LECTURE X.

For perhaps he departed from thee for a season that thou shouldst receive him forever.

Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved.-PHILEMON, 15, 16.

In a previous Lecture I have explained the relation of St. Paul to the institution of slavery as illustrated in his treatment of the case of the slave Onesimus.

III. That St. Paul's proceedings in this case arose from his fixed principle that the kingdom of God was not directly to assault human customs and institutions and the laws of states, will appear beyond all question if we consider the condition of slaves at the period when Paul wrote from Rome. It would be an insult to the Apostle to suppose for a moment that he could have approved of an institution so utterly inhuman. It shows him to have been restrained and guided by a wisdom from above that he could have abstained from forbidding Christians from holding such a relation as that of master to a slave. Let us look at the institution of slavery as it then existed at Rome, and as St. Paul saw it beneath his eye when he penned his Epistle to the Colossians, and sent it by Tychicus and Onesimus.

The condition of the common plebeian or field slave among the Romans was excessively wretched. Placed upon the block of a slave dealer in the Forum, and exposed like any other merchandise

for sale, he could be purchased for what in modern value would be five hundred francs, or one hundred dollars. The janitor, or door-keeper, was sold with the house. The vicarius, or servant of a slave, was not so much regarded as the animals of whose comfort he had reason to be envious. The master in some cases personally knew but few of the slaves that thronged his courts, and would condescend to communicate with them only through an agent, or by the medium of imperious gestures. The slave was not regarded as a man, and the Romans were accustomed to use neuter and abstract terms to describe him. He was not so often called servus, a servant, as servitium, service; not so frequently homo, a man, as corpus, a body, or mancipium, property. According to law he was only a thing. One of the common descriptions given of the slave was that he was an animated tool, and of a tool that he was an inanimate slaye. If he injures the property of another, it is the master who must make indemnity. If he is injured or slain by another, indemnity is made to the master. As he is not regarded as a man, engagements with him are not considered binding, and he has no rights which a freeman is bound to respect.

It results from the same cause that he can have no wife, no family, no relations. His wife, if he is al-. lowed by the gratuitous kindness of the master a quasi marriage, or contubernium, is not his, nor his children his, in any true sense of right or possession; for they belong absolutely to another, and can be taken from him, and used in any way the master pleases, at any moment. Among slaves there can be neither husband, nor wife, nor father, nor mother,

nor children. Nay, the slave is not permitted to have a god. Cato the elder, with that rigid and remorseless logic which distinguished him, wrote that the master only could perform religious rites for the slaves, and that they must not presume to make any offerings to the gods without the permission of their master. This was the Roman right and law. A kind master, indeed, would permit his slaves to celebrate some low rites connected with religion, but they all bore the stamp of the debasement which belonged to his condition. The shepherds enjoyed their rude sacrificial rites, in which wild revelry and license prevailed. The slaves in the city were permitted to enjoy their saturnalia and the women their matronales; but all these were gifts and concessions from their masters, which might be at any time withheld.

Although it was not altogether impossible for slaves to purchase their freedom in peculiarly favorable circumstances, and on the indispensable condition of the good-will of the master, yet it was exceedingly difficult.

The Emperors Claudius and Augustus had attempted to limit the arbitrary and absolute right of the master over the person and life of the slave. But manners and habits proved stronger than laws. As the nation grew more cruel and more devoted to the sports of the amphitheater, and more careless of human life, it would not be likely to grow more kind and considerate to the slave. Juvenal, in a wellknown passage, depicts a woman who, with no motive but caprice, consigns her slave to the cross. Pollio fed his eels with the flesh of slaves. The crosses upon the Esquiline hill, with the bodies of

crucified slaves polluting the air, or with their ghastly skeletons rattling in the wind, constantly reminded the slave to beware how he provoked the omnipotence of the master. When the slaves grew old they were sent to an island in the Tiber, where the sick and infirm were deserted,-left, as it was said, to the care of Esculapius. Cato the elder said to a friend, "If you are a good manager, you will sell your slave and your horse when they are old."

The number of slaves held by the rich Romans was very great. They were counted by the hundred and the thousand. Seneca was opposed to any external badges being borne by them by which they might be designated, lest, perceiving their numbers and strength, they might rise and overpower the citizens. He mentions one house in Rome in which there were four hundred slaves. He describes Demetrius, a freedman of Pompey, and richer than his master, who built the theater which went under Pompey's name, as receiving every night, like the general of an army, an account of the effective force of his slaves. And yet they lived in constant terror of assassination. There was a Roman proverb, "So many slaves, so many enemies." True, slaves guarded their doors and corridors and chambers, but who should guard them against their guards? The usual resource of terror is cruelty, and it was most remorselessly applied toward the slaves. If a master was slain by a slave, the law provided that all the slaves of the household, innocent and guilty, should be punished with death. A shocking instance of this cruel injustice had occurred at Rome just previous to Paul's arrival. It had startled even the

imbruted populace of Rome by its unusual horror, and led to a practical modification of the law. A man of consular dignity was slain by one of his slaves. Four hundred slaves, men, women, and children, passed along in mournful procession to execution. The Forum was agitated; the people were roused almost into a revolt; and the Senate House was besieged for mercy while the weeping train passed on to death. It was all in vain. The law took its course. Four hundred innocent persons perished for the crime of one.

That which added to the horror of this event was the vindication of it which was made in the Senate. Some of the Senators had recoiled before the execution of this horrible law in a case where so many persons were the victims. But an old and learned lawyer, Cassius, charged with the task of resisting these weak-minded innovators upon the sacred customs of their ancestors, spoke in the true dialect of all advocates of prescriptive wrongs. "Shall we seek for reasons against a custom which our ancestors, wiser than we, have established? Among four hundred slaves, if all were not in the plot, is it possible that not one suspected, not one knew, the guilty one? And if information had been given by that one, would not the murder have been prevented? But you say that many innocent persons perish with the guilty. That is true; but when an army is found wanting in courage, and is decimated, both brave men and cowards incur the chances of the lot. There is always something of injustice in every great example, but the wrong inflicted upon the few is compensated by the advantage of the many."

Such was slavery at Rome when St. Paul wrote