Article August 24, 1929 Issue

Oil and Wine

MAUDE E. ROBERTS

Where can we find greater inspiration and instruction as to the way of true happiness and eternal life than in the parable of the good Samaritan, as recorded in the tenth chapter of Luke's Gospel?

A lawyer of Jesus' day asked the Master how he might obtain eternal life. Jesus asked him in reply: "What is written in the law? how readest thou?" The lawyer knew the letter of the law; but when Jesus told him to go and put it into practice and it would bring him eternal life, his attitude betrayed how little of the spirit of the law he had imbibed. He had not yet learned of the law which combines mercy with justice, which lifts the burdens from sorrowing hearts, comforts and heals them. Willing to justify his actions according to his own concept of law, he asked, "And who is my neighbour?"

Was ever an answer so complete, so instructive, so full of inspiration and love, so illustrative of the manner in which real and lasting happiness is attained as the parable which Jesus then presented? As we ponder this parable, do not our thoughts go back to our own experience before we learned of the perfect man of God's creating? Like the traveler in the parable, not realizing that our real home, our dwelling place, is in Mind, eternal good, we accepted the testimony of the five corporeal senses, and believed that they were the avenues through which happiness must come to us; we believed that matter had power to rob us of health, activity, happiness—of life itself. These beliefs had stripped us of our raiment, wounded us, and left us fearful, hopeless, and helpless.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

How Divine Love Meets the Human Need