Servants, In What Sense A Possession.

Servants of this sort were expected to remain for life, or at least unto the year of general release, and their children were considered in the same condition with themselves. That they were a subordinate, dependent class of the community, is obvious. But that they were held by masters as an inheritance or possession for their children, does not prove them to have been a property possession. They were a possession not as things but servants.The terms inheritance, and possession, when applied in the scriptures to persons, are not to be taken in their primary sense as applied to things but in a secondary or topical sense, which is to be determined by the connection. — Take this sentence in Ezek. 44: 28, as an example of both words, in both senses. The Lord says in reference to the sin-offering which should be used for the benefit of the priests, “It shall be unto them for an inheritance; I am their inheritance and ye shall give them no possession in Israel; I am their possession. The terms inheritance and possession here when applied to the sacrifice, denote that it was literally the property of the priests; but the same words when applied to the Almighty certainly have a very different meaning. The Hebrew people generally, are spoken of as the inheritance of the Lord; but they were so not as things, but as rational creatures, capable of knowing and doing his will: and by covenant obligations bound to serve him. So the foreign servants who are spoken of as an inheritance and a possession forever, were so in a limited and secondary sense, which must be determined, not by the expressions themselves when used in reference to other objects, but by the established laws and usages of the country, in respect to persons in their condition. These laws and usages, we have seen treated them not as things, but men having unalienable rights, and immortal souls, as well as their masters.

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Continued from: Reverend Silas McKeen to Thomas C. Stuart, August 20, 1839

SOURCE: Cyrus P. Grosvenor, Slavery vs. The Bible: A Correspondence Between the General Conference of Maine, and the Presbytery of Tombecbee, Mississippi, p. 55-6