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. The Queen of Norway, Sweden and Denmark had a royal CUP OF TEN CURVES, or lips, each one having on it the name of the distinguished person who had drank from it. And that cup which we offer to others in Christian hospitality, though it be of the plainest earthenware, is a royal cup, and God can read on all its sides the names of those who have taken from it refreshment. But all this is impossible unless you have a home of your own. It is the delusion as to what is necessary for a home that hinders so many from establishing one. Thirty rooms are not necessary, nor twenty, nor fifteen, nor ten, nor five, nor three. In the right way plant a table, and couch, and knife and fork, and a cup, and a chair, and you can raise a young paradise. Just start a home, on however small a scale, and it will grow. When King Cyrus was invited to dine with an humble friend the king made the one condition of his coming that the only dish be one loaf of bread, and the most imperial satisfactions have sometimes banqueted on the plainest fare.