homes and their religious atmosphere, ask yourselves if any one would
say that about your houses, and if they could not, why not?
II. We may get here another object lesson as to the hallowing of
common life, trade, and travel.
It does not appear that, after their stay in Ephesus, Aquila and his
wife were closely attached to Paul's person, and certainly they did
not take any part as members of what we 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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