to remember this signal exertion of divine mercy and power in the cause of popular freedom: "Remember that thou wast a servant" (viz. a slave) "in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm," &c. Deut. v. 15.
It was surely for the moral purpose of stirring up in the Israelites a sympathetic concern for the sufferings of the oppressed, and more particularly of oppressed strangers, that they were so frequently reminded of their own former deplorable condition in slavery, and of their miraculous deliverance from thence; being expressly referred to their own feelings and remembrance of the cruel foreign tyranny, which they themselves had so lately experienced in Egypt:—" thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart" (נפט, properly the soul) "of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Exod. xxiii. 9.
God also gave the Israelites due warning of the danger of oppression, by declaring that he would surely revenge the cause of the injured stranger: "Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Ye shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry" (mark this ye African traders of this island, and ye West India and British American slave holders! for ye are all guilty of the like abominable oppressions, and God will surely avenge the cause of the oppressed) "and my wrath shall wax hot and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless." Exod. xxii. 21 to 24.
And have not the careless inhabitants of Great Britain and her colonies too much reason also to apprehend that the same God (who professes to hear the cry of oppressed strangers, if they cry at all unto him) will, sooner or later, visit these kingdoms with some signal mark of his displeasure, for the notorious oppression of an almost innumerable multitude of poor African strangers, that are harrassed,
