But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears, then rushed at him with one accord. They threw him out of the city and stoned him. The witnesses placed their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. They stoned Stephen as he called out, saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!”
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Acts 7:57-59 sits inside this longer paragraph.
But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears, then rushed at him with one accord. They threw him out of the city and stoned him. The witnesses placed their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. They stoned Stephen as he called out, saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” He kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, “Lord, don’t hold this sin against them!” When he had said this, he fell asleep.
Parallel Translations
-
But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears, then rushed at him with one accord.
They threw him out of the city and stoned him. The witnesses placed their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
They stoned Stephen as he called out, saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!”
-
Then they gave a shute with a loude voyce and stopped their eares and ranne apon him all at once
and caste him out of the cite and stoned him. And the witnesses layde doune their clothes at a yonge mannes fete named Saul.
And they stoned Steven callynge on and sayinge: Lorde Iesu receave my sprete.
Show all 3 translations
-
Then they gaue a shoute with a loude voyce, and stopped their eares, and ranne vpon him violently all at once,
And cast him out of the citie, and stoned him: and the witnesses layd downe their clothes at a yong mans feete, named Saul.
And they stoned Steuen, who called on God, and said, Lord Iesus, receiue my spirit.
Cross-references (29)
- Luke 23:46 (v59) Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” Having said this, he breathed his last.
- Acts 22:20 (v58) When the blood of Stephen, your witness, was shed, I also was standing by, consenting to his death, and guarding the cloaks of those who…
- Psalms 31:5 (v59) Into your hand I commend my spirit. You redeem me, Yahweh, God of truth.
- Zechariah 7:11 (v57) But they refused to listen, and turned their backs, and stopped their ears, that they might not hear.
- Acts 8:1 (v58) Saul was consenting to his death. A great persecution arose against the assembly which was in Jerusalem in that day. They were all…
Show all 29 cross-references
- Leviticus 24:14-16 (v58) “Bring him who cursed out of the camp; and let all who heard him lay their hands on his head, and let all the congregation stone him. You…
- Acts 6:13 (v58) and set up false witnesses who said, “This man never stops speaking blasphemous words against this holy place and the law.
- Deuteronomy 13:9-10 (v58) but you shall surely kill him. Your hand shall be first on him to put him to death, and afterwards the hands of all the people. You shall…
- Deuteronomy 17:7 (v58) The hands of the witnesses shall be first on him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So you shall remove the…
- 1 Kings 21:13 (v58) The two men, the wicked fellows, came in and sat before him. The wicked fellows testified against him, even against Naboth, in the presence…
- Luke 4:29 (v58) They rose up, threw him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill that their city was built on, that they might throw him off…
- Acts 22:4 (v58) I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women.
- Acts 22:16 (v59) Now why do you wait? Arise, be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.’
- Numbers 15:35 (v58) Yahweh said to Moses, “The man shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him with stones outside of the camp.”
- Psalms 58:4 (v57) Their poison is like the poison of a snake, like a deaf cobra that stops its ear,
- Joel 2:32 (v59) It will happen that whoever will call on Yahweh’s name shall be saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those who escape,…
- Acts 2:21 (v59) It will be that whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.’
- Acts 9:14 (v59) Here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name.”
- Acts 23:27 (v57) “This man was seized by the Jews, and was about to be killed by them, when I came with the soldiers and rescued him, having learned that he…
- 1 Corinthians 1:2 (v59) to the assembly of God which is at Corinth—those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, with all who call on the name of our…
- Proverbs 21:13 (v57) Whoever stops his ears at the cry of the poor, he will also cry out, but shall not be heard.
- John 10:23-26 (v58) It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in Solomon’s porch. The Jews therefore came around him and said to him, “How long will…
- Acts 6:11 (v58) Then they secretly induced men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.”
- Acts 7:54 (v57) Now when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth.
- Acts 9:1-19 (v58) But Saul, still breathing threats and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked for letters from him…
- Acts 9:21 (v59) All who heard him were amazed, and said, “Isn’t this he who in Jerusalem made havoc of those who called on this name? And he had come here…
- Acts 21:27-31 (v57) When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the multitude and laid hands…
- Romans 10:12-14 (v59) For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich to all who call on him. For, “Whoever will…
- Hebrews 13:12-13 (v58) Therefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside of the gate. Let’s therefore go out to him…
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (26 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv57–59 57. Crying with a loud voice. This was either…
57. Crying with a loud voice. This was either a vain show of zeal, as hypocrites are almost always pricked forward with ambition to break out into immoderate heat; as Caiaphas when he heard Christ say thus, After this ye shall see the Son of man, etc., did rent his clothes in token of indignation, as if it were intolerable blasphemy; or else certainly the preaching of the glory of Christ was unto them such a torment, that they must needs burst through madness. And I am rather of this mind; for Luke saith afterward, that they were carried violently, as those men which have no hold of themselves use to leap out immoderately.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv57–58 This was done in a rage and fury: for…
This was done in a rage and fury: for at that time the Jews could put no man to death by law, as they confess before Pilate, saying that it was not lawful for them to put any man to death, and therefore it is reported by Josephus, lib. 20, that Ananus a Sadducee slew James the brother of the Lord, and for so doing, was accused before Albinus the President of the country.
The zeal of hypocrites and superstitious people, breaketh out at length into most open madness.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv57–59 57 Then they cried out with a loud voice,…
57 Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord,
Ver. 57. Ran upon him] Being acted and agitated by the devil, who had now wholly possessed them; so that they were even satanized, and transformed into so many breathing devils.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv57–59 They cried out; the rabble, or multitude.
They cried out; the rabble, or multitude.
Stopped their ears; that they might show their great detestation of what was said, and might not contract any guilt from it.
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And ran upon him with one accord: this violence and fury was both against the law of God and the law of the land; and the number of zealots (there were some amongst that people eminently so called) provoked the Romans to destroy both city and temple.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On v59 Observe here, 1. The holy deportment of this humble…
Observe here, 1. The holy deportment of this humble saint at his death; he prays.
Learn hence, That good men should shut up their lives with prayer, and die with prayer in their mouths. Our Saviour did so; his first martyr here did so. St. Stephen imitated the death of Christ, and he imitated Christ in his death: turning from malicious men to speak unto a merciful God in prayer. They stoned Stephen, calling upon God.
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Observe, 2. The object of his prayer, or whom St. Stephen prays to, Jesus Christ: He doth not say, "O blessed Virgin! O St. Thomas! O St. Bridget! intercede with my Saviour for me." But he directs his supplications immediately to Christ, saying, Lord Jesus! From whence we may strongly infer the divinity of Christ. Prayer is an act of religious worship, and he that is the proper object of religious worship must be God: Noen must be the object of my prayer, but he that is the object of my faith. How shall I pray to him, in whom I have not believed?
Observe, 3. The subject of his prayer, or what he prays for, his soul. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit; he doth not say, Lord Jesus, save my life, which is in so much danger of being taken away; O, deliver me from the hands of my persecutors, and bring me off safe! Not a word like this; but let it go well with my soul: Lord, receive my spirit.
Learn thence, That the godly man’s care, living and dying, is for his soul; because this is the principal and immortal part, because this is the greatest talent that ever God put into our hands, and because the happiness and eternal welfare of the body depends upon the blessed condition of the soul: If the soul be happy, the body cannot be miserable.
Observe, 4. The sweet surrender, the willing and cheerful resignation which the good man makes of his soul into the hands of Christ; Lord Jesus receive my Spirit.
1. The godly man’s spirit or soul is his own, he has not sold it to sin, nor pawned it to Satan, nor exchanged it for the world; but he has reserved it for Christ, who redeemed it for him.
2. Receive.
Learn hence, It is the duty and disposition of a gracious person, to resign up his soul willingly and cheerfully into Christ’s hands, whenever God calls for it; his soul is surrendered by him, not extorted from him. The knowledge that a good man has of Christ’s love and care, of his faithfulness and power, encourages him to this resignation, Lord, into thy hands I commit my spirit, for thou hast redeemed it, Psa 31:5 And surely he that redeemed it will not hurt it.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv57–58 And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God,.... As he…
And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God,.... As he was praying, and putting up the following petition;
and saying, Lord Jesus receive my Spirit; from whence we learn, that the spirit or soul of man sleeps not, nor dies with the body, but remains after death; that Jesus Christ is a fit person to commit and commend the care of the soul unto immediately upon its separation; and that he must be truly and properly God; not only because he is equal to such a charge, which none but God is, but because divine worship and adoration are here given him. This is so glaring a proof of prayer being made unto him, that some Socinians, perceiving the force of it, would read the word Jesus in the genitive case, thus; "Lord of Jesus receive my Spirit": as if the prayer was made to the Father of Christ, when it is Jesus he saw standing at the right hand of God, whom he invokes, and who is so frequently called Lord Jesus; whereas the Father is never called the Lord of Jesus; and besides, these words are used in like manner in the vocative case, in Rev 22:20 to which may be added, that the Syriac version reads, "our Lord Jesus"; and the Ethiopic version, "my Lord Jesus".
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv57–59 They rushed upon him - Before any sentence passed.
They rushed upon him - Before any sentence passed.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv57–59 Verse 57. They - stopped their ears] As a…
Verse 57. They - stopped their ears] As a proof that he had uttered blasphemy, because he said, He saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. This was a fearful proof against them; for if Jesus was at the right hand of God, then they had murdered an innocent person; and they must infer that God's justice must speedily avenge his death. They were determined not to suffer a man to live any longer who could say he saw the heavens opened and Jesus Christ standing at the right hand of God.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv57, 59 Act 7:57-59. Then they cried out with a loud…
Act 7:57-59. Then they cried out with a loud voice — Being provoked to such a degree that they could not contain themselves, and meaning to drown the voice of Stephen; and stopped their ears — As if they could not bear to hear such blasphemy as they wished to have it thought he had spoken. And ran upon him — Greek, ωρμησαν, rushed on him with one accord, before any sentence was regularly passed; and cast — Greek, εκβαλοντες εξω της πολεως, casting him out of the city — It seems by a gate near the place where the sanhedrim sat; and as soon as they had got without the boundaries of that sacred place, of which they judged it would be a profanation to stain it with human blood, they stoned him — This, like the stoning of Paul at Lystra, seems to have been an act of popular fury, exceeding the power which the Jews regularly had; which, though it might have extended to passing a capital sentence, was certainly not sufficient for carrying it into execution, without the consent of the Romans. The Jews were more than once ready to stone Christ, not only when by their own confession they had not power to put any one to death, (Joh 18:31,) but when nothing had passed which had the shadow of a legal trial. How far they now might have formed those express notions of what the rabbis call the judgment of zeal, is not easy to say; but it is certain they acted on that principle, and as if they had thought every private Israelite had, like Phinehas, who is pleaded as an example of it, a right to put another to death on the spot, if he found him in a capital breach of the divine law; a notion, by the way, directly contrary to Deu 17:6, which required at least two witnesses in capital cases, where there was a legal process. And the two witnesses — Whose hands were first upon him to put him to death; laid down their clothes, &c. — In executions of this kind, it was usual for those who had borne witness against the criminal to cast the first stones at him; and for this purpose they were wont to put off their upper garments, and gave them to be kept by persons equally hearty in the prosecution with themselves; and on this occasion the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of Saul, afterward called Paul, who, it seems, willingly took charge of them, to show how heartily he concurred with them in the execution. O Saul! wouldst thou have believed, if one had told thee, while thou wast urging on the cruel multitude, that the time would come when thou thyself shouldst be twice stoned in the same cause, and shouldst triumph in committing thy soul likewise to that Jesus whom thou wast now blaspheming? His dying prayer reached thee, as well as many others. And the martyr Stephen, and Saul the persecutor, (afterward his brother, both in faith and martyrdom,) are now joined in everlasting friendship, and dwell together in the happy company of those who have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv57–59 Then they cried out - That is, probably, “the…
Then they cried out - That is, probably, “the people,” not the members of the council It is evident he was put to death in a popular tumult. They had charged him with blasphemy; and they regarded what he had now said as full proof of it.
And stopped their ears - That they might hear no more blasphemy.
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With one accord - In a tumult; unitedly.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On v58 Invoking. See with what arms St. Stephen defended himself…
Invoking. See with what arms St. Stephen defended himself against the fury of his enemies. He puts on charity for a breast-place, and by that came off victorious. By his love of God, he resisted the enraged Jews; by the love he bore his neighbour, he prayed for those that stoned him. Through charity, he admonished them of their errors, in order to their amendment; through charity, he besought the divine goodness not to punish their crimes against him. Leaning on charity, he overcame the cruelty of Saul, and merited to have him a companion in heaven, who had been his chief persecutor on earth. (St. Falgentius, Serm. de S. Steph.) --- We here again see the powerful intercession of the saints; "for," says St. Augustine, "if Stephen had not thus prayed, the Church would not have to glory in a St. Paul. Si Stephanus non sic orasset, Ecclesia Paulum non haberet." (Serm. i. de S. Steph.)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv57–59 Then they cried out . . . and ran…
Then they cried out . . . and ran upon him with one accord--To men of their mould and in their temper, Stephen's last seraphic words could but bring matters to extremities, though that only revealed the diabolical spirit which they breathed.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv57–59 57. Cried… ran upon him—The succession of feeling through…
57. Cried… ran upon him—The succession of feeling through which they passed is curiously marked in the narrative. When first his face shone like an angel’s they were awed into quiet listening. As he lingered upon the honourable points of Jewish history their attention seems to have been rapt; but as the point of his argument was felt they began to manifest (Act_7:51) their unwilling ears and mental resistance. When he charged them with violation of the law (Act_7:53) they gnashed; but finally, when he claimed to station Jesus the Nazarene at the right hand of the Shekinah, they would stand it no longer. At such unheard-of blasphemy, stopping their ears and raising a howl, they rush, all at once, upon the victim.
This case may have begun with due judicial regularity; but it terminated in a scene of mob violence, paying some regard to the forms of law in the mode of execution. It is probable that the Sanhedrin possessed no power for capital punishment; but in those turbulent times daring acts of atrocity as deep as this were constantly occurring. Stoning to death was the Jewish punishment for blasphemy.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv57–59 57. Then they cried out] Better, But, &c.
57. Then they cried out] Better, But, &c.
and stopped their ears] Thus shewing that they merited the description given in Act_7:51. The verb signifies, to compress, to hold tight together. On the action thus described cp. T. B. Kethuboth 5 b, “Wherefore is the whole ear hard but the flap soft? That if any hear an unbecoming word he may press up the flap and shut his ear.”
