to remain a slave even if the opportunity to become free presents itself; for this is the interpretation which a chain of the best commentators gives to the words "use it rather." See, too, Eph. vi. 5-9; Tit. ii. 9; 1 Pet. ii. 18.[1]
The earliest Christian writings take the same view of the question of slavery as we find in the Epistles of Paul and Peter. So in the Didaché we read: "Thou shalt not give directions when thou art in anger to thy slave or thy handmaid, who trust in the same God, lest perchance they shall not fear the Lord who is over you both; for He cometh not to call men according to their outward position, but He cometh to those whom the Spirit hath made ready. And ye slaves, ye shall be subject to your masters as to God's image, in modesty and fear" (chap. iv.).
Aristides writes as follows: "But as for their servants or handmaids, or their children if any of them have any, they (the Christians) persuade them to become Christians, for the love that they have towards them; and when they have become so, they call them without distinction Brethren."—Apol., chap. xv.
But although slavery as an institution[2] was left for the time virtually untouched, Christianity in its own circles worked an immediate and vast change in the condition of the slave: "It supplied a new order of relations, in which the relations of classes were unknown, and it imparted a new dignity to the servile classes."[3]
In the assemblies of the Christians of the first days on which we have been dwelling, the social difference between
- ↑ Slavery was not authoritatively condemned until the year of grace 1807. Lecky characterizes the action of Christian England here in the following eloquent words: "The unwearied, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous acts recorded in the history of nations" (History of Morals, chap. i.). And even after 1807 it lived on an acknowledged and recognized institute of several countries. The terrible war which led to the slave abolition in the United States is still unforgotten even by this generation.
- ↑ Ozanam estimates the numbers of slaves in the first and second centuries of our era as amounting to half the population of the Empire. The estimate is no doubt exaggerated, but the numbers of the slave population in that period were undoubtedly very great.
- ↑ Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii. chap. iv.
