But, last and chiefly, we have a still stronger fact to present. When Abraham was directed in Genesis xvii., 10, etc., to circumcise himself as a sign of the covenant between God and him, he was also directed to circumcise all his male children. The parental relationship was made the ground of their inclusion in the same covenant. And God directed his slaves also, "born in his house, or bought with his money of any foreigner," to be circumcised along with him. The parental tie brought his children under the religious rite of circumcision; the bond of master and servant brought his servants under it. Here then, we have the relationship of domestic slavery sanctioned, along with the parental and filial, by God's own injunction, by a participation in the holiest sacrament of the ancient church. Would a holy God thus baptize an unholy relation? Would he make it the ground of admission to a religious ordinance? To see a feeble illustration of the absurdity of such a conclusion, consider what would be thought of a minister of the New Testament, in which our Saviour has forbidden a plurality of wives, if that minister should desecrate the marriage ceremonial of his church, knowingly, to sanctify the union of the felon in the act of bigamy? Such a desecration would surely be not less shocking in the Author, than in a minister of religion.
And here, the favourite plea of the anti-slavery men fails entirely—that Abraham lived in the dawn of religious light; that the revelation given him was only partial, and that while he possessed the rectitude of conscience which would have made him relinquish all sinful relations, if enlightened as to their true character, the customs of his age misled him to commit things which Christians afterwards taught to be sinful, and that therefore, these things, excusable in him because of his ignorance, would be wickedness in us. There is some truth in these statements, but they have nothing on earth to do with this example; because the circumcision of the slaves was God's act, and not Abraham's. God knows all things. He is perfectly holy and unchangeable. If he had seen that slavery is intrinsically wrong, and had intended at some future day to declare it so, would he at this time have sanctioned it by making it the ground of a solemn ordinance of religion? As we shall see, this cry of the imperfection of the Old Testament revelation is of Socinian origin, and is essentially false, in the sense in which it is uttered. But be it as just as any statement could be, it has no application here; because our whole inference is drawn from the acts of God himself, and not of an Old Testament Saint.
§ 4. Hagar remanded to Slavery by God.
Sarah, in a season of desperation at her childless condition, seems to have been tempted to imitate the corrupt expedient which was prevalent among the Canaanites around her, and which still prevails in the East. According to this usage, the chief wife, or wife proper, gives to her husband a concubine from among her slaves, as a sort of substitute for herself; and the offspring of the connexion is regarded as her own child. Abram, misled by evil example, and by the solicitations of his wife—the person who would have had the best right to complain of his act—concurred temporarily in the arrangement, and received his Egyptian slave Hagar as an inferior wife. The favour of her master, and the prospective honour of being the mother of offspring, which has always been exceedingly prized by Oriental women, so inflated the servant with impudence, that she no longer treated her mistress with decent respect. When Sarah bitterly complained of this, Abram replied by reminding her that Hagar was still her slave; and that she was entitled, as a mistress, to compel her to observe a suitable demeanour. When Sarah proceeded to exert this authority, probably administering corporal punishment to Hagar for some instance of impertinence, the latter ran away, and pursued the direction which led to her native country, Egypt. It was then that the angel of the Lord found her "by the fountain in the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai. And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands." Genesis xvi., 7 to 9. He then proceeded to unfold the future of her unborn son, and Hagar obeyed his commands. From verses 10th and 13th, we learn certainly that this angel was a Divine Person. For, in the first place, he promises Hagar, "I will multiply thy seed exceedingly;" but none but the Almighty could truthfully make such a promise in his own name, as it is here made. In the latter place we are informed that it was the Lord (in Hebrew, Jehovah; the most characteristic and incommendable name of God) that spake unto her; and Hagar called his name: "Thou God, seest me." We remark again, that Hagar was certainly in the relation of domestic slavery, and not of a hired servant, to Abraham and Sarai. She is called Shiphheh, which is the regular word for female slave in the Old Testament. Had she not been an actual slave, Sarai would never have presumed, according to Oriental usage, to dispose of her person in the manner related. Here, then, we have God, himself, the Angel Jehovah, who can be no other than the Second Person of the Trinity, Christ, commanding this fugitive to return into the relation of domestic slavery, and submit to it. Can that relation be in itself sinful? To assert this, would make our adorable Saviour particeps criminis. He cannot have required a soul to return into a sinful state. He never requires of his servants more than their duty; so that if Sarai had possessed no real and just title to Hagar's services as a slave—if the claim had been a mere imposition and injustice, she would not have been required to submit to it. Abolitionists attempt to evade this by saying that Hagar was instructed to return and submit to bondage on the same principle on which Christ instructs us, when wrongfully smitten on one cheek to turn the other likewise. This, say they, by no means implies that the smiting was just. We reply, that the parallel cannot be drawn. Had Hagar been in the hand of an unjust mistress, it would have been her duty in Christian forbearance to "take it patiently, though buffeted wrongfully." But she was not now in Sarai's hand. She had successfully escaped it, and was far advanced in her' journey to her native Egypt, where she evidently expected to find friends and shelter. Under these circumstances, it is preposterous to say that the grace of Christian forbearance required of her to return voluntarily whither no claim of right drew her, and subject herself to unjust and unauthorized persecution again. We ask, Does Christ so press the duty of peaceableness, as to sacrifice to it the whole personal well-being and rightful interests of the innocent victim of unjust aggression? Is his chief object, in these lessons of forbearance, to gratify and pamper the lust of persecution in the aggressor? Is there no right of just self-defence left? Surely he teaches us that we owe a duty to our own life and well-being, as well as to our fellow-men's. When we are wronged, we are to defend this right only in such ways as become a son of peace—a man of forgiveness. But the same Saviour who taught his disciples to render good for evil when injured, also commanded them: "When they persecute you in one city, flee ye into another." When a peaceable escape can be secured from injustice, it is both the privilege and duty of the most forgiving Christian on earth to use it. Now Hagar was in such a condition; had her subjection to Sarai been, as the Abolitionists say slavery is, a condition of unjust persecution, the Saviour's instructions to her would doubtless have been: "Now that you have escaped the injustice of her that wronged you, flee to another city." His remanding her to Sarai shows that the subjection was lawful and right.
