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(2.) This interpretation is in harmony with the context. Scarcely could the design of the apostle be better expressed than by the following comment: "He is endeavoring to fortify Christians against discouragement from the sufferings to which they were exposed for the sake of the gospel. Christians should seek to avoid suffering by maintaining a good conscience; but if they should still, and perhaps on this very account, be called to suffer, it was greatly better to do so for well-doing than for ill-doing. Then, in confirmation of this complex truth, he points to a twofold illustration. In the first instance, he fixes attention on Christ as having suffered, indeed, the just for the unjust; suffered as the Righteous One, but only once suffered, and on that “åπağ πadev" the especial stress is to be laid. It was, so to speak, but a momentary infliction of evil, however awful in its nature while it lasted; still but once borne, and never to be repeated. Not only so, but it carried along with it infinite recompenses of good for sinful men, bringing them to God, and for Christ himself, limiting the reign of death to a shortlived dominion over the body, while the soul, lightened and relieved, inspired with the energy of immortal life, went into the invisible regions, and, with buoyant freedom, moved among the spirits of the departed. How widely different from that mighty class of sufferers; the most striking examples in the world's history of the reverse of what appeared in Christ, the last race of the antediluvians, who suffered not for well-doing, but for ill-doing; and suffered not once merely in the flood that swept them away from their earthly habitations, but even now, after so long a time, when the work on the cross was finished, still pent up as in a prisonhouse of doom, where they could be haunted by memories of past crimes, and with forebodings of eternal retribution. What a contrast! How should the thought of it persuade us to suffering for well-doing rather than for evil doing! And for those lost ones themselves Christ's spirit, now released from sufferings, fresh with the dew of its dawning immortality preached, preached by its very entrance into the paradise of glory" (Fair. Her. Man.).

(3.) As a final argument in favor of this interpretation

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; 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 fol lowing 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 (2) 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."

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

900

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

עברי)

Ebed

If any one buys a "Hebrew servant" (8, 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.

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?

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

901 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, Sulvador, Institutions de Moise, 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. See § 12), and that the servant, in order to be with them, must remain forever in servitude.