and 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 people, received a
_full compensation_ for his services, besides the payment of his
expenses. But that _postponement_ of the circumcision of the foreign
servant for a year (_or even at all_ after he had entered the family of
an Israelite) of which the Mishnic doctors speak, seems to have been _a
mere usage_. We find nothing of it in the regulations of the Mosaic
system. Circumcision was manifestly a rite strictly _initiatory_.
Whether it was a rite merely _national_ or _spiritual_, or _both_, comes
not within the scope of this inquiry. ]

II. THE SURRENDER OF FUGITIVE SERV