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and ran [rushed] upon him with one accord] As though he were one convicted of idolatry, in which case (Deu_13:9-10) “the hand of all the people” was to be upon the offender.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv57–59 (57) Ran upon him with one accord.—The violence reported…
(57) Ran upon him with one accord.—The violence reported presents a singular contrast to the general observance of the forms of a fair trial in our Lord’s condemnation. Then, however, we must remember, the Roman procurator was present in Jerusalem. Now all restraint was removed, and fanaticism had full play. That neither office nor age was enough to guard, under such conditions, against shameful outrage has been seen even in the history of Christian assemblies, as, e.g., in that of the Robber Synod of Ephesus in A.D. 449. The caution in 1Ti_3:3, that a bishop should not be a striker, shows how near the danger was even in the apostolic age. The facts in this case seem to imply that the accusers, and perhaps also the excited crowd whom they represented, were present as listening to the speech, as well as the members of the Sanhedrin.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv57–59 But for then, A.V.; rushed for ran, A.V. (wrmhsan).
But for then, A.V.; rushed for ran, A.V. (wrmhsan).
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv57–59 Then they cried with a loud voice, and stopped…
Act_7:57-60
Then they cried with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him.
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The first gospel martyr
I. The matter for which he died.
II. The Divine assistance which he experienced.
III. The composure with which he passed away. (J. A. Krummacher, D. D.)
The first Christian martyr
I. The call of Stephen was to martyrdom. Neither he nor the Church knew the honour which awaited him. Note--
1. That the humblest service leads to the highest.
2. How a man may enlarge a narrow sphere. We do not want so much men for large places as men to enlarge small places.
3. What God wanted of Stephen did not fully appear at the first. All that the Church could see was, that he had qualifications for a difficult trust. God bad a larger purpose. He wanted him, not to live, but to die.
4. That a mans greatest services may only begin when he is buried.
5. That no Divine cause hinges on a man. God always has another.
II. Stephen was called because he was full of the Holy Ghost. Through the Spirit he--
1. Had a message.
2. The power of a holy face. The baptism of the Spirit is an illumination. We have seen faces of men and women weal; and expressionless, dark and evil, through conversion glorified. The change at first is in softening, idealising. As it progresses, the peace of God is reflected in the features. In its completeness there is the manifestation of unearthly power.
3. He displayed the Divine union of severity and gentleness.
4. Had a vision.
5. Was sustained. He triumphed over pain.
III. The effects of the martyrdom.
1. On the world. He showed how a Christian could die. There had been deaths of disciples already, but they were shameful, dreadful: first Judas, then Ananias and his wife. But God now gave His people a grave to glory in.
2. On the Church (Act_7:1). A general persecution was let loose. The Christians met the storm as they had been instructed by Jesus; they fled from the city and were scattered, but wherever they went they preached. Thus a part of the Divine plan appeared. In all ages persecution has been one of the greatest providential agencies for the spread of the gospel.
3. On the apostles. It was a discipline only paralleled by that which followed the crucifixion; but through it they were to become better leaders, and God would take care of His Church. They met the trial nobly. They stayed at their posts. The influence of their constancy upon the Christians, and also upon their enemies, must have been very great.
4. Upon the devout Jews. The persecution tested them. At the peril of their lives they paid the murdered man the reverence of burial. So the death of Jesus brought out Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.
5. On Saul. Upon him the impression was deep. His reference to the part he had had in the murder, when he was in his trance at Damascus, shows it. One of the goads against which, from that time, he kicked in vain, was then buried in his heart. The immediate result was to infuriate him. But he had received his death-wound. The cord of love held him. (Sermons by the Monday Club.)
The first martyrdom
Note--
I. Stephens faith. He did not say, All these things are against me; if Christ had designed to own my work, He would not thus have cut it short; if this be the manner in which Christs cause prospers below, how can I believe that He Himself lives and reigns above? Never was his faith so strong, or his vision so unclouded. While his enemies are rushing upon him he is rapt above earth and earthly things, and privileged to behold his beloved Master Himself standing at the right hand of God.
II. His hope. In the midst of the uproar of angry voices, and of the flight of stupefying, crushing stones, he is calling upon his Master, not as a mere expression of pain or disquietude or weakness; or as the ignorant ejaculations sometimes heard from a sinners deathbed, when for the first time the grasp of a mightier power is felt, which must be propitiated by abject invocation: not thus, but in the tone of one who knows whom he has believed.
III. His charity. As the mangled frame begins to totter to its dissolution, the dying martyr kneels. That posture with which we allow any little excuse to interfere, which many of us never practise even in Gods house, which few of us would practise in a season of pain or sickness, he deemed the fittest attitude even for a dying man: he would honour God with his body as well as with the spirit: and then he cries aloud, in the hearing of his enemies still thirsting for his blood, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge! He prays not, as some have done, that the murderers may find out their sin one day in punishment--not even that his blood may produce a speedy and an abundant harvest, but that that cruel deed may never be weighed in Gods balances against its perpetrators. Thus he prayed, and in one case at least we know that his prayer was heard and answered.
IV. His composure. He was laid to rest. He was lulled to slumber. The word itself is enough to take the sting from death. The ease of St. Stephen himself may assure us that no circumstances of death can prevent its being this to a Christian. It matters not whether the cause of death be disease or accident, the weapon of war or the stroke of the executioner. It matters not whether the scene of death be the house or the roadside, the field of battle or the desolate prison-house. There are three conditions of such a death. It must be--
1. A rest from labour. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, etc.
(1) An idle, desultory, self-indulgent life has earned no rest. Night may come to such a life, but not the sweet sleep of the healthily wearied labourer.
(2) Again, a rest from what labour? Not from common worldly occupations, such as have their reward (if anywhere) here, and have nothing stored up for them in the world unseen. He who would rest in Christ must first have wrought in Christ. It is Christs labourer, not the worlds, who, when he dies, falls asleep.
2. A rest with Christ. I have a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better. While we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.
3. A rest unto rising. A sleep not to be again broken is death, not sleep. A sleep only to be broken by terrific Suffering is no sleep: it is a frightful dream, a horrible nightmare. Such is the death of the wicked. (Dean Vaughan.)
Stephens martyrdom
True Christian zeal will seek to do the highest work of which sanctified humanity is capable. Stephen is first heard of as a distributor of the alms of the Church to needy widows. Doubtless he used the office of a deacon well, and so purchased to himself a good degree. Although the onerous duty of serving tables might well have excused him from other service, we soon find him doing great wonders among the people; and not even content with that, we see him defending the faith against a synagogue of subtle philosophical deniers of the truth. He had a higher promotion yet--he gained the peerless dignity of martyrdom. Put a man without zeal into the front place, and he will gradually recede into his native insignificance, or only linger to be a nuisance; but put a man into the rear, if his soul be full of holy fire, you will soon hear of him. Observe
I. The power of the Holy Spirit as developed in Stephens death, in order that we may learn to rely upon that power. This power is seen in--
1. The fact that although surrounded by bitter enemies, and having no time for preparation, Stephens defence is wonderfully logical, clear, and forcible. This chapter does not read like an address delivered to a furious mob. He could not have delivered it with greater fearlessness had he been assured that they would thank him for the operation. To what do we trace this mouth and wisdom but to the Holy Spirit? The Holy Ghost exerts such a power over the human mind, that when it is His will, He can enable His servants to collect their scattered thoughts, and to speak with unwonted power. Moreover, the Lord can also touch the stammering tongue, and make it as eloquent as the tongue of Esaias. When we can study the Word, it is mere presumption to trust to the immediate inspiration of the moment; but if any one of you be called to speak for your Master when you can have had no preparation, you may confidently depend upon the Spirit of God to help. It is better to be taught of the Holy Spirit than to learn eloquence at the feet of masters of rhetoric. The Spirit of God needs to be honoured in the Church in this respect.
2. The manner and bearing of the martyr. He gazes steadfastly up into heaven. They may gnash their teeth, but they cannot disturb that settled gaze. What he beholds above makes him careless of the bloodthirsty foes below. The bearing of many of the martyrs has been singularly heroic. When the King of France told Bernard Palissy that, if he did not change his sentiments, he should be compelled to surrender him to the Inquisition, the brave potter said to the king, You say I shall be compelled, and yet you are a king; but I, though only a poor potter, cannot be compelled to do other than I think to be right. The potter was more royal than the king. Now if you and I desire to walk among the sons of men without pride, but yet with a bearing that is worthy of our calling and adoption, we must be trained by the Holy Ghost. Those men who go cap-in-hand to the world, asking leave to live, know nothing of the Holy Ghost.
3. His calm and happy spirit. It is a great thing for a Christian to keep himself quiet within when turmoil rules without. To be calm amid the bewildering cry, confident of victory--this is so hard that only the Divine Dove, the Comforter, can bring us from above the power to be so; but when once the art of being still is fully learned, what strength and bliss is in it!
4. His holy and forgiving temper. He knelt down, as if to make them see how he prayed, and then he prayed with a loud voice, that they might hear. Surely this is a work of the Holy Spirit indeed! We find it not altogether easy to live at peace with all men, but to die at peace with our murderers, what shall I say of it? The prayer we have just mentioned did not die in the air; it passed through the gate of pearl, and it obtained an answer in the conversion of Saul.
II. The source of richest comfort, with the hope that we may learn to look there. It was the end and aim of the Holy Spirit to make Stephen happy. How could this be done? By revealing to him the living and reigning Saviour at the right hand of God. If we have like precious faith with Stephen, since it is a great fact that Christ is there, there is no reason why oar faith should not see what Stephens faith saw. He saw--
1. That Jesus was alive. He was not serving a dead Christ; he was speaking for a Friend who still existed to hear his pleadings, and to accept his testimony. Stephen argued within himself, If Christ lives after crucifixion, why should not Stephen live, through Christ, after stoning?
2. That Jesus saw him and sympathised with him. Is not that the meaning of the attitude which the Lord assumed? The Man of Sorrows is alive, and sympathises with His people still. In all your affliction He is afflicted.
3. Jesus standing at the right hand of God. That was the point in dispute. The Jews said the Nazarene was an impostor. No, said Stephen, there He is. The people rage, the rulers take counsel together, but yonder is the King upon the holy hill of God; and to Stephens heart this was all he wished. I have known what it is to be brought so low in heart, that no promise of Gods Word gave me a ray of light, nor a gleam of comfort, and yet, so often as I have come across this text, Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, etc., I have always found a flood of joy bursting into my soul, for I have said, Well, it is of no consequence what may become of me so long as my Lord Jesus is exalted. Like the dying soldier in the hour of battle, who is cheered with the thought, The general is safe; the victory is on our side. I would like to put this telescope, then, to the eye of every sorrowing Christian. Your Saviour is exalted--
(1) To intercede for you.
(2) To prepare a place for you.
(3) As your representative. Because He lives, we shall live also.
III. The comfort itself. We do not find that the appearance of Jesus stopped the stones. That is the plan of the present dispensation. The Lord Jesus does not come to us to forbid our suffering, nor to remove our griefs, but He sustains us under them. My grace is sufficient for thee. How sweetly is Stephens triumph pictured in those last words, He fell asleep. This is the life of a Christian. When the world has been most in arms against a believer, it is wonderful how he has rested with perfect composure in the sight of his enemies. This shall be the death of the Christian. He shall shut his eyes to earth and open them to heaven. His body shall but sleep, to be awakened by the heavenly trumpeter. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Stephens martyrdom
On reviewing the whole narrative we cannot fail to be struck with three things--
1. The professed patrons of religion engaged in banishing it from the world. The peculiar enormity of the crime is that it was done in the name of religion.
2. The most eminent future apostle accessory to the death of the most eminent disciple. This teaches us--
(1) How the conscience may be perverted. An action is not necessarily right because the author believes it to be so.
(2) How concealed the spirituality of the law may be from its most diligent student. Some knew its letter, but had not learned the alphabet of its spirit. The letter killeth.
(3) How sovereign and almighty is the grace of God. Christ selected Saul to become His apostle, and the martyrdom of Stephen was one of the causes of His conversion. He is able of stones to raise up children to Abraham.
3. The most useful man of his time allowed to be stoned out of the world as a blasphemer. Stephen appears in two opposite lights--as a victim and as a victor. Though crushed he yet conquered-illustrating the dark and bright sides of piety.
I. The dark side. Stephen dying under a shower of stones. The world has ever hated vital Christianity. Two causes led to this result--
1. He held convictions which clashed with the prejudices and worldly interests of his contemporaries.
2. He faithfully declared those convictions. Had he kept them to himself, compromised them, or toned them down to the corrupt spirit of his age, he would have avoided such an end as this.
II. The bright side. Piety looked upon from the worlds side is rather a miserable object--but not so when viewed from the spiritual side.
1. Stephen was in vital connection with God. He was filled with the Holy Ghost.
2. He had a glorious vision of heaven. Having God within him, everything was full of divinity.
3. His spirit was inspired with the sublimest magnanimity.
4. He had a delightful departure from the world.
(1) He commended his spirit to Christ. This prayer implies--
(a) Consciousness that he had a spirit.
(b) Belief that that spirit would survive his expiring body.
(c) Unbounded faith in Christ to take care of his spirit.
(2) He fell asleep. Implying--
(a) A welcome rest.
(b) An anticipated rising. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The martyrdom of Stephen
I. What was the secret of his meekness and his bravery? There must have been some Divine bestowment. Was it, then, some miraculous gift reserved for some specially chosen man? The secret lies in the fact that he was full of faith and of the Holy Ghost. He did not leap into this character. There was no special charm by which these graced clustered round him: they were the gift of God to him as they are to us. The only difference between us and him is that he grasped the blessing with a holier boldness, and lived in a closer communion with God. It was not physical hardiness then. There are men whose bravery no one dare question, who have yet beer the veriest cowards in the face of moral duty, and vice versa. The Duke of Wellington once despatched two officers on a service of great hazard, and as they were riding the one turning to the other saw his lips quivering and his cheek blanched. Reining in his horse he said, Why, you are afraid. I am, was the answer; and if you were half as much afraid as I am, you would relinquish the duty altogether. Without wasting a word the officer galloped back and complained bitterly that he had been sent in the company of a coward. Off, sir, to your duty, was the dukes reply, or the coward will have done the business before you get there. And the great man was right. There was physical timidity, perhaps the result of a highly-wrought nervous organisation, but there was an imperial regard for duty which bore him above his fears to triumph. Yes; and Church history can tell us many a story of sufferings endured for Christ by delicate and high-born womanhood. Martyrs are what they are from the demonstration of the Spirit and power.
II. The lot of the Christian is ordinarily an inheritance of persecution. There was nothing in Stephens character to arouse hostility. But he was faithful, and his reproofs stung his adversaries to the quick; he was consistent, and his life was a perpetual rebuke to those who lived otherwise; he was unanswerable, and that was a crime too great to be forgiven.
1. Persecution has been the lot of the Church in all ages. The prophets were scoffed, and some of them were slain. Nearly all the apostles wove the martyrs amaranth into their crown of thorns. Rome pagan persecuted, so has Rome papal, and even churches of purer faith.
