The Parable of the Good Samaritan

Luke x. 80 — 37.

On those summer mornings, when dews — sowing, as Milton says, the earth with orient pearl — lie thick on the meadow, and hang the trees with diamonds, and the smoke from cottage chimneys rises through the still air in blue and wreathed and graceful columns, the water of a lake looks like a mirror for Nature to admire her beauty in; cloud and mountain, rocks and hanging woods, the cattle that pasture and the flowers that adorn the banks, all faithfully reflected in this beautiful image of a soul at peace. On such an occasion, let a stone be thrown far out into the bosom of the quiet waters, and so soon as it goes down with a sullen plunge, a-wave rises. ‘This assumes the form of a circle, and, widening out equally on all sides, extends itself to embrace a larger and larger sphere. Symbol of our love, such it should be.

To love all in an equal degree is indeed impossible, because though some have larger hearts than others, the affections, like our other powers, act within certain limits. Our understanding is confined within bounds

that it cannot pass; many subjects lie beyond its reach. Our eyes have a limited range of vision; we see the stars, not those who inhabit them. Our ears have a still more limited range of hearing; we see the flash of lightning when, too distant on the horizon or in the upper regions of air for us to hear the thunder, no sound reaches us. On the other hand, God embraces all creatures — those which are farthest removed from him, as well as the lofty archangels that stand nearest his throne. His heart has room enough to hold them all. - Infinite, not less than eternal and unchangeable, unaffected by space or place, knowing neither distance nor nearness, he embraces this world with all its creatures, and all other worlds with theirs, in his heart, as he embraces them all in his arms. But though we were originally made after his image, our affections are of limited capacity. They diminish in strength in proportion as the objects we love are removed from us — as the circle in the lake, the larger it grows in size grows the less in height, till it is lost in the distant waters, or dies with a feeble ripple on the shore. It cannot be otherwise, else we were gods, not men.

We must admit this, and that, as a candle, shining brighter on near than remote objects, gives more light to the room where it burns than to the traveller who sees it gleaming afar in the cottage window, our love necessarily grows weaker the more it is diffused. Still, like light, or the.circle in the water, it ought, not moying in one direction rather than in another, nor limited in its outgoings to our own party, or sect, or race, or country, to diffuse itself on all around. Such is the grand and most necessary lesson which the parable of the Good Samaritan was designed to teach. In considering it, let us attend to

ITS OCCASION.

The Jews had no class whose office corresponded exactly to that of Christian ministers. But in their synagogues, where they met Sabbath by Sabbath to worship, and hear the Word of God enforced and explained, they had assemblies which corresponded more or less with our churches. There, after a fashion now only found among some Baptists and the Society of Friends, the public speaking was not engrossed by the leaders; but any person had the opportunity — which our Lord sometimes embraced — of addressing the congregation. Still, there was a class among the Jews who made the Bible their peculiar study; and who were therefore regarded as authorities on all questions connected with the laws of Moses. These men, the divines as we might call them and probably the common preachers of the country, were therefore called lawyers; and to the question of a man of that class, the world and church owe this beautiful parable.

The Evangelist says that he stood up and tempted our Lord, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? But we should do this lawyer injustice, and violate the charity which, thinking no evil, puts a favorable rather than an unfavorable construction on other men’s conduct, were we to rank him with those who sought by their question about tribute to entrap our Lord. No doubt the same word is used in both instances. But to tempt — as when it is said that God tempted Israel, which in a bad sense we know he could not do — is simply to try; and by the law of charity, as well as from a regard to his answers and whole bearing, this man is entitled to a favorable construction both of his motives and object. He had heard of him whose fame filled the whole land; and to ascertain whether he was as great a teacher as fame, prone to exaggerate, reported, to measure his ability, perhaps to try his soundness, he tested him by this fair and momentous question: ‘Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” It involved a weighty matter; and would God that all of us went to Jesus with the same question but with a still higher object — anxious and eager to be saved.

