“Let favour be showed to the wicked, yet will he not learn
righteousness; in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and
will not behold the majesty of the Lord.” _Isa._ xxvi. 10.
“His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be
holden by the cords of his sins.” _Prov._ v. 22.
“But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of
the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments, and his
statutes, which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall
come upon thee, and overtake thee:
“Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the
field; cursed shalt thou be in thy basket and thy store; cursed shall be
the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy land; the increase of thy
loins, and the flocks of thy sheep. Cursed shalt thou be when thou
comest in; and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out. The Lord shall
send upon thee cursing, vexation and rebuke in all thou settest thy hand
unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly;
because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me.
And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, the way
whereof I spake unto thee. Thou shalt see it no more again; and there ye
shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen (לְעָבְדָֽים _la ebedim, for
slaves_) and bondwomen (וְלִשְׁפָה֭וֹת _ve lisheppahoth, and for female
slaves_), and no man shall buy you.” (That is, they should be
worthless.) _Deut._ xxviii. 15–68.
Such, then, are the unchangeable laws of God touching man’s disobedience
and non-conformity; and, in this instance of their application, have
been seen fulfilled, with wonder and astonishment, by the whole world.
Consistent with the laws of God and the providence of Jehovah, there was
no other way to make any thing out of the wicked family of Jacob; no
other means to fulfil his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, except
to prepare them in the school of adversity; to reduce them under the
severe hand of a master; to place them in slavery, until, by its
compulsive operation tending to their mental, moral, and physical
improvement, they would become fitted to enjoy the blessing promised
their fathers. “Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.”
_Luke_ xiv.
“And when the sun was going down a deep sleep fell upon Abraham, and a
horror of great darkness fell upon him; and He (the Lord) said unto
Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a strange
land that is not theirs, and shall _serve_ (וַֽעֲבָד֭וּם _va ebadum,
shall be slaves to_) them; and they shall afflict them four hundred
years.” _Gen._ xv. 12, 13.
God foresaw what condition the wicked family of Jacob would force
themselves into; nor is it a matter of surprise that it filled the mind
of Abram with horror.
God never acts contrary to his own laws. The Israelites, in slavery four
hundred years under hard and cruel masters, kept closely bound to severe
labour, and all the attendants of slavery, had no time to run into
deeper sins. The humility of their condition and distinction of race
would be some preventive to amalgamation, and a preservative to their
purity of blood; and would lead them also to contemplate and worship the
God of Abraham. And let it ever be remembered that the worship of God is
the very highway to intellectual, moral, and physical improvement,
however slow, under the circumstances, was their progress.
Let us take the family of Jacob, at the time of the selling of Joseph,
and, from what their conduct had been and then was, form some conjecture
of what would have been the providence of God, touching their race, at
the close of the then coming four hundred years, had not the Divine Mind
seen fit to send them into slavery. Does it require much intellectual
labour to set forth their ultimate condition? Would not the result have
been their total annihilation by the action of the surrounding tribes;
or their equally certain national extinction by their amalgamation with
them? If, by the providence of God, as manifested among men through all
time, one of these conditions must have attached to them, then will it
follow that, to them, slavery was their salvation,—under the
circumstances of the case, the only thing that could preserve them from
death and extinction on earth.
Under such view of the facts, and the salvatory influence of the
institution, slavery will be hailed by the good, pious, and
godly-minded, as an emanation from the Divine Mind, portraying a
fatherly care, and a watchful mercy to a fallen world, on a parallel
with the general benevolence of that Deity who comprehended his own
work, and the welfare of his creatures.
The slavery of the Israelites in Egypt for the term of four hundred
years was a sentence pronounced against them by Jehovah himself, who had
previously promised them great worldly blessings, preceded by the
promise of his own spiritual forbearance, of his own holy mercy, as the
ultimate design of his providence towards them. And we now ask him, who
denies that the design of this term of slavery was to ameliorate and
suitably prepare that wicked race for the reception and enjoyment of the
promises made, to extricate himself from the difficulties in which such
denial will involve the subject. We are aware that there are a class of
men so holy in their own sight, that, from what they say, one might
judge they felt capable of dictating to Jehovah rules for his conduct,
and that they spurn in him all that which their view does not
comprehend. Do such forget, when they stretch forth their hand,
imagining God to be that which suits them, but which he is not, that
they make an idol, and are as much idolaters as they would be had they
substituted wood and stone? Such, God will judge. We have no hope our
feeble voice will be heard where the mind is thus established upon the
presumption of moral purity—we might say divine foresight. But, by a
more humble class, we claim to be heard, that, as mortal men, reasoning
by the light it hath pleased God to give, we may take counsel together
in the review of his providences, as vouchsafed to man, and, by his
blessing be enabled to see enough to justify the ways of the Almighty
against the slanders of his and our enemy.
The theological student will notice the fact of the holy books abounding
with the doctrine that the chastenings of the Lord operate the moral,
mental, and physical improvement of the chastised; and that such
chastenings are ever administered for that purpose, and upon those whose
sins call it down upon them. “My son, despise not the chastenings of the
Lord; neither be weary of correction: for those whom the Lord loveth he
correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.” _Prov._
iii. 11, 12. “Thus saith the Lord, where is the bill of thy mother’s
divorcement, whom I have put away? Or which of my creditors is it to
whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold
yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.” _Isa._
l. 1.
The garden of the sluggard produces weeds and want. We know a man of
whom it may be said, he is inoffensive; but he is thriftless, indolent,
and therefore miserable. He has never learned those virtues that would
make him respectable or happy.
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