2. But apart from ecclesiasticism altogether they that will live godly must suffer persecution. The developments of the persecuting spirit are restrained by the advance of enlightenment, the decorums of society, the interlacings of interest, the silent unrecognised leaven of Christian faith; but depend upon it, if you are a Christian the world hates you and your practice still. The father may interpose to prevent his childs devotion, the husband withdraw his wifes privileges, or the custom may be withdrawn, the preferment withheld, the suspicion insinuated. There are a thousand ways by which the latent hate may be shown--in the shrug of the shoulder, the curl of the lip, the glance of the eye, the wave of the hand.
3. If you are persecuted take it as a proof of your legitimacy. I wonder almost whether the reason that there is so little persecution now is that there is so little faithfulness. Unfaithfulness to the Christian is like the Deluge to the world--a flood to drown it: persecution to the Christian spirit is like the Deluge to the ark--a flood to lift it nearer to heaven.
III. Strength and grace are always given most liberally where they are most needed. In the early part of Stephens life, when acting as deacon and evangelist, he had grace according to his day. When before the council the Spirit inspired his unpremeditated speech and gave him a vision of glory. And now amid the shower of stones he lay his head upon his Saviours bosom and went triumphant home. As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Have you not heard from the lips of the now glorified that the time of their fiercest trial was the time of their most glorious deliverance? Have you not listened sometimes in the death-chamber, and wondered at the disclosures of the realities of heaven?
IV. Death is not death to a believer. He fell asleep. When men sleep they usually surround themselves with the most favourable circumstances. They demand quiet, they exclude light and sound. Stephen fell in circumstances very different, but when God wills a man to sleep it does not matter how much noise there is around him. In sleep there is--
1. Repose.
2. Security. Men do not usually commit themselves to slumber without some prospect of safety; so there was security for Stephens body in the grave and his soul in paradise.
3. Restoration; for after the night comes the morning. (W. M. Punshon, LL. D.)
The death of Stephen
Observe--
I. The malignant excitement of the Jewish council. We are shocked at the wickedness of which the heart of man is capable. It has many manifestations; but in no case is it so strongly marked as in the contrasts presented in instances of religious persecution. On the one hand, there is everything to conciliate regard; and on the other, there are the worst of passions. But how is this to be accounted for? Enmity to the truth of God; and hatred to them who hold it. Yet, think not that this spirit is confined to ages of persecution. It exists in ages of professed liberality. Be faithful witnesses of the truth; and you will see the enmity, and often hear the growl of the savage within, though chained. Be faithful to yourselves; and you will often find when truth and its preachers press hard upon your errors, the inquiry rising, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?
II. The attitude of the martyr.
1. The fact that he was full of the Holy Ghost intimates that he had in that moment a special visitation of Divine strength and comfort. How often does this appear in the Bible! Hence St. Paul remarks, We glory in tribulations also. When the three Hebrew children were cast alive into the burning fiery furnace, one like unto the Son of God appeared amongst them, so that not a hair of their heads was singed. When St. John was banished to the Isle of Patmos he was favoured with the presence of his glorified Lord and of the holy angels. All these facts are designed to teach us that the Lord is a very present help in the time of trouble.
2. The immediate effect of this visitation was, that he looked up stedfastly into heaven, a devout committal of his cause into a supreme hand. A man whose eye is fixed on heaven tramples equally underfoot the smiles and the frowns of earth. Here is no defiance, no retreating of man into himself in search of natural courage or other principles to sustain him. In Christian heroism man goes out of himself to a higher power, and becomes mighty through God.
III. The vision vouchsafed to him. How appropriate it was to the two great purposes which to him were so important in that hour!
1. To confirm his faith. Whether he had seen our Lord before does not appear; but he now saw Him in His glory. Here was faith rewarded and confirmed by the evidence of vision; just as all true faith shall finally be rewarded. For true faith fixes upon the reality of things. They exist, though the distance which separates time from eternity intervenes; and God does not work a miracle, as in the case of Stephen, to enable us to see. Still they are there, and the faith which the world despises shall be crowned with the glorious sight. Ah! how soon may God lift the veil and let the saint into the anticipated glories, and plunge the sinner into the forgotten horrors of eternity!
2. To inspire courage and comfort. It was a vision of Jesus--
(1) At the place of power and authority; everything below, therefore, was under His management and control. If the sovereign Lord permitted his enemies to destroy him, it was the part of the servant to bow. Still He is at the right hand of power, to control the rage of man, to choose the moment when His servant should thus glorify Him, to afford him almighty succour, to turn his death into a means of furthering His own eternal truth, and by opening His glory to receive his spirit.
(2) Standing and looking down upon him. How could he then faint? There was Christ tacitly exhorting him by His look, Be thou faithful unto death, etc. He looks upon us; let us take care that we sin not. He requires of us patiently to bear the cross, and to suffer with resignation. He will give us the help we need. Let us look to Him in habitual reverence and stedfast trust.
IV. His death It was a death of--
1. Prayer. He died calling upon God. No former grace was then sufficient, although important; for he knew how to call upon God. Let us now learn the habit of prayer. We shall need it to our last struggle.
2. Faith. Christ was recognised by the dying martyr, and into His hands the soul was commended.
3. Certainty. In the mind of Stephen there was no gloom as to the future. And now, O ye judges, said Socrates, ye are going to live, and I am going to die. Which of these is best, God knows; but I suppose no man does. I am going to take a leap in the dark! exclaimed an infidel in the prospect of dissolution. The despairing sinner trembles at the sight of the great gulf. It is your privilege to die like Stephen.
4. Charity. A soul ripe for heaven can have no resentments.
5. Peace. He fell asleep. (R. Watson.)
The death of Stephen
It is a glorious thing to be the first t achieve some great work--the first mariner to sail into an unknown sea, or the first soldier to mount the breach, and enter the beleaguered city--but nobler still to be the first to bear witness to a great truth, and to seal the testimony with ones blood. This honour was enjoyed by Stephen. In the story of his martyrdom we see--
I. A victim conquering. Stephens murderers seemed to get the victory, yet in reality they were vanquished. No wonder that their victim triumphed, for persecution is always a sign of weakness. Persecution is always an attempt to accomplish the impossible. It is an endeavour to effect spiritual ends by physical means. Not all the Acts of Parliament, decrees of magistrates, rage of princes in the world can crush the soul that is strengthened by the grace of God. The martyr triumphs over his foes.
II. A witness testifying. Stephens martyrdom was an argument for Christianity.
1. He bore testimony to the facts of the gospel story. What a convincing proof of the reality of these events!
2. He bore testimony to the power of the living Saviour. Nothing can inspire such enthusiasm and devotion as a person can excite.
III. A hero crowned.
1. A radiant vision. I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man, etc. The spirit-world is nearer than we often think. If our powers were developed, what spiritual glories would flash upon us!
2. A celestial spirit. Lord, lay not this sin to their charge--the martyrs prayer for his murderers. How unlike the worlds spirit of revenge!
3. A profound peace. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. How striking the contrast between Stephens calmness and the fierce excitement of his persecutors! (T. W. Mays, M. A.)
The death of Stephen
Let us regard this as refuting some practical mistakes.
I. That character will save a man from harm. That would be so in certain conditions of society, but those conditions are not present in our life. Stephen was a man of blameless character, yet when he was called upon to make his defence, and had made it, his character went for nothing. The meanest criminal could not have received more malignant treatment. A bad world cannot tolerate good men. If we were better we should be the sooner got rid of. It is our gift of compromise that keeps us going.
II. That truth needs only to be heard in order to be recognised and accepted. But show where truth has ever been crowned readily. Truth spoken to the true will always be so received, but truth spoken to the false challenges a contest of strength.
III. That regularly constituted authorities must be right. You smile at the suggestion that one odd man can have the truth, and seventy regularly trained and constitutionally appointed men do not know the reality of the case in dispute. The Church must be right; we cannot allow ourselves to be bewildered and befooled by eccentric reformers and by individual assailants. All history reverses such opinions. The truth, it would seem, has always been with the one man. The moment another man joins him he is less than he was before. The sense of individual responsibility is almost lost. The Almighty seems to have elected the individual man, and through him to have spoken to the crowd or the race. But he has not Gods message simply because he happens to be one. You are not great because you are eccentric. You are not wise because you are solitary. But being called and inspired, having the assurance of the truth, and being prepared to establish that assurance by daily sacrifice, go forward, and at the last the vindication will come.
IV. That personal deliverance in trial is the only possible providence. That is the very idea that would recur to the simplest mind that could look at the case. It is the first rush at a popular riddle; but there is nothing in that answer. If that were Gods method there would never be any need of deliverance at all. There must be something grander than this. The miracle was wrought within. Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. Any miracle of merely personal deliverance set side by side with that miracle of grace would be an anti-climax and a pitiful commonplace. Any religion that will evoke such a spirit in its believers, and lead them under such circumstances to offer such prayers, needs no vindication of its divinity.
V. That life is limited by that which is open to the eyes of the body. It would have been a poor case for Stephen but for the invisible. If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable. Moses endured as seeing the invisible. Stephen said, I see heaven opened, etc. Blessed are the pore in heart, for they shall see God. In great dangers God shows us great sights. What did Elisha ask the Lord to do in the case of the young man who saw the gathering hosts surrounding his prophet master? Lord, open his eyes that he may see. That is all we want. The enemy is near: but the friend is nearer. Stephens spiritual faith made him forget that he had a body. Think of trusting his spirit to a God that had allowed his body to be killed! This is the sublimity of faith. When the spirit is inspired, when heaven is opened, when Christ rises to receive the guest, there is no flesh, there is no pain, there is no consciousness but in the presence of God, the absorption of the heart in the infinite love. When the heart seizes God as an inheritance it fears not them that kill the body. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Stephens death
I. Its general character.
1. It was in the midst of his service. He had been appointed an officer of the Church to see that the alms were distributed properly, and thereby he did most useful service, for it gave the apostles opportunity to give themselves wholly to their true work, and it is no small matter to be able to bear a burden for another if he is thereby set free for more eminent service than we could ourselves perform. The care which Stephen exercised over the poor tended also to prevent heartburning and division. Bat, not content with being a deacon, Stephen began to minister in holy things as a speaker of the Word with great power. He stands forth as quite a leading spirit; so much so, indeed, that the enemies of the gospel made him the object of their fiercest opposition. Stephen stood in the front rank of the Lords host, and yet he was taken away! A mystery, say some; A great privilege, say I. Is it not well to die in harness? Who wants to linger till he becomes a burden rather than a help?
2. In the prime of his usefulness. And is not this well? Well, first, that God should teach His people how much He can do by a man whom He chooses; well, next, that He should show them that He is not dependent upon any man. If our life can teach one lesson, and when that is taught, if our death can teach another, it is well to live and well to die. If God be glorified by our removal, is it not well?
3. It was painful, and attended with much that flesh and blood would dread. He died not surrounded by weeping friends, but by enemies who gnashed their teeth; no holy hymn made glad his death chamber, but the shouts and outcries of a maddened throng rang in his ears. For him no downy pillow, but the hard and cruel stones. Now this is all the more for our comfort, because if he died in joy and triumph, how much more may we hope to depart in peace!
4. It was calm, peaceful, confident, joyous. He never flinched while addressing that infuriated audience. He was as calm as the opened heaven above him, and continued so though they hurried him out of the city. He stood up and committed his soul to God with calmness, and when the first murderous stones felled him to the earth he rose to his knees, still not to ask for pity, but to plead with his Lord for mercy upon his assailants; then, closing his eyes, he fell asleep. Believe, then, O Christian, that if you abide in Christ, the like will be the case with you. We wept when we were born though all around us smiled; so shall we smile when we die while all around us weep. Why should we expect it to be otherwise? Stephens God is our God; the Holy Spirit dwells in us even as He did in him.
5. His mind was in a very elevated condition, Remark--
(1) His intense sympathy with God. All through that long speech of his you see that his soul is taken up with his God, and the treatment which he had received from Israel.
(2) His exclusive attachment to the spiritual. All ritualism was clean gone from him. I dare say at one time Stephen felt a great reverence for the temple; but Stephen says, Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands. It is noteworthy how the saints, when they are near to die, make very little of what others make a great deal of. The peculiar form of worship and the little specialities of doctrines which he made much of, will seem little in comparison with the great spiritual essentials when the soul is approaching the presence chamber of the Eternal.
(3) His superiority to the fear of men. He looks like an immortal angel rather than a man condemned to die. The fitter we are for heaven the more we scorn all compromise, and feel that for truth, for God, for Christ, we must speak out, even if we die.
(4) His freedom from all cares. He was a deacon, but he does not say, What will those poor people do? What will the apostles do? He trusts the Church militant with her Captain; he is called to the Church triumphant. Why should it not be thus with us? Our Lord managed His Church well enough before we were born; He will not be at a loss because He has called us home.
(5) His triumphant death. His name was Stephanos, or crown, and truly that day he not only received a crown, but he became the crown of the Church as her first martyr.
II. Its most notable peculiarity. It was full of Jesus. Jesus was--
1. Seen--
(1) As the Son of Man. This is the only place in Scripture where Jesus is called the Son of Man by any one but Himself. At all times it is a gladsome sight to see the representative Man exalted to the throne of God, but it was peculiarly suitable for this occasion, for the Lord Himself had warned the present audience about the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power.
(2) Standing--eager both to sustain and to receive him when the conflict was over.
(3) At the right hand of God, the place of love, power, and honour. Now, when we come to die, we may not, perhaps, expect with those eyes to see what Stephen saw, but faith has a grand realising power. So long as we are sure that Christ is at the right hand of God, it little matters.
2. Invoked. Dying Christians are not troubled with questions as to the Deity of Christ. Unitarianism may do to live with, but it will not do to die with. At such a time we need an Almighty Saviour.
(1) Stephen makes no mention of any other intercessor. The abomination of saint and angel worship had not been invented in his day.
(2) Neither do we find him saving a word as to his good works, and almsdeeds, and sermons, and miracles.
3. Trusted. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
4. Imitated, for the death of Stephen is a reproduction of the death of Jesus. Jesus died without the gate, praying, so did Stephen; Jesus died saying, Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit; Stephen says, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Christ dies pleading for His murderers, so does Stephen. Now, if our death shall be a reproduction of the death of Jesus, why need we fear?
III. Its suggestion as to the kind of death which we may wisely desire. First, it is very desirable that our death should be--
1. Of a piece with our life. Stephen was full of faith and of the Holy Ghost in life, and so was he full of the Holy Ghost in death; Stephen was bold, brave, calm, and composed, in life, he is the same amid the falling stones. It is very sad when the reported account of a mans death does not fit in with his life. It is ill to die with a jerk, getting as it were upon another line of rails all on a sudden. It is better to glide from one degree of grace to another, and so to glory. Death may be the fringe or border of life, but it should he made out of the same piece. A life of clay is not to be joined to a death of gold.
