That interview completed the change in the heart of the Phrygian youth. He had returned from Pandataria a freedman, for on the night before her murder Octavia had freed her Christian slaves. He had also received gifts from his generous mistress which placed him above present need. He had therefore hired himself a lodging, and now, being readmitted, at Paul’s intercession, into the Christian assemblies, he recovered life and happiness. He waited on the Apostle with ceaseless assiduity, and anticipated all his wants. If ever Paul needed one to serve him—which was often the case, for Timotheus had been sent on a message to Ephesus—the Phrygian was at hand, and the Apostle found in his society and cheerful vivacity a great alleviation of a captive’s weariness. It was not long before he confided to the Apostle his whole story, concealing nothing, and he asked for his advice as to his future course.
That advice fell like a death-blow on all his hopes. With the impetuosity of youth he had entirely lost sight of the fact that he was still Philemon’s slave, and that the manumission conferred on him by Octavia, in her ignorance that he was the personal chattel of another, was legally invalid. He was, therefore, stricken with amazement when the Apostle told him that he was not a freedman, but still a slave. At those words the fabric of his life seemed once more to be smitten into ruins. He had exulted with passionate joy at the thought that he was no longer at the beck and call of a master, no longer liable to the horrors of the cross and the branding-iron, of the scourge or the furca. To be told that he was still a Phrygian slave, that duty required him to go back to the familia of Philemon, to restore what he had stolen, to face any punishment which the law of Colossæ might inflict on him, to place his future life unreservedly in the hands of his owner, and to face the humiliation of returning to the company of his old companions as a thief and a runaway—this was like a sentence of hopeless condemnation. And there was yet another circumstance which made the pang more deadly. He still cherished for the gentle daughter of Nereus a love which might not have seemed hopeless. If he stayed at Rome, if as a freedman he could strike out for himself an honourable career—which his Greek education rendered possible—he felt sure that he could yet win the hand of the Christian girl. But to return to Colossæ as a slave, and a guilty slave, and to be perhaps compelled to grow old in servitude on the banks of the Lycus—it seemed too terrible a sacrifice!
Yet his sincerity stood the test. After a great struggle with himself he bowed his head, and answered: ‘If it is my duty, my father, I will do it.’
‘It is thy duty, my son Onesimus, and doubt not that the path of thy duty will also be the path of thy happiness. Thou wilt gain by losing. I know and I love Philemon, and his wife Apphia, and their son Archippus; and I will write to Philemon for thee, and I do not doubt that now he will set thee free—for indeed I need thee. Thou art as a son to me; I have begotten thee in my bonds, and thou art true to thy name in all thy help to me. But even if Philemon does not set thee free, he is now thy fellow-Christian, and therefore thy brother beloved, and no slavery can make thee other than the Lord’s freedman.’
The letter to Philemon was written—the Magna Charta of ultimate emancipation—and Onesimus was sent with it to his former master. He was accompanied by Tychicus of Ephesus, who was charged with the circular letter to that and other cities, as well as with the letter to the Colossians. They had an affecting parting with the Apostle, for though he was full of hope, yet the issue of his approaching trial was uncertain, and they knew not whether they should ever see his face again. He shed tears as he embraced Onesimus, to whom he had grown deeply attached, but they left him in the kind care of Aristarchus, and of the two Evangelists Mark and Luke. Above all, Timotheus had again come from Ephesus to stay with him, and Timotheus was to him as the son of his old age.
His case excited little attention. When it was heard in Nero’s presence the Emperor was amusing himself with composing a loose satire, paragraphs of which he handed from time to time to some delighted favourite. He polished his wicked verses again and again, till his note-book was almost illegible with erasures, and he paid little heed to the Apostle’s accusers. The evidence, scanty as it was, broke down completely, and testimony in favour of the innocence and the services of the prisoner was given gladly by gentile witnesses.
The impeachment might have been more formidable but for the shipwreck of the vessel which, as Julius had told Vespasian, was conveying to Rome a commission of his accusers among whom were two persons no less important than Josephus, the young and learned Rabbi of Jerusalem, and Ishmael ben Phabi,[92] the High Priest. But their ship foundered in a terrible storm. Its entire cargo was lost, including the documents on which the Sadducean hierarchs of Jerusalem had relied to procure the Apostle’s condemnation. Of the two hundred souls on board only eighty had been picked up, by a ship of Cyrene, after they had swum or floated all night in the tempestuous waves. Ishmael and Josephus had indeed been saved, but several of their witnesses had perished. On the other hand, when men so different as Felix the brother of Pallas, and the honourable Festus, and the centurion Julius, and Publius the Protos of Melite, and Lysias the chief captain at Jerusalem, all wrote in Paul’s favour, and when the good-natured King Agrippa II. and Berenice had taken the trouble to subscribe to this favourable testimony with their own hands, there could be no reason for detaining him. Not even Tigellinus had any object in keeping his clutch upon a prisoner who was too poor for purposes of extortion. The Apostle was acquitted. Accompanied by rejoicing friends, he went to Ostia, and thence set sail for Ephesus. After a brief sojourn in the city of Artemis, he paid his promised visit to Philemon at Colossæ. The first to greet him with happy smiles in the house of the Colossian gentleman was Onesimus, and as the Apostle pressed him to his heart, he learnt that all his hopes had been fulfilled. Philemon, on receiving Paul’s letter, had summoned the fugitive to his presence, and frankly forgiven him. Orders were given to all the slaves of the household that no reference was to be made to the past. Apphia and Archippus treated the runaway with marked kindness, and he himself restored the full sum which he had stolen and strove in every way to repair the old wrong. Philemon had not thought it advisable, under the circumstances, at once to set Onesimus free, but now in honour of Paul’s visit he manumitted him and others of his Christian slaves, and allowed him henceforth to devote his grateful services to the comfort of the Apostle, with whom he set forth for Crete.
CHAPTER XLIX
THE DEPTHS OF SATAN
‘He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers—