Chapter X: A Good Sport

Say, fellows, I overheard a remark the other day as I passed a bunch of boys down on the corner. One of the boys was saying, "Oh, he's a good sport, all right," and I wondered just what that boy thought it took to make a good sport. About that time one of the boys whom I knew pulled out of the crowd and coming my way overtook me, so I asked him who was the "good sport" the fellows were talking about.

"Why," he said, "it was Jim Love; when he was in the two-mile cross-country foot race the other day, with a good chance of getting ahead of Tom Locke, who won it, Jim stopped long enough to help a guy across a footlog with a sack of potatoes or something--and even then came in just a few yards behind Tom. He would have won, but for that stop; but he said the old man looked as if he was about to fall off the footlog. Tom saw it, too, but he waded the creek and got a better lead on Jim."

It did me good to think of those fellows classing Jim up as "a good sport," after I knew what had happened. They had the right idea. I believe our Lord would have called Jim a good sport, too, if He had been telling the boys of to-day about it, because the Christ spirit in a fellow is what makes him a "good sport" in the highest sense. Once when a proud Pharisee was trying to trap our Lord with a "catch question," Jesus answered him with a story very much like that which made the boys call Jim Love a good sport.

The Pharisee asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbour?" and Jesus told him about the Good Samaritan. A man was travelling from Jerusalem down the rough mountain road to Jericho, and was attacked by bandits, beaten, robbed, and left lying beside the road half dead. A priest came along, but he was in a hurry; he had important religious duties awaiting him, and besides, that fellow looked as if he was in bad and it would take a lot of time and trouble to "undertake" him, so Mr. Priest just hummed a little tune to himself, looked at the sky and passed on.

Then came a Levite. He got down off his donkey and stepped over and looked at the poor fellow. Yes, he was breathing, but so near dead he probably would not last long, so why worry? So passed on the Levite. But next came along a man whom the priest and the Levite despised because he was a Samaritan. They regarded him as a very poor sort of a citizen.

But the Samaritan had a heart in him and he had a way of saying to himself when he saw anybody in distress: "Suppose I was in that fellow's fix, what would I like to have done for me?" When he asked himself that question on this occasion, the answer came quick and strong: "Get down and help him all you can; yes, your business is urgent, too, but here is a fellow-man in hard luck and you've got the stuff to help with!"

That is the way the heart of a good sport talks back to a fellow, and a good sport listens when his heart speaks, and a good sport acts quickly. So the Samaritan got down off his donkey and ran to the man, felt his pulse, spoke to him, loosened his shirt and looked into that ugly wound all bleeding. Then back to his travelling sack and out with the oil and wine.

Pouring in the soothing and healing stuff, he doubtless said: "There now, old fellow, you're feeling better already; just keep steady a bit, and we'll get you out of this; a little water? yes, hold on a minute--" and down to the trickling stream he runs and brings a cool drink in his little leather cup.

Ah, it was fine to see that beaten man revive! He opened his eyes wide and looked the gratitude he was not yet able to speak. Soon the Samaritan got the whole story of the attack, listening with sympathetic indignation as the wounded man told how it happened, how he was taken by surprise by those cowardly ruffians, stripped, robbed, and beaten into insensibility. Directly he was trying to raise up on his elbow, and the Samaritan said:

"Now you just put your arm around my neck and hold steady while I lift. That's it, get your weight on your right foot, lean forward, and I'll get you atop this beast. Ah! that's the stuff, you're getting stronger every minute--now steady just a moment, let me pick up that oil bottle--all right--Get up! Bess--steady, girl, keep your hoofs in the path, and we'll make it fine. There, that's the movement.

"The inn is only a mile down the road now, friend, and there is food and a good bed awaiting you--oh, well, that's all right about your money being taken, I'll take care of that. The innkeeper and I are good friends, and likely with the good treatment you'll get you will be on your way in a couple of days--"

And so they go, the donkey picking her way carefully over the rougher places under the restraining voice of her master, while the wounded man leans heavily upon his benefactor.

Then, you know the rest, fellows. That despised Samaritan saw the thing clean through. He did not leave "his neighbour" until he had spent a night with him at the inn and had an understanding next morning with the innkeeper as to his safekeeping until able to resume the journey.

And what did our Lord teach in that graphic story? Why, simply this: Anybody whom you can help is your neighbour. If there is a poor man at my door needing something I can give, he is my neighbour. Or, if there is a rich Chinaman six thousand miles across the seas, needing the spiritual help I can send him through my prayers, my gifts, or my personal attention--he is my neighbour. Distance, short or long, is not the measure of neighbourhood; but need and my ability to help are the tests which determine how near by is my brother man.

The Boy Scouts have a fine motto: "Do a Good Turn Daily." There is just one better--"Do a Good Turn Whenever You Can," and that is loving your neighbour.

_Read Luke 10:25-37._