| Things to Live For |
Chapter 14 |
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Some people talk a great deal about perfection. They mean really only a life free from positive and willful sins. They do not think of that whole hemisphere of life which in them is almost empty. Love is not doing others no harm; it is doing them all the good that it is in our power to do. We are taught to pray, not “Forgive us our crimes,” but “Forgive us our debts.” Debts are what we owe. It is not supposed that respectable people will commit crimes against their neighbors; but when we look into the matter closely, we shall find that most of our days leave unpaid debts of love; kindnesses or services due to others, but not paid, certainly not paid in full. The priest and the Levite did not hurt the wounded man, but they failed to pay him the debt they owed him. What they owed and did not pay was the difference between their passing by in harmless neglect and the noble service which the Good Samaritan rendered.
It is well to press the application of the lesson very closely. All along life’s dusty wayside lie wounded men and women, robbed and left to die. We are continually passing by them. Which role are we playing, – the priest’s and the Levite’s, or the Good Samaritan’s? Take a single day’s life, and see how many times we pass by on the other side. You learned of a neighbor in trouble. It was in your thought to go to him to offer him help. But you did not do it. The day closed, and there was that brotherly kindness which you ought to have done left undone. Yonder, at the ending of the day, your neighbor is still bowing in the darkness beneath his burden. He might have been rejoicing had it not been for your sin of omission.
Here is one who has failed, and fallen into the dust. There he lies, wounded in his soul, unable to rise. You know of him – he was an old neighbor of yours, a schoolmate perhaps. You have a vision of the possibilities that are in your old friend’s soul, under sin’s ruin, and you feel impelled to go to him in Christ’s name. But you do not follow the good impulse – you pass by on the other side, and let him lie where he fell. Listen to the word of the Lord: “When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.” You were not his tempter. The wounds in his soul you did not inflict. You did nothing to lead him into sin. Yet you knew of his wounding, his fall, his peril, and had it in your power at least to try to save him. You simply passed by on the other side.
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