spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, father, We wait for the adoption of the children of God. And (Gal. iv. 4, 5.) God sent forth his son to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Among the Mohammedans the ceremony of adoption is performed, by causing the adopted to pass through the shirt of the person who adopts him. For this reason to adopt among the Turks is expressed by saying to draw any one through one's shirt; and an adopted son is called by them, Akietogli, the son of another life-because ho was not begotten in this.1 Something like this is observable among the Hebrews: Elijah adopted the prophet Elisha, by throwing his mantle over him (1 Kings xix. 19.); and when Elijah was carried off in a fiery chariot, his mantle, which he let fall, was taken up by Elisha his disciple, his spiritual son, and adopted successor in the office of prophet. (2 Kings ii. 15.) This circumstance seems to be illustrated by the conduct of Moses, who dressed Eleazar in Aaron's sacred vestments, when that high priest was about to be gathered to his fathers; indicating thereby, that Eleazar succeeded in the functions of the priesthood, and was, in some sort, adopted to exercise that dignity. The Lord told Shebna, the captain of the temple, that he would deprive him of his honourable station, and substitute Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, in his room. (Isaiah xxii. 21.) I will CLOTHE HIM WITH THY ROBE, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand. St. Paul, in several places, says, that real Christians put on the Lord Jesus; and that they put on the new man, in order to denote their adoption as sons of God. (Rom. xiii. 14. Gal. iii. 26, 27.)2 1 D'Herbelot Bibl. Orient. P. 47. 2 Michaelis's Commentaries, vol. i. pp. 455-478. vol. ii. pp. 29-122. Lewis's Origines Hebrææ, vol. ii. pp. 240-310. Calmet's Dictionary, articles Marriage, Divorce, Adoption. Harwood's Introduction, vol. ii. pp. 119-124. Jahn, År chæologia, Bíblica, pp. 221–232. CHAPTER V. ON THE CONDITION OF SLAVES AND OF SERVANTS, AND THE CUSTOMS RELATING TO THEM, MENTIONED OR ALLUDED TO IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. I. Slaves, how acquired.-II. Their condition among the Hebrews. -III. And among other Nations.-IV. Of Hired Servants.Customs relating to them and to Slaves alluded to in the New Tes tament. 1. SLAVERY is of very remote antiquity. It existed before the flood (Gen. ix. 25.); and when Moses gave his laws to the Jews, finding it already established, though he could not abolish it, yet he enacted various salutary laws and regulations. The Israelites indeed might have Hebrew servants or slaves, as well as alien-born persons, but these were to be circumcised, and were required to worship the only true God (Gen. xvii. 13-17.), with the exception of the Canaanites. Slaves were acquired by various ways, viz. 1. By Captivity, which is supposed to have been the first origin of slavery (Gen. xiv. 14. Deut. xx. 14. xxi. 10, 11.); 2. By Debt, when persons being poor, were sold for payment of their debts (2 Kings iv. 1. Matt. xviii. 25.); 3. By committing a Theft, without the power of making restitution (Exod. xxii. 2, 3. Neh. v. 4, 5.); and 4. By Birth, when persons were born of married slaves. These are termed born in the house (Gen. xiv. 14. xv. 3. xvii. 23. xxi. 10.), home-born (Jer. ii. 14.), and the sons or children of hand-maids. (Psal. lxxxvi. 16. cxvi. 16.) II. Slaves received both food and clothing, for the most part of the meanest quality, but whatever property they acquired belonged to their lords hence they are said to be worth double the value of a hired servant. (Deut. xv. 18.) They formed marriages at the will of their master, but their children were slaves, who, though they could not call him a father (Gal. iv. 6. Rom. viii. 15.), yet they were attached and faithful to him as to a father, on which account the patriarchs trusted them with arms. (Gen. xiv. 14. xxxii. 6. xxxiii. 1.) If a married Hebrew sold himself, he was to serve for six years, and in the seventh he was to go out free, together with his wife and children: but, if his master had given one of his slaves to him as a wife, she was to remain, with her children, as the property of his master. (Exod. xxi. 2-4.) The duty of slaves was to execute their lord's commands, and they were for the most part employed in tending cattle or in rural affairs; and though the lot of some of them was sufficiently hard, yet under a mild and humane master, it was tolerable. (Job xiii. 13.) When the eastern people have no male issue, they frequently marry their daughters to their slaves; and the same vractice appears to have obtained among the Hebrews, as we read in 1 Chron. ii. 34, 35. Now Sheshan had no sons but daughters; and Sheshan had a servant (slave), an Egyptian, whose name was Jarha; and Sheshan gave his daughter to Jarha his servant to wife.. In Barbary, the