prayed for his friends; also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he
had before."
    But to return to Abraham, when the fullness of time has come
and by the Divine legation of Moses, this family of Abraham is to
be organized fully as a visible Church and also as a Nation, to whom
has been assigned in the Abrahamic Covenant, the Land of Canaan
as an inheritance; another Covenant of redemption with its sacra-
mental seal as the former. The Passover ordinance is entered into
with a Church composed of masters with their slaves in the land of
Egypt as, see Ex. 12: 43, 44, 45. That such were the constituent
elements of the Church at this time is mainfest from the terms of
the law.-"This is the ordinance of the passover; There shall no
stranger eat thereof, a foreigner and a hired servant shall not eat
thereof, but everp man's servant that is bought for monep, when
thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof." This Holy
ordinance is given to the Church as a Church through its recog-
nized leaders, the elders.
    Thus we find that the relation of master and slave was sanc-
tioned in the Church of God as such, and not merely as a civil
institution, even before the law given by Moses; and this is certainly
very strong testimony to begin with against all theories of the sin-
fulness of slavery. When the Church of God, prepared with great
solemnity by a council of its elders, stood before Mount Sinai to
hear directly the very voice of her Lord and heard utter the great
Covenant of the law, two of the precepts of the law recognized the
propriety of the relation of master and slave within the Church
itself. In the fourth commandment masters are required to see to it
that their slaves shall keep holy the Sabbath as well as themselves
and children. In the tenth commandment, forbidding even unlaw-
ful desires of another's property, slaves are enumerated among the
representative articles of property which men shall not covet, thus,
"Nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass,
nor anything that is thy neighbor's," here recognizing slaves as
legitimately the property of the master, as much so as his money or
any of his possessions; and these ten commandments were written
by the finger of Almighty God upon tables of stone and given as a
foundation for the Mosaic Law. Who dare say to the Almighty,
"Why, or what, doest Thou" If it seems that unnecessary care
has been taken to establish this conclusion we have only to reflect on
the important bearing it must have on the interpretation of the civil
code of Moses and its no less important bearing upon the interpre-
tation of the New Testament teaching concerning slavery.



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