It has been objected again, that we cannot argue this, unless we are willing to argue the lawfulness of concubinage; because to send Hagar back to her bondage was to resign her again to this relation. We utterly deny it. The Lord only says to her: "Return to thy mistress and submit thyself under her hands;" not "Return to thy master's bed." There is not one particle of proof that Abram continued his improper connexion with her after these transactions. Nor is there more worth in the remark, that subsequently, the same divine Being met Hagar wandering in the same wilderness, and did not require her to return, but assisted her journey. The answer is, that she was then under no obligation to return; because her master had fully manumitted her, and bestowed her freedom on her.
§ 5. Slavery in the Laws of Moses.
God, in accordance with his covenant with Abraham, set apart Israel, through the ministry of Moses, to be his peculiar and holy people, his witness in the midst of an apostate world, to keep alive the services and precepts of true morality and true religion, till, in the fulness of time, Jesus Christ should come in the flesh, and begin the Christianizing of all nations. To effect these objects, He renewed his revelation of the eternal and unchangeable moral law, from Sinai, in the Decalogue; and he also gave, by the intervention of Moses, various religious and civil laws, which were peculiar to the Jews, and were never intended to be observed after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The great object of all this legislation, was to set apart the Jewish nation as a holy people, peculiarly dedicated to purity of moral life, and the maintenance of true religion, amidst corrupt and idolatrous generations. To effect this, God found it necessary to raise a barrier to familiar social intercourse between the Israelites and their corrupting heathen neighbours; and sundry of the expedients by which this barrier was raised, were prohibitions of usages which would have been, in themselves, neither right nor wrong, but morally indifferent, as the eating of pork. Some of those laws having the same object in view, required acts in their original nature indifferent; such as circumcision and eating the Passover. But it is totally inconsistent with the holiness of God, and with his purpose of setting Israel apart to a holy life, that any of those peculiar laws should require acts in themselves wicked, or forbid things in themselves morally binding. It would be impiety to represent God as capable of commanding what is wrong; and to enjoin sin in order to make people holy, would be a folly and a contradiction. God's revealed will, so far as it is revealed for a rule of life, either permanent or temporary, can contain nothing but what is right, and pure, and just. If it had been a positive moral duty to eat pork, this holy God would never have made the prohibition to eat it a part even of the temporary, ceremonial laws of his servants. Had it been morally wrong to kill, roast, and eat a lamb, God would never have enjoined on them the institution of the Passover. These conclusions are as plain as the alphabet.
Now then, if we find any particular thing either sanctioned or enjoined, in the peculiar ceremonial or civil institutions of Moses, it does not prove that thing to be morally binding on us, in this century, or necessarily politic and proper for us; but it does prove it to be, in its essential moral character, innocent. That thing cannot be sin in itself. So, Jno. David Michaelis, in his Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, Book 1, Art. 1. This is the important and just distinction. The fact that animal sacrifices were required in the ceremonial laws of Moses, does not prove that it is our duty, under the Christian dispensation, to offer sacrifices, or that it is appropriate for us to do so; but it does prove that the act would be in itself innocent (though useless) for us, and for every one, if it had not been forbidden in subsequent revelation. Otherwise, a holy God would never have enjoined or sanctioned it at all.
Therefore, the fact that God expressly authorized domestic slavery, among the peculiar and temporary civil laws of the Jews, while it does not prove that it is our positive duty to hold slaves, does prove that it is innocent to hold them, unless it has been subsequently forbidden by God. Now then, let us see what God authorized by Moses. Exodus xxi. 2 to 6: "If thou buy an Hebrew servant, (Ebed,) six years he shall serve; and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him unto the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever," (that is, probably, until the year of Jubilee, which came once in fifty years. See Leviticus xxv. 41.)
This, cries the anti-slavery man, was only temporary servitude. We reply: but it was involuntary servitude, though temporary. It gave to the master the right to compel the labour of the servant without his consent; and this is a sanction of the principle of our institution. What will be said then to the following? Leviticus xxv. 44 to 46: "Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land; and they shall be your possession," (your property.) "And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever; but over your brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not rule over one another with rigour."