summary of the commandments: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,
and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself"[909] The answer was
approved. "This do, and thou shalt live" said Jesus. These simple words
conveyed a rebuke, as the lawyer must have realized; they indicated the
contrast between knowing and doing. Having thus failed in his plan to
confound the Master, and probably realizing that he, a lawyer, had made
no creditable display of his erudition by asking so simple a question
and then answering it himself, he tamely sought to justify himself by
inquiring further; "And who is my neighbour?" We may well be grateful
for the lawyer's question; for it served to draw from the Master's
inexhaustible store of wisdom one of His most appreciated parables.

The story is known as the _Parable of the Good Samaritan_; it runs as
follows:

"A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell
among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded
him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there
came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he
passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was
at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other
side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he
was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to
him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set
him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care
of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two
pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care
of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I
will repay thee."

Then of the lawyer Jesus asked: "Which now of these three, thinkest
thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He
that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou
likewise."[910]

Whatever of motive there may have been in the lawyer's query, "Who is my
neighbour?" aside from that of self-justification and a desire to
retreat in the best form possible from an embarrassing situation, we may
conceive to lie in the wish to find a limitation in the application of
the law, beyond which he would not be bound to go. If he had to love his
neighbors as he loved himself, he wanted to have as few neighbors as