The lawyer's question, Who is my neighbour?' is turned round the other way in Christ's form of it at the close. It is better to ask Whose neighbour am I?' than' Who is my neighbour?' The lawyer meant by the word a person whom I am bound to love.' He wanted to know how far an obligation extended which he had no mind to recognise an inch farther than he was obliged. Probably he had in his thought the Rabbinical limitations which made it as much duty to' hate thine enemy' as to love thy neighbour.' Probably, too, he accepted the national limitations, which refused to see any neighbours outside the Jewish people.
Neighbourhood,' in his judgment, implied' nearness,' and he wished to know how far off the boundaries of the region included in the command lay. There are a great many of us like him, who think that the obligation is a matter of geography, and that love, like force, is inversely as the square of the distance. A good deal of the so-called virtue of patriotism' is of this spurious sort. But Christ's way of putting the question sweeps all such limitations aside. Who became neighbour to' the wounded man? He who showed mercy on him,' said the lawyer, unwilling to name the Samaritan and by his very reluctance giving the point to his answer which Christ wished to bring out. We are not to love because we are neighbours in any geographical sense, but we become neighbours to the man farthest from us when we love and help him. The relation has nothing to do with proximity. If we prove ourselves neighbours to any man by exercising love to him, then the relation intended by the word is as wide as humanity. We recognise that A. is our neighbour when a throb of pity shoots through our heart, and thereby we become neighbours to him.
The story is not, properly speaking, a parable, or imaginary narrative of something in the physical world intended to be translated into something in the spiritual region, but it is an illustration by an imaginary narrative of the actual virtue in question. Every detail is beautifully adapted to bring out the lesson that the obligation of neighbourly affection has nothing to do with nearness either of race or religion, but is as wide as humanity. The wounded man was probably a Jew, but it is significant that his nationality is not mentioned. He is a certain man,' that is all. The Samaritan did not ask where he was born before he helped him. So Christ teaches us that sorrow and need and sympathy and help are of no nationality.
That lesson is still more strongly taught by making the helper a Samaritan. Perhaps, if Jesus had been speaking in America, he would have made him a negro; or, if in France, a German; or, if in England, a foreigner.' It was a daring stroke to bring the despised name of Samaritan into the story, and one sees what a hard morsel to swallow the lawyer found it, by his unwillingness to name him after all.
The nations have not yet learned the deep, simple truth of this parable. It absolutely forbids all limitations of mercy and help. It makes every man the neighbour of every man. It carries in germ the great truth of the brotherhood of the race. Humanity' is a purely Christian word, and a conception that was never dreamed of before Christ had showed us the unity of mankind. We slowly approximate to the realisation of the teaching of this story, which is oftener a admired than imitated, and perhaps oftenest on the lips of people who obey it least.
