16 and reward of endurance. How constantly is this contrast introduced—freedom, liberty—that liberty with which Christ has made us free on the one hand ; and the bondage of sin— servants to uncleanness and to iniquity on the other ? “Ye are bought with a price, be not ye the servants of men.” (1 Cor. vii. 23.) Such language, even on spiritual subjects, could not be addressed to men, and men of intelligence, as many of those slaves were, without exciting hopes and wishes for their bodily emancipation. But this the apostles could not procure for them, except by appeal to the consciences of their masters. There was no supreme government which acknowledged the obligations of Christianity. It was therefore necessary to teach slaves the same lessons of submission for the time, which the apostles themselves were bound to observe. How often were they seized upon without process of law, dragged outside the walls, and scourged or stoned.? Though they submitted patiently to such treatment, and gloried in it, we certainly cannot quote their encouragements to each other under the injustice as removing its illegality or sinfulness. The passages, therefore, which are quoted from St. Paul and the other apostles, as justifying slavery by advising submission to masters, have no force except as addressed to slaves under a heathen master, or where Christianity is an intrusive and foreign element in an unfriendly and heathen state. In the case of Onesimus, whom it is said St. Paul sent back to his “master” as a “slave,” how marked the difference between his return and that of Anthony Burns, or atty other fugitive slave from the Christian South. Read the letter of St. Paul throughout, and then say if it be possible that the two persons there mentioned could have stood afterwards, even allowing they did before, in the relation of master and slave. With what sweet and tender solicitude does the Apostle speak of this “ runaway slave what fatherly affection breaks out in every sentence ; with what earnestness, nay, almost authority, does he ask his kindly reception. His language is, “ Receive-him, that is, mine own bowels ; not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and
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