rich people when childless have been known to purchase young slaves, to educate them in their own faith, and sometimes to adopt them for their own children. The greatest men of the Ottoman empire are well known to have been originally slaves brought up in the seraglio: and the Mameluke sovereigns of Egypt were originally slaves. Thus the advancement of the Hebrew captive Joseph to be viceroy of Egypt, and of Daniel, another Hebrew slave, to be chief minister of state in Babylon, corresponds with the modern usages of the East. In order to mitigate the condition of slaves, various statutes were enacted by Moses. Thus, 1. They were to be treated with humanity the law, in Levit. xxv. 39-53., it is true, speaks expressly of slaves who were of Hebrew descent; but, as alien-born slaves were ingrafted into the Hebrew church by circumcision, there is no doubt but that it applied to all slaves.-2. If a man struck his servant or maid with a rod or staff, and he or she died under his hand, he was to be punished by the magistrate: if, however, the slave survived for a day or two, the master was to go unpunished, as no intention of murder could be presumed, and the loss of the slave was deemed a sufficient punishment. (Exod. xxi. 20, 21.)-3. A slave, who lost an eye or a tooth by a blow from his or her master, acquired his or her liberty in consequence. (Exod. xx. 26, 27.)— 4. All slaves were to rest from their labours on the Sabbath, and on the great festivals. (Exod. xx. 10. Deut. v. 14.)-5. They were to be invited to certain feasts. (Deut. xii. 17, 18. xvi. 11.)-6. A master who had betrothed a female slave to himself, if she did not please him, was to permit her to be redeemed, and was prohibited from selling her to a strange nation, seeing he had dealt deceitfully with her. If he had betrothed her to his son, he was to deal with her after the manner of daughters. If he took another wife, her food, raiment, and duty of marriage, he was not to diminish. And if he did not these three unto her, then she was to go out free without money. (Exod. xxi. 7-11.)-7. Hebrew slaves were to continue in slavery only till the year of jubilee, when they might return to liberty, and their masters could not detain them against their wills. If they were desirous of continuing with their masters, they were to be brought to the judges, before whom they were to make a declaration that for this time they disclaimed the privilege of this law; and had their ears bored through with an awl against the door-posts of their master's house, after which they had no longer any power of 1 Boring of the ear was an antient custom in the East: it is thus referred to, by Juvenal: ... Libertinus prior est: "Prior," inquit, "Ego adsum, Sat. i. 102-105. recovering their liberty until the next year of jubilee, after forty-nine years. (Exod. xxi. 5, 6.) This very significant ceremony implied that they were closely attached to that house and family; and that they were bound to hear, and punctually to obey, all their master's orders.-8. If a Hebrew by birth was sold to a stranger or alien dwelling in the vicinity of the land of Israel, his relations were to redeem him, and such slave was to make good the purchase money if he were able, paying in proportion to the number of years that remained, until the year of jubilee. (Levit. xxv. 47-55.) Lastly, if a slave of another nation fled to the Hebrews, he was to be received hospitably, and on no account to be given up to his master. (Deut. xxiii. 15, 16.) III. Although Moses inculcated the duty of humane treatment towards slaves, and enforced his statutes by various strong sanctions, yet it appears from Jer. xxxiv. 8-22. that their condition was sometimes very wretched. It cannot, however, be denied that their situation was much more tolerable among the Hebrews than among other nations, especially the Greeks and Romans. Nor is this a matter of astonishment: for the Israelites were bound to exercise the duties of humanity towards these unhappy persons by weighty sanctions and motives, which no other nation had, whose slaves had no rest, no legal protection, and who were subject to the cruel caprice of their masters, whose absolute property they were, and at whose mercy their lives every moment lay. For the slightest and most trivial offences they were cruelly scourged and condemned to hard labour and the petty tyrant of his family, when exasperated by any real or apprehended injury, could nail them to a cross, and make them die in a lingering and most miserable manner. These slaves, generally, were wretched captives, who had been taken prisoners in unfortunate battles, or had fallen into their enemies' hands in the siege of cities. These miserable captives, antient history informs us, were either butchered in cold blood, or sold by auction The freedman, bustling through, replies, "First come is still GIFFORD. Calmet, to whom we are indebted for this fact, quotes a saying from Petronius Arbiter, as attesting the same thing; and another, of Cicero, in which he rallies a Lybian who pretended he did not hear him. It is not,' said the philosopher, 'because your ears are not sufficiently BORED.'