we may say, while it gives to all the words and clauses of the passage their natural meaning and construction, it also perfectly accords with the analogy of faith. It is in harmony with the general tenor and scope of the teachings of the New Testament in respect to Christ and departed spirits. It is free from all taint of the pagan notions of a common underground depository of spirits. It gives no countenance to the Romish dogma of purgatory. Nor does it lend the slightest sanction to the opinion that probation will be extended for a longer or shorter time after death; that an opportunity for securing salvation will be granted to sinners beyond the grave. This opinion seems to be gaining new adherents at the present time. Of the "Essays and Reviews" by eminent English churchmen, that by Wilson upon the "National Church" concludes as follows: "The Roman Church has imagined a limbus infantium,' we must rather entertain a hope that there shall be found after the great adjudication receptacles suitable for those who shall be infants, not as to years of terrestrial life, but as to spiritual development; nurseries, as it were, and seed-grounds, where the undeveloped may grow up under new conditions, the stunted may become strong, and the perverted be restored. And when the Christian church, in all its branches, shall have fulfilled its sublunary office, and its founder shall have surrendered his kingdom to the Great Father, all, both small and great, shall find a refuge in the bosom of the universal parent, to repose, or be quickened into higher life, in the ages to come, according to his will." The fatal tendency of such a belief we can readily understand. Men in love with sin will continue in sin up to the very instant of death; will make no provision for eternity until they are plunged into it. Now, adopting the exposition we have given to this text, it can by no means be made to countenance the idea of a probation after death. And if such an opinion is not countenanced by this text, then it finds no support in the Bible. The great and obvious doctrine of the Bible is that now, in the present life, is the accepted time; that now is the day of salvation, and that this life is the only day of salvation.

ARTICLE II.

SAALSCHÜTZ ON HEBREW SERVITUDE.

BY PROF. E. P. BARROWS, ANDOVER, MASS.

An exhibition of the subject of Hebrew servitude from the Jewish point of view has long seemed to us eminently desirable. For this purpose we had selected the 101st chapter of Prof. Saalschütz's Treatise on the Mosaic Law, entitled "Dienende." Before we had found leisure to complete the translation of this chapter, our design was in part anticipated by the appearance in the American Theological Review of Prof. H. B. Smith's translation of Dr. M. Mielziner's work on "Slavery among the ancient Hebrews, from biblical and Rabbinic sources." By this translation Prof. Smith has rendered to the Christian public an important service. We proceed, nevertheless, to carry out our original plan, and that for two reasons. First, because Saalschütz differs in some important points from the common Rabbinic view, to which Mielziner in general adheres; so that by a comparison of the two the reader will have the matter more fully before him in its various aspects. Secondly, because we propose in a series of consecutive articles to discuss the whole subject of slavery, in its relations to the Bible, the State, and the Church; and to such a series the subject of Hebrew servitude constitutes the most suitable introduction.

In Saalschütz's Treatise on the Mosaic Law2 the numerous foot-notes are numbered consecutively from the beginning to the end of the work. In the translation of the present chapter it was important to retain this numbering for various reasons, especially for convenience of reference

In the April and July numbers for 1861.

2 Das Mosaische Recht, nebst den vervöllstandigenden thalmudisch-rabbinischen Bestimmungen. Für Bibelforscher, Juristen und Staatsmänner. Von Dr. G. L. Saalschütz. Berlin. 1853.

to the notes appended to other chapters. The few brief notes of the translator are always indicated by brackets. To the translation are appended some general remarks, to which the reader's attention is respectfully called.

TRANSLATION.

1. The Mosaic law knows nothing of slavery in the sense of considering freeman and slave as beings holding an opposite relation to each other in respect to their dignity as men, and on a scale of civil and social rights. The Hebrew language has no word for stigmatizing by a degrading appellation one part of those who owe service, and distinguishing them from the rest as "slaves," but only one term for all who are under obligation to render service to others. For males this is Ebed, servant, man-servant; properly laborer; 88 for females, Shifchah, Ama, maid-servant, maid. Among a people who occupied themselves with agriculture; whose lawgiver, Moses, and whose kings, Saul and David, went immediately from the herd and from the plough to their high vocation, there could be nothing degrading in an appellation taken from "labor." "Servant of God" is also applied to Moses and the pious as a title of honor. The laws, moreover, respecting servants protect in every regard their dignity as men, and their feelings, as will be manifest from what follows. They by no means surrender these to the arbitrary will of the masters, as in other ancient and modern states in which slavery and thraldom have prevailed.