2. The perfecting of our whole career, the putting of the cornerstone upon the edifice, so that when nothing else is wanted to complete he mans labours he falls asleep.
3. Useful. Augustine says, If Stephen had never prayed, Saul had never preached. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Stephens death a witness to vital Christian truth
I. The character of Stephen; or what manner of man he was: full of the Holy Ghost. Now this Holy Spirit dwells in the heart of all the Israel of God (Joh_14:25-26). What can be plainer, than that here is a Person distinct from either the Father and the Son, but intimately connected with both? And that He is not a principle, but a person. In this view, the fruits of the Spirit are to be always distinguished from the Spirit itself; the gifts are not to be confounded with the Giver; the Spirit of faith will make a man die contentedly; the Spirit of purity will make him die composedly; the Spirit of truth will make him die consistently; the Spirit of comfort will make him die happily; the Spirit of might will make him die triumphantly.
II. His confidence; or what he did: He looked up stedfastly into heaven. Not only looked towards, but into, as one who had cast his anchor of hope within the veil, and knew, therefore, where again to find it.
1. He looked up, we cannot doubt, with longing desire to be there.
2. With great indifference to all things here below. We would not tolerate neglect of your proper concerns; but the hour cometh when the possession of the whole world, will be of no avail; when its opinions can no longer influence, when its interests can no longer bind, when its friendships can no longer profit, and when its pleasures can no longer charm. If, then, you cannot look up stedfastly into heaven for comfort, ah! you have nowhere else to look!
3. In prayer. Stephen knew that a martyrs grace was needful to a martyrs constancy. He prayed, therefore, for himself; but also for his murderers--Holy hands must be lifted up without wrath or doubting.
III. His vision and encouragement; or what he saw--
1. The glory of God, and Jesus. As the glory of God is seen most, resplendent in the face (or person) of Jesus Christ, this was most probably the view with which his soul was blest. Somewhat of this, too, Esaias saw when at the surpassing brightness even the seraphim did ceil their faces with their wings.
2. Jesus standing at the right hand of God, amidst His shining hosts, sovereign and supreme, arising in order to be the first to receive the dying martyrs spirit; standing, as a priest who standeth daily ministering, to offer up this sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savour; standing, as a judge of masteries at the end of the goal or conflict, to hail the triumph of the candidate, and Himself confer the victors crown!
IV. His avowal; or, what he said. Behold, I see the heavens opened, etc. Here, then, St. Stephen gives a testimony to--
1. The Trinity; for he himself was full of the Holy Ghent: he saw the glory of God the Father, and this manifested in Jesus standing at His right hand. He declared also--
2. Christs humanity--Son of Man. His faith and hope of admission into heaven: I see heaven opened. Can there be a doubt but that there is an open door, which no man can shut, proposed to us? When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, Thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
V. His adoration; or whom it was he worshipped. They stoned Stephen, invocating and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit! Jesus, therefore, was the object of his adoration; He was the only God he invocated, and at his last extremity of suffering and distress--a period when, if ever, men pray with the utmost seriousness, and always to Him whom they conceive to be the mightiest to help. Nor is it an immaterial circumstance that this invocation was made at the very time when Stephen saw the glory of the Father, and was himself full of the Holy Ghost; so that neither ignorance nor inadvertency nor imperfection could occasion it. And as if conscious, too, that He who could succour could equally forgive, he prayed again to Christ--Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. (W. B. Williams, M. A.)
The massacre
Stephen had been preaching a rousing sermon, and the people could not stand it. They resolved to do as men sometimes would like to do in this day, if they dared, with some plain preacher of righteousness--kill him. I want to show you to-day five pictures. Stephen--
I. Gazing into heaven. Before you climb a ladder you want to know to what point the ladder reaches. And it was right that Stephen, within a few moments of heaven, should be gazing into it. We would all do well to be found in the same posture. There is enough in heaven to keep us gazing. The whole universe is Gods palace, but heaven is the gallery in which the chief glories are gathered. We have a great many friends there. As a man gets older, the number of his celestial acquaintances very rapidly multiplies. We have not had one glimpse of them since the night we kissed them good-bye and they went away; but still we stand gazing at heaven.
II. Looking upon Christ. How Christ looked in this world, how He looks in heaven, we cannot say. Painters have tried to imagine His features, and put them upon canvas; but we will have to wait until with our own eyes we see Him. And yet there is a way of seeing Him now, and unless you see Christ on earth, you will never see Him in heaven. Look! There He is. Behold the Lamb of God. Can you not see Him? Then pray to God to take the scales off your eyes. His voice comes down to you, saying, Look unto Me, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved. Proclamation of universal emancipation for all slaves, of universal amnesty for all rebels. Behold Him, little children, for if you live to threescore years and ten, you will see none so fair. Behold Him, ye aged ones, for He only can shine through the dimness of your failing eyesight. Behold Him, earth. Behold Him, heaven. What a moment when all the nations of the saved shall see Him!
III. Stoned. The world has always wanted to get rid of good men. Their very life is an assault upon wickedness. Out with Stephen through the gates of the city. Down with him over the precipices. Let every man come and drop a stone upon his head. But these men did not so much kill Stephen as they killed themselves. While these murderers are transfixed by the scorn of all good men, Stephen lives in the admiration of all Christendom. Show me any one who is doing all his duty to State or Church, and I will show you scores of men who utterly abhor him. If a steamer makes rapid progress through the waves, the water will boil and foam all round it. You may assault a good man, but you cannot kill him. On the day of his death, Stephen spoke before a few people of the Sanhedrin; this Sabbath morning he addresses all Christendom!
IV. Praying. His first thought was not how the stones hurt his head, nor what would become of his body. His first thought was about his spirit. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. There is within you a soul. What direction will it take? What guide will escort it? What gate will open to receive it? Oh, this mysterious spirit i It has two wings, but it is in a cage now, but let the door of this cage open the least, and that soul is off. The lightnings are not swift enough to take up with it. And have you no anxiety about it? Thank God for the intimation of my text, that when we die Jesus takes us. In that hour it may be we shall be too feeble to say a long prayer, not even the Lords Prayer, for it has seven petitions. Perhaps we ms.y be too feeble to say the infant prayer our mothers taught us, but this prayer of Stephen is so short, concise, earnest, comprehensive, we surely will be able to say that.
V. Asleep. What a place to sleep in! Stephen had lived a very laborious life. But that is all over now. I have seen the sea driven with the hurricane until the tangled foam caught in the rigging, and wave rising above wave seemed as if about to storm the heavens, and then I have seen the tempest drop, and the waves crouch, and everything become smooth and burnished as though a camping place for the glories of heaven. So I have seen a man, whose life has been tossed and driven, coming down at last to an infinite calm, in which there was the hush of heavens lullaby. (T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v58 Chapter 16
Chapter 16
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN MARTYRDOM.
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Act_7:58-60; Act_8:1
THE apology of Stephen struck the keynote of Christian freedom, traced out the fair proportions of the Catholic Church, while the actual martyrdom of Stephen taught men that Christianity was not only the force which was to triumph, but the power in which they were to suffer, and bear, and die. Stephens career was a type of all martyr lives, and embraces every possible development through which Christs Church and His servants had afterwards to pass, - obscurity, fame, activity, death, fixing high the standard for all ages.
I. We have in this passage, telling the story of that martyrdom, a vast number of topics, which have formed the subject-matter of Christian thought since apostolic times. We have already remarked that the earliest quotation from the Acts of the Apostles connects itself with this scene of Stephens martyrdom. Let us see how this came about. One hundred and forty years later than Stephens death, towards the close of the second century, the Churches of Vienne and Lyons were sending an account of the terrible sufferings through which they had passed during a similar sudden outburst of the Celtic pagans of that district against the Christians. The aged Pothinus, a man whose life and ministry touched upon the apostolic age, was put to death, suffering violence very like that to which St. Stephen was subjected, for we are told expressly by the historian Eusebius that the mob in its violence flung missiles at him. "Those at a distance, whatsoever they had at hand, every one hurled at him, thinking it would be a great sin if they fell short in wanton abuse against him." The Church of Lyons, according to the loving usage of those early times, sent an account for all their trouble to the brethren in Asia and Phrygia, that they might read it at the celebration of the Eucharist for their own comfort and edification. They entered into great details, showing how wonderfully the power of Gods grace was manifested, even in the weakest persons, sustaining their courage and enabling them to witness. The letter then goes on to note the marvellous humility of the sufferers. They would not allow any one to call them martyrs. That name was reserved to Jesus Christ, "the true and faithful Martyr," and to those who had been made perfect through death. Then, too, their charity was wonderful, and the Epistle, referring to this very incident, tells how they prayed "like Stephen, that perfect martyr, Lord, impute not this sin to them." The memory of St. Stephen served to nerve the earliest Gallic martyrs, and it has ever since been bound up with the dearest feelings of Christians. The arrangements of the Calendar, with which we are all familiar, are merely an expression of the same feeling as that recorded in the second-century document we have just now quoted. Christmas Day and St. Stephens Day are closely united, -the commemoration of Christs birth is joined with that of the martyrdom of St. Stephen, because of a certain spiritual instinct. Christmas Day records the fact of the Incarnation, and then we have according to the order of the Calendar three holy days; St. Stephens, St. Johns, and the Holy Innocents Day, which follow one another in immediate succession. Many persons will remember the explanation of an old commentator on the Calendar and Liturgy, of which Keble makes a very effective use in his hymns in the "Christian Year" set apart for those days. There are three classes of martyrs: one in will and deed like St. Stephen, -this is the highest class, therefore he has place next to Christ; another in will, but not in deed, like St. John the Divine, who was ready to suffer death, but did not, -this is the second rank, therefore his place comes next to St. Stephen; and lastly come the Holy Innocents, the babes of Bethlehem, martyrs in deed but not in will, and therefore in the lowest position. The Western Church, and especially the Church of Northern Europe, has always loved the Christmas season, with its cheerful fires, its social joys, its family memories; and hence, as it was in the Church of the second century, so with ourselves, none has a higher or dearer place in memory, doubtless largely owing to this conjunction, than the great proto-martyr. Men have delighted, therefore, to trace spiritual analogies and relationships between Stephen and Christ; fanciful perhaps some of them are, but still they are devout fancies, edifying fancies, fancies which strengthen and deepen the Divine life in the soul. Thus they have noted that Christmas Day and St. Stephens Day are both natal days. In the language of the ancient Church, with its strong realising faith, men spoke of a saints death or martyrdom as his dies natalis. This is, indeed, one of the many traces of primitive usage which the Church of Rome has preserved, like a fly fixed in amber, petrified in the midst of her liturgical uses. She has a Martyrology which the ordinary laity scarcely ever see or use, but which is in daily use among the clergy and the various ecclesiastical communities connected with that Church. It is in the Latin tongue, and is called the "Martyrologium Romanum," giving the names of the various saints whose memories are celebrated upon each day throughout the year, and every such day is duly styled the natal or birthday of the saint to whom it is appropriated. The Church of Rome retains this beautiful custom of the primitive Church, which viewed the death-day of a saint as his birthday into the true life, and rejoiced in it accordingly. That life was not, in the conception of the primitive believers, a life of ghosts and shadows. It was the life of realities, because it was the life of eternity, and therefore the early Christians lived for it, they longed for it, and counted their entrance upon it their true natal or birthday. The Church brought the two birthdays of Christ and Stephen into closest union, and men saw a beautiful reason for that union, teaching that Christ was born into this lower world in order that Stephen might be born into the heavenly world. The whole of that dreadful scene enacted at Jerusalem was transformed by the power of that beautiful conception. Stephens death was no longer a brutal murder; faith no longer saw the rage, the violence, the crushed body, the mangled and outraged humanity. The birthday of Jesus Christ, the Incarnation of the Master, transfigured the death-scene of the servant, for the shame and sufferings were changed into peace and glory; the execrations and rage of the mob became angelic songs, and the missiles used by them were fashioned into messengers of the Most High, ushering the faithful martyr through a new birth into his eternal rest. Well would it be for the Church at large if she could rise to this early conception more frequently than she commonly does. Men did not then trouble themselves about questions of assurance, or their Christian consciousness. These topics and ideas are begotten on a lower level, and find sustenance in a different region. Men like Stephen and the martyrs of Vienne and Lyons lived in the other world; it was the world of all their interests, of all their passionate desires, of all their sense of realities. They lived the supernatural life, and they did not trouble themselves with any questions about that life, any more than a man in sound physical health and spirits cares to discuss topics dealing with the constitution of the life which he enjoys, or to debate such unprofitable questions as, How do I know that I exist at all? Christians then knew and felt they lived in God, and that was enough for them. We have wandered far enough afield, however; let us retrace our steps, and seek to discover more in detail the instruction for the life of future ages given us in this first martyr scene.
