Page:The duties of masters and slaves respectively (1845).djvu/13

9 the victors were put to death. Afterwards, the conqueror sometimes spared the lives of those falling into his power, but only to reserve them for his own service, or to secure the price they might bring when sold to others. Hence the origin of slavery. Captives taken in war were, doubtless, the first slaves: and the lot of servitude was entailed by inheritance on all their descendants. Hence we find traces of the existence of slavery, even from the earliest times. Nimrod, the mighty hunter, is often asserted to have been the first slaveholder. Gen. 10:9.

Certain it is that long before the time of Moses, slavery existed. Abraham had slaves, and many of them. There were of this class, born in his house, no less than 300 capable of bearing arms. Gen. 14:14. Hagar, the maid of Sarah, whom her mistress surrendered to Abraham in hope of an heir, was an Egyptian slave, Gen. 16:3; and Ishmael, her son, was by birth a slave also, in contradistinction from Isaac, who was born free, being the son of a free mother. This admitted fact, "Hagar gendereth to bondage—she is in bondage with her children," is the basis of the Apostle's comparison, between the law and the gospel, Gal. 14:24-26.

The patriarch Joseph was sold by his treacherous brethren, a slave to the Ishmaelite merchants, and by them he was conveyed into Egypt, and there resold to Potiphar. A few years later, under the administration of Joseph, as prime-minister to Pharaoh, the whole Egyptian nation having alienated their lands to the crown, to procure the means of sustenance, next sold their personal freedom, and became a race of hereditary serfs, appertaining to the soil, and passing with it from owner to owner. Later still, the whole race of Israel, from the condition of protected guests, were degraded to that of slaves to Egypt's monarchs; they were compelled to work, not for their own advantage, but at the bidding, and for the profit of their taskmasters. Samson, when captured by the Philistines, was reduced to the rank of a slave: compelled to labour hard, or to make rude sport, at the pleasure of his masters. The little Hebrew maid, who, in the time of the prophet Elisha (2 Kings, 5:2) waited upon her mistress, the wife of Naaman, the Syrian leper, was a slave, a captive taken in war.

Unquestionably were most of the ancient heathen nations around the Jews holders of slaves. Such were the Midianites, the Egyptians, and the Canaanitish tribes. We read that Pharaoh bestowed sundry gifts upon Abraham, among which were slaves. "He entreated Abraham as well, for Sarah's sake; and he had sheep, and oxen, and he-asses, and men-servants and maid-servants. Gen. 12:16. Abimelech also "took sheep, and oxen, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and gave''