ONE of the most epoch-making disputes in the unfolding of human thought is that which culminated in the letter sent from the elders at Jerusalem by their "beloved Barnabas and Paul" to the Gentile churches. Love's impartiality, gilding the mountain-peaks of Jewish thought and character, as represented by the apostolic band, was bound to Hood the plains of prejudice below; and in Arts xv. we find the crisis reached, and the strong desire to bind upon Gentile converts the rite of circumcision and other Jewish customs, giving way before the eloquence of Peter, Paul, and James.
It had taken Peter and his comrades time to reach their new standpoint. Many were the lessons in divine Love's impartiality, from the healing of the Syro-Phœnician's daughter to Peter's vision at Joppa, before the inrooted exclusiveness of the Jew could be removed from thought, and at the hour of the disciples entrance upon the ministry they were still its slaves. With their impatience also, and liability to take offense, they were especially unsuited to deal with the Samaritans, between whom and the Jews hatred and strife were perennial. The chief ground of offense between the two races was the claim of the Samaritans to be the descendants of the lost ten tribes, a claim which the Jew regarded with the bitterest contempt. To such a condition of thought it was of course most galling that these self-styled relations were fixed between Galilee and Judæa, and so in the route of all religious pilgrimages or business journeys from one country to the other, with ample opportunity to vent that petty spite with which they paid back the insufferable airs of the Jew.
Jesus, who appreciated all those "other sheep" who were outside the Jewish fold, seemed specially drawn to the Samaritans, as being more easily stirred to gratitude and charity than the Jews. When one thinks of the Master's exaltation, as he noted the receptivity of the Samaritan woman and her neighbors, one can appraise still better the self-restraint of the command to defer the preaching of the gospel in their cities. It was evidently one of the fruits of the victory over Satan's offer to bestow upon "the anointed" all the kingdoms of this world.
