Colossians 4:1

RULES FOR MASTERS

‘Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.’

Colossians 4:1

St. Paul does not seem to go much into detail here, for he sums up in two words the master’s duty, but what a wealth of meaning, what a mine of suggestive thought, do those two words contain. ‘Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal,’ he says, and then follows the same reminder for master as for servant, ‘ye also have a Master in heaven.’

With very few exceptions, wherever one goes one hears the same complaint about servants. They are idle, or shiftless, or untrustworthy, or ill-tempered, or selfish. Mistresses of households speak especially as though their servants were almost the chief trouble of their lives. Now I am not going to meet all this with a direct denial. Our servants are very much what we make them. Have you ever tried God’s way with your servants? Have you ever thought of giving ‘to your servants that which is just and equal’?

Let us face this matter out.

I. God bids you be just to your servants.—I suppose that means that you should do by them what you would have them do by you. God bids you give to them that which is equal. By that he surely means this: ‘Give them fair play.’ These are the words of God the Holy Ghost, and so define an essential part of the duties of practical Christianity. Women of refinement and much kindly feeling, not at all destitute of sympathy for others, sometimes speak of their servants as though they were creatures of an inferior race. The family take their pleasure frequently, but they never share it with the servants. The family meals are luxurious, the servant’s table is meagre. They must work on until midnight, and then be the first to rise, and if, exhausted by fatigue, they are late, they are scolded sharply. If the mistress of the house or one of the children is a little out of sorts, every one is alarmed, and the doctor is sent for at once; but who cares for the poor servant’s headache or prostration? And then when, worn out by overwork, illness really fastens upon her, a cab is fetched, and she is sent to her home or to the hospital, and if she dies, who cares? O my brothers and sisters, she is our sister too. Is this giving unto her that which is just and equal? To say nothing of the sin and shame of it all, for which God will surely judge you, how can you expect your servants to treat you other than you treat them?

II. We may have good servants still if we will do as God bids us do, and be Christ-like masters and mistresses.—In all ranks of society there are the worthless and the undeserving, but these are few, after all. God says to you, ‘O woman, use your servant well. Don’t give her the worst bedroom in the house with the paper hanging in damp strips from the walls. Give her wholesome food and sufficient rest, and fresh air now and then, not under cover of the night, but in the light of day. See that pleasant books are not beyond her reach. Make your children pay her, in due degree, the respect they pay to others. When she ails give her the simple remedies you use in the family. If she falls ill and your house is large enough, don’t turn her from your door, but nurse her at home. Be a mother to her. Pray for her. Try to help her in the path of life. Stay home from Holy Communion sometimes that she may kneel at the altar of God, and receive the strength and grace you so deeply prize. Make her one of yourselves. Share your life with her. O man, care for your labourer. See that he has a cottage fit to live in and a fair wage. Encourage him and his with kindly words, sympathise with them if sickness comes to them. Treat him as your fellow. Men and women, “give unto your servants that which is just and equal.” ’ Only fulfil the will of God and your special difficulties about servants will vanish.

III. How many blessings have come to us through keeping God’s rule which otherwise we should have missed, just as Naaman’s leprosy would never have left him had not his wife been a gentle, loving mistress to the little Hebrew maid; just as no blessing would have come to the Centurion had he not loved his poor suffering servant. Has not God heaped blessings upon us by the hands of these same servants by whom we have striven to do His will—kindnesses and thoughtfulness in health, and such goodness when we have been ill, as they have watched by us through the long hours and borne with us in our fretfulness and soothed us with gentle words? If some of you have never known servants like these, go home and begin to try God’s plan, and it will not be long before you, too, shall be blessed in your deed. You may not always succeed, for there are still the ‘unthankful and the evil’ amongst servants as there are amongst those they serve, but you will not fail in the long run if, asking God’s blessing, you persevere.

Rev. S. Pascoe.

Illustration

‘There are as many true and faithful servants in the world as ever there were, but they are the servants of kind and sympathising employers. Dean Ramsay has told us of one such who lived in one family all her life, and who, when, at a great age, she lay at the point of death, sent for her master, who was a few years her junior, and told him she had one last request to make which she begged him not to deny her: “When I am carried to the kirkyard,” she said, “let them put my body so that when you are buried there I may lie at your feet.” Who would not love to have a servant like that?’