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Show 208 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. In his note to the sLxteenth verse of the epistle, Mr. Barnes says: "Not now as a servant. The adverb rendered 'not now,' (obxen,) means no more, no furtlwr, no longer." So let it be. We doubt not that such is its meaning. lienee, we need not examine Mr. Darnes' numerous authorities, to show that such is the force of the adverb in question. He has, we admit, most abundantly established his point that obxen means no longer. But then this is a point which no anti-abolitionist has the least occasion to deny. We find precisely the same rendition in Macknight, and we are perfectly willing to abide by his translation. If Mr. Barnes had spared himself the trouble of producing these authorities, and adduced only one to show that 3oUlo( means a !tired servant, or an apprentice, his labor would have been bestowed where it is needed. As the passage stands, then, St. Paul exhorts Philemon to receive Onesimus, "no longer as a servant." Now this, we admit, is perfectly correct as far as it goes. "It (i.e. this adverb) implies," says Mr. Barnes, "that he had been in this condition, but was not to be now." lie was no longer to be a servant! Over this view of the passage, Mr. Sumner goes into quite a ARGU:\IENT FROM THE SCRIPTURES. 209 paroxysm of triumphant joy. · "Secondly," says he, "in charging Oncsimus with this epistle to Philemon, the apostle announces him as 'not now a servant, but above a scrvant,-a brother beloved;' and he enjoins upon his correspondent the hospitality due only to a freeman, saying expressly, 'If thou count me, therefore, as a partner, receive !Lim as myself;' ay, sir, not as slave, not even as servant, but as a brother beloved, even as the apostle himself. Thus with apostolic pen wrote Paul to his disciple Philemon. Beyond all doubt, in these words of gentleness, benediction, and EMANCIPATION,* dropping with celestial, soul-awakening power, there can be no justification for a conspiracy, which, beginning 'vith the treachery of Iscariot, and the temptation of pieces of silver, seeks by fraud, brutality, and violence, through officers of the law armed to the teeth like pimtes, and amid soldiers who degrade their uniform, to hurl a fellow-man back into the lash-resounding den of American slavery; and if any one can thus pervert this beneficent example, allow me to say that be gives too much occasion to doubt his intelligence or his sincerity .. " * The emphnsis is ours. 0 IS• |