Philemon 1:16

Christianity not permanently compatible with slavery as an institution.

I. IT FOLLOWS FROM THE CONSIDERATION OF CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD that, although it finds many slaves, yet it shall gradually raise them to a state of freedom. It frees their souls at once. They become "the Lord's freemen" ( 1 Corinthians 7:22 ), and the body cannot always remain bound when the soul is free. Thus, though it does not cut down the tree (of slavery), it severs the roots, and a state of slavery cannot therefore permanently flourish among Christians.

II. THIS IS ALSO THE TEACHING OF HISTORY . It was an age of slavery in which this Epistle was written. Europe and Asia were occupied by an immense population of slaves, far outnumbering the free persons. In the province of Attica alone there were four hundred thousand slaves and only thirty-one thousand freemen. In Corinth there were four hundred and sixty thousand slaves. It was not uncommon in Rome (where the apostle was at the time of writing) for one rich man to possess as many as ten or even twenty thousand slaves. They cultivated the fields; they monopolized all the trades. It was an age of slavery. Into this state of society the gospel of Christ came. It did not, indeed, propose to break the bonds of all slaves, and reach the kingdom of God through social convulsion and much bloodshed. Its propagators did not preach a servile revolt.

III. IT PROPOSED NOT A TEMPORAL BUT A SPIRITUAL FREEDOM TO ITS FOLLOWERS . It recognized all alike as immortal beings. There was one Church for all, whether bond or free; and the same sacraments in which all should participate. Other forms of religion had treated the slave as a chattel; this alone regarded him as a man. It raised into activity the moral powers of his nature. He had been managed by the fear of punishment merely. But the gospel spoke to him of moral differences in conduct—of right and wrong; it awoke in his soul an inspiring hope. It predicted a day of judgment, in which the difference between a good and evil life should have the most momentous consequences to each individual. Thus it transformed the slave altogether. He began to look before and after; to raise his thoughts, his hopes, and his voice to heaven; and to understand what was the "liberty wherewith Christ had made him [though a slave] free" ( Galatians 5:1 ), even "the glorious liberty of the children of God" ( Romans 8:21 ).

IV. TO THE MASTER ALSO THE VERY SAME ENDS WERE PROPOSED . He, too, was to run the same Christian course with his slave, guided by the same principles, helped by the same hopes, and constrained by the same sanctions. A similar object soon produced a similarity of character; and a similarity of (Christian) character brought about sympathy of feeling. In the rising tide of Christian fellowship the worst hardships of slavery melted away, even long before it was formally abolished. It became an anachronism, a relic of a vanished and gone-by condition of things.

V. AND AS IT WAS IN THE FIRST PERIOD OF THE GOSPEL , SO IT HAS BEEN SINCE . There have been periods when circumstances had brought about partial revivals of the spirit of slavery. But the working of the principles of the gospel have proved irreconcilable as ever with slavery, and has either brought it to an end or cast it out. Take, for example, the civil war in America.