^ E. Mellor, The Hem, of Christ's Garment, 185.
8 W, R. Moody, The Life of Dmg^fct L. Moody, 439.
V
2o6 THE GOOD SAMARITAN
withstanding their high religious rank, they were as cold and heartless as the most blatant infidel could be. On the other hand, the Samaritan was neighbourly, not because he was a religious man, but right in the teeth of his religious teaching. The best Samaritan lover of God, according to his creed, was the best Samaritan hater of the religion of his neighbours in Judaea ; just as among ourselves, the most approved Protestant is by some thouc^ht to be the most bitter anti-Catholic demonstrator.
^ A clergyman wrote to me, "I am a Calvinist ; belief in the Incarnation appears to me indispensable to salvation, and to my recognition of any one as a child of God. But I confess that the enormous difficulty of at least apparent facts staggers me ; one of the most perfect characters I know is an aged tJnitarian lady ; but then are there not most exemplary people to be found who deny all Christianity in every shape and form ? The more I think of it the more perplexed I am." ^
^ Some time ago, dismasted and waterlogged on the boundless sea, a barque had drifted about, until it was one thousand miles from any land, and all hope of relief had died out from the minds of her starving crew. The cry, " A ship ! a ship ! " roused the dying energies of the men, and at once shawls and shirts on the ends of oars and boat-hooks were waved as signals of distress. The stranger vessel changed her course and bore down upon the miserable wreck. The wretched sufferers tried with united voice to send a cry of welcome over the waves, and when they recognized their country's flag they rejoiced at the sure prospect of relief. We cannot realize what they felt as help drew near, after having for days anticipated an awful death, but still less can we imagine their awful revulsion of feeling, and the howl of despair which rent the air, when the vessel, sailing near enough to see the ghastly wretches in their destitute condition, stayed in its course, tacked about, and sailed away, leaving them to their fate. Nor was this all; the same thing had been done by another vessel previously, which also bore their country's flag and colours. So they endured the tortures of Tantalus, and abandoned themselves to despair. When death had thinned their numbers, and all were laid helpless, suddenly, by God's pity, a Norwegian vessel sailed across their path. Compassion filled the hearts of the foreign sailors, and tender succour was afforded them. Nor was it until the last survivor had been carried on board the ship that they left the wreck to drift away, a derelict cofiin, with its unburied dead.^
1 J. Martineau, National Duties, 184. 2 y^^ j^ Townsend,
ST. LUKE X. 37 207
3. Need is the measure of neighbourliness. — Max Miiller said that to the Greek every man not speaking Greek was a barbarian ; , / to the Jew every man not circumcised was a Gentile ; to the Muhammadan every man not believing in the prophet of Arabia was an infidel. "It was Christianity that struck the word ' barbarian ' from the dictionaries of mankind and replaced it with the word 'brother.'" Under the influence of the teaching and spirit of Christ we are coming to see that all men everywhere are neighbours, and that it is open to us to do something to help the wounded pilgrim on life's highway.
^ Longfellow spoke of his feelings at a banquet when so many were in the outer darkness and in direst need. He spoke of the poverty-stricken millions who challenge our wine and bread ; and impeach us all as traitors, the living and the dead.
And whenever I sit at the banquet,
Where the feast and song are high, Amid the mirth and the music
I can hear that awful cry.
And hollow and haggard faces,
Look into the lighted hall, And wasted hands are extended
To catch the crumbs that fall.
For within there is light and plenty,
And odours fill the air ; And without there is cold and darkness,
And hunger and despair.^
^ We cannot read John Woolman's Journal without seeing how — to use his own quaint and beautiful phraseology — he was " baptized into a feeling sense of all conditions." His sympathies knew neither barrier nor boundary. His devotion braced itself to the expenditure of any energy and the endurance of any sacrifice. Wherever he discovered a weary and oppressed man or woman, he recognized his neighbour and his brother. Whatever he could do for these forlorn and broken travellers, lying wounded by the wayside of life and forgotten by the majority who passed by, was done cheerfully, unpretentiously, graciously. " In Pharais," Fiona Macleod tells us — and Pharais is Celtic for Paradise — " there are no tears shed, though in the remotest part of it there is a grey
^ A. McLean, WTiere the Book Speaks, 83.
2o8 THE GOOD SAMARITAN
pool, the weeping of all the world, fed everlastingly by the myriad eyes that every moment are somewhere wet with sorrow, or agony, or vain regret, or vain desire. And those who go there stoop, and touch their eyelids with that grey water, and it is as balm to them, and they go healed of their too great joy ; and their songs thereafter are the sweetest that are sung in the ways of Pharais." This was the paradise in which John Woolman sojourned through all his fifty years of life. He was always stooping and touching his eyelids with the grey water. His pity overleaped the fences and trammels which hem ours in.^