It was an old custom, that, among the heathen Romans, which their
forefathers, who were wiser and better than they, had handed down to
them. They had forgotten, perhaps, what it meant: but still we may
see what it must have meant: That the old forefathers of the Romans
had intended to remind their children every year by that custom, that
their poor hard-worked slaves were, after all, men and women as much
as their masters; that they had hearts and consciences, and sense in
them, and a right to speak what they thought, as much as their
masters; that they, as much as their masters, could enjoy the good
things of God's earth, from which man's tyranny had shut them out;
and to remind those cruel masters, by making them once every year
wait on their own slaves at table, that they were, after all, equal
in the sight of God, and that it was more noble for those who were
rich, and called themselves gentlemen, to help others, than to make
others slave for them.
I do not mean, of course, that those old heathens understood all this
clearly. You will see, by the latter part of my sermon, why they
could not understand it clearly. But there must have been some sort
of dim, confused suspicion in their minds that it was wrong and cruel
to treat human beings like brute beasts, which made them set up that
strange old custom of letting their slaves play at being free once
every Christmas-tide.
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