s that "the Apostle does not say one word for or
against slavery as such." Again I regret to differ. Paul never said a
word _against_ slavery, but he said many words that sanctioned it by
implication. He tells slaves (_servants_ in the Authorised Version) to
count their owners worthy of all honor (1 Tim. vi. 1); to be obedient
unto them, with fear and trembling, as unto Christ (Ephesians vi. 5);
and to please them in all things (Titus ii. 9). I need not discuss
whether servants means _slaves_ and masters _owners_, for Mr. Henson
admits that such is their meaning. Here then Paul is, if Jesus was not,
brought face to face with slavery, and he does not even suggest that the
institution is wrong. He tells slaves to obey their owners as they obey
Christ; and, on the other hand, he bids owners to "forbear threatening"
their slaves. But so much might have been said by Cicero and Pliny; the
former of whom, as Lecky says, wrote many letters to his slave Tiro "in
terms of sincere and delicate friendship"; while the latter "poured out
his deep sorrow for the death of some of his slaves, and endeavored to
console himself with the thought that as he had emancipated them before
their death, they had at least died free men."

Paul does indeed say that both bond and free are "all one in Christ."
But Louis the Fourteenth would have admitted _that_ kinship between
himself and the meanest serf in France, "One in Christ" is a spiritual
idea, and has relation to a future life, in which earthly distinctions
would naturally cease.

Mr. Henson is obliged to face the story of Onesimus, the runaway slave,
whom Paul deliberately sent back to his master, Philemon. "The Apostle's
position," he says, "is practically this"; whereupon he puts into Paul's
mouth words of his own invention. I do not deny his right to use
this literary artifice, but I decline to let it impose on my own
understanding. There is a certain pathetic tenderness in Paul's letter
to Philemon if we suppose that he took the institution of Slavery for
granted, but it vanishes if we suppose that he felt the institution to
be wrong. Professor Newman justly remarks that "Onesimus, in the very
act of taking to flight, showed that he had been submitting to servitude
against his will, and that the house of his owner had previously been
a prison to him." Nor do I see any escape from the same writer's
conclusion that, although Paul besought Philemon to treat Onesimus as
a brother, "this ve