Then said Jesus unto him, Go, &c.— What a lively picture have we in this parable, of the most disinterested and active benevolence!—A benevolence, which excludes no person, not even strangers or enemies, from its tender regards! which disdains no condescension, grudges no cost, in its labours of love! Could any method of conviction have been more forcible, and at the same time more pleasing, than the interrogatory proposed by our Lord, and deduced from the history, Luke 10:36.? or can there be an advice more suitable to the occasion, more important in its nature, or expressed with a more sententious energy, than Go, and do thou likewise. In this case the learner instructs, the delinquent condemns himself; bigotry hears away its prejudice; and pride (when the moral so sweetly, so imperceptibly insinuates), even pride itself lends a willing ear to admonition.
From our Lord's conduct in the case, we learn how to apply to the passions and prejudices of men, and by what art truth is best and most successfully introduced, where error has been long in possession. Were it a defect in our reason and understanding that made us disagree, and judge and act differently in cases where we have one and the same rule to go by, no human application could reach the distemper; since it is not in our power to enlarge the faculties which are bounded by God and nature; though the Spirit of God can do wonderful things in this respect. But our reason and our understanding are not in fault; they want only to be set free, and to be delivered from the bondage of passion and prejudice, to judge rightly in cases of morality andnatural justice. It is Self which influences the judgment of men, when they obstinately maintain and defend the cause of error or of vice: it is Self that always lies at the bottom: it is not so much the vice as Self that is to be defended; and if you can but separate Self from the vice, (which nothing but the grace of God can do,) the vice will soon be condemned and forsaken. By this honest, this holy art, our Lord convinced the lawyer, who put the question to him, Luke 10:25. He asked the question, intending that none should be admitted into the number of his neighbours, who were not nearly allied to him, of the same nation at least. Our Saviour states a case to him, and puts it so, that his prejudices were all thrown out and silenced. The consequence was, that he who wanted to exclude almost all mankind from a right to his good offices, in a few minutes owns even the Samaritan, his most hated enemy, to be the Jew's neighbour; and by owning and accepting the Samaritan's good offices done to the Jew under the relation of a neighbour, he confessed the Samaritan's right, in that relation, to expect and receive the good offices of the Jew. Whence we may draw the following consequences: 1. It is evident, that the true art of convincing of their errors men of obstinate prejudices, but of general discernment, is, to throw them as much as possible out of their case; for the less a man is concerned himself, the better he judges. You are not in such instances to stir and fret his prejudices, but to decline them; not to reproach him with the error that you condemn, but to place the error at a sufficient distance from him, that he may have a true light to view it in. We have a remarkable instance of this in the conduct of the prophet Nathan with David. But, after all, unless the sacred influences of divine grace accompany our efforts, no genuine good will ever arise even from the most refined arts of reasoning. 2. When once you find yourself, on such occasions, labouring to justify your actions, and searching for expositions which may suit your own inclinations, you may consider yourselfexceedingly far gone from the true liberty of the gospel. 3. If you find yourself involved in the case you are to judge of, instead of seeking for new reasons and arguments whereby to form your opinion, you had much better look back, and reflect what sense you had of this matter before the cause was your own; for it is ten to one but that judgment was much more free and impartial than any that you will make now: or consider, if the case admits it, what is the sense of the truly pious part of mankind; you may more safely trust them than yourself, when your passions are concerned. At least, suppose your enemy in the same circumstances with yourself, and doing what you find yourself inclined to, and consider what judgment you should make of him;—and so judge of yourself.