mani generis, enemies of the human race-these facts, we say, were made the very ground on which the Mosaic law enjoined the warmest and purest benevolence towards the wretched and defenceless of every nation. "Before the hoary head shalt thou rise up; thou shalt honor the face of the aged man; and thou shalt fear thy God-I am the Lord. And should there be the stranger sojourning with you in thy land, thou shalt not oppress him. But the stranger that dwelleth with thee shall be unto thee even as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thine own self. For ye yourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt.-I am the Lord."

Levit. 19: 33.

So also, Deut. 10: 17, "For the Lord your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords. He is the great, and strong, and fearful God who wilt not regard persons, nor receive bribes." That is, He is no mere local or national divinity, or Zeus na wios; and although for special purposes connected with the best interests, ultimately of the human race, he exercises a special care over the nation of Israel, yet in the great matters of eternal justice, he regardeth not persons; he knoweth no national differences, he is turned aside from his immutable equity by no offerings or ritual, even of his own most cherished appointment. He it is, proceeds the solemn declaration of the law" He it is that executeth the judgment of the fatherless and the widow, and who loveth the stranger, to give unto him food and raiment. Wherefore thou also must love the stranger; for ye yourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt."

Two motives are here appealed to as the ground and sanction of the law,-motives as far as possible removed from the outward, the formal, and the carnal,-one coming up from the deepest fountain of tenderness, from the most inward emotions of the human spirit, the other coming down from the higher and most spiritual conceptions of the Divine character. "For ye also were strangers"-as though it had been one of the Divine designs, that, in this school of experience, they should learn to cherish a spirit of sympathizing tenderness for all the oppressed. Again, "For the Lord your God, He executeth the judgment of the fatherless and the widow-He loveth the stranger;" as though the mere fact of defencelessness gave some kind of claim upon his protection, and upon his righteous intervention in case of any wrong arising out of their helpless state.

It was but the echo of this ancient voice, as it came down the long valley of tradition, which so impressed upon the primitive Greek theology those similar doctrines that stand out in such bright relief amid the darkness of the Homeric and Hesiodean polytheism. These striking Old Testament attributes of the Deity (if we may so style them in consequence of their being almost entirely peculiar to the olden scripture) appear in the strong no

tions so early and universally entertained of the sacred duty of hospitality, and especially of kindness to suppliants, however guilty in some respects they might be who had fled to us for protection. Hence, the farther we go back among all nations, the more distinct and emphatic do we find the moral injunctions under this head, and the ascriptions of corresponding qualities to their chief deity or deities. Hence, too, the duty of hospitality or of kindness to strangers, as strangers, came to be ranked, not merely among civil and social, but rather among religious obligations. It was classed among the duties styled data, or rà лрòs τὸν θεόν, in distinction from the merely δίκαια, or τὰ πρὸς ἀνθρώπους. The discharge of it was regarded as an act of piety rather than of justice; the violation was looked upon as an impiety peculiarly calculated to call down the vengeance of Heaven. Hence, the epithet Zeus évios, so strikingly suggestive of this same spiritual appellation, "The stranger's God." Hence the touching lines of Homer, so much in the spirit, and almost in the language, of the Mosaic precept

Αλλ' όδε τις δύστηνος ἀλώμενος ἐνθάδ' ἱκάνει
Τον νῦν χρὴ κομέειν.

Odyss. vi., 206.

Or the still more tender expressions-Odyss. xiv., 56.

Ξεῖν' οὔ μοι θεμις ἔστ', οὐδ' ει κακίων σέθεν ἔλθοι
ξεῖνον ἀτιμῆσαι

I must not turn away the stranger, nor inquire

If crime has brought thee here; a worse than thou 7
Should still receive my aid.

And then follow the lines which are repeated in both these examples, and whose proverbial form and style intimate, that from "the olden time" they had been regarded as containing the reliligious ground of the duty

πρὸς γὰρ Διός εἰσιν ἅπαντες

ξεῖνοί τε πτωχοί τε

Jove's special care

Are strangers poor and friendless.