II. We have brought before us the cause of the sudden outburst against Stephen. For it was an outburst, a popular commotion, not a legal execution. We have already explained the circumstances which led the Sanhedrin to permit the mob to take their own course, and even to assist them in doing so. Pilate had departed; the imperial throne too was vacant in the spring or early summer of the year 37; there was an interregnum when the bonds of authority were relaxed, during which the Jews took leave to do as they pleased, trusting that when the bonds were again drawn tight the misdeeds of the past and the irregularities committed would be forgotten and forgiven. Hence the riot in which Stephen lost his life. But what roused the listeners-Sanhedrists, elders, priests, and people alike - to madness? They heard him patiently enough, just as they afterwards heard his successor Paul, till he spoke of the wider spiritual hope. Paul, as his speech is reported in the twenty-second chapter, was listened to till he spoke of being sent to the Gentiles. Stephen was listened to till he spoke of the free, universal, spiritual character of the Divine worship, tied to no place, bounded by no locality. Then the Sanhedrin waxed impatient, and Stephen, recognising with all an orators instinct and tact that his opportunity was over, changes his note-charging home upon his hearers the same spirit of criminal resistance to the leadings of the Most High as their fathers had always shown. The older Jews had ever resisted the Holy Ghost as He displayed His teaching and opened up His purposes under the Old Dispensation; their descendants had now followed their example in withstanding the same Divine Spirit manifested in that Holy One of whom they had lately been the betrayers and murderers. It is scarcely any wonder that such language should have been the occasion of his death. How exactly he follows the example of our Saviour! Stephen used strong language, and so did Jesus Christ. It has even been urged of late years that our Lord deliberately roused the Jews to action, and hastened his end by his violent language of denunciation against the ruling classes recorded in the twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew. There is, however, a great lesson of eternal significance to be derived from the example of St. Stephen as well as of our Lord. There are times when strong language is useful and necessary. Christs ordinary ministry was gentle, persuasive, mild. He did not strive nor cry, neither did any man hear His voice in the streets. But a time came when, persuasion having failed of its purpose, the language of denunciation took its place, and helped to work out in a way the Pharisees little expected the final triumph of truth. Stephen was skilful and gentle in his speech; his words must at first have sounded strangely flattering to their prejudices, coming from one who was accused as a traitor to his race and religion. Yet when the gentle words failed, stern denunciation, the plainest language, the keenest phrases, - "Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears," "Betrayers and murderers of the Righteous One,"-prove that a Christian martyr then, and Christs martyrs and witnesses of every age, are not debarred under certain circumstances from the use of such weapons. But it is hard to know when the proper time has come for their employment. The object of every true servant and witness of Christ will be to recommend the truth as effectually as possible, and to win for it acceptance. Some people seem to invert this course, and to think that it is unworthy a true follower of Christ to seek to present his message in an attractive shape. They regard every human art and every human motive or principle as so thoroughly bad that men should disregard and despise them. Human eloquence, or motives of policy and prudence, they utterly reject. Their principles lead some of them farther still. They reject the assistance which art and music and literature can lend to the cause of God, and the result is that men, specially as they grow in culture and civilisation, are estranged from the message of everlasting peace. Some people, with a hard, narrow conception of Christianity, are very responsible for the alienation of the young and the thoughtful from the side of religion through the misconceptions which they have caused. God has made the doctrines of the cross repugnant to the corrupt natural feelings of man, but it is not for us to make them repugnant to those good natural principles as well which the Eternal Father has implanted in human nature, and which are an echo of His own Divine self in the sanctuary of the heart. It is a real breach of charity when men refuse to deal tenderly in such matters with the lambs of Christs flock, and will not seek, as St. Stephen and the apostles did, to recommend Gods cause with all human skill, enlisting therein every good or indifferent human motive. Had St. Stephen thought it his duty to act as some unwise people do now, we should never have had his immortal discourse as a model for faithful and skilful preaching. We should merely have had instead the few words of vigorous denunciation with which the address closed. At the same time the presence of these stern words proves that there is a place for such strong language in the work of the Christian ministry. There is a time and place for all things, even for the use of strong language. The true teacher will seek to avoid giving unnecessary offences, but offence sharp and stern may be an absolute duty of charity when prejudice and bigotry and party spirit are choking the avenues of the soul, and hindering the progress of truth. And thus John the Baptist may call men a generation of vipers, and Paul may style Elymas a child of the devil, and Christ may designate the religious world of His day as hypocrites; and when occasion calls we should not hesitate to brand foul things with plain names, in order that men may be awakened from that deadly torpor into which sin threatens to fling them. The use of strong language by St. Stephen had its effect upon his listeners. They were sawn asunder in their hearts, they gnashed their teeth upon the martyr. His words stirred them up to some kind of action. The Gospel has a double operation, it possesses a twofold force-the faithful teaching of it cannot be in vain. To some it will be the savour of life unto life, to others the savour of death unto death. Opposition may be indeed unwisely provoked. It may be the proof to us of nothing else save our own wilfulness, our own folly and imprudence. But if Christian wisdom be used, and the laws of Christian charity duly observed, then the spirit of opposition and the violence of rage and persecution prove nothing else to the sufferers than that Gods word is working out His purposes, and bringing forth fruit, though it be unto destruction.
III. Again, the locality, the circumstances, and the surroundings of Stephens martyrdom deserve a brief notice. The place of his execution is pointed out by Christian tradition, and that tradition is supported by the testimony of Jewish custom and of Jewish writings. He was tried in the Temple precincts, or within sight of it, as is manifest from the words of the witnesses before the council, "He ceaseth not to speak against this holy place. We have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place." The mob then rushed upon him. Under ordinary circumstances the Roman garrison stationed in the neighbouring town of Antonia, which overlooked the temple, would have noticed the riot, and have hastened to intervene, as they did many years after, when St. Pauls life was threatened in a similar Jewish outburst. But the political circumstances, as we have already shown, were now different. Roman authority was for the moment paralysed in Jerusalem. People living at great centres such as Rome once was, or London now is, have no idea how largely dependent distant colonies or outlying districts like Judaea are upon personal authority and individual lives. In case of a rulers death the action of the officials and of the army becomes necessarily slow, hesitating; it loses that backbone of energy, decision, and vigour which a living personal authority imparts. The decease of the Roman Emperor, synchronising with the recall of Pontius Pilate, must have paralysed the action of the subordinate officer then commanding at Antonia, who, unaware what turn events might take, doubtless thought that he was safe in restraining himself to the guardianship and protection of purely Roman interests.
The scene of Stephens murder is sometimes located in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, near the brook Kedron, under the shadow of Olivet, and over against the Garden of Gethsemane. To that spot the gate of Jerusalem, called the Gate of St. Stephen, now leads. Another tradition assigns the open country northeast of Jerusalem, on the road to Damascus and Samaria, as the place consecrated by the first death suffered for Jesus Christ. It is, however, according to the usual practice of Holy Scripture to leave this question undecided, or rather completely disregarded and overlooked. The Scriptures were not written to celebrate men or places, things temporary and transient in themselves, and without any bearing on the spiritual life. The Scriptures were written for the purpose of setting forth the example of devotion, of love, and of sanctity presented by its heroes, and therefore it shrouds all such scenes as that of Stephens martyrdom in thickest darkness. There is as little as possible of what is merely local, detailed, particular about the Scriptures. They rise into the abstract and the general as much as is consistent with being a historical narrative. Perhaps no spot in the world exhibits more evident and more abundant proofs of this Divine wisdom embodied in the Scriptures than this same city of Jerusalem as we now behold it. What locality could be more dear to Christian memory, or more closely allied with Christian hope, than the Holy Places, as they are emphatically called-the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and its surroundings? Yet the contending struggles of Roman Catholics, Greeks, and Armenians have made the whole subject a reproach and disgrace, and not an honour to the Christian name, showing how easily strife and partisanship and earthly passions enter in and usurp the ground which is nominally set apart for the honour of Christ Jesus. It is very hard to keep the spirit of the world out of the most sacred seasons or the holiest localities.
Stephen is hurried by the mob to this spot outside the Holy City, and then they proceed in regular judicial style so far as their fury will allow them. Dr. John Lightfoot, in his great work "Horae Hebraicae," dealing with this passage, notes how we can trace in it the leading ideas and practices of Jewish legal processes. The Sanhedrin and their supporters dragged St. Stephen out of the city. because it was the law as laid down in Lev_24:14 - "Bring forth him that hath cursed without the camp." The Jews still retained vivid memories of their earlier history, just as students of sociology and ethnology still recognise in our own practices traces of ancient prehistoric usages, reminiscences of a time, ages now distant from us, when our ancestors lived the savage life in lands widely separated from our modern homes. So did the Jews still recognise the nomad state as their original condition, and even in the days of our Saviour looked upon Jerusalem as the camp of Israel, outside of which the blasphemer should be stoned.
Lightfoot then gives the elaborate ceremonial used to insure a fair trial, and the re-consideration of any evidence which might turn up at the very last moment. A few of the rules appointed for such occasions are well worth quoting, as showing the minute care with which the whole Jewish order of execution was regulated: "There shall stand one at the door of the Sanhedrin having a handkerchief in his hand, and a horse at such a distance as it was only within sight. If any one therefore say, I have something to offer on behalf of the condemned person, he waves the handkerchief, and the horseman rides and calls the-people back. Nay, if the man himself say, I have something to offer in my own defence, they bring him back four or five times one after another, if it be a thing of any moment he has to say." I doubt, adds Lightfoot, they hardly dealt so gently with the innocent Stephen. Lightfoot then describes how a crier preceded the doomed man proclaiming his crime, till the place of execution was reached; where, after he was stripped of his clothes, the two witnesses threw him violently down from a height of twelve feet, flinging upon him two large stones. The man was struck by one witness in the stomach, by the other upon the heart, when, if death did not at once ensue, the whole multitude lent their assistance. Afterwards the body was suspended on a tree. It will be evident from this outline of Lightfoots more prolonged and detailed statement that the leading ideas of Jewish practice were retained in St. Stephens case; but as the execution was as much the act of the people as of the Sanhedrin, it was carried out hurriedly and passionately. This will account for some of the details left to us. We usually picture to ourselves St. Stephen as perishing beneath a deadly hail of missiles, rained upon him by an infuriated mob, before whom he is flying, just as men are still maimed or killed in street riots; and we wonder therefore when or where St. Stephen could have found time to kneel down and commend his spirit to Christ, or to pray his last prayer of Divine charity and forgiveness under such circumstances as those we have imagined. The Jews, however, no matter how passionate and enraged, would have feared to incur the guilt of murder had they acted in this rough-and-ready method. The witnesses must first strike their blows, and thus take upon themselves the responsibility for the blood about to be shed if it should turn out innocent. The culprits, too, were urged to confess their sin to God before they died. Stephen may have taken advantage of this well-known form to kneel down and offer up his parting prayers, which displaying his steadfast faith in Jesus only stirred up afresh the wrath of his adversaries, who thereupon proceeded to the last extremities.
Stephens death was a type of the vast majority of future martyrdoms, in this among other respects: it was a death suffered for Christ, just as Christs own death was suffered for the world at large, and that under the forms of law and clothed with its outward dignity. Christianity proclaims the dignity of law and order, and supports it-teaches that the magistrate is the minister of God, and that he does a divinely appointed work, but Christianity does not proclaim the infallibility of human laws or of human magistrates. Christianity does not teach that any human law or human magistrate can dictate to the individual conscience, or intrude itself into the inner temple of the soul. Christianity indeed has, by a long and bitter experience, taught the contrary, and vindicated the rights of a free conscience, by patiently suffering all that could be done against it by the powers of the world assuming the forms and using the powers of law. Christians, I say, have taught the dignity of law and order, and yet they have not hesitated to resist and overturn bad laws, not however so much by active opposition as by the patient suffering of all that fiendish cruelty and lust could devise against the followers of the Cross. Just as it was under the forms of law that our Saviour died and Stephen was executed, and Peter and Paul passed to their rest, so was it under the same forms of law that the primitive Church passed through those ten great persecutions which terminated by seating her on the throne of the Caesars. Law is a good thing. The absence of law is chaos. The presence of law, even though it be bad law, is better than no law at all. But the individual Christian conscience is higher than any human law. It should yield obedience in things lawful and indifferent. But in things clearly sinful the Christian conscience will honour the majesty of law by refusing obedience and then by suffering patiently and lovingly, as Stephen did, the penalty attached to conscientious disobedience.
IV. Let us now briefly notice the various points of interest, some of them of deep doctrinal importance, which gather round St. Stephens death. We are told, for instance, that the martyr, seeing his last hour approaching, "looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God." Surely critics must have been sorely in want of objections to the historical truth of the narrative when they raised the point that Stephen could not have looked up to heaven because he was in a covered chamber and could not have seen through the roof! This is simply a carping objection, and the expression used about St. Stephen is quite in keeping with the usus loquendi of Scripture. In the seventeenth of St. John, and at the first verse, we read of our Lord that "lifting up His eyes to heaven" He prayed His great eucharistic prayer on behalf of His Apostles. He lifted His eyes to heaven though He was in the upper chamber at the time. The Scriptural idea of heaven is not that of the little child, a region placed far away above the bright blue sky and beyond the distant stars, but rather that of a spiritual world shrouded from us for the present by the veil of matter, and yet so thinly separated that a moment may roll away the temporary covering and disclose the world of realities which lies behind. Such has been the conception of the deepest minds and the profoundest teaching. St. Stephen did not need a keen vision and an open space and a clear sky, free from clouds and smoke, as this objection imagines. Had St. Stephen been in a dungeon and his eyes been blind, the spiritual vision might still have been granted, and the consolation and strength afforded which the sight of his ascended Lord vouchsafed. This view of heaven and the unseen world is involved in the very word revelation, which, in its original Greek shape, apocalypse, means simply an uncovering, a rolling away of something that was flimsy, temporary, and transient, that a more abiding and nobler thing may be seen. The roof, the pillars, the solid structure of the temple, the priests and Levites, the guards and listeners, all were part of the veil of matter which suddenly rolled away from Stephens intensified view, that he might receive, as the martyrs of every age have received, the special assistance which the King of Martyrs reserves for the supreme hour of mans need. The vision of our Lord granted at this moment has its own teaching for us. We are apt to conjure up thoughts of the sufferings of the martyrs, to picture to ourselves a Stephen perishing under a shower of stones, an Ignatius of Antioch flung to the beasts, a Polycarp of Smyrna suffering at the stake, the victims of pagan cruelty dying under the ten thousand forms of diabolical cruelty subsequently invented; and then we ask ourselves, could we possibly have stood firm against such tortures? We forget the lesson of Stephens vision. Jesus Christ did not draw back the veil till the last moment; He did not vouchsafe the supporting vision till the need for it had come, and then to Stephen, as to all His saints in the past, and to all His saints in the future, the Master reveals Himself in all His supporting and sustaining power, reminding us in our humble daily spheres that it is our part to do our duty, and bear such burdens as the Lord puts upon us now, leaving to Him all care and thought for the future, content simply to trust that as our day is so shall our grace and our strength be, Stephens vision has thus a lesson of comfort and of guidance for those fretful souls who, not. content with the troubles and trials of the present, and the help which God imparts to bear them, will go on and strive to ascertain how they are to bear imaginary dangers, losses, and temptations which may never come upon them.
Then, again, we have the final words of Stephen, which are full of important meaning, for they bear witness unto the faith and doctrine of the apostolic Church. They stoned Stephen, "calling upon the Lord, and saying. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit"; while again a few moments later he cried, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." The latter petition is evidently an echo of our Lords own prayer on the cross, which had set up a high standard of Divine charity in the Church. The first martyr imitates the spirit and the very language of the Master, and prays for his enemies as Christ himself had done a short time before; while the other recorded petition, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," is an echo likewise of our Lords, when He said, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." We note specially about these prayers, not only that they breathe the spirit of Christ Himself, but that they are addressed to Christ, and are thus evidences to us of the doctrine and practice of the early Church in the matter of prayer to our Lord. St. Stephen is the first distinct instance of such prayer, but the more closely we investigate this book of the Acts and the Epistles of St. Paul, the more clearly we shall find that all the early Christians invoked Christ, prayed to Him as one raised to a supernatural sphere and gifted with Divine power, so that He was able to hear and answer their petitions. St. Stephen prayed to Christ, and commended his soul to Him, with the same confidence as Christ Himself commended His soul to the Father. And such commendation was no chance expression, no exclamation of adoring love merely. It was the outcome of the universal practice of the Church, which resorted to God through Jesus Christ. Prayer to Christ and the invocation of Christ were notes of the earliest disciples. Saul went to Damascus "to bind all that called upon the name of Jesus." {Act_9:14} The Damascene Jews are amazed at the converted Sauls preaching of Jesus Christ, saying, "Is not this he that in Jerusalem made havoc of them which called on this name?" {Acrs 9:21} While again Rom_10:12 and 1Co_1:2 prove that the same custom spread forth from Jerusalem to the uttermost parts of the Church. The passage to which I have just referred in the Corinthian Epistle is decisive as to St. Pauls teaching at a much later period than St. Stephens death, when the Church had had time to formulate its doctrines and to weigh its teaching. Yet even then, he was just as clear on this point as Stephen years before, addressing his Epistle to the Church of God at Corinth, "with all that call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in every place"; while again, when we descend to the generation which came next after the apostolic age, we find, from Plinys celebrated letter written to Trajan, describing the practices and ideas of the Christians of Bithynia in the earliest years of the second century, that it was then the same as in St. Pauls day. One of the leading features of the new sect as it appeared to an intelligent pagan was this: "They sang a hymn to Christ as God." St. Stephen is the earliest instance of such worship directly addressed to the Lord Jesus Christ, a practice which has ever since been steadily maintained in every branch of the Church of Christ. It has been denied, indeed, in modern times that the Church of England in her formularies gives a sanction to this practice, which is undoubtedly apostolical. A reference, however, to the collect appointed for the memorial day of this blessed martyr would have been a sufficient answer to this assertion, as that collect contains a very beautiful prayer to Christ, beseeching assistance, similar to that given to St. Stephen, amid the troubles of our own lives. The whole structure of all liturgies, and specially of the English liturgy, protests against such an idea. The Book of Common Prayer teems with prayer to Jesus Christ. The Te Deum is in great part a prayer addressed to Him; so is the Litany, and so are collects like the prayer of St. Chrysostom, the Collect for the First Sunday in Lent, and the well-known prayer for the Third Sunday in Advent-"O Lord Jesu Christ, who at Thy first coming didst send Thy messenger to prepare Thy way." The Eastern Church indeed addresses a greater number of prayers to Christ directly. The Western Church, basing itself on the promise of Christ, "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My Name, He will give it you," has ever directed the greater portion of her prayers to the Father through the Son; but the few leading cases just mentioned, cases which are common to the whole Western Church, Reformed or unreformed, will prove that the West also has followed primitive custom in calling upon the name and invoking the help of the Lord Jesus Himself. And then when Stephen had given us these two lessons, one of faith, the other of practice; when he had taught us the doctrine of Christs divinity and the worship due to Him, and the practice of Christian charity and the forgiving spirit which flows forth from it, even towards those who have treated His servants most cruelly, then Stephen "fell asleep," the sacred writer using an expression for death indicative of the new aspect which death had assumed through Christ, and which henceforth gave the name of cemeteries to the last resting-places of Christian people.
V. The execution of St. Stephen was followed by his funeral. The bodies of those that were stoned were also suspended on a tree, but there was no opposition to their removal, as afterwards in the great persecutions. The pagans, knowing that Christians preached the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, strove to prove the absurdity of this tenet by reducing the body to ashes. The Christians, however, repeatedly proved that they entertained no narrow views on this point, and did not expect the resurrection of the identical elements of which the earthly body was composed. They took a broader and nobler view of St. Pauls teaching in the fifteenth of 1st Corinthians, and regarded the natural body as merely the seed out of which the resurrection body was to be developed. This is manifest from some of the stories told us by ancient historians concerning the Christians of the second century. The martyrs of Vienne and Lyons have been already referred to, and their sufferings described. The pagans knew of their doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and thought to defeat it by scattering the ashes of the martyrs upon the waters of the Rhone; but the narrative of Eusebius tells us how foolish was this attempt, as if man could thus overcome God, whose almighty power avails to raise the dead from the ashes scattered over the ocean as easily as from the bones gathered into a sepulchre. Another story is handed down by a writer of Antioch named John Malalas, who lived about A.D. 600, concerning five Christian virgins, who lived some seventy years earlier than these Gallic martyrs, and fell victims to the persecution which raged at Antioch in the days of the Emperor Trajan, when St. Ignatius perished. They were burned to death for their constancy in the faith, and then their ashes were mingled with brass, which was made into basins for the public baths. Every person who used the basins became ill, and then the emperor caused the basins to be formed into statues of the virgins, in order, as Trajan said, that "it may be seen that I and not their God have raised them up."
But while it is plainly evident from the records of history that the earliest Christians had no narrow views about the relation between the present body of humiliation and the future body of glory, it is equally manifest that they paid the greatest attention to the mortal remains of their deceased friends, and permitted the fullest indulgence in human grief. In doing so they were only following the example of their Master, who sorrowed over Lazarus, and whose own mortal remains were cared for by the loving reverence of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea. Christianity was no system of Stoicism. Stoicism was indeed the noblest form of Greek thought, and one which approached most closely to the Christian standpoint, but it put a ban upon human affection and feeling. Christianity acted otherwise. It flung a bright light on death, and illuminated the dark recesses of the tomb through the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the prospect for humanity which that resurrection opens up. But it did not make the vain attempt of Stoicism to eradicate human nature: Nay, rather, Christianity sanctified it by the example of Jesus Christ, and by the brief notice of the mourning of the Church for the loss of their foremost champion, St. Stephen, which we find in our narrative. Such a gratification of natural feeling has never been inconsistent with the highest form of Christian faith. There may be the most joyous anticipation as to our friends who have been taken from us, joined with the saddest reflections as to our own bereavement. We may be most assured that our loss is the infinite gain of the departed, and for them we mourn not; but we cannot help feeling that we have sustained a loss, and for our loss we must grieve. The feelings of a Christian even now must be thus mixed, and surely much more must this have been the case when devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him.
The last results we note in this passage of Stephens death are twofold. Stephens martyrdom intensified the persecution for a time. Saul of Tarsus was made for a while a more determined and active persecutor. His mental position, his intellectual convictions, had received a shock, and he was trying to re-establish himself, and quench his doubts, by intensifying his exertions on behalf of the ancient creed. Some of the most violent persecutions the Church has ever had to meet were set on foot by men whose faith in their own systems was deeply shaken, or who at times have had no faith in anything at all. The men whose faith had been shaken endeavoured, by their activity in defence of the system in which they once fully believed, to obtain an external guarantee and assurance of its truth; while the secret unbeliever was often the worst of persecutors, because he regarded all religions as equally false, and therefore looked upon the new teachers as rash and mischievous innovators.
The result then of Stephens martyrdom was to render the Churchs state at Jerusalem worse for the time. The members of the Church were scattered far and wide, all save the Apostles. Here we behold a notable instance of the protecting care of Providence over His infant Church. All save the Apostles were dispersed from Jerusalem. One might have expected that they would have been specially sought after, and would have been necessarily the first to flee. There is an early tradition, however, which goes back to the second century, and finds some support in this passage, that our Lord ordered the Apostles to remain m the city of Jerusalem for twelve years after the Ascension, in order that every one there might have an opportunity of hearing the truth. His protecting hand was over the heads of the Church while the members were scattered abroad. But that same hand turned the apparent trial into the Churchs permanent gain. The Church now, for the first time, found what it ever after proved to be the case. "They that were scattered abroad went about preaching the word." The Churchs present loss became its abiding gain.
The blood of the martyrs became the seed of the Church. Violence reacted on the cause of those who employed it, as violence-no matter how it may temporarily triumph-always reacts on those who use it, whether their designs be intrinsically good or bad; till, in a widely disseminated Gospel, and in a daily increasing number of disciples, the eye of faith learned to read the clearest fulfilment of the ancient declaration, "The wrath of man shall praise God, and the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain."
Chapter 1
THE TRAINING OF SAUL THE RABBI
Act_7:58; Act_22:3
THE appearance of St. Paul upon the stage of Christian history marks a period of new development and of more enlarged activity. The most casual reader of the Acts of the Apostles must see that a personality of vast power, force, individuality, has now entered the bounds of the Church, and that henceforth St. Paul, his teaching, methods, and actions, will throw all others into the shade. Modern German critics have seized upon this undoubted fact and made it the foundation on which they have built elaborate theories concerning St. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles. Some of them have made St. Paul the inventor of a new form of Christianity, more elaborate, artificial, and dogmatic than the simple religion of nature which, as they think, Jesus Christ taught. Others have seen in St. Paul the great rival and antagonist of St. Peter, and have seen in the Acts a deliberate attempt to reconcile the opposing factions of Peter and Paul by representing St. Pauls career as modelled upon that of Peter. These theories are, we believe, utterly groundless; but they show at the same time what an important event in early Church history St. Pauls conversion was, and how necessary a thorough comprehension of his life and training if we wish to understand the genesis of our holy religion.
Who and whence, then, was this enthusiastic man who is first introduced to our notice in connection with St. Stephens martyrdom? What can we glean from Scripture and from secular history concerning his earlier career? I am not going to attempt to do what Conybeare and Howson thirty years ago, or Archdeacon Farrar in later times, have executed with a wealth of learning and a profuseness of imagination which I could not pretend to possess. Even did I possess them it would be impossible, for want of space, to write such a biography of St. Paul as these authors have given to the public. Let us, however, strive to gather up such details of St. Pauls early life and training as the New Testament, illustrated by history, sets before us. Perhaps we shall find that more is told us than strikes the ordinary superficial reader. His parentage is known to us from St. Pauls own statement. His father and mother were Jews of the Dispersion, as the Jews scattered abroad amongst the Gentiles were usually called; they were residents at Tarsus in Cilicia, and by profession belonged to the Pharisees who then formed the more spiritual and earnest religious section of the Jewish people. We learn this from three passages. In his defence before the Council, recorded in Act_23:6, he tells us that he was "a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees." There was no division in religious feeling between the parents. His home life and his earliest years knew nothing of religious jars and strife. Husband and wife were joined not only in the external bonds of marriage, but in the profounder union still of spiritual sentiment and hope, a memory which may have inspired a deeper meaning, begotten of personal experience in the warning delivered to the Corinthians, "Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers." Of the history of his parents and ancestors we know practically nothing more for certain, but we can glean a little from other notices. St. Paul tells us that he belonged to a special division among the Jews, of which we have spoken a good deal in the former volume when dealing with St. Stephen. The Jews at this period were divided into Hebrews and Hellenists: that is, Hebrews who by preference and in their ordinary practice spoke the Hebrew tongue, and Hellenists who spoke Greek and adopted Greek civilisation and customs. St. Paul tells us in Php_3:5 that he was "of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews," a statement which he substantially repeats in 2Co_11:22. Now it was almost an impossibility for a Jew of the Dispersion to belong to the Hebrews. His lot was cast in a foreign land, his business mixed him up with the surrounding pagans so that the use of the Greek language was an absolute necessity; while the universal practice of his fellow-countrymen in conforming themselves to Greek customs, Greek philosophy, and Greek civilisation rendered the position of one who would stand out for the old Jewish national ideas and habits a very trying and a very peculiar one. Here, however, comes in an ancient tradition, recorded by St. Jerome, which throws some light upon the difficulty. Scripture tells us that St. Paul was born at Tarsus. Our Lord in His conversation with Ananias in Act_9:2, calls him "Saul of Tarsus," while again the Apostle himself in the twenty-second chapter describes himself as "a Jew born in Tarsus." But then the question arises, how came his parents to Tarsus, and how, being in Tarsus, could they be described as Hebrews while all around and about them their countrymen were universally Hellenists? St. Jerome here steps in to help us. He relates, in his "Catalogue of Illustrious Writers," that "Paul the Apostle, previously called Saul, being outside the number of the Twelve, was of the tribe of Benjamin and of the city of the Jewish Gischala; on the capture of which by the Romans he migrated with them to Tarsus." Now this statement of Jerome, written four hundred years after the event, is clearly inaccurate in many respects, and plainly contradicts the Apostles own words that he was born in Tarsus.
But yet the story probably embodies a tradition substantially true, that St. Pauls parents were originally from Galilee. Galilee was intensely Hebrew. It was provincial, and the provinces are always far less affected by advance in thought or in religion than the towns, which are the chosen homes of innovation and of progress. Hellenism might flourish in Jerusalem, but in Galilee it would not be tolerated; and the tough, sturdy Galileans alone would have moral and religious grit enough to maintain the old Hebrew customs and language; even amid the abounding inducements to an opposite course which a great commercial centre like Tarsus held out. Assuredly our own experience affords many parallels illustrating the religious history of St. Pauls family. The Evangelical revival, the development of ritual in the Church of England, made their mark first of all in the towns, and did not affect the distant country districts till long after. The Presbyterianism of the Highlands is almost a different religion from the more enlightened and more cultured worship of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Low Church and Orange developments of Ulster bring us back to the times of the last century, and seem passing strange to the citizens of London, Manchester, or Dublin, who first make their acquaintance in districts where obsolete ideas and cries still retain a power quite forgotten in the vast tide of life and thought which sways the great cities. And yet these rural backwaters, as we may call them, retain their influence, and show strong evidence of life even in the great cities; and so it is that even in London and Edinburgh and Glasgow and Dublin congregations continue to exist in their remoter districts and back streets where the prejudices and ideas of the country find full sway and exercise. The Presbyterianism of the Highlands and the Orangeism of Ulster will be sought in vain in fashionable churches, but in smaller assemblies they will be found exercising a sway and developing a life which will often astonish a superficial observer.
So it was doubtless in Tarsus. The Hebrews of Galilee would delight to separate themselves. They would look down upon the Hellenism of their fellow-countrymen as a sad falling away from ancient orthodoxy, but their declension would only add a keener zest to the zeal with which the descendants of the Hebrews of Gischala, even in the third and fourth generations, as it may have been, would retain the ancient customs and language of their Galilean forefathers.
St. Paul and his parents might seem to an outsider mere Hellenists, but their Galilean origin and training enabled them to retain the intenser Judaism which qualified the Apostle to describe himself as not only of the stock of Israel, but as a Hebrew of the Hebrews.
