face with God, did not think that holding slaves polluted a man's hands with blood, or disqualified him for serving acceptably in the awful solemnities of religion.
As surely, then, as Moses wrote by divine inspiration, did God himself sanction among the Jews, the tolerance of slavery, including the buying and selling of human beings, with their descendants, into perpetual bondage. What God sanctions cannot be in itself, and essentially, evil. Moreover, the laws which God enacted for the treatment of slaves, and the privileges he authorized to be extended to the slaves of his covenant—people show, that God looks upon the condition of a slave, (wholly dependent though he be on the pleasure of his master, for his personal comforts,) as not inconsistent with the service of God, and with the hope of salvation.
But in reply to this argument drawn from the Mosaic law, it is often urged—"The tolerance of slavery in the Jewish church, furnishes no argument to prove that slavery is lawful now; because polygamy was tolerated in that ancient church, and yet no one contends for polygamy now! If we may hold slaves now because Abraham held slaves, and any Jew, however pious, might hold them, then we must authorize polygamy now, too, because Abraham, and Jacob, and David, all good men and approved of God, had each of them many wives!"
But to this I answer, the cases are not parallel. Whatever God has once sanctioned cannot be, in itself, and essentially, wrong. God did once sanction the existence of slaveholding and of polygamy both; and
