The tender, immortal stories of the woman who broke her alabaster vase of precious nard and “filled all the house with the odor,” and of the woman (perhaps the same one) who had been a sinner and who from her passion of love for her great forgiveness wet Christ’s feet with her tears, even before she could open her cruse of ointment, are the finest possible illustrations of the spirit of “the second mile.” They picture, in subtly suggestive imagery, the immense contrast between the spontaneous, uncalculating act of one who “loves much” and does with grace what love prompts; and acts, on the other hand, like that of Simon the pharisaic host, who offers Jesus a purely conventional and grudging hospitality, or like that of the disciples who sit indeed at the table with Jesus but come to it absorbed with the burning question, “who among us is to be first and greatest,” not only at the table but “in the Kingdom!” What grace and unexpected love come into action in the simple deed of the “Samaritan” who, from nobility of nature, does what official Priest and Levite leave undone! The hated foreigner, spit at and stoned as he walked the roads of Judea, under no obligation to be kind or serviceable, is the real “neighbor,” the bearer of balm and healing, the dispenser of love and sympathy. He may have no ordination to the priesthood, but he finely exhibits the attitude of grace which belongs in the religion of “the second mile.” But we do not reach the full significance of “the second mile” until we see that it is something more than the highest level of human grace. What shines through the gospels everywhere, like a new-risen sun, is the revelation that _this_—this grace of the second mile—is the supreme trait and character-nature of God as well. How surprising and unexpected is that extraordinary unveiling of the divine nature in the story of the prodigal boy! It is wonderful enough that one who has wasted his substance and squandered his own very life should still be able in his squalor and misery to come to himself and want to go home; but the fact which radiates this sublime story like a glory is the uncalculating, ungrudging, unlimited love of the Father, which remains unchanged by the boy’s blunder, which has never failed in the period of his absence, and which bursts out in the cry of joy: “This my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.”