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 one of the two men said, ’Let us join partnership together, and set up here as tent-makers for a time.’  What came out of this unintended and apparently chance meeting?

The first thing was the conversion of Aquila and his wife; and the effects of that are being realised by them in heaven at this moment, and will go on to all eternity.

So, in the infinite complexity of events, do not let us worry ourselves by forecasting, but let us trust, and be sure that the Hand which is pushing us is pushing us in the right direction, and that He will bring us, by a right, though a roundabout way, to the City of Habitation.  It seems to me that we poor, blind creatures in this world are somewhat like a man in a prison, groping with his hand in the dark along the wall, and all unawares touching a spring which moves a stone, disclosing an aperture that lets in a breath of purer air, and opens the way to freedom.  So we go on as if stumbling in the dark, and presently, without our knowing what we do, by some trivial act we originate a train of events which influences our whole future.

Again, when Aquila and Priscilla reached Ephesus they formed another chance acquaintance in the person of a brilliant young Alexandrian, whose name was Apollos.  They found that he had good intentions and a good heart, but a head very scantily furnished with the knowledge of the Gospel.  So they took him in hand, just as Paul had taken them.  If I may use such a phrase, they did not know how large a fish they had caught.  They had no idea what a mighty power for Christ was lying dormant in that young man from Alexandria who knew so much less than they did.  They instructed Apollos, and Apollos became second only to Paul in the power of preaching the Gospel.  So the circle widens and widens.  God’s grace fructifies from one man to another, spreading onward and outward.  And all Apollos’ converts, and their converts, and theirs again, right away down the ages, we may trace back to Priscilla and Aquila.