Most certainly the Lord does not here intend to intimate that all the priests and Levites were cruel, and all Samaritans tender-hearted: to apply them so would be to wrest his words. This teacher grasps his instrument by the extremity, first one extremity and then the other, that his lesson may reach further than if he had grasped it by the middle. The honourable office, and even the generally high character, of priest and Levite will not cover the sin of selfishly neglecting the sufferings of a fellow-creature: self-sacrificing love is approved by God and useful to men as well in a Samaritan as in a Jew. There is no respect of persons with God. It is quite certain that there were benevolent priests and unkind Samaritans; and it is also certain that the Lord would not overlook kindness in the one, nor sanction cruelty in the other. The lesson was addressed to a Jew; and therefore the lesson is so constructed as to smite at one blow the two poles on which a vain Jewish life in that day turned--"they trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others." That high thing, the scribe's self-righteous trust in his birth-right, the Lord will by the parable bring low; and this low thing, the mean position of a Samaritan in the estimate of the scribe, he will at the same moment exalt. He hath done all things well.[63] [63] In the case of the ten lepers (Luke xvii. 16), which is not a parable, but a history, we learn that the one who experienced and expressed gratitude to God for his recovery was a Samaritan. Whether their low and despised condition had been to some extent blessed in making them more humble and receptive than their Jewish neighbours, we do not know; but, in point of fact, in the historical incident a Samaritan was more ready than the Jew to give praise to God; and in the construction of the parable a Samaritan is represented as also more beneficent to men. In connection with this case a striking example may be seen of the divine impartiality of the Scriptures. Some persons, with a view to objects of their own, take pleasure in representing ministers of religion as more self-seeking and less generous than those who make no religious profession. The contrast between the Levite and the Samaritan, if this case stood alone, might seem to support their theory. But there is no respect of persons or classes with God; you may learn from the Scriptures--and that, too, from the writings of the same apostle--that the Samaritans were not all kind, and the Levites not all hard-hearted. They were Samaritans (Luke ix. 53) who would not permit Jesus and his disciples, when they were weary, to pass the night in their village; and he was a Levite (Acts iv. 36) who was named Son of Consolation, and sold his property that he might distribute the proceeds among the poor.