SERMON AND PUBLIC MEETINGS IN CONNECTION WITH THE CONVENTION. THE following Discourse was preached in St. Botolph's Church, Aldersgate-street, London, on Sunday Evening, August 31st, under the auspices of the City of London Temperance Association, Albion Hall, London Wall, in connection with the Convention, by the Rev. HENRY GALE, B.C.L., Rector of Treborough, Somerset. I THE GOOD SAMARITAN. Which now of these three thinkest thou was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? HAVE a strong impression, my dear brethren, that there never was a period in the world's history when professing Christians required more to be reminded of their every-day duties than at the present time. It is too true that the visible church of all denominations is assenting to social customs and laws which are repugnant to morality and obstructive of the Gospel; and therefore I humbly pray that the God of all grace will vouchsafe to us the aid of his Holy Spirit whilst we consider the text in reference to some special duty of our own day. There is much practical charity carried out in alms-giving, and other efforts to benefit the poor and degraded around us, and to minister to their comforts and elevation; but there is a fundamental error underlying these efforts, of which the workers are many of them unconscious, and which it must be the Christian minister's duty to expose and to get removed. The words which I have chosen, if I shall be able to open them up to your view as they stand before my own, will be helpful for this purpose. They are a portion of what we call the parable of the "Good Samaritan,” and they were addressed to a certain lawyer who tempted Christ by saying, "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said unto him, "What is written in the law? How readest thou?" And he answering said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself." And Jesus said unto him, "Thou hast answered right-this do and thou shalt live." But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, "And who is my neighbour?" Jesus answering said, "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead; and a certain priest came that way, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side; but a certain Samaritan as he journeyed came where he was; and when he saw him he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him; and on the morrow when he departed he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, "Take care of him, and whatsoever thou spendest more when I come again I will repay thee.' Which now of these three thinkest thou was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?" And he said, "He that showed mercy on him." Then said Jesus unto him, "Go and do likewise." The occasion on which we are met being the Sunday prevening and preparatory to the "International Temperance and Prohibition Convention," when deputations from all parts of the world will meet in prayerful and solemn discussion on the best mode of promoting sobriety and the suppression of the Liquor-Traffic, will, I trust, justify the application I may presently make of the words before us. Good "neighbourship" in every sense, at home and abroad, being the object of the Convention, anything which prevents the nations of the earth from seeing their true interests, and incapacitates them from developing their resources, by causing an enormous waste of money and material, clouding the national mind, diminishing its intellectual vigour, engendering feuds and quarrels, staying the progress of the liberal arts, hindering general education, and opposing the spread of true religion, must be a fitting theme for their consideration; and all these evils drinking usages and a Liquor-Traffic unceasingly produce. I would first draw your attention to these three, the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan. 1. The priest, by virtue of his office and the exercise of the religion which he was appointed to teach, was bound by every tie of duty to have relieved the sufferer; the common feelings of humanity should have sufficed to have ensured his sympathy. 2. So with the Levite. Upon him, as an agent in sacred things, inferior only to the priest, would be the same pressure of holy and humane duty; but they were both hypocrites. The mention of these persons was, I conceive, to show in after time to what high positions in the outer church men may attain, and how great their professions and strict their observance of the formalities of religion, and yet how devoid they may be of real godliness. Had our Lord, therefore, said a certain man, instead of priest, it would not have been enough. There was an object in thus framing the parable or stating the case; and we shall miss the teaching intended if we lose sight of this point. He knew and denounced the cruelty and hypocrisy of the Jewish priesthood, and foresaw that, in coming time, the Church which He himself was about to purchase with his own blood, would be more or less infested with wolves in sheep's clothing. 