Luke 10:36

36. Which… was neighbour? Dr. Trench, and other commentators of the present day, with doubtful correctness, we think, say that our Lord here reverses the question. The lawyer, they suppose, asks, Who is to be held as a neighbour to be loved? Whereas the real present form of the question is, Who becomes my neighbour by loving? Our Lord supposes the lawyer to identify himself with the wounded Jew; and thereby proceeds to force him by the parable to confess that even a Samaritan may be and is his neighbour. Neighbourship, then, depends not upon blood, or sect, or profession, but upon humanity. If the Samaritan, in spite of his being a Samaritan, may, as a man, with the true sympathies of a man, be my neighbour, then any being within the unity of the species, by his very being human, is my neighbour. And all this the Saviour clinches with his Go and do thou likewise. Deal with a Samaritan as this Samaritan deals with a Jew; and so you will, Jew and Samaritan, be neighbours. And then the lawyer finds himself placed upon that high platform by which the divine law of love, ignoring the divisions of race, nation, and color, unites mankind into one neighbourship and brotherhood. It is not without propriety that Luke, a Gentile, should furnish this most beautiful parable.