ST. LUKE X. 37 201
been to lose the truth. The lawyer, steeped in all the traditions and instincts of his class, wanted our Lord to give him a clear and precise definition of his neighbour ; to mark him out, and set him apart from the general mass of mankind. But definition means limitation. If our Lord had said, "This man is your neighbour," the inference in the lawyer's mind would have been, " Then that other is not my neighbour ; I need not concern myself with him ; I can pass him by." But this conclusion would have been the very error which Jesus came to banish. He could put the man right only by declining to answer the question ; by taking him to a wholly different standpoint, and making him start there, namely — " Be in your own spirit neighbourly, and then every man will be your neighbour."
^ In our religious and moral difficulties we throw out some question as a sort of challenge, persuading ourselves that it is really decisive. Often it remains unanswered. We are dis- appointed, discomfited. Under such failure of their self-chosen test questions, men often give up their faith or surrender their moral struggle. But, apart from the petulance, the impetuosity, or the effort to "justify oneself" which a little honest self-scrutiny would often discover in our questions, and which are sufficient to deprive them of any right to an answer, God's wisdom may see that they spring from a wrong attitude of mind, that they are not facing the line of truth, and therefore may refuse to answer them. But all the while in some other way, at the moment perhaps not discerned. He may be leading us to the truth. While our mind remains a blank as to that particular difficulty which we thought of such crucial importance, He may be bringing some other truth before us, or shaping our lives by some special experience, so that after a time we shall find, perhaps without knowing how, that that old question has been answered in some other way, or has been proved futile or superfluous.^
There are, who darkling and alone,
Would wish the weary night were gone,
Though dawning day should only show
The secret of their unknown woe ;
Who pray for sharpest throbs of pain
To ease them of doubt's galling chain :
*• Only disperse the cloud," they cry,
"And if our fate be death, give light and let us die."
1 C. G. Lang.
202 THE GOOD SAMARITAN
Unwise I deem them, Lord, unmeet
To profit by Thy chastenings sweet.
For Thou wouldst have us linger still
Upon the verge of good or ill,
That on Thy guiding hand unseen
Our individual hearts may lean,
And this our frail and foundering bark
Glide in the narrow wake of Thy beloved ark,
So be it, Lord; I know it best,
Though not as yet this wayward breast
Beat quite in answer to Thy voice;
Yet surely I have made my choice:
I know not yet the promised bliss,
Know not if I shall win or miss;
So doubting, rather let me die,
Than close with aught beside, to last eternally.^
II.
The Lessons of the Paeable.
The road from Jerusalem to Jericho, which nature has blasted with sterility, Christ has refreshed with a tale of the most delicious humanity. That tale, if regarded merely as a picture of the time — as painting with a few strokes its most marked forms of character, and distributing their genuine colours over its peculiar prejudices, vices and miseries, possesses inimitable beauty. There is the Priest, whom we are accustomed to see amid the stir of Jerusalem — the very model of pompous piety, the master of^ sanctimonious ceremonies, beating his breast in the market-place, and stretching forth his hands at the corners of the streets, the scrupulous adviser of the people's conscience. We are invited to see him on the solitary ride. His back turned to the metropolis, he is a saint no more ; he performs no charities among the hills ; delivered from the public eye, he breaks loose from the moralities of life and the reverence of God. There is the Levite, a kind of menial of the sacerdotal order, whose conduct towards " him that fell among thieves " is true to his usual mimicry of the priests, with whose interests his own are interwoven, and whose habits and hypocrisy he copies to the life. And there is the Samaritan * John Keble, The Christian Year.
ST. LUKE X. 37 203
— half foreigner, half apostate, and more wholly outcast than if he had been idolater downright — the object of irritating historical recollection, the living memorial of captivity and schism, the centre of a hate both national and religious. With no office, or digni- fied caste, like the others, to protect him from peril by their sanctity, but traversing a hostile country, he stops to bind the wounds of a stranger.
^ No one has made the " Good Samaritan " so real to the soul's eye as Watts in his picture of that name. It ceases to be a parable ; it becomes a vivid incident of daily life. The naked, dead-alive condition of the Jew who had fallen among thieves, clinging with a despairing grip to the supporting arm of the stranger who has come at the last extremity to his help; the benevolent face of that stranger and alien — so full of pity, so capable to save, so prompt to interpose, could not possibly have been presented in a more graphic way ; while the lonely, desolate region, half-way between Jerusalem and Jericho, is depicted with a magic touch which adds immensely to the pathos of the scene. The whole story is seen as by a lightning flash, and it makes its appeal to the heart in a manner which cannot be resisted. " Go, and do thou likewise " is felt with irresistible power by every one who gazes upon that moving sight, and the selfishness that would make one pass by on the other side, and disclaim all connexion with a human brother in distress, whose creed and conditions of life are different from ours, becomes impossible.^