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Letter 29] he inveighed against the spirit of slavery, declaring that in Christ "there is neither bond nor free;" and on the only occasion that we know of, when he had to mediate in a practical way between an angry master and a runaway slave, he sent the man back to his master without conditions or stipulations, but with a letter that was equivalent to an emancipation: "For perhaps he was therefore parted from thee for a season that thou shouldest have him for ever; no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much rather to thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord. If then thou countest me a partner, receive him as myself." Was not this, practically and morally, more efficacious than if the Apostle had fulminated against the master Philemon fiery utterances about the rights of man and the incompatibility between Christianity and slavery? Was not Onesimus more sure of being emancipated by the quiet apostolic method? Was not Philemon likely to feel a quickened sense of new and higher duty when the Spirit of Christ was breathed into his heart by these touching and affectionate words, than if a Pauline edict had confronted him with a "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not"? St. Paul's method has been the method of the Spirit of Christ: for eighteen centuries Christ has been saying to men, not "All slavery is unlawful," but to each master about each individual slave, "If then thou countest Me a partner, receive him as Myself." Hence by degrees has been shaped a conviction that slavery in itself is against the will of God.

But the destruction of slavery has not destroyed other problems of life which still await their solution from Christian socialism. When men cease to work from the compulsion of a master, they either give up working, or they work for some other motive—their own subsistence, or their own comfort, luxury, avarice, ambition, the mere pleasure and interest of work, or for the sake of