s_
left at home? What hindered them from marching off in a body? Perhaps
the Israelitish matrons stood sentry in rotation round the kitchens,
while the young ladies scoured the country, as mounted rangers, picking
up stragglers by day, and patrolled the streets, keeping a sharp
look-out at night.

IV. Their continuance in Jewish families depended upon the performance
of various rites necessarily VOLUNTARY.

Suppose the servants from the heathen had upon entering Jewish families,
refused circumcision; if _slaves_, how simple the process of
emancipation! Their _refusal_ did the job. Or, suppose they had refused
to attend the annual feasts, or had eaten unleavened bread during the
Passover, or compounded the ingredients of the anointing oil, they would
have been "cut off from the people;" _excommunicated_.

V. We infer the voluntariness of the servants of the Patriarchs from the
impossibility of their having been held against their wills. Abraham's
servants are an illustration. At one time he had three hundred and
eighteen _young men_ "born in his house," and many more _not_ born in
his house. His servants of all ages, were probably MANY THOUSANDS. How
Abraham and Sarah contrived to hold fast so many thousand servants
against their wills, we are left quite in the dark. The most natural
supposition is that the Patriarch and his wife _took turns_ in
surrounding them! The neighboring tribes, instead of constituting a
picket guard to hem in his servants, would have been far more likely to
sweep them and him into captivity, as they did Lot and his household.
Besides, there was neither "Constitution" nor "compact," to send back
Abraham's fugitives, nor a truckling police to pounce upon them, nor
gentleman-kidnappers, suing for his patronage, volunteering to howl on
their track, boasting their blood-hound scent, and pledging their
"honor" to hunt down and "deliver up," _provided_ they had a description
of the "flesh-marks," and were suitably stimulated by _pieces of
silver_. Abraham seems also to have been sadly deficient in all the
auxiliaries of family government, such as stocks, hand-cuffs,
foot-chains, yokes, gags, and thumb-screws. His destitution of these
patriarchal indispensables is the more afflicting, since he faithfully
trained "his household to do justice and judgment," though so deplorably
destitute of the needful aids.

VI. We infer that servants were voluntary, as there is no instance of an
Israelitish master