483. How to Treat Company

How to Treat Company

Rom_12:13 : ’93Given to hospitality.’94

There is danger that the multiplication of large and commodious hotels in our towns and cities and villages will utterly exterminate that grace which Abraham exhibited when he entertained the angels, and which Lot showed when he watched for guests at the gate of the city, and which Christ recognized as a positive requisite for entering heaven, when he declared: ’93I was a stranger and ye took me in.’94 I propose to speak of the trials and rewards of Christian hospitality.

The first trial often comes in the whim and eccentricity of the guest himself. There are a great many excellent people who have protuberances of disposition and sharp edges of temperament and unpliability of character, which make them a positive nuisance in any house where they stay. On short acquaintance they will begin to command the household affairs, order the employees to unusual service, keep unseasonable hours, use narcotics in places offensive to sensitive nostrils, put their feet at unusual elevations, drop the ashes of their Havana on costly tapestry, open bureaus they ought never to touch, and pry into things they ought never to see and become impervious to rousing bells and have all the peculiarities of the gormandizer or the dyspeptic and make excavations in poor dentistry with unusual implements, and in a thousand ways afflict the household which proposes to take care of them. Added to all, they stay too long. They have no idea when their welcome is worn out, and they would be unmoved even by the blessing which my friend, Gerrit Smith, the philanthropist, asked one morning at his breakfast table, on the day when he hoped that the long protracted guests would depart, saying: ’93O Lord, bless this provision, and our friends who leave us today!’94

But there are alleviations to be put on their side of the scale. Perhaps they had not the same refining influences about them in early life that you have had. Perhaps they had inherited eccentricities that they cannot help. 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 they were to be intended as an illustration of the opposite of what you are trying to inculcate in the minds of your children. 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 our guests that which is antagonistic to our taste and sentiment, it is a positive triumph when we can obey the words of my text and be ’93given to hospitality.’94

Another trial in the using of this grace is in the toil and expense of exercising it. In the well-regulated household things go smoothly, but now you have introduced a foreign element into the machinery, and though you may stoutly declare that they must take things as they find them, the Martha will break in. The ungovernable stove. The ruined dessert. The joint that proves unmasticatable. The delayed marketing. The perplexities of a caterer. The difficulty of doing proper work, and yet always being presentable. Though you may say there shall be no care or anxiety, there will be care and there will be anxiety.

In 1694, a captain-general provided a very grand entertainment; and, among other things, he had a fountain in his garden’97a fountain of strong drink. In it were four hogsheads of brandy, eight hogsheads of water, twenty-five thousand lemons, thirteen hundredweight of Lisbon sugar, five pounds of grated nutmeg, three hundred toasted biscuits; and a boat built on purpose was placed in the fountain, and a boy rowed around it and filled the cups of the people who came there to be supplied. Well, you say, that was a luxurious entertainment, and, of course, the man had no anxiety; but I have to tell you, that though you had, or propose, an entertainment like that, you have anxiety. In that very thing comes the Divine reward. We were born to serve; and when we serve others, we serve God. The flush on that woman’92s cheek, as she bends over the hot stove, is as sacred in God’92s sight as the flush on the cheek of one who, on a hot day, preaches the Gospel. We may serve God with plate and cutlery and broom as certainly as we can serve him with Psalm-book and liturgy. Margaret, Queen of Norway and Sweden and Denmark, had a royal cup of ten lips, on which was recorded the names of the guests who had drunk from this cup. And every Christian woman has a royal cup, on which are written all the names of those who have ever been entertained by her in Christian style’97names not cut by human ingenuity, but written by the hand of a Divine Jesus.

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. John Howard was invited to the house of a nobleman. He said: ’93I will come on one condition, and that is that you have nothing but potatoes on the table.’94 The stipulation was complied with. Cyrus, King of Persia, under the same circumstances, prescribed that on the table there must be nothing but bread. Of course, these were extremes, but they are illustrations of the fact that more depends upon the banqueters than upon the banquet.

Uncivilized and barbarous nations have this virtue of hospitality. Jupiter had the surname of the Hospitable, and he was said especially to avenge the wrongs of strangers. Homer extolled it in his verse. The Arabs are punctilious on this subject, and among some of their tribes it is not until the ninth day of tarrying that the occupant has a right to ask his guest ’93Who and whence art thou?’94 If this virtue is so honored among barbarians, how ought it to be honored among those of us who believe in the Bible, which commands us to use hospitality one toward another without grudging?

