"Here is the Epistle to Philemon, placed by the hand of the Holy Spirit himself in the Sacred Canon. It is on a small piece of parchment, easily lost; the wind might have blown it from Philemon's table out of the window, beyond recovery; it was not addressed to a Church, to be kept in its archives; it is a private letter, subject to every change in the condition of a private citizen. Yet, while the epistle to Laodicea, sent about the same time, is irrecoverably lost, this little writing, addressed to a private man, goes into the Bible, by direction of God! "Do you not suppose," said I, "that God had a meaning in this beyond merely informing us how a master received a servant back to bondage?" "What further purpose do you think there was in it?" said he. "I only know," said I, "that slave-holding was to be a subject, as has proved to be the case, which would involve the interests of at least two of the continents of the earth, one of them being then unknown. Here the Church of God was to have large increase. Here, too, slavery was to exist, and to thrill the hearts of millions of citizens from generation to generation. It is very remarkable that one book of the Bible, which was to be made known to all nations by the commandment of the everlasting God, for the obedience of faith, should be exclusively on the subject of slavery, and that the whole burden of the Epistle should be, The Rendition of a Fugitive Slave!" "This never occurred to me before," said Mr. North. "Suppose," said I, "that instead of sending back Onesimus, the epistle had been a private letter from Archippus at Colosse to Paul at Rome, clandestinely aiding Onesimus to escape from Philemon, and that Paul had received Onesimus and had harbored him, and had sent him forth as a missionary, and that not one word of comment had appeared in the Bible discountenancing the act. What would have happened then?" "Then," said Mrs. North, "one thing is certain; the business of running off slaves to Canada would now have been more brisk even than it is at present." "Why?" said I. "Simply because," said she, "the New Testament would have sanctioned the practice of running off slaves." "Why, then," said I, "does it not now equally countenance the 'running' of slaves back to their masters?" "Please answer that for me, husband," said Mrs. North. He smiled, and rose to put some coal on the fire. We waited for his words. "Well," said he, "I do not know but it is all right, provided the master be in each case a Philemon." "That is a good word," said I. "You show that the Bible has an ascendency in your mind. You will be safe in following the Bible wherever it leads you, even into slave-holding, if it goes so far. But I must now question you a little. You may answer me or not, as you please.