Grace be with you all. Amen. The condition of the Hebrew Christians was most serious. But one excellence is acknowledged to have belonged to them. It was almost the only ground of hope. They ministered to the saints.[385] Yet even this grace was in peril. In a previous chapter the writer has exhorted them to call to remembrance the former days, in which they had compassion on them that were in bonds.[386] But he considers it sufficient, in reference to brotherly love, to urge them to see that it continues.[387] They were in more danger of forgetting to show kindness to their brethren of other Churches, who, in pursuance of the liberty of prophesying accorded in Apostolic times, journeyed from place to place for the purpose of founding new Churches or of imparting spiritual gifts to Churches already established. Besides, it was a time of local persecutions. One Church might be suffering, and its members might take refuge in a sister-Church. Missionaries and persecuted brethren would be the strangers to whom the enrolled widows used hospitality, and whose feet they washed.[388] We can well understand why in that age a bishop would be especially expected to be given to hospitality.[389] Uhlhorn excellently observes that “the greatness of the age consisted in this very feature: that Christians of all places knew themselves to be fraternally one, and that in this oneness all differences disappeared.”[390] In the case of a Church consisting of Hebrews the duty of entertaining strangers, many of them necessarily Greeks, would be peculiarly apt to be forgotten. When a Church wavered in its allegiance to Christianity, the alienation would become still more pronounced. The constant going and coming of missionary brethren reminds the author of the ministry of angels, who are like the swift breezes, and carry Christ’s messages over the face of the earth.[391] Sometimes they are as a flame of fire. When they were on their way to destroy the Cities of the Plain, Abraham and Lot entertained them, not knowing that they were heaven-sent ministers of wrath.[392] It would be presumptuous in any man to deny the possibility of angelic visitations in the Christian Church; but the Apostle’s meaning is not that hospitality ought to be shown to strangers in the hope that angels may be among them. They are to be received unawares; otherwise the fragrance of the deed is gone. But the fact remains, and has been proved in the experience of many, that kindness to strangers, be they preaching friars, or itinerant exhorters, or persecuted outcasts, brings a rich blessing to children’s children. A Syrian builds for himself a hut on the riverside, and offers to carry the wayfarers across on his shoulders. One day a child asks to be taken over. But the light burden becomes every moment heavier. The exhausted bearer asks in astonishment, “Who art thou, child?” It was Christ, and the Syrian was named the Christ-bearer in remembrance of the event.[393]