if so, the reason of his having run away would have been fear of punishment. St. Paul’s influence upon him must have been strong to have induced him to return. The name Onesimus, like Philemon, is Phrygian; for some reason or other Phrygian slaves were regarded with contempt: Φρὺξ ἀνὴρ πληγεὶς ἄμεινον καὶ διακονέστερος (mentioned by Vincent as being quoted by Wallon, Hist. de l’esclavage dans Vantiquité, ii. 61, 62). The name was very commonly given to slaves, and appears over and over again on inscriptions as the name of a slave or a freedman.
The letter in which St. Paul intercedes for Onesimus was sent by Tychicus, who was going to Colosse and Laodicza with other letters from him to the churches there. Nothing could exceed the affectionate tactfulness displayed in the Epistle; the delicate way in which St. Paul combines the appeal to all that is best in Philemon with a gentle, yet distinct assertion of his own authority (see vv. 8, 9, 21) is very striking. The Epistle is a witness to the high demands which Christianity makes upon men; and the way in which it teaches the universal brotherhood of man together with
_.the eternal truth that one man is better than another—or worse— and that therefore class distinctions lie within the nature of things; this is another side of its permanent value. The power of the Gospel and the noble character of St. Paul are the two notes sounded throughout ; or, as Lightfoot so well expresses it, the special value of the Epistle lies in the fact that “‘ nowhere is the social influence of the Gospel more strikingly exerted, nowhere does the nobility of the Apostle’s character receive a more vivid illustration than in this ac- cidental pleading on behalf of a runaway slave”’.
§ III. Slavery, fewish and Roman.—The question of slavery so obviously suggests itself in connexion with this Epistle that a short section on the subject seems called for. It is not enough to refer only to Roman slavery, although Onesimus was a slave and Philemon a master under the Roman régime ; for St. Paul was a Hebrew, and the Hebrew conception of slavery must, therefore, be taken into account as well. ‘‘ Slavery was practised by the Hebrews under the sanction of the Mosaic law, not less than by the Greeks and Romans. But though the same in name, it was in its actual working ’—and, we may add, in its whole theory and conception—“ something wholly different ”” (Lightfoot, Philemon, p. 319). The Hebrew laws regard- ing slavery were exceedingly humane, for Hebrew slaves belonged to the Covenant people, for which reason also they were regarded as members of their owner’s family; they therefore had their social, as well as their religious rights. A Hebrew slave could not be kept