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Show 19G LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. abolitionists. But, as it is, they have to apologize for the great apostle, and try, as best they may, to deliver him from his very equivocal position! But if they are true apostles, and not false, then, we fear, the best apology for his conduct is that he bad never read the Declaration of Independence, nor breathed the air of Boston. This point, however, we shall not decide. 1V e shall examine their apologies, and let the candid reader decide for himself. St. Paul, it is not denied, sent back Onesimus. But, says Mr. Barnes, he did not compel or urge him to go. He did not send him back against his will. Onesimus, no doubt, desired to return, and St. Paul was moved to send him by his own request. Now, in the first place, this apology is built on sheer assumption. There is not the slightest evidence that Onesimus requested St. Paul to send him back to his master. "There may have been many reasons," says Mr. Barnes, "why Onesimus desired to return to Colosse, and no one can prove that he did not express that desire to St. Paul, and that his 'sending' him was not in consequence of such request." Trne; even if Onesimus had felt no such desire, and had expressed no such AROUMEN'f FRO~I TilE SCRIPTURES. 19i desire to St. Paul, it would have been impossible, in the very nature of things, for any one to prove such negatives, unless he had been expressly informed on the subject by the writer of the epistle. But is it not truly wondmful, that any one should, without the least particle or shadow of evidence, be pleased to imagine a series of propositions, aud then call upon tho opposite party to disprove them? Is not such proceeding the very stuff that dreams arc made of? No doubt there may have been reasons why Oncsimus should desire to return to his master. There were certainly reasons, n.ncl reasons of tremendous force, too, why he should have desired no such thing. The fact that Philemon, whom he had oflended by running away, had, according to law, the power of life and death over him, is one of the reasons why he should have dreaded to return. llence, unless required by the apostle to return, he may have desired no such thing, and no one can prove that an expression of such desire on his pat"t was the ground of the apostle's action. It is certain that he who affirms should prove. ' In the second place, if St. Paul were an abolitionist at hen1·t, he shonlcl have avoidct! the li• |