- The words do and inherit which the lawyer employed, make it probable that there was such confusion in his ideas of the method of salvation as we find among many whose ignorance is less excusable. They seem to think that salvation is half of God’s mercy and half of their own merits; that they are to do something, by way of reconciling themselves to an offended God, Christ doing the rest; his merits supplementing their shortcomings. Their prayers and pains, their good conduct and efforts after a holy life, though not sufficient to save them, are to fit them for being saved by the blood of Jesus. Now, how did our Lord meet such a case? As he treated Peter’s — humbling his pride by bidding him walk the sea. The disciple who would have lorded it over his fellows, and claimed among them such pre-eminence as Popery has since given him

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in the Church, steps proudly on the billows; but has hardly left the boat’s side, when, turning pale at the sight of the crested waves, he begins to sink. He confessed himself unequal to the ambitious task — crying, Lord, save me; I perish. It was such a course that our Lord followed here; and also on another such occasion. He bids this lawyer try the law; keep it if he can; obtain eternal life through obedience, — just to teach him, or rather to make his own failures teach him, that he cannot. When, in reply to Christ’s question, he has recited the sum of the ten commandments, and shown, to his credit be it admitted, that he was acquainted with the spirit as well as the letter of the law, Jesus said to him, ‘‘ Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.”’

Whether there was anything in our Lord’s tone or eye which, while his lips said, ‘“‘ Thou hast answered right: this do and live,” said as plainly as words, You have not done it, and know you have not done it, — l do not know. But his own conscience smote the lawyer — telling him that what it was necessary and right to do, he had not done. ‘To whatever extent he might deceive himself as to his loving God, he knew and remembered — as we all do — many cases in which he had not loved his neighbor as he loved himself. Weill had it been for him had he instantly thrown himself at the feet of Jesus, to ery, ‘Save me; I perish!’’ And well for us, if convincing us of sin and misery, and teaching us our inability to obtain salvation by its works, the law has been a schoolmaster to bring us

to Christ. These words, “This do, and thou shalt ne live,” certainly shut us all up to Christ. Too blind to see this, or too proud to acknowledge it, the lawyer, driven to his shifts, attempts to escape from the di-Jemma in which he finds himself. One door seems open — offering him escape. If he can confine the term neighbor within very narrow limits, he may evade the difficulty, and, though he had failed doing to many what he would have wished them to do to him, satisfy himself that he had kept the whole law. So, hoping to escape by this door — as Luke says, ‘willing to justify himself’’ — he immediately replied: ‘“‘ And who is my neighbor?’’ — a question that our Lord answers by a story, which, launching out beyond its limits, illustrates, in her active and true benevolence, the queen of graces — Christian Love. Let us attend now to the story of the Good Samaritan, as it divides itself into three distinct parts.

THE FIRST ACT.

The curtain rises to show a district of country lying between Jerusalem and Jericho. It is wild and rocky 3. a savage place — whose mountain caves conceal men, savage as the scenes they haunt. When one reads what crimes of violence and robbery were, less than a century ago, committed on travellers in the immediate neighborhood of London, and remembers how in their early days the mails were conveyed along the highroads by guards carrying fire-arms, we cease to wonder that the road between two such towns as Jericho and Jerusalem was infested by bold and bloody robbers. Between these two large cities there was, of course,

much correspondence. Men of wealth and means often travelled the road — offering amid these wild and rocky solitudes a good chance for plunder; and where the carcase was, in outcasts, desperate men, and roving Bedouins, the eagles were gathered together. The gospel narrative represents this road as dangerous; +’ and since some are now getting up objections to the Bible, which they are ignorant enough to fancy new — though they be as old as Tom Paine, and vain enough to deem unanswerable — though, answered over and over again, to refute them be to slay the slain, it may be worth while here to mark the perfect harmony between sacred and common history. Now, to say nothing of other authors, Josephus — the Jewish historian and no Christian, mentions that that road was in his day infested by robbers. It was the scene of such crimes as to be called, The Bloody Way; and so dangerous had it become to travellers, that Jerome states that the Romans found it necessary to erect a fort there for their protection.

