between hired servants and their masters.  Their untrustworthiness was proverbial.  John ix. 12, 13.  None but the lowest class engaged as hired servants, and the kinds of labor assigned to them required little knowledge and skill.  Various passages show the low repute and trifling character of the class from which they were hired.  Judg. ix. 4; 1 Sam. ii. 5.  The superior condition of bought servants is manifest in the high trusts confided to them, and in their dignity and authority in the household.  In no instance is a hired servant thus distinguished.  The bought servant is manifestly the master’s representative in the family—­with plenipotentiary powers over adult children, even negotiating marriage for them.  Abraham adjured his servant not to take a wife for Isaac of the daughters of the Canaanites.  The servant himself selected the individual.  Servants also exercised discretionary power in the management of their masters’ estates, “And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his master, for all the goods of his master were under his hand.”  Gen. xxiv. 10.  The reason assigned for taking them, is not that such was Abraham’s direction, but that the servant had discretionary control.  Servants had also discretionary power in the disposal of property.  See Gen. xxiv. 22, 23, 53.  The condition of Ziba in the house of Mephibosheth, is a case in point.  So in Prov. xvii. 2.  Distinct traces of this estimation are to be found in the New Testament, Matt. xxiv. 45; Luke xii, 42, 44.  So in the parable of the talents; the master seems to have set up each of his servants in trade with a large capital.  The unjust steward had large discretionary power, was “accused of wasting his master’s goods,” and manifestly regulated with his debtors, the terms of settlement.  Luke xvi. 4-8.  Such trusts were never reposed in hired servants.

[Footnote A:  “For the purchased servant who is an Israelite, or proselyte, shall fare as his master.  The master shall not eat fine bread, and his servant bread of bran.  Nor yet drink old wine, and give his servant new; nor sleep on soft pillows, and bedding, and his servant on straw.  I say unto you, that he that gets a purchased servant does well to make him as his friend, or he will prove to his employer as if he got himself a master.”—­Maimonides, in Mishna Kiddushim.  Chap. 1, Sec. 2.]

The inferior condition of hired servants, is illustrated in the parable of the prodigal son.  When the prodigal, perishing with hunger among the swine and husks, came to himself, his proud heart broke; “I will arise,” he cried, “and go to my father.”  And then to assure his father of the depth of his humility, resolved to add, “Make me as one of thy hired servants.”  If hired servants were the superior class—­to apply for the situation, savored little of that sense of unworthiness that seeks the dust with hidden face,