“‘Now,’ said Theodotus, ’it is absurd to say that God proclaimed to all the servants throughout Israel, If any of you are dissatisfied, for any cause, and wish to run away, you may do so; and wherever you wish to live, the people-of that place shall provide a residence for you.  After being there for ever so short a time, if you do not like it, you may flee again; and so keep moving all your lifetime, the people everywhere being obliged to allow 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 Priest then in office; no such release, however, was granted to the Gentile slaves, showing that slavery was not a crime in the estimation of the Most High.  Otherwise, He would have legislated for the departure of slaves from their Hebrew masters, as He did for manslayers fleeing from the avenger of blood.  Excuse the digression.  The thought struck me at the moment.’