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I. ITS TRIALS.

1. The whim and eccentricity of the guest. There are a great many excellent people whose temperament makes them a nuisance in any house where they stay. On short acquaintance, they will keep unseasonable hours, have all the peculiarities of the gormandiser or the dyspeptic, and in a thousand ways afflict the household which proposes to take care of them. Added to all, they stay too long. Gerrit Smith, the philanthropist, asked at his breakfast table, on the day when he hoped that the long-protracted guests would depart, "O Lord, bless this provision, and our friends who leave us to-day!" But there are alleviations. Perhaps they have not had the same refining influences about them that you have had. Perhaps it is your duty, by example, to show them a better way. Perhaps they are sent to be a trial for the development of your patience. Perhaps it is to make your home the brighter when they are gone. When our guests are cheery, and fascinating, and elegant, it is very easy to entertain them; but when we find in them that which is antagonistic to our taste and sentiment, it is a positive triumph when we can be "given to hospitality."

2. The toil and expense of exercising it. When you introduce a foreign element into the domestic machinery, though you may declare that they must take things as they find them, the Martha will break in. The ungovernable stove, the unmasticable joint, the delayed marketing, the difficulty of being presentable, etc. Yet we may serve God with plate, and cutlery, and broom, just as certainly as with psalm-book and liturgy. But you are not to toil unnecessarily. Though the fare be plain, cheerful presidency of the table and cleanliness of appointments will be good enough for anybody that ever comes to your house. I want to lift this idea of Christian entertainment out of a positive bondage into a glorious inducement. Suppose it were announced that the Lord Jesus Christ would come to town this week, what woman in this house would not be glad to wash for Him, or spread for Him a bed, or bake bread for Him? He is coming. "Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these, My brethren, ye have done it to Me."

II. ITS REWARDS.

1. The Divine benediction. When any one attends to this duty, God's blessing comes upon him, upon his companion, upon his children.

2. The good wishes and prayers of our guests. I do not think one's house ever gets over having had a good man or woman abide there. George Whitefield used to scratch a text on his window, and in one case, after he left, the whole household was converted by it. The woman of Shunem furnished a little room for Elisha, and all the ages have heard the consequences. On a winter night my father entertained Trueman Osborne, the evangelist, and that, among others, was the means of saving my soul. How many of our guests have brought to us condolence, and sympathy, and help! It is said of St. Sebald, that in his Christian rounds he used to stop for entertainment at the house of a poor cartwright. Coming there one day, he found him and his family freezing for the lack of fuel. St. Sebald ordered the man to bring some icicles and throw them on the hearth; whereupon they began to blaze immediately, and the freezing family were warmed by them. How often have our guests come in to gather up the cold, freezing sorrows of our life, kindling them into illumination, and warmth, and good cheer. He who opens his house to Christian hospitality, turns those who are strangers into friends. Some day you will be sitting in loneliness, watching a bereavement, and you will get a letter, and there you will read the story of thanks for your Christian generosity long years before, and how they have heard afar off of your trouble. When we take people into our houses as Christian guests, we take them into our sympathies for ever. In Dort a soldier stopped at a house, desiring shelter. At first he was refused admittance, but when he showed his credentials he was admitted. In the night-time two ruffians broke in, but no sooner had they come over the door-sill than the armed guest met them. There are no bandits prowling around to destroy our houses; but how often our guests become our defenders. We gave them shelter first, and afterwards they fought for our reputation, for our property, for our soul.

3. We shall have hospitality shown to us and to ours. In the upturnings of this life, who knows where we may be thrown, and how much we may need an open door? There may come no such crisis to us, but our children may be thrown into some such strait. Among the Greeks, after an entertainment they take a piece of lead and cut it in two, and the host takes one half and the guest the other as they part. These are handed down from generation to generation, and after awhile perhaps one of the families in want or in trouble go out with this one piece of lead and find the other family with the corresponding piece, and no sooner is the tally completed than the old hospitality is aroused, and eternal friendship pledged. So the memory of Christian hospitality will go down from generation to generation, and the tally will never be lost.

(T. De Witt Talmage, D.D.)

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KJV: Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.

WEB: contributing to the needs of the saints; given to hospitality.