§ 2. The body of servants consisted in general of the following classes: 1, debtors who were obliged to render service to the creditor; 2, Hebrew men-servants and maid-servants bought with money; 3, heathen men-servants and maid-servants; 4, children of both sexes brought up in the master's house, that had been either taken in war, or were

The verb abad (3) signifies to labor in general, as may be plainly seen from its use in the law of the Sabbath, Ex. xx 9: "Six days mayest thou labor." E, EN; see § 9, note 911.

the offspring of men-servants or maid-servants; 5, such as were hired for wages."

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§ 3. (I. a) The laws relating to Hebrew servants are as follows:

If any one buys a "Hebrew servant" (, Ebed Ibri) he shall serve six years, but in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in single he goes out single. If he is the husband of a wife she goes out with him. Ex. xxi. 2, 3.

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If his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children remain to the master, and the servant goes out by himself. If the servant says: I love my master, my wife, and my children: I will not go out free; then his master shall bring him before the judges, and fetch him to a door or a door-post, and bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him forever, vs. 4-6.

In Deut. xv. 16, 17, where this symbolic indication of permanent servitude is once more prescribed, it is stated still more definitely that the ear is to be fastened by the awl to the door. The manifest dishonor which lies in this symbolic act agrees perfectly with the whole spirit of the law; for this seeks to protect personal freedom in every way, and always to re-establish it; and cannot therefore approve of one's giving himself over to perpetual servitude. It is true that in the case before us he had, in his love for his family, an apparently good reason for the act. But who bade him. at the outset to enter into these relations, and take for his wife a maid in the ownership of her master?

90 At a later day the Nethinim constituted a peculiar class. § 16.

9) From the specifications that follow it appears that she is a heathen maidservant, who has not the right of going out at the end of six years. - Bertheau, Sieben Gruppen Mos. Gesetze. S. 22., as also before him, Salvador, Institutions de Moïse, L. VII ch. V, assume that she is a Hebrew maid, whose six years of service do not end at the same time with those of her husband. But this seems to be altogether excluded from the law, which could not, in the case supposed, have said in general terms that the maid and her children belong to the master (according to the law for heathen maids, Lev. xxv. 44 − 46. See12), and that the servant, in order to be with them, must remain forever in servitude.

There has been, moreover, a difference of opinion respecting the meaning of the words: "he shall serve him forever," Ex. xxi. 5; or, as it reads, Deut. xv. 17, "he shall remain thy servant forever." The question is, whether they actually signify an unlimited period of time, or only one that lasts till the year of jubilee. The latter opinion has, as a general rule, prevailed. But we do not believe it to be the original meaning. For, in the first place, there is no ground why we should here take "forever" in this sense. Then, again, this word is plainly used, Lev. xxv. 46, of a servitude not limited by the year of jubilee. (See below, § 12.) Still further, in Lev. xxv. 40-42, no degradation is attached to a service that ends with the year of jubilee. That only which lasts beyond this limit is characterized as an actual bond-service. Finally, it does not appear how the year of jubilee, without a single intimation of the lawgiver on the subject, should give the servant the right previously renounced by him of taking with himself his wife. and her children, when she is a maid-servant in the ownership of her master. But without this the departure must then also be distasteful to him. Without controversy, then, the words: "he shall serve forever," mean, he and his remain the property of his master (perhaps his hereditary property. Compare Lev. xxv. 46). Possibly this will help us, further on, in the solution of greater difficulties connected with the passages pertaining to the law in question.

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In Deut. xv. 12-18, the same law is repeated with some additional particulars:

(I. b.) The "Hebrew brother" who goes out free on the seventh year shall not be sent away empty; but is to be furnished from the flock, the threshing-floor, and the winepress. Deut. xv. 13, 14.

According to the law of the Mishnah, the Hebrew servant who has been appropriated by the ceremony of boring his ear becomes free at the year of jubilee, or upon the death of his master, without being obligated to render further service to his son, as he certainly is obligated when the master dies within the six years of service. But this duty, again, holds good only in respect to the son, not to the daughter or other heirs. - Qiddushin. 1, 2.