3. The Samaritan, on the other hand, was most likely ignorant of God's law. He was, too, of a people so despised by the Jews that they "would have no dealings" with them; and yet the suffering before him at once dethroned his prejudices, swelled his heart, and unlocked the kind sympathies of his nature. It was enough that a fellow-creature was in distress; and he did his utmost to relieve him. The term "neighbour" sometimes means one who lives near; but in the present instance it refers to one who, "partaking of the same nature with ourselves, is entitled to our good offices." And it is worthy constantly to be borne in mind that the Gospel allows no such term as "stranger," but positively and unreservedly makes every man a "neighbour." Therefore, whilst the Samaritan performed the office of neighbour to the poor man that had been robbed, and so, by the admission of the lawyer, did his duty; the poor sufferer also was neighbour, in the Scriptural sense of the term, to the Good Samaritan, and in that capacity entitled to the kindness he received; which kindness he was bound to be thankful for, and (whenever the opportunity might offer) to exercise the same towards a neighbour or fellow-creature who might need it at his hands. "The road from Jerusalem to Jericho lay through a mountainous and rocky desert, and at this period was much infested with robbers, so that, as Jerome states, it was called the bloody way.' It was much frequented by travellers, on account of its being the high road to Peræa, and because classes and stations of priests and Levites were fixed at Jericho as well as at Jerusalem." The whole transaction as recorded is so disgraceful to the priest and Levite as to vie in comparison with the darkest crime. Nothing, apparently, could be more outrageous, cruel, and cold-blooded; and yet a sadder case may be conceived. Had the priests and the Levites been the law-makers of Judea, and had they granted for sums of money (portions of the plunder) licenses to marauders to rob on the highway, and had this poor man been one of the victims of those licensed robbers, the case against the priest and Levite would have been infinitely worse. The impression on reading the parable on every well-regulated mind is, that any man must have been constrained to have performed, for common pity's sake, the part of the Good Samaritan; and the same mind unhesitatingly condemns the conduct of the "passers-by" for their cruelty and hard-heartedness. Speculating upon the course which events might have taken had the Good Samaritan not journeyed in that direction, one is led to inquire, in case the poor maltreated man had died of his wounds after the priest and Levite had looked upon him, and "passed by on the other side," of what crime would they have been guilty? Human law might not have been able to have inflicted condign puishment, but in God's view their crime would have been little less than that of murder. According to British law, persons who excite and encourage others to the commission of crimes, and share in the booty, are held to be "accessories both before and after the fact." And was there not less excuse for the unfeeling conduct of these men, in their not being themselves in fear? Even among robbers the priest would be safe. He would be known by his dress; to some extent his office would be respected; and he would reasonably be supposed to have no property about him. Fanciful notions have been entertained, by which both crafty and silly people have evaded actual duty. The oil and wine have been looked upon as representing the blood and spirit of Christ, by which our souls are healed-the inn his church-the host his ministers--and the two pence his sacraments: ideas more amusing than instructive, and tending very much to draw men's thoughts from the grand life-lesson intended to be taught. Carrying out, for a moment, this fancy, the wounded man must be the sinner-the robbers emissaries of the devil-and the priest and Levite coworkers with him, because found treating with indifference both the body and soul of the sinner. Far better for us to take a practical view of our Lord's teaching. The highway from Jerusalem to Jericho would rather represent the ordinary path of life; the wounded man as a wayfarer on his journey through the world; the thieves as the common enemies of peace and safety; the priests as the appointed teachers and expounders of the moral law, and exemplars of a holy life, whose conduct, in this instance, was base and execrable; whilst the Good Samaritan, though poor and despised, yet kind and self-denying, was animated with a brother's love, and displayed an example to be followed by us all, according to our opportunity. Faith (or rather the profession of it) without works of love and charity, is dead and vain; and, therefore, the stamp of our blessed Lord's approbation is put upon the conduct of the Samaritan by the injunction given to the lawyer" Go, and do thou likewise." The special occasion of our "Temperance and Prohibition Convention" will admit of a special application of this parable. The direct scope of the narrative is fixed by the