may call his evangelistic
staff. They seem to have gone their own way, and as far as the scanty
notices carry us, they did not meet Paul again, after the time when
they parted in Ephesus. Their gipsy life was probably occasioned by
Aquila's going about--as was the custom in old days when there were
no trades-unions or organised centres of a special industry--to look
for work where he could find it. When he had made tents in Ephesus
for a while, he would go on somewhere else, and take temporary
lodgings there. Thus he wandered about as a working man. Yet Paul
calls him his 'fellow worker in Christ Jesus'; and he had, as we saw,
a Church in his house. A roving life of that sort is not generally
supposed to be conducive to depth of spiritual life. But their
wandering course did not hurt these two. They took their religion
with them. It did not depend on locality, as does that of a great
many people who are very religious in the town where they live, and,
when they go away for a holiday, seem to leave their religion, along
with their silver plate, at home. But no matter whether they were in
Corinth or Ephesus or Rome, Aquila and Priscilla took their Lord and
Master with them, and while working at their camel's-hair tents, they
were serving God.

Dear brethren, what we want is not half so much preachers such as my
brethren and I, as Christian tradesmen and merchants and travellers,
like Aquila and Priscilla.

III. Again, we may see here a suggestion of the unexpected issues of
our lives.

Think of that complicated chain of circumstances, one end of which
was round Aquila and the other round the young Pharisee in Jerusalem.
It steadily drew them together until they met in that lodging at
Corinth. Claudius, in the fullness of his absolute power, said, 'Turn
all these wretched Jews out of my city. I will not have it polluted
with them any more. Get rid of them!' So these two were uprooted, and
drifted to Corinth. We do not know why they chose to go thither;
perhaps they themselves did not know why; but God knew. And while
they were coming thither from the west, Paul was coming thither from
the east and north. He was 'prevented by the Spirit from speaking in
Asia,' and driven across the sea against his intention to Neapolis,
and hounded out of Philippi and Thessalonica and Beraea; and turned
superciliously away from Athens; and so at last found himself in
Corinth, face to face with the tentmaker from Rome and his wife. Then