ow you a place of abode. Did the Most High mean to
encourage such vagabondism?

"'No; He merely provided that a fugitive from a heathen master should
not be sent away from the worship of Jehovah into heathenism.'

"'That is undoubtedly the true meaning,' said the pastor, 'if Theodotus
will allow me to put in a word. "Thee," in that passage, means Israel as
a nation, not each man.'

"'I thank you, Sir,' said Theodotus; 'and now I maintain that the
injunction not to give up a fugitive to his heathen master, but to keep
him in Israel, is a powerful argument in favor of retaining slaves where
they will be most benefited in their spiritual concerns. God thus makes
the soul of man and its eternal welfare paramount to all external
relations, including slavery.'

"'May I inquire, then,' said the Laodicean: 'Suppose that Philemon had
been a cruel heathen master, and Onesimus had fled for his life, would
Paul have sent him back?'

"'If the case were clear and beyond doubt, I am not sure that he would,'
said Theodotus. 'While he would not counsel Onesimus to run away, yet I
can only say, that, fleeing from certain cruelty and death, I doubt if
he would have been remanded. But Paul told servants to be "subject to
their masters," "not only to the good and gentle, but also to the
froward." He speaks to them of "suffering wrongfully;" of "doing well,
and suffering for it;" and he refers the suffering slave to Christ,
"who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered,
threatened not." Moreover, he says: "For even hereunto were ye called;
because Christ also _suffered for us_, leaving us an example that ye
should _follow his steps_." That is certainly death.'

"'If Paul did not send Onesimus back to Philemon, however, it would not
be because it was wrong, in his view, for Philemon to hold him in
bondage; please observe this distinction; but, judging the case by
itself, he would decide whether the slave ought not, under the
circumstances, to have the right of asylum,--Paul himself having once
been "let down by a basket," to escape from the Damascenes. Paul and any
other man would, in certain cases, protect even a fugitive son or
daughter from a father; and this consistently with his recognition of
the parental and filial relation.

"'Let me remind my brother, and you, my pastor, and my brethren, of one
fact which occurs to me at the moment. Manslayers, in cities of refuge,
were to go free at the death of the High Pri