1. It is the duty of Christians to receive kindly their brethren, and to aid them in every way within their power, and to do this from religious! motives, and in a religious manner; as becometh saints, vs. 1, 2.
2. The social relations in which Christians stand to each other as re- latives, countrymen, friends, should not be allowed to give character to their feelings and conduct, to the exclusion of the more important rela- tion which they bear to Christ. It is as friends, helpers, fellow labour- ers in the Lord, that they are to be recognised ; they are to be received in the Lord ; our common connexion with Christ is ever to be borne in mind, and made to modify all our feelings and conduct, vs. 3 — 12.
2. From the beginning females have taken an active and important part in the promotion of religion. Tliey seem more than others to have contributed to Christ of their substance ; they were his most faithful attendants, * last at the cross, and first at the sepulchre ;' Phebe was a servant of the church, a succourer of Paul and of many others ; Tryphe- na, Tryphosa, and Persis laboured much in the Lord, vs. 1, 2, 3, 6, 12.
4. It does not follow, because a custom prevailed in the early churches, and received the sanction of the apostles, that we are obliged to follow it. Tliese customs often arose out of local circumstances and previous habits, or were merely conventional modes of expressing certain feelings, and were never intended to be made universally obligatory. As it was com- mon in the east (and is so, to a great extent, at present, not only there, but on the continent of Europe) to express affection and confidence by ' the kiss of peace,' Paul exhorts the Roman Christians to salute one another with a holy kiss ; i. e. to manifest their Christian love to each other according to the mode to which they were accustomed. The exer- cise and manifestation of the feeling, but not the mode of its expression, are obligatory on us. This is but one example ; there are many other things connected with the manner of conducting public worship, and with the administration of baptism and the Lord's supper, common in the apostolic churches, which have gone out of use. Christianity is a living principle, and was never intended to be confined to one unvarying set of forms, v. 16.