the last days of paganism, it is probable that some slight memorial
continued to connect the dinner party [_cœna_] with a divine
sacrifice; and thence partly arose the sanctity of the hospitable
board; but to the east of the Mediterranean the full ritual of a
sacrifice must have been preserved in all banquets, long after it
had faded to a form in the less superstitious West. This we may
learn from that point of casuistry treated by St. Paul,--whether
a Christian might lawfully eat of things offered to idols. The
question was most urgent; because a Christian could not accept an
invitation to dine with a Grecian fellow-citizen who still adhered
to paganism, _without_ eating things offered to idols;--the
whole banquet was dedicated to an idol. If he would not take
_that_, he must continue _impransus_. Consequently, the
question virtually amounted to this: Were the Christians to separate
themselves altogether from those whose interests were in so many
ways entangled with their own, on the single consideration that these
persons were heathens? To refuse their hospitalities, _was_
to separate, and with a hostile expression of feeling. That would
be to throw hindrances in the way of Christianity: the religion could
not spread rapidly under such repulsive prejudices; and dangers,
that it became un-Christian to provoke, would thus multiply against
the infant faith. This being so, and as the gods were really the
only parties invited who got nothing at all of the banquet, it
becomes a question of some interest,--what _did_ they get?
They were merely mocked, if they had no compensatory interest in
the dinner! For surely it was an inconceivable mode of honoring
Jupiter, that you and I should eat a piece of roast beef, leaving
to the god's share only the mockery of a _Barmecide_ invitation,
assigning him a chair which every body knew that he would never
fill, and a plate which might as well have been filled with warm