is my own bowels. Without
thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were
of necessity, but willingly. For perhaps he therefore departed for a
season, that thou shouldest receive him forever; not now as a servant,
but above a servant, a brother beloved. Having confidence in thy
obedience I wrote unto thee, knowing that thou wilt do also more than I
say."

Does any one fancy Philemon treating Onesimus, after this epistle, as
fugitive slaves are treated in America, putting up his wife and children
directly after for sale, or delivering him, over to the first slave
merchant that was willing to take charge of him, and carry him a hundred
leagues away? It is so certain that Philemon did more than had been told
him, that the Epistle to the Colossians shows us the "faithful and
well-beloved brother Onesimus" honorably mentioned among those concerned
about the spiritual interests of the church.

Do what one will, there is an implied abolition of slavery (implied but
positive) at the bottom of that close fraternity created by the faith in
the Saviour. Between _brethren_, the relation of master and slave, of
merchant and merchandise, cannot long subsist. To sell on an
auction-block or deliver over to a slave-driver an immortal soul, for
which Christ has died, is an enormity before which the Christian sense
of right will always recoil in the end. "In this," it is written, "there
is neither Greek nor Jew, nor circumcision nor uncircumcision, nor
barbarian nor Seythian, nor bond nor free, but Christ is all and in
all." Let slaveholders put to themselves the question what they would
say to-day if the epistle to Philemon were addressed to them; and it is
addressed to them; the Onesimuses of the South--and such there are--are
thus thrown upon the conscience of their masters, their brothers.

I have said enough on the subject to dispense with examining very
numerous passages in which slavery is _supposed_ by the writers of the
New Testament. The duties of masters and of slaves are laid down by them
without doubt, and the existence of the institution is not contested for
a moment; only, it is brought face to face with that which will slay it:
the doctrine of salvation through Christ, of pardon, of humility, of
love, is, in itself, and without the necessity of expressing it, the
absolute negation of slavery.

It has fully proved so, and the early ages of Christianity leave no
doubt as to the interpretation given