Now, it is somewhere among its rocky defiles that the scene of this tragedy is laid. A solitary man appears — travelling from Jerusalem; from which it is said he went down to Jericho, just as we speak of going wp to London, or coming down from it, be- cause it is in point of fact our capital. Issuing from one of the defiles, or springing up from behind some rock, a band of ruffians fall on him. Very probably he stands on his defence. Swords are drawn; blows are struck; overpowered at length by superior numbers, he is felled to the ground. With all haste they plunder his person, nor stop till they strip him naked; and parting with a blow or two to finish their work, on the rule that dead men tell no tales, they hurry oit — leaving him on the ground, insensible, helpless, dying, in a pool of blood. So the first act closes, and the curtain falls.

SECOND ACT.

The curtain rises on the same scene — the man is where he fell, the pool of blood growing larger as life ebbs away. But he is not alone now. ‘Two new characters appear on the road, travellers also going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. The foremost is a priest; the second we might call a priest’s assistant — a Levite. He also is a minister of religion, and an official of the temple. Here again mark the correspondence between this story and what we know from other sources to be well-attested facts. Judging by these, the priest and Levite are the very men we would have expected to appear. The Jewish priests, though their homes were scattered over the country, were required, somewhat as the canons do in Hnglish cathedrals, to serve by turns in the temple at Jerusalem; and since no fewer than twelve thousand priests and Levites had their ordinary residence in Jericho, you will see how often they must have travelled this road, and how natural therefore their appearance on the scene.

Ministers of religion, fresh from the service of the holy sanctuary, men to whom others looked for an example of all that was humane, magnanimous, and godlike, in them surely help was at hand! It seemed

vn ome

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a happy fortune for this unfortunate man that countrymen, strangers neither in faith nor speech nor blood; men devoted to duties calculated not to harden but to soften the heart; not to secularize and lower, but to improve and elevate the mind, and to form, in short, a noble character — should be the first to find him. Alas! this poor, bleeding victim may live or die for them. First the one, and then the other approaches — the Levite making a closer inspection than the priest. What then? No sooner do they see his naked form bleeding to death on the ground, than instead of hasting to his aid, shouting for help, and doing their utmost to save him, both pass on the other side; and, pressing forward, leave him to his miserable fate. David says, Put not your trust in princes; nor — says this story, and many portions of history besides — in priests.

Not that some excuse may not be pleaded for the priest and Levite. Not long years ago, in some cities of fair and sunny Italy, if a man was assassinated in broad day, and on the public streets, people fled the scene, leaving the wretch to die, lest, found by the bloody corpse, they should be accused of the murder. Such might be the fears which moved these men to what seemed a cruel neglect. Besides, it is plain that they themselves were in some danger of sharing a similar fate. The ship steers wide of the rock on which another lies wrecked. Its inhabitants fly from a house on fire — consulting their own safety, and thinking more how they themselves shall escape the danger, than how they may save others from it. And naturally enough supposing that these rocks, in the perpetrators of this bloody deed, concealed men who waited to repeat it on the next passenger, they only did what thousands would have done — when, leaving this poor wretch to his fate, they hurried from the scene. Besides, his case seemed hopeless. To attempt to save him, therefore, was only to waste time, and rashly expose themselves — to risk their own lives without any great probability of being able to-save his. Then they had this flattering unction to lay to their souls, that they had not done this wrong; his blood was not on their hands: neither their friend, nor brother, nor acquaintance, he had no special claim on them. It was other people’s business as much as theirs to aid him. What was he to them, or they to him?

I do not say that these were good excuses. Still, they are as good, and better than many have to offer, who, passing by misery on the other side, indulge a hateful selfishness — heaping up riches at the expense of the poor and needy, to the neglect of such as are ready to perish. God forbid that I should even seem to justify this priest and Levite! ‘‘ With them, mine honor, be not thou united!”’ Yet there are thousands who have no right to condemn them. Condemning them, we are happy if we do not condemn ourselves. The same spirit of hateful and ungodly selfishness still walks the world; and, though in less tragic circumstances, how often have I encountered it — wearing a new face, perhaps a fair mask, but the same old enemy of God and man? The Jewish economy is gone; its temple is a ruin; its priests and Levites have passed from the stage of time — but not that selfish spirit. It belongs to our fallen nature. Nor will it ever be eradicated till God pour out his Spirit upon all flesh, and Christian love, in millennial days, reigns over a regenerated world, and crime and selfishness, if not all suffering, banished from earth, the golden rule shall be universally owned and acted on — ‘‘ Do unto others as ye would have others do unto you.” Hven so come, Lord Jesus! Come quickly!

