gthened 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.

About a year after the first Epistle to the Corinthians was sent from
Ephesus, the Epistle to the Romans was written, and we find there the
salutation to Priscilla and Aquila which is my text. So this
wandering couple were back again in Rome by that time, and settled
down there for a while. They are then lost sight of for some time,
but probably they returned to Ephesus. Once more we catch a glimpse
of them in Paul's last letter, written some seven or eight years
after that to the Romans. The Apostle knows that death is near, and,
at that supreme moment, his heart goes out to these two faithful
companions, and he sends them a parting token of his undying love.
There are only two messages to friends in the second Epistle to
Timothy, and one of these is to Prisca and Aquila. At the mouth of
the valley of the shadow of death he remembered the old days in
Corinth, and the, to us, unknown instance of devotion which these two
had shown, when, for his life, they laid down their own necks.

Such is all that we know of Priscilla and Aquila. Can we gather any
lessons from these scattered notices thus thrown together?

I. Here is an object lesson as to the hallowing effect of
Christianity on domestic life and love.

Did you ever notice that in the majority of the places where these
two are named, if we adopt the better readings, Priscilla's name
comes first? She seems to have been 'the better man of the two'; and
Aquila drops comparatively into the background. Now, such a couple,
and a couple in which the wife took the foremost place, was an
absolute impossibility in heathenism. They are a specimen of what
Christianity did in the primitive age, all over the Empire, and is
doing to-day, everywhere--lifting woman to her proper place. These
two, yoked together in 'all exercise of noble end,' and helping one
another in Christian work, and bracketed together by the Apostle, who
puts the wife first, as his fellow-helpers in Christ Jesus, stands
before us as a living picture of what our sweet and sacred family
life and earthly loves may be glorified into, if the light from
heaven shines down up