a
stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger_." Lev. xxv. 35, 36. "_If
thy brother be waxen poor thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a_
STRANGER _or a sojourner, that he may live with thee, take thou no usury
of him or increase, but fear thy God_." [What an absurdity to suppose
that _this same stranger_ could be taken by one that _feared his God_,
held as a _slave_, and robbed of time, earnings, and all his rights!]

7. _Servants were placed upon a level with their masters in all civil
and religious rights_. See Numbers xv. 15, 16, 29. Numb. ix. 14. Deut,
i. 16, 17. Lev. xxiv. 22.

III.--DID PERSONS BECOME SERVANTS VOLUNTARILY, OR WERE THEY MADE
SERVANTS AGAINST THEIR WILLS?

We argue that they became servants _of their own accord_,

1. Because to become a servant in the family of an Israelite, was to
abjure idolatry, to enter into covenant with God[A], to be circumcised
in token of it, to be bound to the observance of the Sabbath, of the
Passover, the Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles, and to receive
instruction in all the particulars of the moral and ceremonial law.

[Footnote A: Maimonides, who wrote in Egypt about seven hundred years
ago, a contemporary with Jarchi, and who stands with him at the head of
Jewish writers, gives the following testimony on this point: "Whether a
servant be born in the power of an Israelite, or whether he be purchased
from the heathen, the master is to bring them both into the covenant."
"But he that is in the _house_ is entered on the eighth day, and he that
is bought with money, on the day on which the master receives him,
unless the slave be _unwilling_. For if the master receive a grown
slave, and he be _unwilling_, his master is to bear with him, to seek to
win him over by instruction, and by love and kindness, for one year.
After which, should he _refuse_ so long, it is forbidden to keep him,
longer than a year. And the master must send him back to the strangers
from whence he came. For the God of Jacob will not accept any other than
the worship of a _willing_ heart."--Maimon, Hilcoth, Miloth, Chap. 1st,
Sec. 8th.

The ancient Jewish Doctors agree in the testimony, that the servant from
the strangers who at the close of his probationary year still refused to
adopt the religion of the Mosaic system, and was on that account cut off
from the family, and sent back to his own people, received a _full
compensation_ for his services, besides the payment of his ex