wages, but political economy cannot regulate the spirit in which wages are to be paid, nor the personal interest to be taken in those who earn them. Human affairs cannot rightly or happily go on for long without humaneness, nor, indeed, without something far higher than mere humanity. It is because men leave God out of their affairs and mutual relations, that human society becomes corrupt. The due acknowledgment of God would always dictate the duty of treating servants, not as so many fingered animals, with so much profitable productive or working power only, but as human beings having the same nature, faculties, and sensibilities as the masters. Servants have feelings to be considered, if not always to be consulted. I have heard it said that servants ought not to have feelings, ought not to be sensitive; ought never to take amiss anything said to them; ought never to feel the want of anything which but for their position as servants, or if out of service, they might fairly look for and enjoy. This idea is monstrous. The feelings of servants and their self-respect should be considered as really as those of the master or mistress. True religion in either will find many ways of doing so. Nor is it to be forgotten that servants have characters to be cultivated and elevated. You expect them to be attentive and faithful, diligent and industrious; and not a little, in respect to their character, may depend on you who are their masters and mistresses. They cannot be in your employment, to say nothing of residence under your roof, without receiving some influence tending to make them better or worse. Remember that they are beings of like passions with yourselves; and if they find you hasty, irritable, vain, indolent, or hypocritical, do not wonder if they show the same traits of character. If you would be well served, you must prove yourselves worth serving well. It is not to be expected that servants will give their best efforts to please and obey masters who

are loose or reckless in their habits, and indifferent to the just claims of those whom they employ. The master must govern himself, and rule his own spirit, if he would wisely control his servants, and judiciously care for their character. There is nothing more likely to influence servants and workmen for good than the evidence of personal interest in their moral and physical welfare on the part of their employers.

Christian masters cannot give that which is just and equal to their servants without also remembering that they have souls to be saved. The remembrance of this will prompt efforts of various kinds to bring such influences to bear on them as shall be for their spiritual welfare. A clergyman who had just come in a city parish, being anxious, as in the sight of God, to do his duty to all his parishioners, went one day to the warehouse of a firm employing two or three hundred young men, who resided on the premises. He told his object to one of the principals, and said he was desirous to take some action specially for the spiritual good of the young men in the house, and hoped the firm would afford him some facility for such an effort. The great merchant instantly replied that he could not listen to such a thing; that there they had nothing to do with the spiritual character of the young men; they were in that establishment solely for business purposes, and that the firm had nothing to do with their souls." A truly Christian employer could not have spoken in this way. Happily the principals in many large houses of business do afford facilities to their young men for intellectual improvement and religious exercises. The master who really cares for his own soul will find ways and means of practically showing that he cares for the souls of all dependent on him. It cannot be denied or doubted that this is an essential part of the rendering of that which is "just and equal." We should never forget our Lord's

66

words to His disciples: "Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say well; for so I am. If I, then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you." (John xiii. 13-15.) The Christian master and the Christian servant are brethren, in equality of service and of allegiance to their Heavenly King.

II. The argument or motive by which this duty is enforced is in the closing words of the verse: "Knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven." The master as well as the servant is under the authority of Christ, and is responsible to Him. The Christian servant is required to serve his earthly master as if he were serving Christ; and the Christian master is required to use his human authority in dealing with his servant as if he, too, were serving Christ. Both occupy the same relation as servants to the great Lord and Master of all. Here, therefore, there is the idea of responsibility. Many masters, firmly holding the principle of the responsibility of servants, practically forget that they are themselves equally responsible to God. And not only so in the society of this world duties and relations are reciprocal, the one part and the one class being responsible to another. The authority of earthly masters is not absolute, but dependent on the will of God, and in its exercise He ought ever to be acknowledged, for He alone has absolute dominion. He concerns Himself in the complaints and wrongs of the meanest and poorest of His creatures in His service masters and servants are on equal terms, and in His sight rich and poor meet together. Nothing is more displeasing to the Almighty Father than social oppression or injustice in the relations which subsist here between man and man, and between class and class of the great human family. Remember the touching language of Job: "If I

did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant, when they contended with me; what then shall I do "when God riseth up? and when He visiteth, what shall I answer him? Did not He that made me in the womb make him?" (Job xxxi. 13-15.) Above all, it becomes us to remember that in the graphic and sublime account of the last judgment, given by our Lord Himself, the issues of that great day are made in a sense to depend on our conduct toward each other. What we do to the poorest of His disciples will be acknowledged as having been done to Himself. Master and servant are of the same flesh and blood, are subject to the same infirmities, are hastening to the same common end, and are alike amenable to the same living Lord of all. Think of this future; act in all your relations as seeing Him who is invisible, that in the discharge of your duty and the recognition of your responsibility you may receive the approbation of your "Master in heaven." It will be a blessed time amongst men when the religion of the Son of God shall sanctify all human transactions, and sweeten all the relations of life; when master and servant shall recognize with gratitude and love the voice which now says alike to both, "One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren."

XL.

The Value and Power of Prayer.

"Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving; withal praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds: that I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak."-COLOSSIANS iv. 2-4.

WE

E now enter on the exposition of the last division of this epistle, which consists of two parts; some general exhortations, and the expression of a series of friendly salutations. He passes from the enforcement of the various duties and relations of domestic life to more general admonitions, and places prayer in the very front. He had expounded doctrine, and inculcated precept, and now he urges perseverance in that one duty which vitalizes doctrine to the Christian soul, and makes obedience to precept both a privilege and a pleasure. He contemplates prayer as the ladder which connects earth with heaven, by which the soul of man rises to God in holy communion, and through which power from on high and all needful spiritual blessings descend on us.

I. The duty of prayer is here strongly urged by the Apostle. He sums up all his faithful and loving counsels, and binds them as it were together, by insisting on this one sacred and sublime duty of prayer. There is no attempt to