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Updated: May 31, 2025
Arabin read the service and the archdeacon preached. Nearly the same congregation was present, with some adventurous pedestrians from the city, who had not thought the heat of the midday August sun too great to deter them. The archdeacon took his text from the epistle to Philemon. "I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds."
Not Philemon's but Paul's views are in dispute; and if Philemon did liberate Onesimus which is a pure assumption Paul certainly did not advise him to do anything of the kind. Paul's epistle to Philemon does not, from its very-nature, seem intended for publication.
It has the sanction of God's own Apostle; for when Paul sent back Onesimus to Philemon, whom did he send? A Freeman? No, Sir. Among all people, and in all ages, has this Institution, if such it is to be called, existed, and had the countenance of wise and good men, and even of the Christian Church itself, until these modern times, up at least to the Nineteenth Century.
Paul tell Onesimus to return to his master? etc., etc. Many Secessionist organs of public opinion, no doubt, declined to commit themselves to pro-slavery views: they started with the assumption that slavery is an evil and a crime, and they continued protesting the same creed.
It is so certain that Philemon did more than had been told him, that the Epistle to the Colossians shows us the "faithful and well-beloved brother Onesimus" honorably mentioned among those concerned about the spiritual interests of the church. Between brethren, the relation of master and slave, of merchant and merchandise, cannot long subsist.
And I think that Master whom Paul served, not in preaching only, but also in practice, when he sent back the slave Onesimus to Philemon, praying that he might be received, "no' now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved," that Divine Master must have looked tenderly upon these two women both women, though of such different age and position, and taught them through His Spirit in His word, as only He can teach.
It has the sanction of God's own Apostle; for when Paul sent back Onesimus to Philemon, whom did he send? A Freeman? No, Sir. Among all people, and in all ages, has this Institution, if such it is to be called, existed, and had the countenance of wise and good men, and even of the Christian Church itself, until these modern times, up at least to the Nineteenth Century.
What says Mrs. Beecher Stowe's Cassy to this? "Stealing! They who steal body and soul need not talk to us. Every one of these bills is stolen stolen from poor starving, sweating creatures." Now 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.
It was about a fortnight later when Aleck Donne went down the garden directly after breakfast with the full intent, after thinking it over a good deal, of charging old Onesimus Dunning, the gardener, with being leagued with the Eilygugg smugglers. "If I told uncle," he argued, "he would be sent away at once; but that would be doing the poor fellow a lot of harm and perhaps make him worse.
Thus were the inalienable rights and birth-right privileges of Onesimus, as a member of the human family, defined and protected by apostolic authority. To this impulse, he was confident Philemon would promptly and fully yield. How could he do otherwise? The thing itself was right.
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