Samaritan woman

“ Sin must be left outside, but the sinner of every race and tribe was welcomed to all the privileges of this kingdom. We now see the wisdom and the divinity of our Lord's course.
Had these marveling disciples had their way, the sect of the Christians would have been added to the sects of the Herodians and the Sadducees, and been buried in the same grave centuries ago. The voice that talked with this Samaritan woman is heard round the globe now, and every century only adds greater authority to its divine utterance; and it is heard because it spoke with this despised Samaritan woman. ”

“ For our bodies have received unity among themselves by means of that laver which leads to incorruption; but our souls, by means of the Spirit. Wherefore both are necessary, since both contribute towards the life of God, our Lord compassionating that erring Samaritan woman [308] —who did not remain with one husband, but committed fornication by [contracting] many marriages—by pointing out, and promising to her living water, so that she should thirst no more, nor occupy herself in acquiring the refreshing water obtained by labour, having in herself water springing up to eternal life. ”

“ John does not mention here the miracles which our Lord did at Capernaum on his first journey, [409] , nor those which he did at Jerusalem on the feast of the passover. See [410] ; [411] .
There are several particulars in the preceding history of the Samaritan woman which confirm the doctrine of a particular providence, and show how God manages the most common occurrences in order to accomplish the designs of his mercy and love.
The Gospel must be preached to the Samaritans: this is God's purpose; and in this case, the wrath of man is caused to praise him. ”

“ But it was never thought the interests or caprices of men could lead to a denial of the civil rights or social supremacy of woman. People of one race have always been unjust to those of another. The ignorant and sordid Jew despised the Samaritan and scoffed at the idea of his equality. ”

“ When I was a little fellow, before my mother died, she used to read me lessons out of her great Bible with the silver clasps, and of all the stories she read to me, I liked the lesson of the Good Samaritan best, and, looking back, now that I am a grown man, it seems to me that I met the Good Samaritan that night, only he was a woman. ”

“ Thus, when he had a mission of mercy in view for Samaria, he called to the work a woman; not such as we should suppose a divine teacher would choose,—not a pre-eminently intellectual or a very good woman,—but, on the contrary, one of a careless life and loose morals and little culture. ”

“ Not only in temporal things, but much more in spiritual, did our Lord seek out women for their cure and salvation. He did not disdain to speak long and patiently with the woman of Samaria, and, instead of heralding his saving presence to her countrymen through his own disciples, he preferred to let her be his messenger. He proposed the modest almsgiving of the poor widow as a model of all true charity. ”

“ The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is here, and now. Women have played the good Samaritan for a long time, and they have found many a one beaten and robbed on the road of life. They are still doing it, but the conviction is growing on them that it would be much better to go out and clean up the road! ”

“ On the whole, I was very favorably impressed with the appearance of the Samaritan community. The men were generally handsome, tall, healthy-looking,and intelligent, but very few of them could read or write. The women are modest, and the children very pretty and thoughtful, yet full of life and activity. I am told that the Samaritans live to a great age, and generally escape the epidemics which break out occasionally in Nablûs. ”

“ On the contrary, the law which He imposed on His disciples: ‘And into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not’ (Matt. x. 5) , this, during the days of His flesh, He imposed also on Himself. He was not sent ‘but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Matt. xv. 24; Acts xiii. 46) ; and if any grace reached Samaritan or heathen, it was, so to speak, but by accident, a crumb falling from the children's table.”38 Samaria had been the portion of the tribe of Ephraim and of half the tribe of Manasses. ”

“ O shallowness of human judgments! It was enough to be born a Samaritan in order to be rejected by the priest, and despised by the Levite. Yet now, what to us the priest and the Levite, of God's chosen race though they were? They passed from the hearts of men when they passed the sufferer by the wayside; while this loathed Samaritan, half thrust from the pale of the Hebrew, becomes of our family, of our kindred; a brother amongst the brotherhood of Love, so long as Mercy and Affliction shall meet in the common thoroughfare of Life! ”

“ And wherever a true wife comes this home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head, the glowworm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot: yet home is wherever she is; and for a noble woman it stretches far around her, better than ceiled with cedar or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far for those who else were homeless."
Let us now consider the Virtuous Woman verse by verse. Solomon is describing a rich woman with an "establishment," a sphere and husband and children, as if a woman's life was not complete without this. ”

“ Out of pity, my beloved angel, be generous; and, if you love me, oh! free me from this state of shame and degradation! Take me with you. I do not ask to become your wife, that would be too much happiness; I will only be your friend, your mistress, as I would have been Salimberi's; my heart is pure and innocent, I feel that I can remain faithful to my lover through my whole life. Do not abandon me. The love I have for you is sincere; my affection for Salimberi was innocent; it was born of my inexperience and of my gratitude, and it is only with you that I have felt myself truly a woman. ”

“ In those early days of Japanese life, it was not an unknown occurrence for a woman when plunged into the depths of some disappointment or overwhelming grief to take the oath of a religious recluse. "Her conscience," says Sama-no-Kami, "when she takes the fatal vow may be pure and unsullied and nothing may seem able again to call her back to the world which she forsook. But as time rolls on, some household servant or aged nurse brings her tidings that the lover has been unable to cast her out of his heart, and his tears drop silently when he hears aught about her. ”

“ The ear of his soul has so caught the rhythm of Divine harmonies that it does not hear longer the little lisping shibboleths of earthly speech; and while the sympathies of smaller hearts flow like a stream down in their well-defined and accustomed channel, seldom knowing any overflow, save in some rare freshet of impulse and of feeling, the sympathies of the Samaritan moved outward like the currents of the wind, sweeping across all chasms and over all mountain heights of division, bearing their clouds of blessing anywhither as the need required. ”

