From an editorial in the “Sunday School Times” on “The Delusion of Symmetry.” PROBABLY the priest and the Levite who left the wounded man by the roadside were not the heartless and cruel types we have thought them. It is quite as easy to believe that they were victims of symmetry. Each of them was engaged in a definite errand. He had been brought up to carry his errands through without break. Due at Jerusalem at a certain day and hour for his share of temple service, and due home again for his just and well-earned rest, his life had fallen into a religious routine which he hated to have broken in upon. God had ordered the routine, and the man’s whole life had been an acceptance of it. He was naturally distrustful of things that broke in on it. Nor was it callousness toward suffering, for his religion had made ample provision for the sufferers. The real trouble was that this unfortunate man had been unfortunate in such an irregular and unsymmetrical way, not covered by the ordinary relief agencies. The Jericho road was no place for people to get into such a plight. At Jerusalem or Jericho, either end of the road, everything would have been all right; but midway,— well, it was too bad, but it was more than could be taken care of. At either of these places the priest and the Levite would have known what to do for him, but they were out of their track and quite helpless anywhere else. The good Samaritan had his very pressing business too, but with a sigh, perhaps, he admitted the pressingness of this unlooked-for business also, and suffered interruption. And tho he would have preferred to have the man in reach of familiar agencies up in Samaria, the near-by inn would answer as well. Such cases ought to be cared for by a fund, and indiscriminate charity was dangerous; but, tho it was wholly irregular and unsymmetrical and out of order, the fund in his own pocket would do at a pinch. One of the good things about the good Samaritan was that he was flexible enough to be good in a new way. Good men easily incur the penalty of being able to do good and be good in only one way, so that when circumstances veer somewhat they are often found to be doing what is positively bad, tho without the least bad intention. We must all have our policies of action and procedure, but their existence is simply for the sake of enabling us to compass and control our resources in the most effective way. Yet the tendency is strong to worship the policy, make an idol of the method, and lose sight of the resources.