and its beauty from diversity and
contrast.

"'Every man shall bear his own burden.' True: but now turn to an earlier
verse in the same chapter--

"'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.' Yes;
while Heaven ordains to each his peculiar suffering, it connects the
family of man into one household, by that feeling which, more perhaps
than any other, distinguishes us from the brute creation--I mean the
feeling to which we give the name of _sympathy_--the feeling for each
other! The herd of deer shuns the stag that is marked by the gunner; the
flock heedeth not the sheep that creeps into the shade to die; but man
has sorrow and joy not in himself alone, but in the joy and sorrow of
those around him. He who feels only for himself abjures his very nature
as man; for do we not say of one who has no tenderness for mankind that
he is _inhuman_? and do we not call him who sorrows with the sorrowful,
_humane_?

"Now, brethren, that which especially marked the divine mission of our
Lord, is the direct appeal to this sympathy which distinguishes us from
the brute. He seizes not upon some faculty of genius given but to few,
but upon that ready impulse of heart which is given to us all; and in
saying, 'Love one another,' 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' he elevates
the most delightful of our emotions into the most sacred of his laws.
The lawyer asks our Lord, 'who is my neighbor?' Our Lord replies by the
parable of the good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite saw the wounded
man that fell among the thieves, and passed by on the other side. That
priest might have been austere in his doctrine, that Levite might have
been learned in the law; but neither to the learning of the Levite, nor
to the doctrine of the priest, does our Saviour even deign to allude.
He cites but the action of the Samaritan, and saith to the lawyer,
'Which now of these three, thinkest thou was neighbor unto him that fell
among the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy unto him. Then said
Jesus unto him, 'Go, and do thou likewise.'

"O shallowness of human judgments! It was enough to be born a Samaritan
in order to be rejected by the priest, and despised by the Levite. Yet
now, what to us the priest and the Levite, of God's chosen race though
they were? They passed from the hearts of men when they passed the
sufferer by the wayside; while this loathed Samaritan, half thrust from
the pale of the Hebrew, becomes of our family, of ou