THIRD ACT.

This story recalls another which I could not read without mingled feelings of anger and admiration. Dismasted and waterlogged on the wide ocean, a thousand miles away from the nearest land, a bark had drifted about till all hope of relief was dead in her starving crew. The cry, a ship! a ship! roused their flagging energies. Shawl and shirt on the end of boat-hooks were waved as signals of distress. The stranger changed her course and bore down on the miserable wreck. They put forth their utmost strength to send a long, loud shout over the deep: and as, on her nearing them, they discovered their country’s flag, they congratulated each other on being saved. Who can fancy what men felt who had been for days hanging over a horrible death, at this blessed change? But still less can we fancy the sudden revulsion of feeling, the terrible sinking of heart, the awful howl which rose to heaven, when the other vessel, sailing near enough to see the ghastly wretches who implored their pity, put about, and, going off on the other tack, left them to despair. Nor was that all. Recalling that scene in the infernal torments of the heathen poet, where Tantalus fills the cup, and no sooner raises it to his thirsty lips, than the water vanishes, the same hopes had been raised before by another ship — manned also by their countrymen, to suffer the same cruel disappointment. Sometimes cold and thin, blood, as their rescue proved, is not always thicker than water. When death had seized some, and despair all, a Norwegian bark, by God’s good providence, came sailing across their path. Pity filled the hearts and eyes of the foreign sailors; nor till they had carried the last survivor on board their ship, did they desert the wreck, and leave it to drift away over the ocean — a wandering coffin with its unburied dead. A noble act! but still nobler his who now appears on the scene of this bloody tragedy to redeem the character of humanity, become an exemplar, in Christ’s hands, to all future ages, and gaining an immortal renown, win for himself the famous title of The Good Samaritan. ‘To appreciate his conduct aright, let us consider

WHO HE WAS.

He was ‘‘a certain Samaritan,” is all that we are told. His name has not been preserved. No matter — he has left a broad footprint on the sands of time: and we may hope that, like many more nameless ones, his memorial is in the ‘‘ book of remembrance’ of which Micah speaks, saying, “‘ They shall be mine, saith the Tord, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I

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% will spare them as a man spareth his son that serveth him.”’ On him, as a Samaritan, the wounded man has no claim; they are not countrymen — one either in blood or faith. The Samaritans were not, as some suppose, a race of degenerate Jews, with the blood of Abraham, though adulterated by admixture, flowing in their veins. When the land that had been occupied by the ten tribes was cleared, and they were carried away into perpetual captivity, their place was supplied thus: “The King of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamoth, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof.”” Heathen colonists, they brought their gods with them; and though, with the view of being delivered from the lions, which, multiplying rapidly while the country lay waste, disputed possession of it with the new settlers, they adopted some Jewish forms, and stood in some awe of him they counted the God of the land, they clung long by their old faith. It is said of them in the book of Kings, what is remarkably descriptive of many professing Christians, ‘‘ they feared the Lord, and served their own gods.” Being enlightened in the course of time by the truth which streamed in on them from the Jews, whose territories surrounded theirs, the Samaritans came at last to abandon the faith and practices of their heathen fathers. Setting up a temple and worship in Samaria, In opposition to that which had its seat in Jerusalem, they became worshipers of the true God.

