th thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy
God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy
money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase. I _am_ the Lord
your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you
the land of Canaan, _and_ to be your God. And if thy brother _that
dwelleth_ by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not
compel him to serve as a bondservant: _But_ as an hired servant, _and_ as
a sojourner, he shall be with thee, _and_ shall serve thee unto the year
of jubilee: And _then_ shall he 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. For they _are_ my servants,
which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as
bondmen. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor; but shalt fear thy
God.--Leviticus xxv. 8 _et seq._

Fenton, "Early Hebrew Life," has, I think, given the clue through the
difficulties of the jubilee-year legislation. He traces the early communal
character of Hebrew society, its gradual break-up under the encroachments
of manorial lords, and the natural efforts of the people to regain their
communal rights. "But how remedy the evil? How restore to the communities
their old rights and privileges, without unduly trenching upon rights and
possessions that had since been acquired? The year of Jubilee is the
Hebrew solution of the problem," (p 71). It was a compromise; the old
seventh year communal right adjourned to seven times seven years, and
enlarged. Fenton quotes a curious survival, in the borough of
Newtown-upon-Ayr, of this very compromise between the old and the new
social systems--a Scottish Jubilee.

It is a queer sign of the disproportionate development of individual
religion in our current Christianity, that this social and economic
legislation should have been so spiritualized away as to leave no
consciousness of its original character in the minds of those who sing in
our prayer-meetings that "The year of Jubilee is come."

[54] The Dialogues of Plato: Jowett's edition, II. 106.

[55] Matthew Arnold in _Contemporary Review_, xxiv. 800; xxv. 508.

[56] The Friend: Essay x.

[57] Sacred Books of the East: I. ix. _et seq._

[58] Confessions of Augustine: Book X. Sec. vi.

[59] Exodus, xx. 31.

[60] Richard Hooker: Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I., ch. xvi. Sec. 8.