runaway; he had no right to send any fugitive back to his master.  The state of the case then seems to have been this.  Onesimus had been an unprofitable servant to Philemon and left him—­he afterwards became converted under the Apostle’s preaching, and seeing that he had been to blame in his conduct, and desiring by future fidelity to atone for past error, he wished to return, and the Apostle gave him the letter we now have as a recommendation to Philemon, informing him of the conversion of Onesimus, and entreating him as “Paul the aged” “to receive him, not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, especially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord.  If thou count me therefore as a partner, receive him as myself.”  This, then, surely cannot be forced into a justification of the practice of returning runaway slaves back to their masters, to be punished with cruel beatings and scourgings as they often are.  Besides the word doulos here translated servant, is the same that is made use of in Matt. xviii, 27.  Now it appears that this servant owed his lord ten thousand talents; he possessed property to a vast amount.  And what is still more surprising, if he was a slave, is, that “forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made.”  Whoever heard of a slaveholder selling a slave and his family to pay himself a debt due to him from a slave?  What would he gain by it when the slave is himself his property, and his wife and children also?  Onesimus could not, then, have been a slave, for slaves do not own their wives or children; no, not even their own bodies, much less property.  But again, the servitude which the apostle was accustomed to, must have been very different from American slavery, for he says, “the heir (or son), as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all.  But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.”  From this it appears, that the means of instruction were provided for servants as well as children; and indeed we know it must have been so among the Jews, because their servants were not permitted to remain in perpetual bondage, and therefore it was absolutely necessary they should be prepared to occupy higher stations in society than those of servants.  Is it so at the South, my friends?  Is the daily bread of instruction provided for your slaves? are their minds enlightened, and they gradually prepared to rise from the grade of menials into that of free, independent members of the state?  Let your own statute book, and your own daily experience, answer these questions.