They had ceased to be heathens; still they were heretics. For, though they admitted the divine authority of the first five Books of Moses, they utterly rejected the Psalms, the prophets, and all the remaining por- ° tions of the Bible. For these reasons the Jews hated. them — their rivalry, their heresy, and their heathen — blood, breeding a bitterly rancorous hatred. So strong was this antipathy, that the woman by Jacob’s well was astonished that our Lord would ask of her even a drink of water, saying, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria! for, adds the evangelist, “‘the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.’’ Refusing them the common civilities of life, they used their name as a term of the bitterest reproach — for everything that was bad and abhorrent. When his enemies, for example, were so transported with rage against our Lord that forgetting the sacredness of the place, they rose up in the temple to stone him, their passions found vent in this speech as the very concentration of the fiercest hatred: ‘Say we not well,’’ they cried, as they gnashed their teeth on him, “Say we not well, that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?”’

It was to one of this race that the priest and Levite left their wounded countryman. Many a bitter gibe and sneer had this Samaritan suffered of the Jews; but now with that wretched man in his hands his hour of vengeance had arrived — and nobly he avenged himself! Alone with the victim, — no eye on him but the vulture’s that, perched on a rock, waited the close of life’s struggle to descend with foul beak and flapping wing on its prey, — he approaches, and bends over the dying man; but not to finish what the robbers had all but.completed. Risking his property, venturing even his life, he treats a fallen enemy as if he had been a wounded brother — his own mother’s son. How beautiful is humanity!

And how hateful the antipathies over which love won this signal triumph! Hateful in the Jew, they are, whether connected with churches, sects, nations, races, or colors, doubly hateful in the Christian — the follower of the meek and lowly and loving Jesus, of him in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free. Yet see how the laws of humanity and Christian love are outraged by the antipathy which the white man bears to the patient and injured African! In America, for instance, color is worse than a crime. The Bible declares that God has made of one blood all nations of the earth, and by one blood redeemed them; and in practical contempt both of God and his word, they refuse to eat at the same table, ride in the same carriage, worship in the same church, or, unless under the pressure of a dire necessity, even to fight in the same ranks with the negro; it is the old story, — ‘‘ the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.”

Here are the old, bad human passions. What if

time should bring round as remarkable a parallel in ’

God’s righteous and retributive providences? Those whom one age sees riding on the top of the wheel of fortune, the next often sees eating dust. The fate of nations, as of individuals, has not seldom illustrated the laws expressed in these sayings: Pride goeth

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before destruction; The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. May those who have enslaved the unhappy negroes, bought and sold their brethren like cattle, trampled them under foot, and, using their name also as a term of reproach, repudiated something more sacred than their State debts — the claims of a common parentage and a common redemption — take warning! The haughty, intolerant, contemptuous Jews would not hear the warn- ing, ‘‘ Woe to the crown of pride!” and now they are a by-word, a proverb, and a hissing, — a nation scattered and peeled. As ages roll on, the providence of God will continue to show that it is not war with its bloody triumphs, nor commerce with its wealth, nor science with its arts, but righteousness that exalteth a nation. Depend on it, that the bread we cast on the waters, whether for evil or for good, will return, though after many days. ‘There is one true policy for nations and individuals. Regardless of immediate consequences, let them do what is right; if they have done wrong repent it, and, if possible, repair it — this their rule: What doth the Lord require of thee? but to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.

. WHAT THE SAMARITAN DID. So soon as he saw the man weltering in his blood, it is said, “he had compassion on him.” So, perhaps, had the priest and Levite. But observe, no mention is made of that; no account is kept of it, any more than we keep account of the blossoms in the orchard that

come to nothing — are beautiful, but nipped by late frosts or blown away by winds, never turn to fruit. In that respect, this book is an exemplar of another, the book of judgment. It is deeds only that are entered there. ‘I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me.” ‘Go and do thou likewise.”’

Now what did the Samaritan do? Conquering his prejudices, and those fears for his safety which amid such scenes and with such a sight before him were not unnatural, he hastes to the rescue. Throwing himself from his steed, he bends over the bleeding form, and finding life still there, applies such remedies as circumstances permitted and his skill suggested. It was and is still common in the Hast, for travellers to carry their provisions with them; and it providentially happened here that what the Samaritan had for eating was not unsuitable for healing — the one man’s meat was fit to be the other man’s medicine. For that purpose he uses it — esteeming it better that he should suffer hunger than that this poor wretch should suffer death. Nor in oil and wine were his applications so unsuitable, and his surgery so rude, as some might fancy. In ancient times oil was employed to mollify wounds and deaden their pain; and wine to stanch ‘ their bleeding; and Galen, one of the greatest of Roman physicians, pronounces them excellent means for such ends. They were at any rate the best he had. Like the woman in the gospel, he did what he could —

git pouring them into the wounds, which he hastily tore his own robes to bind. And as he watched with eager interest the signs of returning life, I can fancy the joy that thrilled through all his frame, when the pulse began again to beat, and color returned to the bloodless cheek, and, opening his eyes, this poor man fixed them with looks of eloquent gratitude on the face of his kind benefactor.

