Page:The early Christians in Rome (1911).djvu/167

 *tributing to the necessity of saints, given to hospitality," Rom. xii. 13. "Use hospitality one to another, without grudging," 1 Pet. iv. 9. "Beloved, thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest to the brethren and to strangers," 3 John 5, etc.

This urgent recommendation to practise hospitality in the New Testament Epistles of Peter and Paul, of John and the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, repeated with insistence and earnestness by writers of the second and third centuries, was, as Justin Martyr tells us in his picture of the Sunday gathering of Christians, incorporated among the special exhortations to the brethren urging them to generous almsgiving.

The duty of "hospitality" thus pressed home at these gatherings as important enough to rank with the claims of the widow and the orphan and the sick poor, needs a few words of explanation.

In the early days of Christianity it must be borne in mind that the widely extended world of Rome was not as in mediæval and modern times, made up of different nations and peoples, but that the Roman world was all one, that men were fellow-subjects of one great Empire, and that the passing to and fro from land to land was far more common than in after times; and that Christians, whether belonging to Asia or to Greece, to Italy or to Gaul, made up one great Brotherhood.

For a Christian coming into a strange city to find there at once a home and a warm welcome, and if poor and needy, help and assistance, would constitute a very powerful inducement to very many to join the new Society in which lived such a spirit of loving brotherhood and kindness.

Special means of intercourse through letters and messages and other means were provided. Cæcilius in Minucius Felix (c. ix.), an early writing, as we have said, belonging to the middle of the second century or even earlier, especially tells us that "Christians recognize each other by means of secret marks and signs, and love one another almost before they are acquainted."

It was to give effect to this far-reaching spirit of brotherhood that the apostles and their successors insisted so earnestly upon the new and beautiful duty of "hospitality."