HOME | Contents | Introduction | Stephen | Stephen-Paul contrasted | Crucifixion | Martyrdom | The Call |
IT is too often the fate of great words to become merely the objects of admiring contemplation. Spoken by a great soul, they lie dormant in the mind of the raceuntil the arrival of another great soul in whose heart they start into life and pass out into action.
The story of the first Christian martyrdom is a familiar story. Christianity has enshrined the name of Stephen as the first on the roll that is written in letters of blood and fire. And it may be objected that there is nothing obscure in the record of Stephen to justify our making it one of the hidden romances of the New Testament. But it is only a single chapter in the life of Stephenthe last and only the external aspect of itthe tragedy of the endon which the thoughts of the Church have been mainly concentrated. We have been too much engrossed in the spectacular side of the short career; too little concerned with the great deed of liberation which was the cause of that end. We have read his defence on the day of his trial too often as an interesting but somewhat irrelevant piece of national history which was abruptly terminated before we could see the point he was making. Its piercing and poignant relevance is too often missed.
It was more a deed than a speechan act in which Christianity was rent violently from the position of a mere sectarian out-growth on the parent tree of Judaism; a rending which decided the fate of Judaism as the religion of Law, and of Christianity as the religion of the Spirit.
It was Jesus who reminded men of the evil fate of sewing new cloth on old, of putting new wine in old wineskins. Matthew recorded the words admiringly in his diary; but Matthew himself, we are told, became a legalist. It was reserved for Stephen to rend the new and the old apartto burst the antique wineskin. Judaism could not be leavened for Christ. It could only be revolutionisedshattered and remoulded. And the Christian community was at first divided. One party clung to the hope of leavening. They regarded the new Faith as only an addition and completion of the old. They regarded themselves as a new party within the ancient Faith. They clung to the Temple worship. They went up daily to prayers (Acts iii.1). But it was the corrupt leaven of the ancient Faith that leavened them. They by-and-by faded away into a legalistic sect; they passed out of the stream of religious life, and became stagnant pools of the desert - Judaisers, Ebionites, Nazarenes, Elkesaites. The living stream of Christian faith flowed into other channels. And it was through the broken body of Stephen that the passage was cleft for the water which flowed from the cleft Rock, Christ crucified.
Who was the man? And what was the disturbing truth he taught, which led the Jews to do him to death? How did his influence live on in the subsequent history of Christianity?
He was the most distinguished member of the first Ecclesiastical Committee that was ever elected by the Christian Church - probably its convener. And this Committee was chosen because Christianity was spreading so fast in Jerusalem that the Twelve Apostles, who were natives of Palestine, and whose language was the Hebrew dialect known as Aramaic, were finding it impossible to look after the interests of the many Greek-speaking Jews - Jews of the Dispersion - who had been won for the new faith in Jerusalem. This young man with the Greek name was the most outstanding of the Hellenist Jews who had accepted Christ in the early days. He was obviously not a native of Palestine. He belonged originally to one of the many Jewish colonies or settlements that were scattered here and there all round the shores of the Mediterranean in the chief commercial centres of the Roman Empire.
Very obviously, too, he was possessed of the gift of eloquence; and when he became a Christian he soon stood out as one of the most arresting and powerful of all the first pleaders for Christ.
Jerusalem was not only the city of the Holy Temple; there were numerous synagogues dotted all over the town. And when these Jewish colonists returned to the city either for temporary or for permanent residence there, they clubbed together and worshipped in a synagogue of their own. In this story we read of "the synagogue which is called the synagogue of the Libyans (for so most probably the word should be rendered), the Cyrenians, and the Alexandrians; as well as that of the Cilicians and Asiatics." Correctly interpreted, this verse refers to two synagogues, not five. One was the synagogue in which the Jewish colonists of the South forgathered. To it resorted the African Jews, who are named here "in the geographical order of their original dwelling-places." The other was the synagogue in which the Jews of the North met Jews from Asia Minor, or, as they are named here, Jews from the provinces of Cilicia and Asia. This interpretation makes the verse not only intelligible, but full of significance for the story we are now considering. There was a young man who had come down all the way from the city of Tarsus in Cilicia to be a student in the House of the Midrash, the sacred college of the Jews. Naturally this student, far from home, would attend the services in the synagogue where he would be likely to meet acquaintances from his native town, or at any rate people from that quarter. The young man's name was Saul.
Where did Stephen hail from? We are not told in so many words, but certain details of the narrative all point in the one direction. In the verse we have just quoted (Acts vi.9), it is the synagogue of the Southern colonials which is mentioned first. They seem to have been the chief movers against the young heretic. It was they whom he had troubled most by the persistent advocacy of his new views. The connection of Philip the Evangelist with this tragic incident is also suggestive. Luke indeed may have got certain details of the story from him. Philip was the next most distinguished member of the committee of Seven elected to look after the interests of the colonial Jews who had become Christians in Jerusalem. He was evidently a close friend of Stephen. There is a tradition that the two went out together to evangelise among the Samaritans. And after Stephen's death Philip fled from Jerusalem. A close friend of Stephen would be a marked man in the city. It is noteworthy that his flight, after a brief and troubled sojourn in Samaria, was in the direction of the South. We observe, too, his interest in the Ethiopian State-Treasurer who passed him in his chariot reading a remarkable book which he had apparently picked up on a stall in the city while there on a pilgrimage of faith. Philip's eagerness to get a friendly lift from this pilgrim from the land of Egypt reveals the direction in which his thoughts were turning. And for a time thereafter Philip's whereabouts were unknown (cf. Acts viii.39 cf.). Had he gone to Stephen's home to carry the sad news to his friends?
Most moving and suggestive of all is the fact that Saul of Tarsus, who was a party to the murder of Stephen, never in all his amazing missionary enterprisesnever onceturned his eyes towards the Southern seaboards of the Mediterranean. Was it that he felt he could not possibly be received with favour in quarters that still rang with the horror of their countryman Stephen's death? Never once did he turn his eyes toward Alexandria where there were many thousands of Jews, with a university of their own, which was fast rising into fame and spreading the influence of its culture all over the East. Never once did he think of visiting this city of that eloquent fellow-worker of hisApollos. It is no rash conjecture that Stephen was a Southerner, and that very likely his early home was Alexandria.
Nor can we help feeling strongly that he had come to Jerusalem for the same reason as Saul of Tarsus. He had perhaps studied philosophy in the Jewish College of Alexandria. He was another of the many souls, in that time of universal religious yearning, who wanted to probe deeper. Perhaps he had hopes that he himself might become a teacher of religion in some synagogue of the Dispersion; and had come up to Jerusalem to finish his training in the Law at the Divinity College there, in the precincts of the Temple. These two young men were strangers; they attended different places of worship on the Sabbath, for Stephen would attend the African synagogue. The conjecture which has been madethat they may actually have sat on the same bench at college, listening to the lectures of the great Gamalielis quite a possible one. It could hardly have been later than Pentecost of 29 AD that Stephen was won for Christ. And though the dates are uncertain, Saul may have been a student in Jerusalem about the time of the Crucifixion. Saul was still a young man at the time of Stephen's death (Acts vii. 58), though he seems already to have risen to ecclesiastical prominence acting as a kind of sheriff-officer of the Sanhedrin (Acts viii. 3, ix. l), if not indeed as a voting member (Acts xxvi.10). Stephen and he were both in Jerusalem together at the most impressionable period of their lives. And students from a distance were almost certain to attend the most famous of the Jewish professors or Rabbis.
They would present a striking contrast as they sat there side by side. The Tarsian, a diminutive youth, nervous and awkward in manner, his talk broken and rapid, his possibly light-coloured hair already thinning, cheeks gaunt and pale, high ascetic brow, and red-lidded eyes sore and weak, though in the dark heart of them there burned a fierce fire. A Pharisee of the Pharisees in his upbringing and outlook, rigid, intolerant, scornful, proud. The other a handsome youth with noble, open, manly face, olive-complexionedthe red blood glowing in his cheeks from the fiery kisses of the Southern sun. Perhaps he had the dark, straight hair that bespoke the Jew, but we like to think of him as differing from the rule of his race in possessing eyes the colour of heaven's blue; he had a Greek name and probably his father or mother was Greek.