St. Pauls more immediate family connections have also some light thrown upon them in the New Testament. We learn, for instance, from Act_23:16, that he had a married sister, who probably lived at Jerusalem, and may have been even a convert to Christianity; for we are told that her son, having heard of the Jewish plot to murder the Apostle, at once reported it to St. Paul himself, who thereupon put his nephew into communication with the chief captain in whose custody he lay. While again, in Rom_16:7; Rom_16:11, he sends salutations to Andronicus, Junias, and Herodion, his kinsmen, who were residents in Rome; and in verse 21 {Rom_16:21} of the same chapter joins Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, his kinsmen, with himself in the Christian wishes for the welfare of the Roman Church, with which he closes the Epistle. It is said, indeed, that this may mean simply that these men were Jews, and that St. Paul regarded all Jews as his kinsmen. But this notion is excluded by the form of the twenty-first verse, where he first sends greetings from Timothy, whom St. Paul dearly loved, and who was a circumcised Jew, not a proselyte merely, but a true Jew, on his mothers side, at least; and then the Apostle proceeds to name the persons whom he designates his kinsmen. St. Paul evidently belonged to a family of some position in the Jewish world, whose ramifications were dispersed into very distant quarters of the empire. Every scrap of information which we can gain concerning the early life and associations of such a man is very precious; we may therefore point out that we can even get a glimpse of the friends and acquaintances of his earliest days. Barnabas the Levite was of Cyprus, an island only seventy miles distant from Tarsus, In all probability Barnabas may have resorted to the Jewish schools of Tarsus, or may have had some other connections with the Jewish colony of that city. Some such early friendship may have been the link which bound Paul to Barnabas and enabled the latter to stand sponsor for the newly converted Saul when the Jerusalem Church was yet naturally suspicious of him. "And when he was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: and they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the Apostles." {Act_9:26-27} This ancient friendship enabled Barnabas to pursue the Apostle with those offices of consolation which his nascent faith demanded. He knew Sauls boyhood haunts, and therefore it is we read in Act_11:25 that "Barnabas went forth to Tarsus to seek for Saul" when a multitude of the Gentiles began to pour into the Church of Antioch. Barnabas knew his old friends vigorous, enthusiastic character, his genius, his power of adaptation, and therefore he brought him back to Antioch, where for a whole year they were joined in one holy brotherhood of devout and successful labour for their Master. The friendships and love of boyhood and of youth received a new consecration and were impressed with a loftier ideal from the example of Saul and of Barnabas.
Then again there are other friends of his youth to whom he refers. Timothys family lived at Lystra, and Lystra was directly connected with Tarsus by a great road which ran straight from Tarsus to Ephesus, offering means for that frequent communication in which the Jews ever delighted. St. Pauls earliest memories carried him back to the devout atmosphere of the pious Jewish family at Lystra, which he had long known, where Lois the grandmother and Eunice the mother had laid the foundations of that spiritual life which under St. Pauls own later teaching flourished so wondrously in the life of Timothy. Let us pass on, however, to a period of later development. St. Pauls earliest teaching at first was doubtless that of the home. As with Timothy so with the Apostle; his earliest religious teacher was doubtless his mother, who from his infancy imbued him with the great rudimentary truths which lie at the basis of both the Jewish and the Christian faith. His father too took his share. He was a Pharisee, and would be anxious to fulfil every jot and tittle of the law and every minute rule which the Jewish doctors had deduced by an attention and a subtlety concentrated for ages upon the text of the Old Testament. And one great doctor had laid down, "When a boy begins to speak, his father ought to talk with him in the sacred language, and to teach him the law"; a rule which would exactly fall in with his fathers natural inclination. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, though dwelling among Hellenists. He prided himself on speaking the Hebrew language alone, and he therefore would take the greatest pains that the future Apostles earliest teachings should be in that same sacred tongue, giving him from boyhood that command over Hebrew and its dialects which he afterwards turned to the best of uses.
At five years old Jewish children of parents like St. Pauls advanced to the direct study of the law under the guidance of some doctor, whose school they daily attended, as another rabbi had expressly enacted, "At five years old a boy should apply himself to the study of Holy Scripture." Between five and thirteen Saul was certainly educated at Tarsus, during which period his whole attention was concentrated upon sacred learning and upon mechanical or industrial training. It was at this period of his life that St. Paul must have learned the trade of tentmaking, which during the last thirty years of his life stood him in such good stead, rendering him independent of all external aid so far as his bodily wants were concerned. A question has often been raised as to the social position of St. Pauls family; and people, bringing their Western ideas with them, have thought that the manual trade which he was taught betokened their humble rank. But this is quite a mistake. St. Pauls family must have occupied at least a fairly comfortable position, when they were able to send a member of their house to Jerusalem to be taught in the most celebrated rabbinical school of the time. But it was the law of that school - and a very useful law it was too - that every Jew, and especially every teacher, should possess a trade bywhich he might be supported did necessity call for it. It was a common proverb among the Jews at that time that "He who taught not his son a trade taught him to be a thief." "It is incumbent on the father to circumcise his son, to redeem him, to teach him the law, and to teach him some occupation, for, as Rabbi Judah saith, whosoever teacheth not his son to do some work is as if he taught him robbery." "Rabbin Gamaliel saith, He that hath a trade in his hand, to what is he like? He is like to a vineyard that is fenced." Such was the authoritative teaching of the schools, and Jewish practice was in accordance therewith. Some of the most celebrated rabbis of that time were masters of a mechanical art or trade. The vice-president of the Sanhedrin was a merchant for four years, and then devoted himself to the study of the law. One rabbi was a shoemaker; Rabbi Juda, the great Cabalist, was a tailor; Rabbi Jose was brought up as a tanner; another rabbi as a baker, and yet another as a carpenter. And so as a preparation for the office and life work to which his father had destined him, St. Paul during his earlier years was taught one of the common trades of Tarsus, which consisted in making tents either out of the hair or the skin of the Angora goats which browsed over the hills of central Asia Minor. It was a trade that was common among Jews. Aquila and his wife Priscilla were tent-makers, and therefore St. Paul united himself to them and wrought at his trade in their company at Corinth. {Act_18:3} It has often been asserted that at this period of his life St. Paul must have studied Greek philosophy and literature, and men have pointed to his quotatations from the Greek poets Aratus, Epimenides, and Menander, to prove the attention which the Apostle must have bestowed upon them. {See Act_17:28, Tit_1:12, 1Co_15:33} Tarsus was certainly one of the great universities of that age, ranking in the first place along with Athens and Alexandria. So great was its fame that the Roman emperors even were wont to go to Tarsus to look for rotors to instruct their sons. But Tarsus was at the very same time one of the most morally degraded spots within the bounds of the Roman world, and it is not at all likely that a strict Hebrew, a stern Pharisee, would have allowed his son to encounter the moral taint involved in freely mixing with such a degraded people and in the free study of a literature permeated through and through with sensuality and idolatry. St. Paul doubtless at this early period of his life gained that colloquial knowledge of Greek which was every day becoming more and more necessary for the ordinary purposes of secular life all over the Roman Empire, even in the most backward parts of Palestine. But it is not likely that his parents would have sanctioned his attendance at the lectures on philosophy and poetry delivered at the University of Tarsus, where he would have been initiated into all the abominations of paganism in a style most attractive to human nature.
At thirteen years of age, or thereabouts, young Saul, having now learned all the sacred knowledge which the local rabbis could teach, went up to Jerusalem just as our Lord did, to assume the full obligations of a Jew and to pursue his higher studies at the great Rabbinical University of Jerusalem. To put it in modern language, Saul went up to Jerusalem to be confirmed and admitted to the full privileges and complete obligations of the Levitical Law, and he also went up to enter college. St. Paul himself describes the period of life on which he now entered as that in which he was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel. We have already touched in a prior volume upon the subject of Gamaliels history and his relation to Christianity, but here it is necessary to say something of him as a teacher, in which capacity he laid the foundations of modes of thought and reasoning, the influence of which moulded St. Pauls whole soul and can be traced all through St. Pauls Epistles.
Gamaliel is an undoubtedly historical personage. The introduction of him in the Acts of the Apostles is simply another instance of that marvellous historical accuracy which every fresh investigation and discovery show to be a distinguishing feature of this book. The Jewish Talmud was not committed to writing for more than four centuries after Gamaliels time, and yet it presents Gamaliel to us in exactly the same light as the inspired record does, telling us that "with the death of Gamaliel I the reverence for the Divine law ceased, and the observance of purity and abstinence departed." Gamaliel came of a family distinguished in Jewish history both before and after his own time. He was of the royal House of David, and possessed in this way great historical claims upon the respect of the nation. His grandfather Hillel and his father Simeon were celebrated teachers and expounders of the law. His grandfather had founded indeed one of the leading schools of interpretation then favoured by the rabbis. His father Simeon is said by some to have been the aged man who took up the infant Christ in his arms and blessed God for His revealed salvation in the words of the "Nunc Dimittis"; while, as for Gamaliel himself, his teaching was marked by wisdom, prudence, liberality, and spiritual depth, so far as such qualities could exist in a professor of rabbinical learning. Gamaliel was a friend and contemporary of Philo, and this fact alone must have imported an element of liberality into his teaching. Philo was a widely read scholar who strove to unite the philosophy of Greece to the religion of Palestine, and Philos ideas must have permeated more or less into some at least of the schools of Jerusalem, so that, though St. Paul may not have come in contact with Greek literature in Tarsus, he may very probably have learned much about it in a Judaised, purified, spiritualised shape in Jerusalem. But the influence exercised on St. Paul by Gamaliel and through him by Philo, or men of his school, can be traced in other respects.
The teaching of Gamaliel was as spiritual, I have said, as rabbinical teaching could have been; but this is not saying very much from the Christian point of view. The schools at Jerusalem in the time of Gamaliel were wholly engaged in studies of the most wearisome, narrow, petty, technical kind. Dr. Farrar has illustrated this subject with a great wealth of learning and examples in the fourth chapter of his "Life of St. Paul." The Talmud alone shows this, throwing a fearful light upon the denunciations of our Lord as regards the Pharisees, for it devotes a whole treatise to washings of the hands, and another to the proper method of killing fowls. The Pharisaic section of the Jews held, indeed, that there were two hundred and forty-eight commandments and three hundred and sixty-five prohibitions involved in the Jewish Law, all of them equally binding, and all of them so searching that if only one solitary Jew could be found who for one day kept them all and transgressed in no one direction, then the captivity of Gods people would cease and the Messiah would appear.
I am obliged to pass over this point somewhat rapidly, and yet it is a most important one if we desire to know what kind of training the Apostle received; for, no matter how Gods grace may descend and the Divine Spirit may change the main directions of a mans life, he never quite recovers himself from the effects of his early teaching. Dr. Farrar has bestowed much time and labour on this point. The following brief extract from his eloquent word, will give a vivid idea of the endless puerilities, the infinite questions of pettiest, most minute, and most subtle bearing with which the time of St. Paul and his fellow-students must have been taken up, and which must have made him bitterly feel in the depths of his inmost being that, though the law may have been originally intended as a source of life, it had been certainly changed as regards his own particular case, and had become unto him an occasion of death.
"Moreover, was there not mingled with all this nominal adoration of the Law a deeply seated hypocrisy, so deep that it was in a great measure unconscious? Even before the days of Christ the rabbis had learnt the art of straining out gnats and swallowing camels. They had long learnt to nullify what they professed to defend. The ingenuity of Hillel was quite capable of getting rid of any Mosaic regulation which had been found practically burdensome. Pharisees and Sadducees alike had managed to set aside in their own favour, by the devices of the mixtures, all that was disagreeable to themselves in the Sabbath scrupulosity. The fundamental institution of the Sabbatic year had been stultified by the mere legal fiction of the Prosbol. Teachers who were on the high road to a casuistry which could construct rules out of every superfluous particle, had found it easy to win credit for ingenuity by elaborating prescriptions to which Moses would have listened in mute astonishment. If there be one thing more definitely laid down in the Law than another, it is the uncleanness of creeping things; yet the Talmud assures us that no one is appointed a member of the Sanhedrin who does not possess sufficient ingenuity to prove from the written Law that a creeping thing is ceremonially clean; and that there was an unimpeachable disciple at Jabne who could adduce one hundred and fifty arguments in favour of the ceremonial cleanness of creeping things. Sophistry like this was at work even in the days when the young student of Tarsus sat at the feet of Gamaliel; and can we imagine any period of his life when he would not have been wearied by a system at once so meaningless, so stringent, and so insincere?"
These words are true, thoroughly true, in their extremest sense. Casuistry is at all times a dangerous weapon with which to play, a dangerous science upon which to concentrate ones attention. The mind is so pleased with the fascination of the precipice that one is perpetually tempted to see how near an approach can be made without a catastrophe, and then the catastrophe happens when it is least expected. But when the casuists attention is concentrated upon one volume like the law of Moses, interpreted in the thousand methods and combinations open to the luxuriant imagination of the East, then indeed the danger is infinitely increased, and we cease to wonder at the vivid, burning, scorching denunciations of the Lord as He proclaimed the sin of those who enacted that "Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor." St. Pauls whole time must have been taken up in the school of Gamaliel with an endless study of such casuistical trifles; and yet that period of his life left marks which we can clearly trace throughout his writings. The method, for instance, in which St. Paul quotes the Old Testament is thoroughly rabbinical. It was derived from the rules prevalent in the Jewish schools, and therefore, though it may seem to us at times forced and unnatural, must have appeared to St. Paul and to the men of his time absolutely conclusive. When reading the Scriptures we Westerns forget the great difference between Orientals and the nations of Western Europe. Aristotle and his logic and his logical methods, with major and minor premises and conclusions following therefrom, absolutely dominate our thoughts. The Easterns knew nothing of Aristotle, and his methods availed nothing to their minds. They argued in quite a different style, and used a logic which he would have simply scorned. Analogy, allegory, illustration, form the staple elements of Eastern logic, and in their use St. Paul was elaborately trained in Gamaliels classes, and of their use his writings furnish abundant examples; the most notable of which will be found in his allegorical interpretation of the events of the wilderness journey of Israel in 1Co_10:1-4, where the pillar of cloud, and the passage of the Red Sea, and the manna, and the smitten rock become the emblems and types of the Christian Sacraments; and again, in St. Pauls mystical explanation of Gal_4:21-31, where Hagar and Sarah are represented as typical of the two covenants, the old covenant leading to spiritual bondage and the new introducing to gospel freedom.
These, indeed, are the most notable examples of St. Pauls method of exegesis derived from the school of Gamaliel, but there are numberless others scattered all through his writings. If we view them through Western spectacles, we shall be disappointed and miss their force; but if we view them sympathetically, if we remember that the Jews quoted and studied the Old Testament to find illustrations of their own ideas rather than proofs in our sense of the word, studied them as an enthusiastic Shakespeare or Tennyson or Wordsworth student pores over his favourite author to find parallels which others, who are less bewitched, find very slight and very dubious indeed, then we shall come to see how it is that St. Paul quotes an illustration of his doctrine of justification by faith from Hab_2:4 - "The soul of the proud man is not upright, but the just man shall live by his steadfastness"; a passage which originally applied to the Chaldeans and the Jews, predicting that the former should enjoy no stable prosperity, but that the Jews, ideally represented as the just or upright man, should live securely because of their fidelity; and can find an allusion to the resurrection of Christ in "the sure mercies of David," which God had promised to give His people in the third verse of the fifty-fifth of Isaiah.
