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 imploringly, “Make me as one of thy hired servants.”  It need not be remarked, that if hired servants were the superior class; to apply for the situation, and press the suit, savored little of that sense of unworthiness that seeks the dust with hidden face, and cries “unclean.”  Unhumbled nature climbs; or if it falls, clings fast, where first it may.  Humility sinks of its own weight, and in the lowest deep, digs lower.  The design of the parable was to illustrate on the one hand, the joy of God, as he beholds afar off, the returning sinner “seeking an injured father’s face” who runs to clasp and bless him with an unchiding welcome; and on the other, the contrition of the penitent, turning homeward with tears, from his wanderings, his stricken spirit breaking with its ill-desert, he sobs aloud, “The lowest place, the lowest place, I can abide no other.”  Or in those inimitable words, “Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and in thy sight, and no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy HIRED servants.”  The supposition that hired servants were the highest class, takes from the parable an element of winning beauty and pathos.  It is manifest to every careful student of the Bible, that one class of servants, was on terms of equality with the children and other members of the family. (Hence the force of Paul’s declaration, Gal. iv. 1, "Now I say unto you, that the heir, so long as he is a child, DIFFERETH NOTHING FROM A SERVANT, though he be lord of all.") If this were the hired class, the prodigal was a sorry specimen of humility.  Would our Lord have put such language, into the lips of one held up by himself, as a model of gospel humility, to illustrate its lowliness, its conscious destitution of all merit, and deep sense of all ill desert?  If this is humility, put it on stilts, and set it a strutting, while pride takes lessons, and blunders in apeing it.

Here let it be observed, that both Israelites and Strangers, belonged indiscriminately to each class of the servants, the bought and the hired.  That those in the former class, whether Jews or Strangers, were in higher estimation, and rose to honors and authority in the family circle, which were not conferred on hired servants, has been already shown.  It should be added, however, that in the enjoyment of privileges, merely political and national, the hired servants from the Israelites, were more favored than either the hired, or the bought servants from the Strangers.  No one from the Strangers, however wealthy or highly endowed, was eligible to the highest office, nor could he own the soil.  This last disability seems to have been one reason for the different periods of service required of the two classes of bought servants—­the Israelites and the Strangers.  The Israelite was to serve six years—­the Stranger until the jubilee[A].