ould
prevail. He is no real friend of servant or master who would enforce the
principles of our Laodicean brother. I adhere to the Apostle. If
questioned as to my right to hold Onesimus in bondage, the answer
immediately suggested is that an inspired Apostle sanctions it in my
case. If right in my case, it is right in principle; for if
slave-holding be a violation of rights, I am guilty of that violation,
however humane a master I may be. The Apostle does not reprove me, nor
require me to manumit Onesimus, but tells me that I now receive him
"forever," and he teaches me how to treat him. I could occupy your time
by arguing the abstract question relating to property in the services of
men,--but I rest my case for the present on the letter of Paul the
Apostle, brought to me by the hand of my fugitive servant, returning to
what the laws call his bonds.

"'Let me add a few words, however, on the general subject, to the
argument of Theodotus.

"'Our good brother from Laodicea tells us that slavery and polygamy are
"twin barbarisms." He argues that slavery was winked at, like polygamy;
was "suffered," by the Most High. But I propose to refute this, and I
will throw myself on your candor to judge if I succeed.

"'God, in Eden, appointed the marriage of one man and one woman to be
the law of matrimony. "And wherefore one?" says the prophet. "He had the
residue of the spirit," and could have ordained otherwise. "Wherefore
one?" The answer is, "that he might seek a godly seed." The arrangement
was for the highest elevation of the race.

"'Polygamy is in direct conflict with the ordinance of God. Of course
God never ordained it. On the contrary, the appointment in Eden was
equivalent to a prohibitory act, which Jesus Christ revived, forbidding
polygamy, and the Apostles have enjoined upon us that we observe the law
of marriage as given in paradise.

"'So much for polygamy. God never recognized it. The edict requiring
the marriage of a childless widow to the brother of her husband, takes
it for granted that a man would leave but one widow.

"'But how is it with slavery? God never forbade it; he recognized it;
when He framed the Jewish code it was perfectly easy to exclude slavery;
but hardly are the Ten Commandments out of his lips when He ordains
slave-holding, gives particular directions about it, decrees that
certain persons shall be an inheritance forever. Jesus Christ never
uttered one word against slavery, though he di