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.
_______________
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
