have not repented of it, in the sin of treating man as property; all, I say, whether slaveholders or their official or unofficial assistants, the drivers upon their plantations, or their drivers in the free States--all, who have been guilty of throwing God's "image" into the same class with the brutes of the field--will find, that He is the avenger of his poorest, meanest ones--and that the crime of transmuting His image into property, is but aggravated by the fact and the plea that it was committed under the sanction of human laws. But, to return--wherein does the letter of Paul to Philemon justify slaveholding? What evidence does it contain, that Philemon was a slaveholder at the time it was written? He, who had been his slave "in time past," had, very probably, escaped before Philemon's conversion to Christ. This "time past," may have been a _long_ "time past." The word in the original, which is translated "in time past," does not forbid the supposition. Indeed, it is the same word, which the Apostle uses in the thirteenth verse of the first chapter of Galatians; and there it denotes a _long_ "time past"--as much as from fifteen to eighteen years. Besides, Onesimus' escape and return both favor the supposition, that it was between the two events that Philemon's conversion took place. On the one hand, he fled to escape from the cruelties of an unconverted master; on the other, he was encouraged to follow the Apostle's advice, by the consideration, that on his return to Philemon he should not have to encounter again the unreasonableness and rage of a heathen, but that he should meet with the justice and tenderness of a Christian--qualities, with the existence and value of which, he had now come to an experimental acquaintance. Again, to show that the letter in question does not justify slaveholding--in what character was it, that Paul sent Onesimus to Philemon? Was it in that of a slave? Far from it. It was, in that of "a brother beloved," as is evident from his injunction to Philemon to "receive him forever--not now as a _slave_, but above a _slave_--a brother beloved." It is worthy of remark, that Paul's message to Philemon, shows, not only that he himself was not in favor of slaveholding, but, that he believed the gospel had wrought such an entire change on this subject, in the heart of Philemon, that Onesimus would find on his return to him, the tyrant and the slaveholder sunk in the brother and the Christian.