ployment sufficiently silly, (to speak within bounds,)
for a modern Bible dictionary maker. There never was a shallower conceit
than that of establishing the sense attached to a word centuries ago, by
showing what it means _now_. Pity that hyper-fashionable mantuamakers
and milliners were not a little quicker at taking hints from some of our
Doctors of Divinity. How easily they could save their pious customers
all qualms of conscience about the weekly shiftings of fashion, by
demonstrating that the last importation of Parisian indecency, just now
flaunting here on promenade, was the identical style of dress in which
the pious Sarah kneaded cakes for the angels, the modest Rebecca drew
water for the camels of Abraham's servants. Since such fashions are rife
in Chestnut-street and Broadway _now_, they _must_ have been in Canaan
and Pandanaram four thousand years ago!

II. 1. The inference that the word buy, used to describe the procuring
of servants, means procuring them as _chattels_, seems based upon the
fallacy--that whatever _costs_ money _is_ money; that whatever or
whoever you pay money _for_, is an article of property, and the fact of
your paying for it _proves_ that it is property. The children of Israel
were required to _purchase_ their first-born out from under the
obligations of the priesthood, Numb. xviii. 15, 16; Exod. xxxiv. 20.
This custom is kept up to this day among the Jews, and the word _buy_ is
still used to describe the transaction. Does this prove that their
first-born were, or are, held as property? They were _bought_ as really
as were _servants_. So the Israelites were required to _pay money_ for
their own souls. This is called sometimes a ransom, sometimes an
atonement. Were their _souls_ therefore marketable commodities?

2. Bible saints _bought_ their wives. Boaz _bought_ Ruth. "So Ruth the
Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I _purchased_ to be my wife." Ruth
iv. 10. Hosea bought his wife. "So I _bought_ her to me for fifteen
pieces of silver, and for an homer of barley, and an half homer of
barley." Hosea iii. 2. Jacob _bought_ his wives Rachel and Leah, and not
having money, paid for them in labor--seven years a piece. Gen. xxix.
15-29. Moses probably bought his wife in the same way, and paid for her
by his labor, as the servant of her father. Exod. ii. 21. Shechem, when
negotiating with Jacob and his sons for Dinah, says, "What ye shall say
unto me, I will _give_. Ask me never so much dowry