The Life Of Jesus Christ In Its Historical Connexion

Christ determined, in this his last journey, to pass through Samaria, [598] as he had done on his first return from the Feast of Passover. The seventy disciples prepared his way among the Samaritans. A few of them met with a bad reception at a certain place; the people refused to entertain them and their Master because they were going to the Feast at Jerusalem. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, with a zeal not yet sufficiently tempered by love -- probably relying on the miraculous powers intrusted to them by Christ -- said to him, "Lord, wilt thou that we command fire from heaven and consume them, even as Elias did?" But he rebuked them with the question, "Know ye not with what temper of mind [599] ye ought, as representatives of my spirit, to be actuated?" And they went to another village.

In the case just mentioned the Samaritans were in fault, and their conduct tended to strengthen the Jewish prejudice of the disciples against them. [600] But. another soon occurred in which Samaritan gratitude was made use of by the Saviour to counteract that prejudice. [601]

On the outskirts of a village ten lepers met him, nine of whom were Jews, and the tenth a Samaritan. Shut out in common from the fellowship of men, they forgot their national hatred in their sufferings, and banded together. Not daring, as lepers, to approach the Saviour, they stood afar off and called for help. They were healed, but not immediately; Christ telling them to show themselves to the priests for inspection. Of all the ten, only the Samaritan came back to thank Christ, and in him God, for the grace of healing. [602]

The Saviour drew the attention of the disciples to the susceptible mind of the thankful Samaritan, in contrast with the dulness of heart shown by the Jews. This simple example was, in fact, a type of the conduct of multitudes. [603]