it to shine
as the sun in the kingdom of our Father.[B] By this law, the children
had secured to them a mother's tender care. If the husband loved his
wife and children, he could compel his master to keep him, whether he
had any occasion for his services or not. If he did not love them, to be
rid of him was a blessing; and in that case, the regulation would prove
an act for the relief of an afflicted family. It is not by any means to
be inferred, that the release of the servant in the seventh year, either
absolved him from the obligations of marriage, or shut him out from the
society of his family. He could doubtless procure a service at no great
distance from them, and might often do it, to get higher wages, or a
kind of employment better suited to his taste and skill. The great
number of days on which the law released servants from regular labor,
would enable him to spend much more time with his family, than can be
spent by most of the agents of our benevolent societies with _their_
families, or by many merchants, editors, artists, &c., whose daily
business is in New York, while their families reside from ten to one
hundred miles in the country.

[Footnote B: Whoever profoundly studies the Mosaic Institutes with a
teachable and reverential spirit, will feel the truth and power of that
solemn appeal and interrogatory of God to his people Israel, when he had
made an end of setting before them all his statutes and ordinances.
"What nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments SO
RIGHTEOUS, as _all_ this law which I set before you this day." Deut. iv.
8.]

We conclude this inquiry by touching upon an objection, which, though
not formally stated, has been already set aside by the tenor of the
foregoing argument. It is this,--"The slavery of the Canaanites by the
Israelites, was appointed by God as a commutation of the punishment of
death denounced against them for their sins."[A] If the absurdity of a
sentence consigning persons to death, and at the same time to perpetual
slavery, did not sufficiently laugh at itself; it would be small
self-denial, in a case so tempting, to make up the deficiency by a
general contribution. Only _one_ statute was ever given respecting the
disposition to be made of the inhabitants of Canaan. If the sentence of
death was pronounced against them, and afterwards _commuted_, when?
where? by whom? and in what terms was the commutation, and where is it
recorded? Grant, for argu