Of course, I do not mean under this cover to give any idea that I approve of that vagrant class who go around from place to place, ranging their whole lifetime, perhaps, under the auspices of some benevolent or philanthropic society, quartering themselves on Christian families with a great pile of trunks in the hall and carpet-bag portentous of tarrying. There is many a country parsonage that looks out week by week upon the ominous arrival of wagon with creaking wheel and lank horse and dilapidated driver, come under the auspices of some charitable institution to spend a few weeks and canvass the neighborhood. Let no such religious tramps take advantage of this beautiful virtue of Christian hospitality.

Not so much the sumptuousness of your diet, and the regality of your abode will impress the friend or the stranger that steps across your threshold, as the warmth of your greeting, the informality of your reception, the reiteration by grasp and by look and by a thousand attentions, insignificant attentions, of your earnestness of welcome. There will be high appreciation of your welcome, though you have nothing but the brazen candlestick and the plain chair to offer Elisha when he comes to Shunem.

Most beautiful is this grace of hospitality when shown in the house of God. I am thankful that I have always been pastor of churches where strangers are welcome. But I have entered churches where there was no hospitality. A stranger would stand in the vestibule for a while and then make a pilgrimage up the long aisle. No door opened to him until, flushed and excited and embarrassed, he started back again, and coming to some half-filled pew, with apologetic air, entered it, while the occupant glared on him with a look which seemed to say, ’93Well, if I must, I must.’94 Away with such accursed indecency from the house of God. Let every church that would maintain large Christian influence in community cultivate Sabbath by Sabbath this beautiful grace of Christian hospitality.

I want to lift this idea of Christian entertainment out of a positive bondage into a glorious inducement. Every effort you put forth, and every dollar you give to the entertainment of friend or foe, you give directly to Christ. Suppose it were announced that the Lord Jesus Christ would come to your city this week, what woman would not be glad to wash for him or spread for him a bed or bake bread for him? There was one of old who washed for him, drawing the water from the well of her own tears. He is coming. He will be here to-morrow. ’93Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it to me.’94 In picture-galleries we have often seen representations of Walter Scott and his friends, or Washington Irving with his associates, but all those engravings will fade out, while through everlasting ages, hanging luminous and conspicuous, will be the picture of you and your Christian guests.

You see we have passed out from the trials into the rewards of Christian hospitality; grand, glorious and eternal. The first reward of Christian hospitality is the Divine benediction. When any one attends to this duty, God’92s blessing comes upon him, upon his companion, upon his children, upon his dining-hall, upon his parlor, upon his nursery. The blessing comes in at the front door and the back door and down through the skylights. God draws a long mark of credit for services received. Christ said to his disciples: ’93He that receiveth you, receiveth me; and he that giveth a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple shall in nowise lose his reward.’94 As we have had so many things recorded against us in heaven, it will be a satisfaction to have written on unfailing archives, the fact that in the month of May or June or September or December of this year, we made the blissful mistake of supposing that we were entertaining weak men like ourselves, when lo! they showed their pinions before they left, and we found out that they were angels unawares.

Another reward comes in the good wishes and prayers of our guests. I do not think one’92s house ever gets over having had a good man or woman abide there. George Whitefield used to scratch on the window of the room where he was entertained, a passage of Scripture, and in one case, after he left, the whole household was converted by the reading of that passage on the window-pane. The woman of Shunem furnished a little room over the wall for Elisha, and all the ages have heard the glorious consequences. On a cold, stormy winter night, my father entertained Trueman Osborne, the evangelist, and through all eternity I will thank God that Trueman Osborne stopped at our house. How many of our guests have brought to us condolence and sympathy and help! There is a legend told of St. Sebald, that in his Christian rounds he used to stop for entertainment at the house of a poor wheelwright. Coming there one day, he found the wheelwright and his family freezing for the lack of any fuel. St. Sebald ordered the man to go out and break the icicles from the side of the house and bring them in, and the icicles were brought into the house and thrown on the hearth and they began to blaze immediately, and the freezing family gathered around and were warmed by them. That was a legend; but 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. Years will go by, and there will be great changes in you, and there will be great changes in them. Some day you will be sitting in loneliness, watching a bereavement, and you will get a letter in a strange handwriting and you will look at the post-office mark and say: ’93Why, I don’92t know anybody living in that city’94; and you will break the envelope, 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. And the letter will be so full of kindly reminiscences and Christian condolence, it will be a plaster large enough to cover up all the deep gashes of your soul. When we take people into our houses as Christian guests, we take them into our sympathies.