It is the very style and voice of the Scriptures. "Love ye, therefore the stranger; for the Lord loveth the stranger."

There is another illustration of the ancient ideas on this subject, so striking that we cannot omit refering to it. So peculiarly a favorite of Heaven was this virtue of kindness to the stranger supposed to be, that the celestial powers were said to disguise themselves in order to make trial of human hospitality. As in the

Odyssey XVII. 484, where a gross act of violence is thus rebuked

οὐ μὲν κάλ' ἔβαλες δύστηνον αλήτην
Οὐλομεν. εἰ δή πού τις ἐπουράνιος θεός ἐστιν,
και τε θεοὶ ξείνοισιν εοίκοτες αλλοδαποῖσιν
παντοῖοι τελέθοντες, επιστρωφωσι πόληας
ἀνθρώπων, ὕβριν τε καὶ εὐνομίην ἐφορῶντες.

Not to thine honor, didst thou deal the blow,
O impious wretch, upon the stranger's head.
If there's a God in heaven, He saw the wrong,
Or, as old legends tell, Heavenly Powers
In stranger's semblance, taking various forms
Do sometimes visit the abodes of men,

Disguised spectators of the wrongs they do,
And all their kindly deeds.'

Here too the Bible and tradition seem to agree. The argument is Scriptural. The motive presented is strikingly similar to that given in Heb. 13: 2; "Forget not to entertain the stranger; for in so doing some have entertained angels unawares."

In enumeration of great crimes and impieties, as they are often presented by the Greek poets, the three on the list of highest enormity are generally, the violation of the oath, the violation of the filial duty, and, thirdly, the denial of hospitality and refuge to the stranger and the suppliant. It was as though their crimes, more than all others, called aloud upon the Universal Parent and Guardian, more strongly than all others touched the vibrating chord that connects our social human relations with the invisible Justice in the heavens, Hence those against whom they were committed were called μavuara, causes of the Divine displeasure; appellants against their wrong doers to the ever wakeful Divine Vengeance.

The parable of the man who fell among thieves, or of the Good Samaritan, is supposed by many to have been intended as a rebuke to the narrow, clannish, spirit of the Jews, and to teach a cosmopolition or universal philanthropy. It is, therefore, a favorite passage with a certain class of reformers, who are generally distinguished for their dislike to the Old Testament and the Mosaic law. The mention, too, of the priest and levite gratifies another

'In our somewhat loose version of the passage, we have rendered the Greek word, covoμiny, rather freely and yet, we think, so as to present the intended significance. It literally means "reverence for law," or "a law revering conduct." The good law, however, thus referred to is this law of hospitable deeds this universal custom, or sentiment, which it was deemed an impiety to violate. It became in this way, a part of the ancient "law of nations," as though it had been designed, in the moral providence of God, as some compensation for many of the opposite evils which prevailed in those rude and warlike, yet sincere and religious ages.

