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Welfare Ministry
Himself. To participate in that service was a great and exalted privilege,
and the priest and Levite felt that having been thus honored, it was
beneath them to minister to an unknown sufferer by the wayside. Thus
they neglected the special opportunity which God had offered them as
His agents to bless a fellow being.
Many today are making a similar mistake. They separate their
duties into two distinct classes. The one class is made up of great
things, to be regulated by the law of God; the other class is made up
of so-called little things, in which the command, “Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself,” is ignored. This sphere of work is left to caprice,
subject to inclination or impulse. Thus the character is marred, and
the religion of Christ misrepresented.
There are those who would think it lowering to their dignity to
minister to suffering humanity. Many look with indifference and
contempt upon those who have laid the temple of the soul in ruins.
Others neglect the poor from a different motive. They are working,
as they believe, in the cause of Christ, seeking to build up some
worthy enterprise. They feel that they are doing a great work, and
they cannot stop to notice the wants of the needy and distressed. In
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advancing their supposedly great work they may even oppress the
poor. They may place them in hard and trying circumstances, deprive
them of their rights, or neglect their needs. Yet they feel that all this
is justifiable because they are, as they think, advancing the cause of
Christ.—
Christ’s Object Lessons, 382, 383
.
Far-reaching Requirements of God’s Law—To leave the suffer-
ing neighbor unrelieved is a breach of the law of God. God brought
the priest along that way in order that with his own eyes he might see a
case that needed mercy and help; but the priest, though holding a holy
office, whose work it was to bestow mercy and to do good, passed
by on the other side. His character was exhibited in its true nature
before the angels of God. For a pretense he could make long prayers,
but he could not keep the principles of the law in loving God with all
his heart and his neighbor as himself. The Levite was of the same
tribe as was the wounded, bruised sufferer. All Heaven watched as
the Levite passed down the road, to see if his heart would be touched
with human woe. As he beheld the man he was convicted of what he
ought to do; but as it was not an agreeable duty, he wished he had
not come that way, so that he need not have seen the man who was