The life and work of St. Paul

624 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
him except a life of villany. Perhaps in this condition he was met by his
fellow- Colossian, Epaphraa, who as a Presbyter of Colossae would be well
known to Philemon. Perhaps Aristarchus, or any other of those who had
been St. Paul's companions at Ephesus, had come across him, and recognised
him as having been in attendance on Philemon at the time of his conversion
by St. Paul. Perhaps he had himself been present at some of those daily
addresses and discussions in the school of Tyrannus, which, though at the
time they had not touched his heart, had at the least shown him the noble
nature of the speaker, and revealed to the instinctive sense of one who
belonged to an oppressed class, the presence of a soul which could sympathise
with the suffering. How this may have been we do not know, but we do
know that his hopes were not deceived. The Apostle received him kindly,
sympathetically, even tenderly. The Eabbis said, " It is forbidden to teach a
slave the Law." l " " As though Heaven cared for slaves ! said the ordinary
Pagan, with a sneer.8 Not so thought St. Paul. In Christianity there is
nothing esoteric, nothing exclusive. Onesimus became a Christian. The
heart which was hard as a diamond against Pharisaism and tyranny, was yet
tender as a mother's towards sorrow and repentant sin. Paul had learnt in
the school of Him who suffered the penitent harlot to wash His feet with her
tears and wipe them with the hair of her head ; of Him who had said to the
convicted adulteress, " Neither do I condemn thee ; go, and sin no more."
Paul in no wise shared the anti- Christian respect of persons which made some
people in St. Jerome's days 3
argue that it was beneath his dignity to trouble
himself about a runaway slave. He understood better than the Fathers that
the religion of Christ is the Magna Charta of humanity. The drag-net of His
" fishers of men " was dropped to the very depths of the social sea. Here was
one whose position was the lowest that could be conceived. He was a slave ;
a slave of the country whose slaves were regarded as the worst there were ;
slave who had first robbed a kind master, and then run away from him ; a
slave at whom current proverbs pointed as exceptionally worthless,* amenable
only to blows, and none the better even for them. 6 In a word, he was a
slave; a Phrygian slave; a thievish Asiatic runaway slave, who had no
recognised rights, and towards whom no one had any recognised duties. He
was a mere " " 8 "
live
"
chattel a mere ;
implement with a voice T
; a thing
which had no rights, and towards which there were no duties. But St. Paul
converted him, and the slave became a Christian, a brother beloved and
serviceable, an heir of immortality, a son of the kingdom, one of a royal
generation, of a holy priesthood. The satirist Porsius speaks with utter scorn
of the rapid process by which a slave became a freeman and a citizen:
1
Ketubhoth, f. 28, 1.
2 Macrob. Saturn. IL The better Stoics furnish a noble exception to this tone.
* In Ep. ad PhUem.
*
Mv