3. Finally lay stress on the example — " go, and do thou like- wise " — for here lies the moral of the whole. School and train the sensibility and tenderness of heart which God has given to you
^ Joseph Parker.
ST. LUKE X. i^ 215
into the practice of active mercy towards those who stand in need of it ! Do, by ready and ungrudging bounty if God has blessed you with affluence ; in any case by active kindness towards the sick and sorrowing and helpless who shall cross your path, strive in some small measure to pay back to Christ His own unspeakable compassion upon you! For the one prevision of earth's final judgment let fall by Him in talk with His disciples measures acceptance or rejection, weal or woe, the right hand or the left, not by Godward consciousness, integrity of conduct, purity of life, but solely by the loving succour extended to the wounded on life's way, to the suffering, the needy, the forlorn, imaged in whom He saw, and commanded them to see, Himself.
H This day last year Livingstone died — a Scotchman and a Christian, loving God and his neighbour, in the heart of Africa. " Go thou and do likewise ! " — Mackay's Diary, Berlin, May 4th, 1874.1
Have you had a kindness shown?
Pass it on ; 'Twas not given for thee alone,
Pass it on; Let it travel down the years. Let it wipe another's tears, Till in heav'n the deed appears —
Pass it on.
Did you hear the loving word?
Pass it on; Like the singing of a bird?
Pass it on; Let its music live and grow, Let it cheer another's woe; You have reaped what others sow.
Pass it on.
*Twas the sunshine of a smile,
Pass it on ; Staying but a little while!
Pass it on; April beam, the little thing, Still it makes the flow'rs of spring, Makes the silent birds to sing —
Pass it on.
* Mackay of Uganda, 10.
2i6 THE GOOD SAMARITAN
Have you found the heav'nly light?
Pass it on ; Souls are groping in the night,
Daylight gone; Hold thy lighted lamp on high, Be a star in some one's sky, He may live who else would die —
Pass it on.
Be not selfish in thy greed,
Pass it on ; Look upon thy brother's need,
Pass it on; Live for self, you live in vain ; Live for Christ, you live again ; Live for Him, with Him you reign—-
Pass it on.
The One Thing Needful,
Literature.
Aitchison (J.), The Children's Own, 247.
Chadwick (W. E.), Christ and Everyday Life, 144.
Crawford (T. J.), The Preaching of the Cross, 255.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, iii. 512.
Flint (R,), Sermons and Addresses, 123.
Furst (A.), True Nobility of Character, 15.
Gray (W. A.), Laws and Landmarks of the Sinritual Life, 27.
Goulburn (E. M.), Thoughts on Personal Religion, 278.
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year : Miscellaneous, 289.
Laidlaw (J.), Studies in the Parables, 231.
McFadyen (J. E.), The City with Foundations^ 13.
Martineau (J.), Hours of Thought, i. 59.
Morris (A. J.), The Open Secret, 74.
Morrison (G.), The House of God, 159.
Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, iii. 318.
Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, i. 137.
Reichel (C. P.), Sermons, 237.
Rutherford (R.), That Good Part, 1.
Stimson (H. A.), The New Tilings of God, 141.
Temple (F.), Rugby Sermons, ii. 154.
Vincent (M. R.), God and Bread, 39.
Winterbotham (R.), Sermons, 359.
Homiletic Review, Ivi. 383 (J. Williams).
Preacher's Magazine, xi. 369 (J. W. Key worth).
Sunday Magazine, 1893, p. 205 (B. Waugh).
•i»
The One Thing Needful.
But one thing is needful : for Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.— Luke x. 42.
1. An unending interest broods over this story. We return to it again and again, finding fresh lessons in it every time. Martha and Mary are sisters to whom every reader of the Lord's life is drawn. In a certain way we feel grateful to them. They opened their home to the Lord when others cast Him out. They believed in Him ; they ministered to Him ; they worshipped Him. Yet to many readers they are a perplexing study. The one seems to exhibit a life ideal and spiritual ; the other a life care-filled and worldly. It is a contrast which everybody feels to be painful; against which we all, at one time or another, have uttered our silent protest. Yet it continues to be felt. The two sisters have come to be looked upon as types of contrasted life rather than living beings — types vague and conventional, mere figures in an old story, portraits of which the true features are effaced, the legend over the one being a word of praise, under the other a word of blame.
But the memory of the two women was not preserved in the Gospels to be a perplexity, or a contrast, or a mere mist cloud of vagueness and uncertainty. It is plain that to the two writers who have recorded their story, the forms of the sisters were definite, clear cut, natural, very human, and such as were to be studied in after days, and pondered, and profited by. And certainly the Lord had two very real, very greatly esteemed souls in His presence when He addressed them as He is here represented.