American Missionary | Page 4

of battle, show higher courage or a larger sense of duty. Almost all of
our Southern schools are now in session, and begin with increased
attendance.
SCHOOL ECHO.--A teacher writes: "One of my pupils who had been
teaching during the summer came to me in despair over a sum, saying:
"I can't understand sympathizing fractions."
(When we went to school years and years ago, "sympathizing
fractions," meant broken candy. We understood, but the teacher didn't.
Times change, and we change with them.)

THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
BY REV. C.J. RYDER, BOSTON.
"And they marveled that he talked with the woman."
Why? She was a sinful woman. But these disciples must even thus

early in Christ's ministry have learned that he had come to call sinners,
not the righteous, to repentance. She was a Samaritan! That was a
larger reason for their marvel. They could rise above their hatred for sin
more easily than their race prejudice; so can we. The Samaritans were
an inferior people. Degraded they were. They had been degraded for
centuries. The Jews shunned them. Socially our Lord was making a
great blunder, perhaps a fatal blunder, in talking to this Samaritan
woman. His cause was in its infancy. The hand of social prejudice
would surely throttle it. Why antagonize the existing order of society?
How much better to utilize it for the establishment and enlargement of
the great and glorious kingdom of our Lord! This cause needed the
influence of Jewish leaders. Why risk this potent influence for the sake
of one miserable Samaritan woman, or, for that matter, for a whole race
of Samaritans? It seemed very poor management of a cause, new in that
country. "Far be such unwisdom from thee, Lord," we can hear the
impassioned and worldly-wise Peter exclaim. But our Lord chose to
sacrifice the temporary success of his kingdom that he might be true to
the eternal principles of that kingdom; and so he talked with this sinful
woman of this despised race just as considerately as with Nicodemus.
He invited her to his discipleship just as cordially, and to the same
discipleship. There is not a hint that the Good Shepherd built another
fold for the Samaritan sheep, lest some of the Jewish flock should jump
over the fence, if they were put into the same fold.
These Samaritans were not only degraded and despised socially, but
they were also superstitious in their religious beliefs, and semi-heathen
in their forms of worship. It would take generations to bring them up to
a level with the Jewish Christians. They could not comprehend much of
the intelligent preaching that Christ addressed to the Jews. Why not
appoint a special missionary for them, and then quietly exclude them
from the ordinary gatherings? This course would avoid criticism; it
would not violate the established ideas of social and religious propriety.
Nothing need be said about it. It would not be best to put it on
parchment; just let it be quietly whispered about that the disciples
thought it was better for the Samaritan Christians not to meet with the
others. The disciples were surrounded by prejudiced people, to be sure,
but these prejudices were very old; time would correct all these social
and race inequalities. The disciples thought it better to ignore them, and

just organize and carry on their work with no reference to these
degraded and superstitious Samaritans. Such seems to have been
somewhat the reasoning of these timid disciples. It was not our Lord's
reasoning; the doors of his blessed kingdom opened to all. It required
no magic sesame of race respectability to throw back these gates of
pardon and hope. 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. Our Lord
did not ignore this race prejudice; he rebuked it. And so these timid
disciples, realizing only the temporary danger that threatened, marveled
that he talked with this woman. God pity them! But how human they
were. So to-day, in India, the missionaries of the cross, true to their
Lord's great example, talk with pariah and Brahmin, and welcome them
both to equal privileges in the kingdom of his grace--and men marvel.
And so in Alabama and South Carolina, the missionaries of the cross,
true