The life and work of St. Paul

608 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST, PAUL.
Onesiiuus a name which, under the circumstances, naturally lent itself to a
satiric play of words ; for instead of being " Beneficial," he had been very
much the reverse, having first (apparently) robbed his master, and then run
away from him. Borne was in anciout days the most likely place to furnish
a secure refuge to a guilty fugitive, aiid thither, even more than to modern
London, drifted inevitably the vice and misery of the world. Philemon was a
Christian, and some access of wretchedness, or danger of starvation, may have
driven the runaway slave to fling himself on the compassion of the Christian
teacher, whom he may have heard and seen when he attended his master on somo
great gala- day at Ephesus. The kind heart of Paul was ever open ; he had a
deep and ready sympathy for the very lowest and poorest of the human race,
because in the very lowest and poorest he saw those " for whom Christ died."
His own sufferings, too, had taught him the luxury of aiding the sufferings of
others, and he took the poor dishonest fugitive to his heart, and was the human
instrument by which that change was wrought in him which converted the
" "
non tressis agaso into a brother beloved. But Onesimus was still legally the
debtor and the slave of Philemon ; and Paul, ever obedient to the law, felt it a
duty to send him back. He placed him under the protecting care of Tychicus
of Ephesus, and sent him with a letter which could not fail to ensure his
pardon. It was necessary, therefore, for him to write to a citizen of Colossae,
and another circumstance determined him to write also to the Colossian
Church.
This was the strange and sad intelligence which he heard from Epaphras.
They had many opportunities for intercourse, for, either literally or metaphorically,
Epaphras shared his captivity, and did not at once return to his native
city. In his conversations with St. Paul he told him of an insidious form of
error unlike any which the Apostle had hitherto encountered. The vineyard
of the Lord's planting seemed, alas ! to resemble the vineyards of earth in the
multiplicity of perils which it had to overcome before it could bring forth its
fruit. Now it was the little foxes that spoiled its vines ; now the wild boar
which broke down its hedge ;
and now, under the blighting influence of neglect
forth the clusters of
and infertile soil, its unpruned branches only brought
Gomorrah. An erroneous tendency, as yet germinant and undeveloped, but
one of which the prescient eye of St. Paul saw all the future deadliness, had
insensibly crept into these youthful Churches, and, although they only knew
the Apostle by name, he felt himself compelled to exert the whole force of
his authority and reasoning to check so perilous an influence. Doubtless
Epaphras had expressly sought him for the sake of advice and sympathy, and
would urge the Apostle to meet with distinct warnings and clear refutation
the novel speculations with which he may have felt himself incompetent to
cope.
The new form of error was partly Judaic, for it made distinctions in meata,
attached importance to new moons and sabbaths, 1 and insisted upon the value
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