The same shall he receive of the Lord. — This verse clenches the previous exhortations by the inculcation of a sense of responsibility and hope. The phrase itself is emphatic — not “he shall receive the reward of his deed,” but “he shall receive the deed itself,” considered as a thing still living and returning on his head, both in the judgments of life and in what we rightly call the “Last Judgment” of the Great Day. A slave in the eye of the law had no rights, and therefore no responsibility or hope. St. Paul therefore bids him, as a Christian, lift his thoughts to a region in which all, bond and free alike, may hear the blessing, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

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