me in the womb, make him? And did not one
fashion us in the womb?" Taking this language in connection with the
language employed by Moses, in reference to the institution of
involuntary servitude in _that age_, and especially in connection with
the language which Moses employs _after the law was given_, and what
else can be understood, than a reference to a class of duties that slave
owners felt themselves above stooping to notice or perform, but which,
nevertheless, it was the duty of the righteous man to discharge: for
whatever proud and wicked men might think of a poor servant that stood
in his estate, on an equality with brutes, yet, says Job, he that made
me, made them, and if I despise their reasonable causes of complaint,
for injuries which they are made to suffer, and for the redress of which
I only can be appealed to, then what shall I do, and how shall I fare,
when I carry my causes of complaint to him who is my master, and to whom
only I can go for relief? When he visiteth me for despising _their
cause_, what shall I answer him for _despising mine_? He means that he
would feel self-condemned, and would be forced to admit the justice of
the retaliation. But on the supposition that allusion is had to _hired
servants_, who were _voluntarily_ working for _wages_ agreed upon, and
who were the _subjects of rights_ for the _protection of which_, their
appeal would be to "the judges in the gate," as much as any other class
of men, then there is no point in the statement. For _doing that_ which
can be _demanded as a legal right_, gives us no claim to the character
of _merciful benefactors_. Job himself was a great slaveholder, and,
like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, won no small portion of his claims to
character with God and men from the manner in which he discharged his
duty to his slaves. Once more: the conduct of Joseph in Egypt, _as
Pharaoh's counsellor_, under all the circumstances, proves him a friend
to absolute slavery, as a form of government better adapted to the state
of the world at that time, than the one which existed in Egypt; for
certain it is, that he peaceably effected a change in the fundamental
law, by which a _state, condition, or relation_, between Pharaoh and the
Egyptians was established, which answers to the one now denounced as
sinful in the sight of God. Being warned of God, he gathered up all the
surplus grain in the years of plenty, and sold it out in the years of
famine, until he gathered up