"Why," it is objected, "did not the apostles preach immediate emancipation, instead of indorsing slavery by defining its duties--'Servants, obey your masters,' &c.? and Paul even sent back a slave." 1. The primary object of the apostles was not simply "to preach liberty to the captives;" this was but a branch of the tree planted "for the healing of the nations." Their object was to sow the principles of faith, love, justice, and equality, well knowing that, when these took root and flourished, among the first fruit would be "liberty to all the inhabitants of the land." 2. Had this been their great object, they took the best and speediest plan for its accomplishment. Attacking the system directly, the appearance of the Christian missionary would have been the signal for servile war and untold bloodshed, the slave against the master, the poor against the rich; and the heathen rulers, eager for a pretext to crush them, would have denounced them as lighting the torch of rebellion and war; and the further spread of the gospel would have been drowned in the blood of its founders. But they took the very course which God adopted among the Israelites in regard to servitude, not directly prohibiting it, but inculcating principles of social equality and progress, restricting the master's power, and protecting the servant's rights, till, master and slave blended in one, the name of slave was lost in that of Christian. 3. The relation and duties of master and servant are defined by the apostles exactly as they might be to-day in England or the free states--as those of men, _never_ as owner and property; on the contrary, all ownership of man by other than God is expressly denied. 1 Cor. 6:19, 20, "What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost in you, which ye have of God, and _ye are not your own_? For ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and your spirit, _which are God's_." There the ownership is clearly asserted; how can man claim it? "Render to Cesar the things that are Cesar's, _and to God the things that are God's_," lest you be found robbing God himself. Again, 1 Cor. 7:21, 23, "Art thou called, being a servant? care not for it; but, if thou mayst be made free, (δύασαι γενέσθαι, canst become free,) use it rather." What can be more explicit than this? First, ownership of man is denied even to _himself_, much more to _another_. Next, the exhortation to slaves is, if they _can not_ get free from this great wrong, to bear it as such, but, if they _can_, "use it rather;" and the reason given is followed by a rule of action to be adopted wherever possible. Verse 23, "Ye are bought with a price; BE NOT YE THE SERVANTS OF MEN." If this be not express prohibition of chattelism, and command to slaves to free themselves from it, then the language is totally contradictory and unintelligible.