Some, on beginning a good work, go at it at first with zeal; ‘but lacking perseverance, and loving change, they soon turn to something else — tiring of it, as children of their toys. But the Samaritan stuck by the cause on which he had embarked; and so presents an humble illustration of him who will perfect that which concerneth his people, and wherever he begins a good work carry it on to the day of the Lord Jesus. Tenderly lifting up the wounded, he places him on his own beast, and conveys him to an inn, which he (type as we shall see of our Lord) approaches in the form of a servant — walking while the other rides. In these countries no other accommodation was commonly provided for travellers than what the caravanserais still offer in bare walls and the shelter of a roof; but here the inn was one of the few which, anticipating our modern civilization, in landlord and other provisions resembled our own.

Having ventured his life to save the Jew, and plucked him, I may say, from the wreck, bringing him safe to shore, the Samaritan’s work was in a sense done. As the prophet said to the Shunamite, when, having called her boy back to life, he laid him in her

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huppy arms, saying, ‘‘ Woman, behold thy son,” my work is done, it is yours now to care for him, — so he, casting the poor Jew on the kindness of his countrymen, might have left him; and had done so crowned with the highest honors of humanity. But he does more. He will finish what he has so well begun. Business calls him away next morning, but before leaving he undertakes all the expenses of this man’s board and cure. ‘‘’Twopence,” the sum he left with the host, may seem to us inadequate; but money then had a different value from what it has now — a single penny being a. good day’s wages for a good day’s work. Moreover, wise as he was humane, provident as he was generous — qualities that commonly shine in conjunction like binary stars, the Samaritan undertook, in case the sum should fall short, to make good the deficiency when he next came that way. So, earning the admiration of the inn, and followed by the blessings of the wounded man, bringing a blush, let us hope, to the cheek of priest and Levite, and winning for himself an imperishable renown, this most noble philanthropist went on his way — his purse lighter, but his heart happier; in one sense poorer, but in another richer; finding a fame he never sought; and little dreaming of the finger that pointed the eyes of the world to his example, or the voice that said in words which shall ring, in never-dying echoes, on its ear, Go, and do thou like-Wise. i

‘“Go, and do thou likewise’’ — this is the moral of the story. It was told to rebuke the narrow-minded prejudices and selfishness of the Jews. May it rebuke our own! Our Jove is confined within narrow channels, because it 1s a tiny stream. Let it swell into a bigger volume, and these could not contain it; and therefore may God, pouring out his Spirit in showers from heaven, so flood our hearts with love, that it shall burst the boundaries within which education, ecclesiastical or national prejudices confine it, and, burying, drowning them, flow forth to all mankind! By this story Jesus teaches us to do good to all men as we have opportunity, and to rejoice in the opportunities of doing it. If any man’s sorrows need our sympathy, his bodily or spiritual wants our help, let us think no more of asking whether-he belongs to our country or family, our party or church, than if we saw him stretching out his hands from the window of a burning house, or found him, like this object of the Samaritan’s kindness, expiring in a pool of blood. Thus Christ loved us; and thus he teaches us to love one another. This leads me to remark, in bringing these observations to a close, that:

JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF WAS THE GOOD SAMARITAN.

