(1) Martineau denies that we are bound to be neighbourly to those who are in need. He says, " We are under no obligation to love as ourselves the selfish, the malignant, the depraved. Such are not our neighbours, but occupy the same position with respect to us as the Priest and the Levite in the parable, from whom, it is plain, Jesus withheld the appellation. That Christian morality is hostile to personal resentment, that it softens the irritations of natural passion by the memory of our common nature and common immortality, that it so lifts the eye above the little orbit of our earthly life that we may serenely study its seeming disorders, that it 80 enfolds us in consciousness of universal providence that nothing can seem totally deranged in the affairs of men, is perfectly true ; but it does not stifle, it rather quickens our moral indigna- tion and aversion against wrong; and while it disposes us to patient and practical exertion for the debased, while it creates for us new moral obligations towards them, which no other religion ever recognized, it yet renders the sentiment of interior affection for them more unattainable than ever. In spite of all the refine- ments of a sentimental morality, it is impossible to separate in our regard the agent and the act ; disgust at intemperance is disgust at the intemperate; aversion to hypocrisy is aversion to the hypocrite ; indignation at tyranny is indignation at the tyrant. That honour, which, for the sake of our universal Father, is due to all men, that respect which, in consideration of its great futurity, is to be rendered to every human soul, and that promptitude of beneficent effort which, in hope of abating misery, must be ready for every occasion, are never to be withheld from natures the most lost ; but emotion of love like that which springs upward to God, the affection which even our self-respect must not be permitted * Alexander Smellie, in Introduction to The Journal of John Woolman, zziii.
ST. LUKE X. 37 209
to exceed, is too holy to be squandered on any but those who bear on them the signature of Divine approval." ^
(2) But on the other hand let us hear what Dr. Whyte has to say : " It has been said of Goethe that, like this Priest and this Levite, he kept well out of sight of stripped and wounded and half-dead men. I hope it is not true of that great intellectual man. At any rate it is not true of Jesus Christ. For He comes and He goes up and down all the bloody passes of human life, actually looking for wounded and half-dead men, and for none else, till He may well bear the name of The one and only entirely Good and True Samaritan. They are here to whom He has said it and done it. * When I passed by thee, and saw thee wounded and half-dead, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live ; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live. Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was a time of love. Then washed I thee with water, and I anointed thee with oil.' And we ourselves are the proof of it." 2 ■—
0 Christ the Life, look on me where I lie
Eeady to die : 0 Good Samaritan, nay, pass not by.
0 Christ, my Life, pour in Thine oil and wine
To keep me Thine; Me ever Thine, and Thee for ever mine.
Watch by Thy saints and sinners, watch by all
Thy great and small: Once Thou didst call us all, — 0 Lord, recall.
V
Think how Thy saints love sinners, how they pray
And hope alway. And thereby grow more like Thee day by day.
0 Saint of saints, if those with prayer and vow
Succour us now. . . . It was not they died for us, it was Thou.^
* J. Martineau, National Duties, 183.
2 A. Whyte, Our Lord's Characters, 237. ^
3 Christina G. Rossetti, Verses, 207. ^ ' ST. LUKE — 14
2IO THE GOOD SAMARITAN
4. Neighbourliness means sacrifice. — It is not difficult to imagine that the priest who passed the wounded man so heartlessly might say to himself, " Poor man ! he has been roughly handled by some highwaymen, but he has not long to live now, that is clear, and he might as well die where he is as anywhere else." Or he might say : " Ah ! this is a pitiable case ; but really it is not the place for any man to linger in ; and if I encumber myself with the care of him, the robbers, who may even now be hiding beneath some bush or behind some rock, may swoop like vultures down on me, and make of me another victim." Or he might say: "I am anxious to get home, and if I charge myself with the duty of taking this poor man to Jericho, it will greatly retard my progress." All of which means that he would have been neighbour to him that fell among thieves if it had cost him nothing — if it had left untouched his time, his comfort, and his ease. And there are thousands who would be neighbours on the same easy condi- tions, but such is not the spirit which our Saviour commends. The man who would be a follower of the good Samaritan must be one who is endowed with the spirit of sacrifice.