In Dort, Holland, a soldier with a sword at his side, stopped at a house, desiring lodging and shelter. The woman of the house at first refused admittance, saying that the men of the house were not at home; but when he showed his credentials that he had been honorably discharged from the army, he was admitted and tarried during the night. In the nighttime there was a knocking at the front door, and two ruffians broke in to despoil that household. No sooner had they come over the door-sill than the armed guest, who had primed his piece and charged it with slugs, met them, and telling the woman to stand back, dropped the two assaulting desperadoes dead at his feet. Well, now there are no bandits prowling around to destroy our houses; but how often it is that we find those that have been our guests become our defenders? We gave them shelter first, and then, afterwards, in the great conflicts of life they fought for our reputation; they fought for our property; they fought for our soul.

Another reward that comes from Christian hospitality is in the assurance that we shall have hospitality shown to us and to ours. In the upturnings of this life, who knows in what city or what land 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 straits. He, who is in a Christian manner hospitable, has a free pass through all Christendom. It may be that you will have been dead fifty years before any such stress shall come upon one of your descendants; but do you not suppose that God can remember fifty years? and the knuckle of the grandchild will be heard against the door of some stranger, and that door will open; and it will be talked over in heaven and it will be said: ’93That man’92s grandfather, fifty years ago, gave shelter to a stranger, and now a stranger’92s door is open for a grandson.’94

Among the Greeks, after entertaining and being entertained, they take a piece of lead and cut it in two, and the host takes one-half of the piece of lead and the guest takes the other half as they part. These two pieces of lead are handed down from generation to generation and from family to family; and after a while, 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 of lead, 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 from family to family, and the tally will never be lost, neither in this world nor in the world to come. Mark this: the day will come when we will all be turned out of doors, without any exception, barefoot, bare-head, no water in the canteen, no bread in the haversack, and we will go in that way into the future world. And I wonder if eternal hospitalities will open before us, and we be received into everlasting habitations!

Francis Frescobald was a rich Italian, and he was very merciful and very hospitable. One day, an Englishman by the name of Thomas Cromwell appeared at his door asking for shelter and alms, which were cheerfully rendered. Frescobald afterward lost all his property, became very poor, and wandered up into England, and one day he saw a procession passing, and lo! it was the Lord Chancellor of England; and lo! the Lord Chancellor of England was Thomas Cromwell, the very man whom he had once befriended down in Italy. The Lord Chancellor, at the first glance of Frescobald, recognized him, and dismounted from his carriage, threw his arms around him and embraced him, paid his debts, invited him to his house and said: ’93Here are ten pieces of money to pay for the bread you gave me, and here are ten pieces of money to provide for the horse you loaned me and here are four bags, in each of which are four hundred ducats. Take them and be well.’94 So it will be at last with us. If we entertain Christ in the person of his disciples in this world, when we pass up into the next country, we will meet Christ in a regal procession, and he will pour all the wealth of heaven into our lap, and open before us everlasting hospitalities. How tame are the richest entertainments we can give on earth compared with the regal munificence which Christ will display before our souls in heaven!

I was reading the account which Thomas Fuller gives of the entertainment provided by George Neville. Among other things, for that banquet, they had three hundred quarters of wheat, one hundred and four tuns of wine, eighty oxen, three thousand capons, two hundred cranes, two hundred kids, four thousand pigeons, four thousand rabbits, two hundred and four bitterns, two hundred pheasants, five hundred partridges, four hundred plover, one hundred quail, one hundred curlews, fifteen hundred hot pasties, four thousand cold venison pasties, four thousand custards’97the Earl of Warwick acting as steward, and servitors one thousand. Oh, what a grand feast was that! but then compare it with the provision which God has made for us on high; that great banquet hour; the one hundred and forty and four thousand as guests; all the harps and trumpets of heaven as the orchestra; the vintage of the celestial hills poured into the tankards; all the fruits of the orchards of God piled on the golden platters; the angels of the Lord for cup-bearers, and the once-folded starry banner of the blue sky flung out over the scene, while seated at the head of the table shall be the One who eighteen centuries ago declared, ’93I was a stranger and ye took me in.’94 Our sins pardoned, may we all mingle in those hospitalities!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage