earthly glory were more influential in her mind than the love of our Father who is in heaven; and such misplaced feelings can never lead to happiness. Nay, home must be wretched—it is a blank, a void, when God our Saviour does not hold the first and highest place; and all training, all discipline, or human affection which does not tend to that result, will perish like the things of earth. Again; in Isaac Taylor's Memoir of his sister, the story of another daughter is touchingly told. Her father was a physician, and died when his daughter was young. Her sole guardian, therefore, was her widowed mother, and she was not sufficiently decided to withstand the power of evil in the mind of an impulsive daughter. That daughter soon chose for her associates the godless and the gay, and cast aside the restraints of religion. She deemed them prejudices, and, in the pride which is ever based upon ignorance, claimed the right to "think for herself." In doing so, however, she forgot that her God had already both thought and decided for her; and when she had once swerved from the "old paths," "the narrow way," her moral descent was rapid. A father's memory and a mother's wishes lost their power; they were like flax to flame when selfwill goaded this daughter. She speedily grew strong in her contempt for the truth which her parents had taught her, as well as for all who held it, and was manifestly in the toils of the destroyer. Her new opinions operated like the poison cup of Circe, which transformed those who drank of it into beasts. She gradually became a sceptic, confessedly irreligious in her tastes and habits, and enamoured at once of folly and of ruin. "Masked Deism" took the place of the truth of God, and Reason was the only divinity that was owned, but owned 140 only to be outraged. THE END OF ALL. A mother's affectionate heart was con signed by that daughter to distress, and a father's memory was trampled in the dust, that she might "think for herself" that is, rush along the world's path. But an early death came to arrest her. She saw at length to what her opinions and her conduct tended, and died imploring her sisters to be "saved in God's way." The Bible, which had long been discarded, was resumed, and though the judgment day must come ere any one may pronounce on the eternal portion of Mira S her case sheds a lurid light How feeble is filial affection upon the path of daughters. against the impetuous love of sin! How sure the misery of her who rejects the counsels of a Christian mother! How vain are all acquirements and all accomplishments and gifts, when the mind of the world is preferred to the mind of the Redeemer! In the homes where such misguided daughters dwell, to what can their conduct lead but woe and lamentation, to broken hearts, and blighted hopes, and ruined souls, to parents smitten to the dust-perhaps hurried by grief to the grave! 141 MASTERS. CHAPTER XII. MASTERS. Disorganisation of Society-Consequent Evils-The Remedy-Scriptural Views of a Master's Duty-Moses-The Prophets-The New Testament-Mercenary Ties Their Results-Maxims for Masters-Examples-Abraham and his Household-A Servant's Monument-John Howard-Philip Henry. HALF the social evils of our day would be remedied were the relations between the different classes of society put right. On the one hand, there is often a haughty insolence, as if inferiors in rank were also inferiors in nature and destiny. On the other hand, there is as often a scowling defiance or a lawless aggression, as if the rich were a legitimate prey to the poor. In this manner society is dislocated and distempered; it seems to bleed at many a pore. A wide gulph is placed between those who should be mutually aiding, and neither of whom can dispense with the other. It has become the great question of our day how this overgrown evil can be remedied; and philanthropists of the highest type, with some nobles of the land, aided by royalty itself, have lent their assistance to solve the social problem. But we now point to a remedy which would widely succeed or supersede all others, were men wise enough to adopt it. That remedy simply is-Work out the will of God in our homes, or take advantage of the domestic constitution. We undervalue no right appliance for accomplishing 142 THE DIVINE LEGISLATION. a right end, and would enlist every agency which a wise benevolence can suggest; but all antidotes to our social evils will prove superficial and abortive if they ignore the divine method, and therefore leave the root of the evil untouched. All merely local treatment will prove deceptive. What is needed is a radical, an organic, a constitutional treatment— the change must begin in men's homes; and not merely so, but must moreover be directed by the will and the wisdom of God. And the great fountain of all social truth-the Word of God-is very explicit as to the duties of masters. In what is perhaps the most ancient book in the world—the History of Job-we find a beautiful illustration of this. That patriarch, amid the anguish which he endured, once exclaimed, "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?"* The much-tried man thus recognises two important principles in the heavenly jurisprudence: first, the equal rights of all; and secondly, the fact that there is a righteous judge of all; and were these two truths habitually ascendant, home would be happy; our social distempers would be diminished; a thorough remedy would be found for many an evil which now eats as doth a canker. But we have explicit legislation upon this subject, for Moses carefully enacted thus: "Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates: At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall *Job xxxi. 13, 14. HEAVENLY HARMONY. 143 the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the Lord, and it be sin unto thee."* Now everything here is in perfect keeping with the religion of love: it is tender, considerate, and thoroughly fitted to harmonise the relation between superior and inferior. There is no haughty disregard of the interests of the poor, no repelling them as if they might safely be trodden down or treated only as serfs. Nay, their comfort is to be consulted from day to day; and just as we are not to let the sun go down upon our wrath, we are not to let him set upon us in debt to the hired servant whose wages are due. And when we pass from Moses to the prophets, we find one of them exclaiming, "Woe unto him who useth his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work;"+ or when we advance into the New Testament, we hear Inspiration once more exclaim, "Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth." Now everything here is fitted again to rectify much of what is wrong in our social life, to sweeten the intercourse of man with man, to lighten the burden of toil, and wipe the brow which is often wet, in terms of the primal sentence against fallen man.§ If men be disunited by selfishness, and if the strong be prone to oppress and overbear the weak, here is an antidote to that tendency: here is a medicating maxim in that religion which came to set up an empire of love, and knit men together once more * Deuteronomy xxiv. 14, 15. Jeremiah xxii. 13. § Genesis iii. 19. |