and a prophecy which may stimulate and encourage.  ‘Surely I will never forget any of their works’ is a gracious promise which the most obscure and humble of us may take to heart, and sustained by which, we may patiently pursue a way on which there are ‘none to praise and very few to love.’  It matters little whether our work be noticed or recorded by men, so long as we know that it is written in the Lamb’s book of life and that He will one day proclaim it ‘before the Father in heaven and His angels.’

PRISCILLA AND AQUILA

’Greet Priscilla and Aquila my helpers in Christ Jesus; 4. (Who have for my life laid down their own necks:  unto whom not only I give thanks, but so all the churches of the Gentiles:) 5.  Likewise greet the church that is in their house.’—­ROMANS xvi. 3-5.

It has struck me that this wedded couple present, even in the scanty notices that we have of them, some interesting points which may be worth while gathering together.

Now, to begin with, we are told that Aquila was a Jew.  We are not told whether Priscilla was a Jewess or no.  So far as her name is concerned, she may have been, and very probably was, a Roman, and, if so, we have in their case a ‘mixed marriage’ such as was not uncommon then, and of which Timothy’s parents give another example.  She is sometimes called Prisca, which was her proper name, and sometimes Priscilla, an affectionate diminutive.  The two had been living in Rome, and had been banished under the decree of the Emperor, just as Jews have been banished from England and from every country in Europe again and again.  They came from Rome to Corinth, and were, perhaps, intending to go back to Aquila’s native place, Pontus, when Paul met them in the latter city, and changed their whole lives.  His association with them began in a purely commercial partnership.  But as they abode together and worked at their trade, there would be many earnest talks about the Christ, and these ended in both husband and wife becoming disciples.  The bond thus knit was too close to be easily severed, and so, when Paul sailed across the AEgean for Ephesus, his two new friends kept with him, which they would be the more ready to do, as they had no settled home.  They remained with him during his somewhat lengthened stay in the great Asiatic city; for we find in the first Epistle to the Corinthians which was written from Ephesus about that time, that the Apostle sends greetings from ‘Priscilla and Aquila and the Church which is in their house.’  But when Paul left Ephesus they seem to have stayed behind, and afterwards to have gone their own way.