Note 64 — XVII. THE GOOD SAMARITAN.

The Samaritan was riding; for he set the wounded man “on his own beast.” What of the priest and the Levite?—were they riding, or performing the journey on foot? If they were both pedestrians, while the Samaritan had a mule or an ass, it is obvious that the two parties were not on equal terms, and that consequently no fair test of their benevolence could in that transaction be obtained. On that very ground I think it is certain that they were riding as well as he. The parable is not a history, containing the simple facts of any given case, without respect to the lessons which the facts may contain; it is a picture, constructed according to its Author’s mind, and constructed for the purpose of expressing a particular lesson which the Author already had in his mind, and desired to teach. The doctrine which the Teacher intended to declare obviously requires that the two parties whose compassion is compared and contrasted should be on equal terms. The lesson which he meant to convey would slip through and be lost, like water through a leaky vessel, if the priest and Levite were walking when they found the wounded man: we must, therefore, if we would not do violence to the parable, assume that both were mounted. With this conclusion, resulting from the nature of the case, the expressions in their minutest details correspond. The journey of the priest is narrated in the same terms as that of the Samaritan: “A certain priest came down that way,” and “A certain Samaritan as he journeyed came where he was:” we never learn that the Samaritan had a beast of burden until he sets the half-dead traveller upon its back. There was no occasion for mentioning the priest’s mule, for he made no special or remarkable use of it.[64]