Article May 16, 1925 Issue

The Good Samaritan

FLORENCE L. MORGAN

One of the most beautiful of the parables, those simple yet forceful word pictures with which Christ Jesus illustrated the truths he taught, is that of the good Samaritan. Its direct, tender appeal was brought forth in response to the question of the lawyer who, "willing to justify himself," demanded, "Who is my neighbour?" In the silence of a listening crowd one can almost hear the mental conflict as error, stirred and enraged, sought to entangle the calm yet unfaltering Jesus, whose understanding of the ever-presence of God's kingdom protected not only himself, but all those seekers of the light who eagerly awaited the reply of him who spake as "never man spake."

It was typical of his courage and insight that the Master, surrounded by Pharisaical intolerance and faced with the blind opposition of ignorance and fear, rebuked the pride of his listeners by choosing one of a despised race, a Samaritan, as an example of brotherly love, as a type of compassionate thought, expressed in a tender, practical, healing message to mankind. The good Samaritan,—such simplicity! We are told in John's gospel that the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. Yet the Samaritans expressed many good qualities, as witness the woman of Samaria to whom the Christ was revealed at Jacob's well; and, also, in the case of the ten lepers who were healed, the one who returned to give thanks was a Samaritan.

As we turn to the sweet, familiar words in the tenth chapter of Luke's gospel, we read that "a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead." Let us pause a moment. Have not we all, at some time, and perhaps often in our journeyings, been overtaken by thieves (the suggestions of material sense, the false beliefs of the fleshly or carnal mind), and seemed to be robbed of much or of all that we had? The treasures of Truth, among which are courage, faith, spiritual understanding, integrity of thought, clearness of vision,—yea, health itself,—these, it seemed, had been wrested from us, and we had been left, stripped and unable to rise, half dead by the roadside. Popular theology, typified in the parable by a priest, with a material sense of religion, cold and formal, passed by on the other side. Next, in the Bible story, came the Levite; and he too passed by on the other side.

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