he case of
those already dedicated to God by the spiritual opportunities of their
birth and education, so that the beginnings of growth might be
sanctified, like our Lord's childhood, in the Spirit.

{232}

We must also take to heart in our day the lesson of the fifth
commandment, as re-enforced by St. Paul, with its converse in the duty
of parents. Domestic obedience is somewhat at a discount, it is to be
feared, in this generation in most classes of society; and this is a
very grave peril. Parents, wealthy as well as poor, are very commonly
disposed to make schoolmasters and schoolmistresses do the work of
discipline for them, while they retain for themselves the privilege of
spoiling their children. There are, however, of course, very many
exceptions. There are multitudes of homes where discipline is
exercised wisely and lovingly, and children find obedience always a
duty and mostly a joy. This is certainly the only divinely appointed
method by which we are to be prepared for the obedience and
self-discipline required of us when we grow to be what is falsely
described as 'our own masters.' And St. Paul's twofold admonition to
parents is full of wisdom: they are not to provoke their children so
that they become bad-tempered, and they are not to over-stimulate them,
by competition or otherwise, so that they become disheartened. But to
nourish them by appropriate food, mental and spiritual as well as
physical, so that they may grow to the full {233} stature and strength
which God intends for them.

C. MASTERS AND SLAVES. VI. 5-9.

[Sidenote: _Masters and slaves_]

St. Paul's method in dealing with slavery is well known. The slave is
in a position really, at bottom, inconsistent with human individuality
and liberty, as Christianity insists upon it. Thus, to go no further,
the male slave and his wife are liable (in all systems of slavery) to
be sold apart from one another. This puts in its plainest form the
inconsistency of slavery with Christianity. The slave is a living
rational tool of another man, and not his brother with fundamentally
the same spiritual right to 'save his life' or make the best of his
faculties. Thus where a slave _can_ obtain liberty St. Paul exhorts
him to prefer it[31]. And when he is dealing with the Christian master
Philemon, whose runaway slave, Onesimus, has become Christian under St.
Paul's influence, he exhorts him to receive him back, no longer as a
slave, but as a b