parable of the Good Samaritan, upon which here, for the moment,
I should like to dwell.

The Jewish State in the time of Jesus was substantially an
ecclesiastical aristocracy. The highest rank was occupied by the
priests and their assessors, the Levites; after them, sometimes
disputing the first place, came the doctors learned in the sacred
law; below them the commonalty; and still lower in the social scale
were the people of Samaria, who accepted the current Jewish
religion only in part, and who were regarded by the blue-blood
ecclesiastical aristocrats with contempt, indeed almost as outcasts.
This fact it is necessary to remember in order to understand the
parable. The designation Good Samaritan has become so associated
with the idea of mercifulness, that I doubt not there are
many persons who have the impression that Samaritans in the
ancient Hebrew days were people specially noted for their
benevolent disposition. Nothing of the kind, of course, is true. The
Samaritans were a despised lower stratum of the population of
Palestine. Read the parable in this light, and you will perceive that
the moral of it is not as commonly stated--every one who has need
of me is my neighbor; but that there is a far deeper meaning in it.

There came to Jesus one day a man versed in the sacred law, and
asked him what he must do to inherit eternal life. And Jesus
replied: The substance of right conduct is plain enough. Why do
you ask as if it were a thing very recondite and difficult? Love thy
God and thy neighbor. But the doctor of the sacred law, wishing
to justify himself (wishing to show that the way of the upright life
is not so plain, that it may be difficult to decide whom one should
regard as one's equal, to whom one should ascribe worth), asked:
Who is my neighbor? And Jesus replied in the words of the
well-known parable concerning a certain man who had fallen among
thieves, and these stripped him of his raiment and left him for dead
on the public road that runs between Jerusalem and Jericho.
Presently a member of the high aristocracy, a priest, passed by, but
paid no attention to the sufferer; then another, a Levite, came that
way, looked at the man who was lying there helpless, and turned
and went on his journey. Then there came one of those low-caste
despised Samaritans; and he acted like a tender human brother,
bound up the man's wounds, poured oil and wine into them, etc.
And Jesus said: Which one of these three showed