My servants, whom I
brought forth out of Egypt, they shall not be sold as
bondservants"--Lev. xxv. 42), and submitting to have his ear pierced, at
the doorpost of his master's house, as if, like that, his body were
become his master's property. It is uncertain, after this decisive step,
whether even the year of jubilee brought him release; and the contrary
seems to be implied in his always bearing about in his body an indelible
and degrading mark. It will be remembered that St. Paul rejoiced to
think that his choice of Christ was practically beyond recall, for the
scars on his body marked the tenacity of his decision (Gal. vi. 17). He
wrote this to Gentiles, and used the Gentile phrase for the branding of
a slave. But beyond question this Hebrew of Hebrews remembered, as he
wrote, that one of his race could incur lifelong subjection only by a
voluntary wound, endured because he loved his master, such as he had
received for love of Jesus.

When the law came to deal with assaults it was impossible to place the
slave upon quite the same level as the freeman. But Moses excelled the
legislators of Greece and Rome, by making an assault or chastisement
which killed him upon the spot as worthy of death as if a freeman had
been slain. It was only the victim who lingered that died comparatively
unavenged (20, 21). After all, chastisement was a natural right of the
master, because he owned him ("he is his money"); and it would be hard
to treat an excess of what was permissible, inflicted perhaps under
provocation which made some punishment necessary, on the same lines with
an assault that was entirely lawless. But there was this grave restraint
upon bad temper,--that the loss of any member, and even of the tooth of
a slave, involved his instant manumission. And this carried with it the
principle of moral responsibility for every hurt (26, 27).

It was not quite plain that these enactments extended to the Gentile
slave. But in accordance with the assertion that the whole spirit of the
statutes was elevating, the conclusion arrived at by the later
authorities was the generous one.

When it is added that man-stealing (upon which all our modern systems of
slavery were founded) was a capital offence, without power of
commutation for a fine (xxi. 16), it becomes clear that the advocates of
slavery appeal to Moses against the outraged conscience of humanity
without any shadow of warrant either from the letter or the spirit of
the code