After
being there for ever so short a time, if you do not like it, you may
flee again; and so keep moving all your lifetime, the people everywhere
being obliged to allow you a place of abode. Did the Most High mean to
encourage such vagabondism?
"'No; He merely provided that a fugitive from a heathen master should
not be sent away from the worship of Jehovah into heathenism.'
"'That is undoubtedly the true meaning,' said the pastor, 'if Theodotus
will allow me to put in a word. "Thee," in that passage, means Israel as
a nation, not each man.'
"'I thank you, Sir,' said Theodotus; 'and now I maintain that the
injunction not to give up a fugitive to his heathen master, but to keep
him in Israel, is a powerful argument in favor of retaining slaves where
they will be most benefited in their spiritual concerns. God thus makes
the soul of man and its eternal welfare paramount to all external
relations, including slavery.'
"'May I inquire, then,' said the Laodicean: 'Suppose that Philemon had
been a cruel heathen master, and Onesimus had fled for his life, would
Paul have sent him back?'
"'If the case were clear and beyond doubt, I am not sure that he would,'
said Theodotus.
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