Christian friendship.
Unselfish friendship, the union of human souls in the bands of a close, unworldly, self-sacrificing love, has always been a spectacle that has fascinated men, one on which they have dwelt with peculiar fondness. Among the Greeks, Pylades and Orestes, Damon and Pythias; in the Old Testament David and Jonathan, and in the New Testament Peter and John, are examples of such friendships, and of the admiration which men cannot help having for them. But there is not any more beautiful and touching picture of human friendship to be found anywhere than that which rises up before us in the case of Paul, Aquila, and Priscilla. We first find the group in a humble workman's dwelling at Corinth. Drawn together by being ὁμότεχνοι, men of the same trade, they are lodging in the same house. They were brought there indeed from different causes, and from different parts of the world. Paul from Antioch, urged westward by his ardent desire to add new realms to the kingdom of Christ; Aquila and Priscilla driven eastward by the cruel edict of a despot forcing them from their home and all its interests in Italy. They met in Corinth, and dwelt under one roof. There we see the men busy at their trade of tent-making, while the wife, the woman of the house, added that comfort and cheerfulness to the home which the presence of a bright, energetic, intelligent woman is so well fitted to afford. A common trade, a common race, and the common interests arising from both, would soon cement a friendship between two virtuous men thus thrown together in a foreign land. But a much closer bond of union soon knit the two men together. Whether Aquila and Priscilla brought with them from Rome the rudiments of the Christian faith, or whether they first learnt that Jesus is the Christ from the lips of Paul, we have no means of deciding. What is certain is that many words concerning the kingdom of God passed between them in their hours of work. While Paul's industrious hands were travailing and stitching night and day to earn his bread, his eloquent tongue was discoursing of Jesus Christ and his great salvation. Aquila, doubtless well read in the Scriptures, like his later namesake and fellow-citizen in Pontus, was not slow to take in his words; while Priscilla, taking perhaps the woman's part in cutting out and preparing the materials for their work, listened with intense interest to the words of eternal life uttered by the apostle. The friendship begun in earthly relations was soon perfected in the bonds of the love of Christ. We can fancy the hours of united prayer when those two or three were gathered together in the name of Jesus. We can fancy the close fellowship induced by the common enmity of their unbelieving and blaspheming fellow-countrymen. We can fancy their common joy when first one and then another of their Jewish brethren was brought to the Shepherd and Bishop of souls. We seem to feel their common anxiety when Paul was brought before the bema of Gallio, and to hear their common praises when the conspiracy was defeated and the apostle was set free. We no longer wonder to read that when Paul set sail for Syria, Aquila and Priscilla went too (Acts 18:18), and all that follows follows so naturally. Their labor at Ephesus as the apostle's delegates; their faithful instruction of Apollos; their patient continuance at Ephesus after St. Paul's return (1 Corinthians 16:13); the Church in their house, both at Ephesus and at Rome (1 Corinthians 16:9; Romans 16:3); their unbroken attachment to the very latest moment to which our knowledge extends (2 Timothy 4:19);—all is of a piece with that first holy friendship which was born in the workshop at Corinth, and nourished in the fellowship of faith. The picture leaves a deep impression upon the mind that human friendship, like all else that is good or beautiful in human life, attains its perfect growth, and produces its fairest fruits, when it is laid in a common fellowship with God, and is fostered by a constant partnership in loving labors for the glory of Christ and. for the increase of his Church.