Again, notice that, even in these scanty references to our two friends, there twice occurs that remarkable expression ’the church that is in their house.’  Now, I suppose that that gives us a little glimpse into the rudimentary condition of public worship in the primitive church.  It was centuries after the time of Priscilla and Aquila before circumstances permitted Christians to have buildings devoted exclusively to public worship.  Up to a very much later period than that which is covered by the New Testament, they gathered together wherever was most convenient.  And, I suppose, that both in Rome and Ephesus, this husband and wife had some room—­perhaps the workshop where they made their tents, spacious enough for some of the Christians of the city to meet together in.  One would like people who talk so much about ‘the Church,’ and refuse the name to individual societies of Christians, and even to an aggregate of these, unless it has ‘bishops,’ to explain how the little gathering of twenty or thirty people in the workshop attached to Aquila’s house, is called by the Apostle without hesitation ’the church which is in their house.’  It was a part of the Holy Catholic Church, but it was also ’a Church,’ complete in itself, though small in numbers.  We have here not only a glimpse into the manner of public worship in early times, but we may learn something of far more consequence for us, and find here a suggestion of what our homes ought to be.  ’The Church that is in thy house’—­fathers and mothers that are responsible for your 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.