Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/320

 to reject it, at once, as a grievous heresy. Yet such was, unquestionably, the spirit, the word, and the practice of Jesus. It was enough for him to know that the weight of human woe, which called him forth on his errand of mercy, was lightened; and that the spirit before darkened and bound down by the powers of evil, was now brought out into glorious light and freedom. Most earnestly did he declare this solemn principle of catholic communion; and most distinctly did he reiterate it in a varied form. The simplest act of kindness done to the commissioned of Christ, would, of itself, constitute a certain claim to his divine favor. But, on the other hand, the least wilful injury of one sent forth from him, would at once insure the ruin of the perpetrator.

Soon after this solemn inculcation of universal charity, Jesus began to prepare his disciples for their great journey to Jerusalem; and at last having completed his preliminary arrangements, he went on his way, sending forward messengers, (James and John, as it would seem,) to secure a comfortable stopping-place, at a Samaritan village which lay on his road. These select emissaries accordingly proceeded in the execution of their honorable commission, and entering the village, announced to the inhabitants the approach of the far-famed Galilean prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, who, being then on his way to attend the great annual feast in Jerusalem, would that night deign to honor their village with his divine presence;—all which appears to have been communicated by the two messengers, with a full sense of the importance of their commission, as well as of the dignity of him whose approach they announced. But the sturdy Samaritans had not yet forgotten the rigid principles of mutual exclusiveness, which had so long been maintained between them and the Jews, with all the combined bitterness of a national and a religious quarrel; and so they doggedly refused to open their doors in hospitality to one whose "face was as though he would go to Jerusalem." At this manifestation of sectarian and sectional bitterness, the wrath of the messengers knew no bounds, and reporting their inhospitable and scornful rejection to Jesus, the two Boanerges, with a spirit quite literally accordant with their surname, inquired, "Lord! wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them as Elijah did?" The stern prophet of the days of Ahaziah, had called down fire from heaven to the destruction of two successive bands of the insolent myrmidons of the Samaritan king; and might not the wonder-doing Son of Man, with equal vindic