context; it is a beautiful illustration of the law of love without regard to sect or nation, and is intended to show that if a selfish indifference induce us to pass, unpityingly, by our distressed fellow-creatures, when it is in our power to help them, the question, "Which thinkest thou was neighbour to him?" will rise up in judgment against us. Alas! that so many Christian men, and even ministers of the Gospel, should be found who will neither find time, inclination, nor opportunity to assist in redressing the grievous injuries which millions of our people are suffering, and which are within the scope of a neighbourspirit to remove. The evils arising in this country, and even in the world at large (wherever they have been introduced), from intoxicating liquors and the Drink-Traffic, are of the most appalling magnitude. If we visit the hovels, garrets, and cellars, in which the poor are wont to dwell, we find, for the most part, that their leanness, dirt, and rags are caused by intoxicating drinks; and the annals of the workhouse confirm the fact. Disease, from which so few are entirely free, whilst many are such miserable victims to it, riots through the human family from the same cause. The "drunkard's drink," more or less uniformly destroys the intellectual balance of man; the higher faculties of judgment, caution, and conscientiousness are weakened, whilst the lower passions of selfishness, covetousness, and sensuality are excited; and thus a very large amount of the public vice and crime of our country, extending from petty thefts to burglaries, garottings, prostitution, rapes, suicides, murders, and such like, may be traced to its use. To the same cause may be attributed many accidents and sudden deaths. Enumeration of the evils would be difficult; exaggeration of them impossible. The manufacture of British drinks involves the destructon of food to the extent of ten millions of quarters of grain every year, sufficient to feed more than five millions of people. The money cost is not less than a hundred millions of pounds sterling. Let me give you some illustration of this amount. A gilded obelisk may be seen in the "Exhibition," which represents the quantity in size and weight of all the gold exported from the Australian diggings during the last ten years (between the last and present Exhibition); its weight would be more than twenty-five millions of ounces, and its value more than a hundred millions of pounds; and this enormous sum barely designates the money expended by Great Britain in intoxicating liquors during fifty-two weeks. Surely, then, to justify their common use, they must be indispensably necessary to our very existence? Our health, usefulness, and happiness must depend on them? No, quite the reverse! Total Abstinence from them is declared to be the best mode of preserving these blessings, by more than two thousand medical men of highest eminence. The life of a Teetotaler can be insured at a less premium than a moderate drinker's; he can bear all changes of food, climate, and temperature better than a drinker; his life is longer; and, man for man, he does more good, and less harm, in his day and generation. A greater fallacy than that strong drink is good never was believed; it has injured the nation's health, and poisoned the morals of the people; it has vitiated the exercise of the elective franchise, and polluted every avenue to popular power; it has wounded Christianity, and well-nigh corrupted the Christian Church; and no amount of accommodation for public worship can counteract a correspondently increasing number of liquor-shops. "The struggle between the school, the library, and the Church on the one hand, and the beer-shop and the gin-palace on the other, is (according to a London brewer) but one development of the war between heaven and hell.” In this very city, then, there is a robber more fierce and cruel than all the other thieves with whom it abounds; ten thousand places are this Sabbath night opened wherein he may ply his murderous work; and human beings, our neighbours, in shoals are stripped, and being stripped, and wounded, and more than half dead. It is impossible to deny it! Yes! there are thousands in this metropolis of our dear countrymen and women, stripped not merely of their raiment, but of fame, fortune, virtue, and independence; diseased in body, wounded in spirit, broken-hearted, brutalised, who may yet be rescued, elevated, redeemed to humanity and their God, were only the right and necessary steps taken by the Christian Church. And here the didactic and practical nature of the text comes to our relief. The Samaritan did the right thing at the right time. The robber to which I allude is the intoxicating principle in all fermented and distilled liquors; and to its action on the bodies and souls of the nation, are directly traceable by far the larger proportion of all our domestic troubles, our national sins, and our rebellion against Heaven. Ten thousands casks, For ever dribbling out their base contents, Drink! and be mad then, 'tis your country bids, |