al law.
Were the servants _forced_ through all these processes? Was the
renunciation of idolatry _compulsory_? Were they _dragged_ into covenant
with God? Were they seized and circumcised by _main strength_? Were they
_compelled_ mechanically to chew and swallow the flesh of the Paschal
lamb, while they abhorred the institution, spurned the laws that
enjoined it, detested its author and its executors, and instead of
rejoicing in the deliverance which it commemorated, bewailed it as a
calamity, and cursed the day of its consummation? Were they _driven_
from all parts of the land three times in the year to the annual
festivals? Were they drugged with instruction which they nauseated? Were
they goaded through a round of ceremonies, to them senseless and
disgusting mummeries; and drilled into the tactics of a creed rank with
loathed abominations? We repeat it, to become a _servant_, was to become
a _proselyte_. Did God authorize his people to make proselytes at the
point of the bayonet? by the terror of pains and penalties? by
converting men into _merchandise?_ Were _proselyte and chattel_
synonymes in the Divine vocabulary? Must a man be sunk to a _thing_
before taken into covenant with God? Was this the stipulated condition
of adoption? the sure and sacred passport to the communion of the
saints?

[Footnote A: Maimonides, 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 his 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. 1,
Sec. 8.

The ancient Jewish Doctors assert that the servant from the Strangers
who at the close of his probationary year, refused to adopt the Jewish
religion and was on that account sent back to his own