Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/181

 depends upon their reciprocal performance, under the guiding influence of the gospel. The servant owes to the master submission, integrity, faithfulness, and strict obedience. The master owes to the servant, love, respect, kindness, gentleness, and strict honesty. In these two propositions the duties of both seem to be fairly stated, and we shall make them the subject of our subsequent reflections.

HE servant owes to the master submission, integrity, faithfulness, and obedience. Submission should be shewn not only in the performance of the duties required, but in the manner in which they are performed. Sullenness, apparent unwillingness, and insolence of language and manners, are all direct breaches of duty. When a servant enters into employment, he stipulates for a certain return to give his time and his labour for his employer's benefit: his time and his labour, therefore, are no longer at his own disposal, but his employer's, and ought to be used for the interest of his employer.

The servant owes his master strict integrity. If a servant waste either his time, or neglect the labour he ought to perform, he is unfaithful, using that which actually is the property of another, and thus compromises his integrity. Moreover, all the property of the employer should be considered sacred, and not