fugitive
to his master, it would operate practically as a bounty offered to all
servants who would leave their master's service encouraging them to make
contracts, get their pay in advance and then run away, thus cheating
their masters out of their money as well as their own services.--We
answer, the prohibition, Deut xxiii. 15. 16, "Thou shalt not deliver
unto his master," &c., sets the servant free from his _authority_ and of
course, from all those liabilities of injury, to which _as his servant_,
he was subjected, but not from the obligation of legal contracts. If the
servant had received pay in advance, and had not rendered an equivalent
for this "value received," he was not absolved from his obligation to do
so, but he was absolved from all obligations to pay his master in _that
particular way_, that is, _by working for him as his servant_.]

[Footnote B: Among the Israelites, girls became of age at twelve, and
boys at thirteen years.]

VIII. THE RIGHT OF SERVANTS TO COMPENSATION IS RECOGNISED IN Ex. xxi.
27. "And if he smite out his man-servant's, or his maid-servant's tooth,
he shall let him go free for his tooth's sake." This regulation is
manifestly based upon the _right_ of the servant to the _use_ of himself
and all this powers, faculties and personal conveniences, and
consequently his just claim for remuneration, upon him, who should
however _unintentionally_, deprive him of the use even of the least of
them. If the servant had a right to his _tooth_ and the use _of_ it,
upon the same principle, he had a right to the rest of his body and the
use of it. If he had a right to the _fraction_, and if it was his to
hold, to use, and to have pay for; he had a right to the _sum total_,
and it was his to hold, to use, and to have pay for.

IX. WE FIND MASTERS AT ONE TIME HAVING A LARGE NUMBER OF SERVANTS, AND
AFTERWARDS NONE, WITH NO INTIMATION IN ANY CASE THAT THEY WERE SOLD. The
wages of servants would enable them to set up in business for
themselves. Jacob, after being Laban's servant for twenty-one years,
became thus an independent herdsman, and had many servants. Gen. xxx.
43; xxxii. 16. But all these servants had left him before he went down
into Egypt, having doubtless acquired enough to commence business for
themselves. Gen. xlv. 10, 11; xlvi. 1-7, 32. The case of Ziba, the
servant of Mephibosheth, who had twenty servants, has been already
mentioned.

X. GOD'S TESTIMONY TO THE CHARACTER OF ABRAHAM. Gen