SERMON III.

LUKE X. 36, 37.

Which now of these three, thinkeft thou, was neighbour unto him that fell amongst the thieves?-And he faid, He that shewed mercy on bim. Then faid Jefus unto him, Go, and do thou likewife.

I

'N the foregoing verfes of this chapter,

the Evangelift relates, that a certain lawyer stood up and tempted JESUS, faying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eter-. nal life?-To which enquiry, our SAVIOUR, as his manner was, when any ensnaring question was put to him, which he faw proceeded more from a design to entangle him, than an honeft view of getting information. -inftead of giving a direct anfwer, which might afford a handle to malice, or at best ferve only to gratify an impertinent hu

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mour-he immediately retorts the question upon the man who afked it, and unavoidably puts him upon the neceffity of answering himself:—and as, in the present cafe, the particular profeffion of the enquirer, and his fuppofed general knowledge of all other branches of learning, left no room to suspect he could be ignorant of the true answer to his queftion, and especially of what every one knew was delivered upon that head by their great Legislator, our SAVIOUR, therefore, refers him to his own memory of what he had found there in the course of his ftudies.What is written in the law; how readeft thou? -Upon which the enquirer, reciting the general heads of our duty to GoD and MAN, as delivered in the 18th of Leviticus, and the 6t of Deuteronomy,-namely-That we fhould worship the Lord our God with all our bearts, and love our neighbour as ourselves; our bleffed SAVIOUR tells him, he had anfwered right, and if he followed that leffon, he could not fail of the blessing he seemed defirous to inherit.-This do, and thou shalt live.

But he, as the context tells us, willing to juftify himself-willing poffibly to gain

more

more credit in the conference, or hoping, perhaps, to hear fuch a partial and narrow definition of the word neighbour as would suit his own principles, and justify fome particular oppreffions of his own, or those of which his whole order lay under an accufation-fays unto JEsus, in the 29th verse-And who is my neighbour? Though the demand, at first fight, may feem utterly trifling, yet was it far from being fo in fact. For according as you understood the term in a more or a lefs reftrained senseit produced many neceffary variations in the duties you owed from that relation.. relation.-Our bleffed SAVIOUR, to rectify any partial and pernicious mistake in this matter, and place, at once, this duty of the love of our neighbour upon its true bottom of philantropy and univerfal kindness, makes anfwer to the propofed queftion, not by any far-fetched refinement from the schools of the Rabbies, which might have fooner filenced than convinced the manbut by a direct appeal to human nature, in an inftance he relates of a man falling among thieves, left in the greatest distress imaginable, till by chance a Samaritan, an utter stranger, coming where he was, by an act of great goodness and compaffion, not only relieved.

him at present, but took him under his protection, and generoufly provided for his future. safety.

On the close of which engaging accountOur SAVIOUR appeals to the man's own heart in the firft verfe of the text-Which now of these three, thinkeft thou, was neighbour unto him. that fell among ft the thieves? and instead of drawing the inference himself, leaves him to decide in favour of fo noble a principle fo evidently founded in mercy.-The lawyer, ftruck with the truth and juftice of the doctrine, and frankly acknowledging the force of it, our bleffed SAVIOUR concludes the debate with a fhort admonition, that he would practife what he had approved-and go and imitate that fair example of universal benevolence which it had fet before him.

In the remaining part of the difcourfe I shall follow the fame plan; and therefore shall beg leave to enlarge, First, upon the story itself, with fuch reflections as will rife from it; and conclude, as our SAVIOUR has done, with the fame exhortation to kindness and humanity which fo naturally falls from it.

A certain

A certain man, fays our SAVIOUR, went down from Jerufalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who ftripped him of his raiment and departed, leaving him half dead. There is something in our nature which engages us to take part in every accident to which man is fubject, from what cause soever it may have happened; but in fuch calamities as a man has fallen into through mere misfortune, to be charged upon no fault or indifcretion of himself, there is something then so truly interesting, that at first fight we generally make them our own, not altogether from a reflection that they might have been or may be so, but oftener from a certain generofity and tenderness of nature which difpofes us for compassion, abstracted from all confiderations of self: so that, without any obfervable act of the will, we fuffer with the unfortunate, and feel a weight upon our fpirits, we know not why, on seeing the most common inftances of their distress. But where the spectacle is uncommonly tragical, and complicated with many circumftances of mifery, the mind is then taken captive at once, and, were it inclined to it, has no power to make refiftance, but furrenders itself to all