The public residence of hotel and boarding-house abolishes the grace
of hospitality. Your guest does not want to come to such a table. No
one wants to run such a gauntlet of acute and merciless
hyper-criticism. Unless you have a home of your own you will not be
able to exercise the best rewarded of all the graces. For exercise of
this grace what blessing came to the Shunamite in the restoration of
her son to life because she entertained Elisha, and to the widow of
Zarephath in the perpetual oil well of the miraculous cruise because
she fed a hungry prophet, and to Rahab in the preservation of her life
at the demolition of Jericho because she entertained the spies and to
Laban in the formation of an interesting family relation because of
his entertainment of Jacob, and to Lot in his rescue from the
destroyed city because of his entertainment of the angels, and to Mary
and Martha and Zaccheus in spiritual blessing because they entertained
Christ, and to Publius in the island of Melita in the healing of his
father because of the entertainment of Paul drenched from the
shipwreck, and of innumerable houses throughout Christendom upon which
have come blessings from generation to generation because their doors
swung easily open in the enlarging, ennobling, irradiating, and divine
grace of hospitality. I do not know what your experience has been, but
I have had men and women visiting at my house who left a benediction
on every room--in the blessing they asked at the table, in the prayer
they offered at the family altar, in the good advice they gave the
children, in the gospelization that looked out from every lineament of
their countenances; and their departure was the sword of bereavement.