IN studying the sayings of Jesus, one cannot fail to be impressed by the thorough understanding of the vagaries and limitations of the so-called human mind which he displayed. His parables and his metaphors go to the very root of humanity's foibles, and point out the weaknesses and self-deception of mortals, the failings not only of those in his own day, but in ours as well. His parables were of the daily life and work of the people to whom he talked, yet they were so profound and so applicable to all ages that they teach the same spiritual lesson today as when uttered by him; and the same is true of all his sayings. What, for instance, could more thoroughly expose and rebuke the folly of self-righteousness than his unsparing condemnation, "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Again, when he spake a parable "unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others," we find the same keen discrimination between the Pharisee who publicly professed his thankfulness that he was "not as other men are," and the publican, humble and self-abased, who pleaded only for God's mercy to him a sinner. How incisive is his declaration: "I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."
Of the same type was his parable of the good Samaritan. The traveler who had fallen among thieves had been left by the roadside, despoiled and wounded, dependent on the kindness of some chance passer for succor and assistance. But the priest and the Levite, from whom he might reasonably have expected help, in their comfortable self-complacency "passed by on the other side." It was a Samaritan, one of the despised people, who came to the rescue of the sufferer,—"bound up his wounds, . . . and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him." And even the one who was seeking to put the Master at a disadvantage by his questioning was compelled to admit that the despised Samaritan was the true neighbor.
