X.

THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON.

HIS short letter differs from all others which

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have come down to us as parts of the canon of Scripture. It gives us a glimpse of the private friendships of an apostle, and of the social intercourse which he held with his fellow Christians. And this, in relation to a matter originally of mere private interest: the return and reception of a runaway slave. If it be asked, what motive can have led to the placing of such a letter among the books of Scripture, we Christians have no hesitation to Whose guidance to ascribe its preservation. cannot have been thus honoured merely as a relic of St. Paul; for there must have been scores of similar letters in the possession of men and families in the early Christian world, which, had that primitive age been as careful of relics as we are now

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taught to believe it was, would have been preserved with equal care. All these others have perished, and this only remains. I believe that reason sufficient will appear, before the conclusion of our present paper, why this should have been so; that the instruction to be derived from this private letter concerning a mere domestic matter, will vindicate itself as thoroughly worthy to have been conserved for the church in all ages.

First, let us review the circumstances under which the epistle was written. And here let me say that, wishing to make this chapter complete in itself, I shall not be careful to avoid repeating information given already in the preceding chapter, on the Epistle to the Colossians. The reader will thank me for sparing him the troublesome task of referring back and combining the two accounts.

During St. Paul's long sojourn of three whole whole years at Ephesus, the principal city of Asia Minor, he appears to have become the founder of several churches in that country, without having himself visited the towns where they sprung up. The general expression in the narrative in the Acts is, that "all that dwelt in Asia heard the word of .God, both Jews and Greeks," and in Col. ii. 1, the

Apostle speaks of the people of Colossæ and Laodicea as never having seen his face in the flesh. It is to the first mentioned of these, Colossæ, that our attention is now directed. It had once been an important city, but had a few years before the time of which we are speaking been desolated by a terrible earthquake, from the effects of which it appears never afterwards to have recovered. During St. Paul's stay at Ephesus, Epaphras, an inhabitant of Colossæ, became acquainted with him, and received from his lips the word of truth, which became the seed of the Colossian church. Probably in consequence of this, others from the town visited the Apostle, and among them the family with whom we are now concerned, consisting of Philemon; Apphia, his wife; Archippus, probably their son; and Onesimus, their slave. The result of the intercourse between them was that the head of the family became a missionary to his native town-a fellow labourer with the Apostle. Apphia became a sister in Christ; and Archippus, apparently at that time a youth, was afterwards admitted to holy orders; for in the Epistle to the Colossians, iv. 17, St. Paul writes, 'Say unto Archippus, Take heed to the minis

try which thou receivedst in the Lord, that thou fulfil it.'

We must now pass over six or seven years. In that interval, the Apostle has gone through all those trials and perils which signalised the latter portion of his missionary journeyings as related in the Acts has stood before Felix and Festus; and, having for his safety used his right as a Roman citizen of appealing to Cæsar, has been sent prisoner to Rome. He is dwelling there under military custody in his own hired house, resorted to by Christian brethren from all parts of the East. Among the rest comes Epaphras, with news of a mixed kind from Colossæ-news which, making the Apostle both joyful and anxious, set him upon despatching at once an epistle thither. Two messengers are with him, ready to be the bearers of his letter. One of these was Tychicus, a native of Asia, and companion of St. Paul on his missionary journeys. On the other we will for a new minutes direct our attention. He is no other than the slave Onesimus, of whom we before said that he had probably accompanied his master, Philemon, to Ephesus, and there had become acquainted with St. Paul. So much is, I think, necessary to be

supplied in order to account for what we find now happening. Onesimus has become since then a runaway from his master. He has escaped the search of the slave-police, established expressly for the purpose of tracking and bringing back fugitives, and is lying hid, where all that was bad and disreputable found its confluence and its concealment, in the great metropolis, Rome. There, led by what providential chance we know not, he visits the Apostle. He may have been brought by Epaphras. More probably he may have recollected, with fond regret, amongst the refuse of the lowest society, in which such a fugitive would naturally be found, the pure and warm-hearted man who had wrought such a change in his master's family-who had reasoned, in his case in vain, of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. He may have been not unacquainted with some part of the Apostle's subsequent course. He may have even worked his way in one of the ships in which St. Paul had made his broken and perilous voyage to Rome. Or he may have accidentally heard that he was now a prisoner in the same city. Be this as it may, the two met together; the runaway slave, the Apostle of Christ,-and the result of the meet