feeling, by giving them an occasion of railing against the present church and ministry. The Jewish legislation, among its other faults, was deficient, they say, in not defining the word neighbor or in giving it too narrow and local an acceptation. Christ they affirm, meant to take it from this clannish meaning, and to give it a significance coextensive with humanity. Such a view, however, is itself definite, and would seem to have come from allowing their own one-sidedness to blind them to some of the most important inferences from this striking parable. The clannish spirit may be rebuked in it. This, doubtless, was one object, although it is fairly to be inferred that the man who fell among thieves was himself a Jew as well as the priest and levite who passed by. But may it not have been designed also as a rebuke to that spirit of abstract and ideal benevolence which would equally destroy the true meaning of the word neighbor by expanding it to an inflated. bubble, to a heartless and vague conception of "humanity," or "being in general." The one perversion is as bad as the other, and, therefore, the spirit of the parable seems to be in like opposition to both. Our true neighbor is not merely the man allied to us by blood, or by family neighborhood, or national ties, although these have also their own appropriate sacredness; neither is he, on the other hand, merely one who possesses that thing so ill defined, and so little capable of possessing any warm and kindly feelingour common nature, or a share in our common being. This, even if it had the requisite power to move, would still be liable to the same objection as the first. It would still be clannish, although on a larger, and therefore weaker scale. It would still be allied to selfishness. It would still present, if not a false, at least a motive lower than the true. The strong claim upon us is not that the man possesses our common being, or our common nature, or our common humanity, any more than that he possesses our common kindred blood. It is no one of these so much as the simple yet touching fact, that he is a being capable of being distressed, and actually in distress, and that it is in our power to help him. The motive presented in God's Word is of no generic, or abstract, any more than it is of any clannish kind. It is no more grounded on the idea of race, in the widest sense of the term, or of nature, or of humanity, than on that of family. It is simply a recognition of the authority, and loving-kindness, and tender mercy of the Lord our God, who commands us to relieve the miserable and the needy, because we ourselves are needy, very needy and we must, therefore, be kind to our neighbor, and love our neighbor, as we would expect our common God to love and pity us. This is the simple morality of the Old Testament, which the transcendental philanthropist would affect to hold so lightly in his search for some more abstract and philosophical motive. "What ye would that men should do to you, that do ye to them; for this is the law and the prophets."

'Love ye, therefore, the stranger, for ye were strangers once, and the Lord your God loveth the stranger."

The question then still recurs-Who is our true neighbor? He is just the one, we answer, whom the word in its most literalt etymological acceptation would denote. He is the one nearest to us-our vicinus—ó nhŋolov quor-the most contiguous object in distress, whoever he may be,-of whatever kindred, country, world, of whatever character, class, or order of being. He is our neighbor. With him should we immediately begin the work of an ever-widening benevolence; not starting with abstractions and universalities, and ever abiding there, but in the order which God and nature both seem to point out, with the immediate circle around us, with the men who have fallen among thieves in our own immediate neighborhood, and so from thence, expanding until the concentric circles of our practical philanthrophy embrace the world.

If, however, we had actually to decide between them, we should not hesitate to say, that the clannish, the family, or the national feeling, or instinct (as some might choose to stigmatize it) is really higher in the scale of virtue than this abstract philanthropy which so affects to despise it as low and narrow. The first has certainly something higher than selfishness, though doubtless borrowing from this source much of its strength. It may be said to be narrow, and yet it brings out a power of rich and intense emotion which compensates in one direction, for its limited extent in the other. A man is all the better man for having a home, and for loving strongly his home, his children, his neighbors, his immediate friends and acquaintances. The other feeling, in proportion to its false expansion, is dry, flatulent, "puffing up," and, in this way, heart-hardening. It cheats the soul with the gaseous luxury of sentiment, and by thus satisfying it, keeps it away from all warm, and practical, and self-denying benevolence. Its love is a gnostic theory-its philanthropy is an eristic philosophy, a war of casuistry, a strife of logomachris. (See 1 Tim. 6: 4, 5.) Its ambitious passion for doing something afar off, or on a large scale, blinds it to the more obvious duties of a less self-inflating and self-exalting nature; and hence is solved the apparent mystery of the strange affinity between this boasting love on the one hand, and censoriousness, uncharitableness, strife,-in short, some of the very worst aspects of our depraved humanity, on the other.

It might perhaps be said, that the family, or kindred, or merely social feeling, as a moral motive, is condemned-Math. 5: 46 -"If ye love those who love you, what reward have ye &c." Some have even gone so far as to say that the gospel denies to friendship any place among the virtues. To all this, however, it may be replied, in the first place, that in that passage there is nothing condemned at all, but only an exhortation to a higher prinTHIRD SERIES, VOL. VI., No. 1

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