(4) For what is _legitimately and honestly our own_. “Give us,” so runs the petition, “our daily bread.” I do not think it is at all fanciful to interpret this pronoun OUR, as Dr. Dods does, to mean that the bread we pray for must be _our own_ and not another’s; that is to say, it must be fairly earned and honestly come by. “Except a man work,” so says the Scripture, “neither shall he eat.” The divine law is that the bread a man eats should be bread won by his own labour. But there are plenty of people in this world who try to live out of the labour of other people. They are busy, as the saying is, “taking the bread out of other people’s mouths.” They do this not simply by deception and theft and robbery—they do it also by unfair competition, by false dealing, by bogus company promoting, by stock-exchange gambling, by oppression, injustice and wrong. There are those among us who devote their talents to the task of drawing hard-earned money out of the pockets of English people without giving value in return. They want to live and grow fat on the bread of others, not on bread of their own earning. But what we have to pray for is _our own_ bread, bread honestly and fairly earned. That little word “our” stands there to warn us against all dishonesty, trickery, fraud, injustice. The man of business must be able to say that every sovereign of his profits has been gained by fair and honest trading. The artisan must be able to say that every penny in his week’s wage has been earned by good and faithful labour. The master who pays his men less than their due, the man who wastes his master’s time, the shopkeeper who resorts to sharp practices—in fact, any one who strives to get hold of money otherwise than by fairly and squarely earning it, are all sinning against the spirit of this prayer which teaches us to say, “Give us this day _our_ daily bread.”