Nigh Boors.
Shrewd Horace Walpole once wrote, "The worst place in the world to find solitude is the country; questions grow there, and that unpleasant Christian commodity, neighbors."
"And who is my neighbor?" the lawyer asked Jesus. "He that showed mercy," was the lawyer's own answer, following the parable of the good Samaritan.
Walpole's "unpleasant Christian neighbors" were not neighbors at all in Christ's meaning of the term. They were neighbors in the root meaning of the word, nigh boors. They were merciless in their curiosity, their meddlesomeness, their officiousness, their criticisms. They were not neighbors in gracious tact, manly independence, and beautiful regard for the fitness of things. They were boors; and because they were nigh boors, they rankled.
I think we need not go to England, nor back two centuries, to find specimens of the kind of neighbor that Walpole had in mind.
Neighbors' Hens.
I have received an appealing fetter. It comes from a New England town, and it puts the following question:
"X and Y live opposite each other in a village. X keeps hens. What does his duty as a Christian citizen require him to do to prevent his hens from leaving his premises? On the other hand, what does the law of Christian courtesy and forbearance require on Y's part if X's hens do get into his garden after he has expressed to X a wish to have them kept out?"
There you have it! That, in embryo, is the social problem of the ages! It is the problem of "live and let live." Essentially the problem is, "If one man's good is another man's ill, what is the second man to do about it?"
Instead of hens put dollars. A has a lot of them. B has none. A's dollars are aggressive. They have beaks and mouths and claws. Also, they have wings; and they do not fly away. They fly over the fence, rather, and eat up B's possessions and mar Mr. B's peace of mind. And what is B to do about it?
It is a great art, this art of living together. Neighborliness is simply Christianity in action. Christ's question, "Who is my neighbor?" goes to the root of the matter. If you are a thoroughly good neighbor, you are all right for time and eternity.
And the law of neighborliness is simply this: "Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as your-self." If you would wish your neighbor, in case he kept chickens, to build a fence around them with netting that they could not fly over, then build that fence for your own chickens, and do it tomorrow. If, when you have done your best to keep your chickens in and they nevertheless get away from you and into your neighbor's flower-beds, you would like to have him turn the affair off lightly and say that the pansies had done their best blossoming anyway,—why, treat it the same way if your neighbor's hens make uninvited calls upon you against his will and in spite of his efforts. But if your neighbor is one of those mean, cross-grained, crabbed, selfish old curmudgeons that are too stingy to pay for a chicken fence and too ugly to care whether your garden is spoiled or not, get your evidence and witnesses and a lawyer and make him pay the damages done by his hens! That is for the good of the community and of Mr. Neighbor also, and you can sing while you are doing it any hymn in the hymn-book.
And if it is dollars instead of chickens, the rule holds good!