-Commentaire Littéral, sur l'Exode xxi. 6. p. tom. i. p. 501. 1 Among the Romans more particularly, slaves were held--pro nullis-pra mortuis-pro quadrupedibus—for no men-for dead men-for beasts; nay, were in a much worse state than any cattle whatever. They had no head in the state, no name, no tribe, or register. They were not capable of being injured, nor could they take by purchase or descent; they had no heirs, and could make no will. Exclusive of what was called their peculium, whatever they acquired was their master's; they could neither plead nor be pleaded, but were entirely excluded from all civil concerns; were not entitled to the rights of matrimony, and therefore had no relief in case of adultery; nor were they proper objects of cognation nor affiniity. They might be sold, transferred, or pawned, like other goods or personal estate; for goods they were, and as such they were esteemed. Taylor's Elements of the Roman Civil Law, p. 429. 4to. Adams' Summary of Roman Antiquities, PP. 38, 39. for slaves to the highest bidder. The unhappy prisoners thus bought and enslaved, were sometimes thrust into deep mines, to be drudges through life in darkness and despair: sometimes were pent up in private workhouses, and condemned to the most laborious and ignoble occupations: frequently the toils of agriculture were imposed upon them, and the severest tasks unmercifully exacted from them: most commonly they were employed in the menial offices and drudgery of domestic life, and treated with the greatest inhumanity. As the last insult upon their wretchedness, they were branded in the forehead, and a note of eternal disgrace and infamy publicly and indelibly impressed upon them! One cannot think of this most contumelious and reproachful treatment of a fellow-creature without feeling the acutest pain and indignation. To the above-mentioned customs in the treatment of slaves, which obtained among the antients, there are several allusions in the New Testament. Thus, St. Paul, in reference to the custom of purchasing slaves, on whose heads a price was then fixed, just as upon any other commodity, and who, when bought, were the entire and unalienable property of the purchaser, by a very beautiful and expressive similitude represents Christians as the servants of Christ; informs them that an immense price had been paid for them: that they were not at their own disposal; but in every respect, both as to body and mind, were the sole and absolute property of God. Ye are not your own: for ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. (1 Cor. vi. 20.) So also again: Ye are bought with a price, be not ye the servants of men. (I Cor. vii. 23.) St. Paul usually styles himself the servant of Christ; and in a passage in his Epistle to the Galatians, alluding to the signatures with which slaves in those days were branded, he tells them, that he carried about with him plain and indelible characters impressed in his body, which evinced him to be the servant of his master Jesus. From henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. (Gal. vi. 17.) It was a doctrine of the pharisaic Jews, that proselytes were released from all antecedent, civil, and even natural relations: and it is not im 1 The following passage from Mr. Jowett's Christian Researches in the Mediterranean, will give an idea of the rigour with which slaves are treated to this day in the East. The conductor of a nitre factory for the Pasha of Egypt having received commands to prepare a large quantity of nitre in great haste," for this purpose he was building small reservoirs and ducts, with old picked bricks, gathered from ruins; and which are better than the modern baked bricks. A great number of young persons of both sexes were engaged in the work, carrying burdens. To give vivacity to their proceedings, they are required to sing; and to keep them diligent, there were task-masters, standing at intervals of about ten feet, with whips in their hands, which they used very freely. We seemed to behold the manners of the antient Egyptians: Exodus v." Jowett's Researches, p. 130. May not the command to sing also explain Psal. cxxxvii. 3, 4.? "The Mallems," (or heads of districts of Coptic Christians in Egypt,) the same traveller elsewhere remarks, "transact business between the bashaw and the peasants. He punishes them, if the peasants prove that they oppress; and yet he requires from them that the work of those who are under them shall be fulfilled. They strikingly illustrate the case of the officers, placed by the Egyptian task-masters over the children of Israel; and, like theirs, the Mallems often find that their case is evil. See Exod. v. 6-29." Ibid. p. 168. |