Page:Does the Bible sanction American slavery?.djvu/36

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of the Chosen people.” This is another case of the same kind. In ancient times, before Humanity was one, each nation was the “Chosen people” of a God of its own: but the Hebrew nation was the Chosen people of the true God. And as the Chosen people of the true God, the Jews were taught, compared with other nations, not national pride but national humility. They were taught, not that they had sprung of a divine seed and won their land by their own might and valour, but that “a Syrian ready to perish was their father;” that they had been bondsmen in the land of Egypt; and that they had been brought out of their bondage, not by their own arm, but by the arm of their God, to Whom they owed their land and all they had. “And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord, and His statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good? Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord’s thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is. Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and He chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked. For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward: He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him