Rabbinical learning, Hebrew discipline, Greek experience and life, these conspired together with natural impulse and character to frame and form and mould a man who must make his mark upon the world at large in whatever direction he chooses for his walk in life. It will now be our duty to show what were the earliest results of this very varied education.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv57–59 57. Cried out with a loud voice. They cried,…
57. Cried out with a loud voice. They cried, closed their ears to what they called blasphemy, then, in a tumult, without a vote on his guilt or innocence, rushed upon him to slay him, though yet uncondemned legally.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v59 59. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” This is another…
59. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” This is another one of the innumerable Scriptures which knocks the bottom out of soul-sleeping, proposing to brutalize you by taking away your immortal soul and humbugging you with the silly delusion that you consist only of this material body, making even heathens blush for shame; for, walking in the light of nature and the Holy Spirit, without the precious Bible, even they believe in the soul’s immortality. Here we know that Stephen’s immortal spirit was a distinct unity, existing independently of his body, because it left his body under the rock-pile and went up to live with God in heaven, like the disembodied spirit of every dying saint.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv58–59 Act 7:58. - Phm 1:9.
Acts
THE YOUNG SAUL AND THE AGED PAUL 1
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Act 7:58. - Phm 1:9.
A far greater difference than that which was measured by years separated the young Saul from the aged Paul. By years, indeed, the difference was, perhaps, not so great as the words might suggest, for Jewish usage extended the term of youth farther than we do, and began age sooner. No doubt, too, Paul’s life had aged him fast, and probably there were not thirty years between the two periods. But the difference between him and himself at the beginning and the end of his career was a gulf; and his life was not evolution, but revolution.
At the beginning you see a brilliant young Pharisee, Gamaliel’s promising pupil, advanced above many who were his equals in his own religion, as he says himself; living after its straitest sect, and eager to have the smallest part in what seemed to him the righteous slaying of one of the followers of the blaspheming Nazarene. At the end he was himself one of these followers. He had cast off, as folly, the wisdom which took him so much pains to acquire. He had turned his back upon all the brilliant prospects of distinction which were opening to him. He had broken with countrymen and kindred. And what had he made of it? He had been persecuted, hunted, assailed by every weapon that his old companions could fashion or wield; he is a solitary man, laden with many cares, and accustomed to look perils and death in the face; he is a prisoner, and in a year or two more he will be a martyr. If he were an apostate and a renegade, it was not for what he could get by it.
What made the change? The vision of Jesus Christ. If we think of the transformation on Saul, its causes and its outcome, we shall get lessons which I would fain press upon your hearts now. Do you wonder that I would urge on you just such a life as that of this man as your highest good?
I. I would note, then, first, that faith in Jesus Christ will transform and ennoble any life.
It has been customary of late years, amongst people who do not like miracles, and do not believe in sudden changes of character, to allege that Paul’s conversion was but the appearance, on the surface, of an underground process that had been going on ever since he kept the witnesses’ clothes. Modern critics know a great deal more about the history of Paul’s conversion than Paul did. For to him there was no consciousness of undermining, but the change was instantaneous. He left Jerusalem a bitter persecutor, exceeding mad against the followers of the Nazarene, thinking that Jesus was a blasphemer and an impostor, and His disciples pestilent vermin, to be harried off the face of the earth. He entered Damascus a lowly disciple of that Christ. His conversion was not an underground process that had been silently sapping the foundations of his life; it was an explosion. And what caused it? What was it that came on that day on the Damascus road, amid the blinding sunshine of an Eastern noontide? The vision of Jesus Christ. An overwhelming conviction flooded his soul that He whom he had taken to be an impostor, richly deserving the Cross that He endured, was living in glory, and was revealing Himself to Saul then and there. That truth crumbled his whole past into nothing; and he stood there trembling and astonished, like a man the ruins of whose house have fallen about his ears. He bowed himself to the vision. He surrendered at discretion without a struggle. ‘Immediately,’ says he, ‘I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision,’ and when he said ‘Lord, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?’ he flung open the gates of the fortress for the Conqueror to come in. The vision of Christ reversed his judgments, transformed his character, revolutionised his life.
That initial impulse operated through all the rest of his career. Hearken to him: ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. To me to live is Christ. Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Living or dying, we are the Lord’s.’ ‘We labour that whether present or absent, we may be accepted of Him.’ The transforming agency was the vision of Christ, and the bowing of the man’s whole nature before the seen Saviour.
Need I recall to you how noble a life issued from that fountain? I am sure that I need do no more than mention in a word or two the wondrous activity, flashing like a flame of fire from East to West, and everywhere kindling answering flames, the noble self-oblivion, the continual communion with God and the Unseen, and all the other great virtues and nobleness which came from such sources as these. I need only, I am sure, remind you of them, and draw this lesson, that the secret of a transforming and noble life is to be found in faith in Jesus Christ. The vision that changed Paul is as available for you and me. For it is all a mistake to suppose that the essence of it is the miraculous appearance that flashed upon the Apostle’s eyes. He speaks of it himself, in one of his letters, in other language, when he says, ‘It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.’ And that revelation in all its fulness, in all its sweetness, in all its transforming and ennobling power, is offered to every one of us. For the eye of faith is no less gifted with the power of direct and certain vision-yea! is even more gifted with this-than is the eye of sense. ‘If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.’ Christ is revealed to each one of us as really, as veritably, and the revelation may become as strong an impulse and motive in our lives as ever it was to the Apostle on the Damascus road. What is wanted is not revelation, but the bowed will-not the heavenly vision, but obedience to the vision. I suppose that most of you think that you believe all that about Jesus Christ, which transformed Gamaliel’s pupil into Christ’s disciple. And what has it done for you? In many cases, nothing. Be sure of this, dear young friends, that the shortest way to a life adorned with all grace, with all nobility, fragrant with all goodness, and permanent as that life which does the will of God must clearly be, is this, to bow before the seen Christ, seen in His word, and speaking to your hearts, and to take His yoke and carry His burden. Then you will build upon what will stand, and make your days noble and your lives stable. If you build on anything else, the structure will come down with a crash some day, and bury you in its ruins. Surely it is better to learn the worthlessness of a non-Christian life, in the light of His merciful face, when there is yet time to change our course, than to see it by the fierce light of the great White Throne set for judgment. We must each of us learn it here or there.
II. Faith in Christ will make a joyful life, whatever its circumstances.
I have said that, judged by the standard of the Exchange, or by any of the standards which men usually apply to success in life, this life of the Apostle was a failure. We know, without my dwelling more largely upon it, what he gave up. We know what, to outward appearance, he gained by his Christianity. You remember, perhaps, how he himself speaks about the external aspects of his life in one place, where he says ‘Even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place, and labour, working with our own hands. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat. We are made as the filth of the world, and as the offscouring of all things unto this day.’
That was one side of it. Was that all? This man had that within him which enabled him to triumph over all trials. There is nothing more remarkable about him than the undaunted courage, the unimpaired elasticity of spirit, the buoyancy of gladness, which bore him high upon the waves of the troubled sea in which he had to swim. If ever there was a man that had a bright light burning within him, in the deepest darkness, it was that little weather-beaten Jew, whose ‘bodily presence was weak, and his speech contemptible.’ And what was it that made him master of circumstances, and enabled him to keep sunshine in his heart when winter bound all the world around him? What made this bird sing in a darkened cage? One thing-the continual presence, consciously with Him by faith, of that Christ who had revolutionised his life, and who continued to bless and to gladden it. I have quoted his description of his external condition. Let me quote two or three words that indicate how he took all that sea of troubles and of sorrows that poured its waves and its billows over him. ‘In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.’ ‘As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation aboundeth also by Christ.’ ‘For which cause we faint not, but though our outward man perish, yet our inward man is renewed day by day.’ ‘Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.’ ‘I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.’ ‘As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things.’
There is the secret of blessedness, my friends; there is the fountain of perpetual joy. Cling to Christ, set His will on the throne of your hearts, give the reins of your life and of your character into His keeping, and nothing ‘that is at enmity with joy’ can either ‘abolish or destroy’ the calm blessedness of your spirits.
You will have much to suffer; you will have something to give up. Your life may look, to men whose tastes have been vulgarised by the glaring brightnesses of this vulgar world, but grey and sombre, but it will have in it the calm abiding blessedness which is more than joy, and is diviner and more precious than the tumultuous transports of gratified sense or successful ambition. Christ is peace, and He gives His peace to us; and then He gives a joy which does not break but enhances peace. We are all tempted to look for our gladness in creatures, each of which satisfies but a part of our desire. But no man can be truly blessed who has to find many contributories to make up his blessedness. That which makes us rich must be, not a multitude of precious stones, howsoever precious they may be, but one Pearl of great price; the one Christ who is our only joy. And He says to us that He gives us Himself, if we behold Him and bow to Him, that His joy might remain in us, and that our joy might be full, while all other gladnesses are partial and transitory. Faith in Christ makes life blessed. The writer of Ecclesiastes asked the question which the world has been asking ever since: ‘Who knoweth what is good for a man in this life, all the days of this vain life which he passeth as a shadow?’ You young people are asking, ‘Who will show us any good?’ Here is the answer-Faith in Christ and obedience to Him; that is the good part which no man taketh from us. Dear young friend, have you made it yours?
III. Faith in Christ produces a life which bears being looked back upon.
In a later Epistle than that from which my second text is taken, we get one of the most lovely pictures that was ever drawn, albeit it is unconsciously drawn, of a calm old age, very near the gate of death; and looking back with a quiet heart over all the path of life. I am not going to preach to you, dear friends, in the flush of your early youth, a gospel which is only to be recommended because it is good to die by, but it will do even you, at the beginning, no harm to realise for a moment that the end will come, and that retrospect will take the place in your lives which hope and anticipation fill now. And I ask you what you expect to feel and say then?
What did Paul say? ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.’ He was not self-righteous; but it is possible to have lived a life which, as the world begins to fade, vindicates itself as having been absolutely right in its main trend, and to feel that the dawning light of Eternity confirms the choice that we made. And I pray you to ask yourselves, ‘Is my life of that sort?’ How much of it would bear the scrutiny which will have to come, and which in Paul’s case was so quiet and calm? He had had a stormy day, many a thundercloud had darkened the sky, many a tempest had swept across the plain; but now, as the evening draws on, the whole West is filled with a calm amber light, and all across the plain, right away to the grey East, he sees that he has been led by, and has been willing to walk in, the right way to the ‘City of habitation.’ Would that be your experience if the last moment came now?
There will be, for the best of us, much sense of failure and shortcoming when we look back on our lives. But whilst some of us will have to say, ‘I have played the fool and erred exceedingly,’ it is possible for each of us to lay himself down in peace and sleep, awaiting a glorious rising again and a crown of righteousness.
Dear young friends, it is for you to choose whether your past, when you summon it up before you, will look like a wasted wilderness, or like a garden of the Lord. And though, as I have said, there will always be much sense of failure and shortcoming, yet that need not disturb the calm retrospect; for whilst memory sees the sins, faith can grasp the Saviour, and quietly take leave of life, saying, ‘I know in whom I have believed, and that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day.’
So I press upon you all this one truth, that faith in Jesus Christ will transform, will ennoble, will make joyous your lives whilst you live, and will give you a quiet heart in the retrospect when you come to die. Begin right, dear young friends. You will never find it so easy to take any decisive step, and most of all this chiefest step, as you do to-day. You will get lean and less flexible as you get older. You will get set in your ways. Habits will twine their tendrils round you, and hinder your free movement. The truth of the Gospel will become commonplace by familiarity. Associations and companions will have more and more power over you; and you will be stiffened as an old tree-trunk is stiffened. You cannot count on to-morrow; be wise to-day. Begin this year aright. Why should you not now see the Christ and welcome Him? I pray that every one of us may behold Him and fall before Him with the cry, ‘Lord! what wilt Thou have me to do?’
1 To the young.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv57–59 See notes on verse 54
See notes on verse 54
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v59 Omit God. Lit. And were stoning Stephen as he…
God
Omit God. Lit. And were stoning Stephen as he was invoking and saying, Lord Jesus, give welcome unto my spirit.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v57 The stoning of Stephen:
The stoning of Stephen:
v. 57. Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord,
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v. 58. and cast him out of the city, and stoned him; and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet whose name was Saul.
v. 59. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
v. 60. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
The last announcement of Stephen, concerning the vision which was granted to him, raised the anger of the judges to a perfect storm of fury. That this man should receive such bliss before their very eyes caused them to forget dignity, justice, humanity, all the virtues of which they usually made their boast. They cried out with a loud voice, in order to drown out any attempt of Stephen to make himself heard in the resulting din and confusion. They held their ears shut tightly lest another word from his hated lips find entrance there. They rushed upon him with one accord, like a maddened herd of cattle over which all control has been lost. They cast him forth out of the city and there stoned him. This proceeding did not have even a show of right. It was against all the rules of the Jewish criminal law, It can in no way even be called an execution; it can be described only by the word "murder," committed by an infuriated mob, in violation of all law. And yet the mob retained enough sanity to observe some forms of the Law, such as taking the prisoner out of the city and also requiring the witnesses to begin the stoning. It is expressly stated that the witnesses, in making ready for their murderous attack, laid down their outer clothes at the feet of a young man by the name of Saul. As for Stephen, he died the death of a true Christian martyr. While the stones were flying around him, and after he had been struck, he called loudly upon his Lord and God, in the person of Jesus, the Savior. His first prayer was that the Lord Jesus, the exalted Christ, would receive his spirit. And having thus committed his soul into the best safekeeping, he let his last sigh be an intercession for his murderers. Sinking down upon his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, which may, at least to one of those present, have sounded in his ears for years afterward: Lord, do not charge to them this sin. And then he calmly fell asleep in his Savior. Thus Stephen became the first martyr of the Christian Church. Since his time thousands of Christians have been martyred for the sake of the name of Jesus. And their death teaches a lesson, namely, that of cheerfully sacrificing temporal possessions and fortune for the sake of the Lord. In the end we gain everything that a reward of mercy can bestow upon us, heaven itself with all its glories. "Lastly, there is here a fine comfort that St. Stephen here sees the heavens standing open, and that he fell asleep. Here we should mark that our Lord God stands by us if we believe, and that death is not death to them that believe. Thus you have pictured here in this story the entire Gospel faith, love, cross, death, and life."
Summary
Stephen delivers an eloquent speech of defense, which angers the members of the Sanhedrin so that they cast him out of the city and stone him.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv57, 59 covered their ears
covered their ears
"put their hands on their ears." They did this to show that they did not want to hear any more of what Stephen said. (See: Symbolic Action)
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They dragged him out of the city
"They seized Stephen and forcefully took him out of the city"
outer clothing
These are cloaks or robes they would wear outside to stay warm, similar in function to a jacket or coat.
at the feet
"in front of." They were placed there so Saul could watch them.
a young man
Saul was probably around 30 years old at the time.
translationWords
council
stone
testimony
Paul
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv57–59 7:57 they put their hands over their ears: They…
7:57 they put their hands over their ears: They believed that the comparison of Jesus to the divine Son of Man (7:56) was horrible blasphemy.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.