To jaundiced eyes blushing rose, blue sky, and green earth, everything looks yellow; and so much does the appearance of objects depend on the medium through which we regard them, that viewed through stained glass, for instance, they assume its peculiar hue. ‘Thus, if it is colored red, the gentle moon puts on a fierce and angry aspect; and as if, at the sounding of the second angel, the burning mountain of the Apocalypse were cast into the sea, its waters change to blood. Fancy, under the influence of our affection, plays us, if I may say so, such tricks — is equally illusive. Distempered by grief, the weeping mother, in sounds that startle only her, hears the pattering of her dead infant’s feet. Looking through superstitious fears, the peasant sees a ghost in the tombstone which the moon, bursting from a cloud, suddenly whitens; and as the owl hoots from the gray steeple, or brushes past him on noiseless wing, he rushes in frantic terror from the quiet dwellings of the dead. The Romans, bringing to the invasion of our country, tender recollections of their own, on reaching the top of the hill which looks down on the Tay, exclaimed, Behold the Tiber! And under the influence of feelings stronger than fear, more sacred than grief, and loftier than patriotism, fancy has created resemblances and seen things in the Bible, that had no existence other than in a pious imagination. One example of that shines in a constellation of southern skies, and another blooms in the flowers of our conservatories. It was the reverence and love of Jesus Christ in the bosom of the ancient mariner, which, working through fancy, when his ship first plowed the waters of southern seas, saw suspended in the heavens, and formed of brilliant stars — and looking down on the world, the tree on which its Saviour hung; and it was the same piety that discovered in the passion-flower an imitation by the hand of nature of the instruments of our Redeemevr’s torture, and of the halo which now crowns his head in glory. And it is the same piety which, by a pardonable mistake, has in some instances discerned types, symbols, and shadows of Jesus in the Bible, that belong more to the regions of fancy than of fact.

It may be that in seeing Christ in this Good Samaritan, we have passed into this cloud-land; it may be that this is no more than a devout imagination. But the fancy does not, at any rate, pervert God’s word from its grand purpose, nor in the pulpit prostitute to mean and common purposes a place that should be sacred to the saving doctrines of ‘“‘ Jesus Christ and him crucified.’ Here we rise, not sink; and as if we ascended on a sunbeam to its source in the sun itself, here we turn from contemplating Christian love in the Samaritan, to contemplate it in the Saviour — its celestial source and perfect pattern.

Viewed in this light, the story of the Good Samaritan grows in interest, and assumes the grandest character. The whole scene changes: and with it the characters that act their various parts upon the stage. Jerusalem, the city of the living God, with the mountains standing round about her, and crowned by the temple where Jehovah dwelt, now stands for man’s originally happy and holy state. Man leaves it. He goes down from it; travelling downward to that place of misery, so aptly typified by that Jericho, against which the ark and armies of the living God waged war, and whose walls lay under this fatal shadow — “Cursed,”’ said Joshua, as he — stood on its smoking, blood-stained ruins, ‘‘ cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho; he shall lay the foundation thereof in his first-born, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.”’ In the fierce and savage robbers, who issue from their haunts in this gloomy gorge to spring on the traveller, assault him, rob him, strip him, wound him, leaving him to die in his blood, we see the enemy of souls — the spoiler of Eden — the robber of man’s innocence and happiness and honor — Satan, who was a murderer, says our Lord, from the beginning. In the priest and Levite, its fit, official representatives, the law comes with its works. But it does nothing for man — it can do nothing. These, its representatives who pass on the other side, and refuse even to own this wounded wretch, teach us, that ‘by the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified.”’ The law has not the heart of mercy that takes compassion on the lost: nor in atoning merits oil and wine to stop the bleeding of sin’s mortal wounds. ‘These are brought to the scene, to the rescue, to save at the uttermost, by Him who painted his own portrait in the Good Samaritan. ‘* What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”’ There is balm in Gilead, and a physician there.:

If that Good Samaritan was a figure of the God-man, Jesus Christ, would God the man he saved at death’s door was a figure of us! May we be as willing as he to be saved! May we look to Jesus with the love that burned in his heart and beamed in his eyes! May we give ourselves as much over to Christ’s care and cure, as he to his kind benefactor, when he lay in his arms, and hung helpless on his neck; and with still warmer gratitude than his, may we ever cherish in our very heart of -hearts, the memory of this world’s Good

Samaritan! é