“ A dead wife is the best goods in a man's house." Under such teaching it is not at all surprising that the Jews began their morning invocations, two thousand years ago, with these significant words : " Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast not made me a heathen, who hast not made me a slave, who hast not made me a woman." ”

“ And she brought ruin and destruction onto the hull world by it.
“A few years later when men and wimmen grew wiser, when we hear of wimmen rulin’ Israel openly and honestly, like Miriam, Deborah and other likely old four mothers, things went on better. They didn’t act meachin’ and tempt, and act indirect.”
He sithed powerful and sot round oneasy in his chair. And sez he, “I thought wimmen wuz taught by the Bible to serve and love their homes.”
“So they be. And every true woman loves to serve. Home is my supreme happiness and delight, and my best happiness is found in servin’ them I love. ”

“ It is the religion of love which holds one to the side of the road where need is great, work must be done, perhaps sacrifice made. That Samaritan who stopped, dismounted, tenderly cared for an injured brother of hated race, lifted him to his own beast, slowly walked beside him to a place where rest and shelter could be provided, knew the love-inspired religion. ”

“ Mothers ought to be ever awake to the evils of compression, in the region of the heart and lungs. A slight ligature there, in the earlier stages life, is fraught with danger. To disturb or impede those labourers, who turn the wheels of life, both night and day, how absurd and ungrateful. Samson was bound in fetters, and ground in the prison-house, for awhile, but at length he crushed the pillars of the temple, and the lords of the Philistines perished with him. Nature, though she may be long in resenting a wrong, never forgets it. ”

“ Besides, we owed much to the hospitality and kindness of these people. The most striking feature of the missionary work at Kaisarieh is the education of the Armenian women, whose social position seems to be even more degraded than that of their Turkish sisters. With the native Armenians, as with the Turks, fleshiness adds much to the price of a wife. The wife of a missionary is to them an object both of wonderment and contempt. As she walks along the street, they will whisper to one another: “There goes a woman who knows all her husband’s business; and who can manage just as well as himself.” ”

“ To move away from all the associations of childhood and youth, requires a brave heart. But she was also asked to give up her home, and what is dearer to a woman’s heart than her home? We have no doubt Sarah’s home by the beautiful streams that flow down from the high table-lands of Armenia into the rich valleys of Mesopotamia, was a lovely one, and to exchange it for tent-life was a brave sacrifice. Her love to God must have been deep and constant.
After a long, weary journey through the desert sands, the land of promise is finally reached, only to find it afflicted with a famine. ”

“ We take the Golden Road to Samarkand!
(The CARAVAN passes through the gate.)
WATCHMAN
(Consoling the women)
What would ye, ladies? It was ever thus.
Men are unwise and curiously planned.
A WOMAN
They have their dreams, and do not think of us. ”

“ My look wandered about the room and remained fixed on the ceiling, where Samson, lying at Delilah’s feet, was about to have his eyes put out by the Philistines. The picture at that moment seemed to me like a symbol, an eternal parable of passion and lust, of the love of man for woman. “Each one of us in the end is a Samson,” I thought, “and ultimately for better or worse is betrayed by the woman he loves, whether he wears an ordinary coat or sables.” ”

“ The Eastern woman's heart has not changed. Many think it an honour to tolerate with unmoved countenances the one or more women their husbands have brought home, but do not ask what is hidden behind that iron mask, or what the walls of their dwellings could tell when the eyes of the world are removed. There are so many burning women's hearts, with poor, innocent, suffering, childlike souls. ”

“ And Jesus turning said to them: " Go, show yourselves to the priest and offer sacrifice according to the law." And as they went, lo! ere they reached the city gates their hideous deformity disappeared and their flesh became as the flesh of a little child. But were not ten made clean — nine Jews and one Samaritan? Where then are the nine? Alas! there is no one found to return and give glory to God but one, the stranger, the Samaritan.
Brethren, no cup of human joy is without its drain of sorrow. A shadow is on the Saviour's countenance and the Samaritan is presently shamefaced and apologetic. ”

“ Now the plain truth is, that the masculine is in the present printed text a mistake for the feminine. The Samaritan, which many think by far the most authentic copy of the Pentateuch, has the feminine gender in both places ”

“ And when very strong hunger was in Samaria, that women ate their own children, one woman asked judgement from the king against another woman, that would not by covenant bring forth her child to be eaten, when they had eaten the child of the first woman. ”

“ Can we wonder that these things should happen when neither the men nor the women have ever learnt to control their passions? We have glanced at the lives of the Moslem women of Mosul. [242] Can we say that they lead an ennobling, beautiful life? Are the home influences such as to foster a happy, peaceful spirit? On the contrary, we have seen that a woman deserves our pity and sympathy for all the sorrow she has to endure. ”

“ But the twelve apostles were hardly yet willing to entertain kind feelings for the long-despised Samaritans.
Accordingly, when Simon Zelotes observed the Samaritan among the lepers, he sought to induce the Master to pass on into the city without even hesitating to exchange greetings with them. Said Jesus to Simon: "But what if the Samaritan loves God as well as the Jews? Should we sit in judgment on our fellow men? Who can tell? if we make these ten men whole, perhaps the Samaritan will prove more grateful even than the Jews. ”

“ And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth.'
It is certainly most unfortunate that our translators—who had just rendered Διάβολος by Devil, in our Lord's discourse—should take the same word for δαιμόνιον, in the discourse of the Jews. I need not say that they did not mean what He meant, or anything like what He meant. They called Him a Samaritan,—evidently alluding to the Samaritan passion for enchanters. He was a possessed man, like one of those who appeared so often among the worshippers on Gerizim, and drew so many disciples after them. ”