6, which says with seeming harshness that a servant who wishes to
stay with his master after the year of emancipation has arrived, shall
be nailed by the ear to a door, he explains that no man should consent
of his own will to be a slave, for we should only be servants of God;
and if a man deliberately rejects freedom for comfort, he should wear
a mark of degradation. The so-called Christian principle of the
dignity of human life and the equality of man, Philo shows to be the
spirit of the Mosaic law, not limited within the confines of one
nation, but valid for the world. Nor is it contained therein as a mere
sentimental aspiration, but it is realized in the institutions of the
Jewish polity.
Philo looked for the same broad principles in his treatment of the
ceremonial law. The Sabbath day is the central observance, one might
say, the lodestar of the Jewish life, round which the other ceremonies
revolve. The Sabbath is the call to man's higher nature, for it is the
day on which we are bidden to devote ourselves to the Divine power
within us and to seek to know God. "The six days in which the Creator
made the universe are an example to us to work, but the seventh day,
on which He rested, is an example to us to meditate. As on that day
God is said to have looked upon His work, so we, too, should
contemplate the universe thereon, and consider our highest welfare.
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