[Footnote A: Maimonides, who wrote in Egypt about seven hundred years ago, a contemporary with Jarchi, and who stands with him at the head of Jewish writers, gives the following testimony on this point: "Whether a servant be born in the power of an Israelite, or whether he be purchased from the heathen, the master is to bring them both into the covenant." "But he that is in the _house_ is entered on the eighth day, and he that is bought with money, on the day on which the master receives him, unless the slave be _unwilling_. For if the master receive a grown slave, and he be _unwilling_, his master is to bear with him, to seek to win him over by instruction, and by love and kindness, for one year. After which, should he _refuse_ so long, it is forbidden to keep him, longer than a year. And the master must send him back to the strangers from whence he came. For the God of Jacob will not accept any other than the worship of a _willing_ heart."--Maimon, Hilcoth, Miloth, Chap. 1st, Sec. 8th.
The ancient Jewish Doctors agree in the testimony, that the servant from the strangers who at the close of his probationary year still refused to adopt the religion of the Mosaic system, and was on that account cut off from the family, and sent back to his own people, received a _full compensation_ for his services, besides the payment of his expenses. But that _postponement_ of the circumcision of the foreign servant for a year (_or even at all_ after he had entered the family of an Israelite) of which the Mishnic doctors speak, seems to have been _a mere usage_. We find nothing of it in the regulations of the Mosaic system. Circumcision was manifestly a rite strictly _initiatory_. Whether it was a rite merely _national_ or _spiritual_, or _both_, comes not within the scope of this inquiry. Nor does it at all affect the argument. ]
Were the servants _forced_ through all these processes? Was the renunciation of idolatry _compulsory_? Were they _dragged_ into covenant with God? Were they seized and circumcised by _main strength_? Were they _compelled_ mechanically to chew, and swallow, the flesh of the Paschal lamb, while they abhorred the institution, despised its ceremonies, spurned the law which enjoined it, detested its author and executors, and instead of rejoicing in the deliverance which it commemmorated, bewailed it as a calamity, and cursed the day of its consummation? Were they _driven_ from all parts of the land three times in the year up to the annual festivals? Were they drugged with instruction which they nauseated? Were they goaded through a round of ceremonies, to them senseless and disgusting mummeries; and drilled into the tactics of a creed rank with loathed abominations?