06.02 The spirit of neighbourliness
II. THE SPIRIT OF NEIGHBOURLINESS In order to know who is our neighbour we must first possess the true spirit of neighbourliness. It is the spirit of love which knows no limitations. The natural man always tends to look at his relationship with his fellows in the light of the lawyer’s question: to regard as his “neighbours” as men who have a claim upon his thought and help persons clearly defined and set apart by distinctions of race, class, occupations, locality, and the like. The Jew, in spite of the generosity towards the stranger of his own Law, would regard his fellow-Jew as a neighbour; but he had “no dealings with the Samaritan.” The whole system of caste is an elaborate definition and restriction of the neighbour. The spirit of the East is wonderfully described in Arnold’s poem, “The Sick King at Bockhara,” in which the Vizier taunts the king with his foolish compassion “The Kaffirs also, whom God curse, Vex one another night and day.
There are the lepers and all sick;
There are the poor who faint alway.
All these have sorrow and keep still While other men make cheer and sing.
Wilt thou have pity on all these?
No: nor on this dead dog, O King.” The free citizen of Greece or Rome saw no neighbour’s claim in the subject or the slave. Even now, the white man’s civilization when it is left to itself regards the coloured man as a chattel for its own convenience, not as a neighbour entitled to its care and compassion. Dr. Trench quotes a striking passage from the Essays of Emerson in many ways a type of “the natural, man” at his best “Do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men into good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, given to such men as do not belong to me, and to whom I do not belong,” We are always inclined to treat as our neighbours only those who can come within the narrow circle of our own duties, or tastes, or sentiments. The remedy lies not in enlarging these circles or adding to our lists so much as in changing our whole point of view. We are to have so to say a soul of neighbourliness for man as man.
It was this revolution in man’s way of looking at his fellows which Jesus came to accomplish. If we may dare to put it thus boldly God made Humanity His neighbour. Beholding Humanity robbed of its true nature, stripped of its ideal, wounded by its sins, unable to rise, He came down to it, entered it, healed, and restored it. He “was made man.” The Incarnation has made human nature itself sacred. The Christian, the follower of Christ, must therefore see in every man his neighbour. The claim is not his class or condition, but his mere humanity. And the Incarnation not only revealed this ideal of neighbourliness, but made it possible for us to realize it. Man in himself we might not be able to love but the Christ in man we can. “St. Francis,” we are told, “was riding one day near Assisi while he was still perplexed as to the nature of his future work, when suddenly he was startled by a loathsome spectacle. A leper was seated at the roadside. For a moment he gave way to natural horror, till he remembered that he wished to be Christ’s soldier. Then he returned and dismounted and went up to the poor sufferer and giving an alms kissed lovingly the hand which received it. Strong in his hard-won victory he rode on; but when he looked back, there was no beggar to be seen; and therefore his heart was filled with unutterable joy, for he knew that he had seen the Lord.” So in his simple way he realized the truth of neighbourliness which he afterwards taught his brothers. “When thou seest a poor man, my brother, an image of Christ is set before thee. And in the weak behold the weakness which He took upon him.”
TAGS: [Parables]