II. From the children of the house the apostle proceeds to address the _servants_--slaves as they were, until the gospel unbound their chains. The juxtaposition of children and slaves is full of significance; it is a tacit prophecy of emancipation. It brings the slave within the household, and gives a new dignity to domestic service.[152]
The Greek philosophers regarded slavery as a fundamental institution, indispensable to the existence of civilized society. That the few might enjoy freedom and culture, the many were doomed to bondage. Aristotle defines the slave as an "animated tool," and the tool as an "inanimate slave." Two or three facts will suffice to show how utterly slaves were deprived of human rights in the brilliant times of the classic humanism. In Athens it was the legal rule to admit the evidence of a slave only upon torture, as that of a freeman was received upon oath. Amongst the Romans, if a master had been murdered in his house, the whole of his domestic servants, amounting sometimes to hundreds, were put to death without inquiry. It was a common mark of hospitality to assign to a guest a female slave for the night, like any other convenience. Let it be remembered that the slave population outnumbered the free citizens of the Roman and Greek cities by many times; that they were frequently of the same race, and might be even superior in education to their masters. Indeed, it was a lucrative trade to rear young slaves and train them in literary and other accomplishments, and then to let them out in these capacities for hire. Let any one consider the condition of society which all this involved, and he will have some conception of the degradation in which the masses of mankind were plunged, and of the crushing tyranny that the world laboured under in the boasted days of republican liberty and Hellenic art.
No wonder that the new religion was welcome to the slaves of the Pagan cities, and that they flocked into the Church. Welcome to them was the voice that said: "Come unto me, all ye that are burdened and heavy laden"; welcome the proclamation that made them Christ's freedmen, "brethren beloved" where they had been "animated tools" (Philem. 16). In the light of such teaching, slavery was doomed. Its re-adoption by Christian nations, and the imposition of its yoke on the negro race, is amongst the great crimes of history,--a crime for which the white man has had to pay rivers of his blood.
The social fabric, as it then existed, was so entirely based upon slavery, that for Christ and the apostles to have proclaimed its abolition would have meant universal anarchy. In writing to Philemon about his converted slave Onesimus, the apostle does not say, "Release him," though the word seems to be trembling on his lips. In 1 Corinthians vii. 20-24 he even advises the slave who has the chance of manumission to remain where he is, content to be "the Lord's freedman." To the Christian slave what mattered it who ruled over his perishing body! his spirit was free, death would be his discharge and enfranchisement. No decree is issued to abolish bond-service between man and man; but it was destroyed in its essence by the spirit of Christian brotherhood. It melted away in the spread of the gospel, as snow and winter melt before the face of spring.
"Ye slaves, obey your lords according to the flesh." The apostle does not disguise the slave's subservience; nor does he speak in the language of pity or of condescension. He appeals as a man to men and equals, on the ground of a common faith and service to Christ. He awakens in these degraded tools of society the sense of spiritual manhood, of conscience and loyalty, of love and faith and hope. As in Colossians iii. 22-iv. 1, the apostle designates the earthly master not by his common title (_despotes_), but by the very word (_kyrios_) that is the title of the _Lord_ Christ, giving the slave in this way to understand that he has, in common with his master (ver. 9), a higher Lord in the spirit. "Ye are slaves to the Lord Christ!" (Col. iii. 24). St Paul is accustomed to call himself "a slave of Christ Jesus."[153] Nay, it is even said, in Philippians ii. 7, that Christ Jesus "took the form of a slave!"