The philosophy of Alexandria was mystical in its tendency, and the comtemplative faculty had been awakened in his soul. He was a dreamer, and his dreams wandered far beyond the bounds of the Jewish Law. Did not his teachers in Alexandria study the Greek culture, and try to interpret their ancient faith in terms of its philosophy? If ever he had talked with Saul of Tarsus, he would find that their outlook on things was whole worlds apart, Stephen dreaming of a universal religion, ready to admit that anywhere men could find communion with God; Saul contemptuous of every faith but his own, and believing that the Holy Temple alone was the place where men might find perfect communion with God.
Had they ever seen Jesus in the flesh? There is nothing in Paul's writings that really contradicts the assertion. When he says "we have known Christ after the flesh," there may be at least the suggestion of contact with the historic Personality. For he afterwards had a vision of Christ, and recognition of the Figure seems to imply an actual sight of Jesus at some earlier time. It does not debar us from thinking that he was in Jerusalem that solemn Passover week, to be reminded that he never refers to it in his writings. He knew many things about Christ which he never mentions in his letters. He must have taught many things about Him which he does not repeat with the pen. His writings are to confirm his readers in the great truths of the Gospel, not to give the facts of the story. And once at least in that stormy and excited Pascha week the great Figure may have passed before his eyes, the iconoclast Reformer who was gibbeted on a Cross. It is round that Cross that all Paul's doctrine gathers.
Somehow one feels surer about the case of Stephen. In an ecstasy of waking vision he, too, saw Jesus, and recognised Him as the Son of Man who lived and died a year or two ago. And when we think of the charge that was brought against him; when we think of some of the things that escaped his lips in the great defence, when we think of the words he spoke as he knelt under the rain of murderous stones, we cannot help feeling that he saw Jesus in the flesh once or twice at least. Was he among the company of Greeks that desired to see Jesus during that Passover week that ended in the Cross? Philip was the disciple whom they approached, and the so-called early confusion of Philip the disciple with Philip the Evangelist may possibly be no confusion at all, but the truth. The disciple may have had a Greek connection, for his name is Greek, and though the committee of Seven were elected to relieve the Apostles, we are not thereby debarred from supposing that one of the Seven belonged to the band of Apostles. Philip who was a good calculator and had Greek sympathies, was probably doing a large share of the relief-work among the Hellenist widows, for whose sake the Seven were set apart. If there was to be continuity in the work the Seven would have to be guided and advised. And though Stephen was made convener, Philip, who is named second, may have been a disciple put on as consulting member. It is only his later career, partly in the company of Stephen, that won for him the title of "Evangelist." Nor does it seem likely that two very prominent Christians of the earliest days, each of them having virgin daughters, and each named Philip, should have come to settle in the same region in their closing years. The friendship of Stephen and Philip might well date from this striking episode in the career of Jesus the interview that certain Greeks had with Him. For it was the attraction of the Prophet that had drawn them, and Jesus seems to have thought He had won some of them. He was elated by their visitas though they were to Him the first earnest of a worldwide harvest (John .32). However the case may be, Stephen was surely in the Temple courts on one of the first mornings of that Passion week, when the Man from Galilee with the gentle, holy bearing created an unlooked-for and tremendous commotion. Suddenly with a whip of knotted cords He strode into the midst of the trafficking, and in an awful majesty of indignant wrath cleared the Court of the desecrators, with their clamour of haggling and bargaining; upsetting their tables, and driving them forth through the gates. We fancy we see the young dreamer from the South arrested by this action of the Dreamer from the Northern highland Lake. We see him spell-bound, gathering in with the humble folk to listen to His talk, and he heard the Nazarene say of this sacred place which He named His Father's House, that it was called a House of Prayer for all nations; nay, that one day not very far away, this House was to be thrown down, and that He was to build a new Temple, a spiritual Temple, an unseen Temple not made with hands; and that in this Templeanywhere and everywhere, where seeking souls lifted up praying hands in spirit and in truththere was to be the true worship of the one God, the Infinite Spirit, the Father of all.
Why, it must have sounded like an answer to his prayers, like the beginning of the fulfilment of all his dreams. One day passed, and then another, and still the great new thoughts would keep lingering and growing in his mind. And then as he wandered through the crowded streets on the morning of Paschal eve he must have heard the mob shouting "Crucify, crucify!" And he followed to Calvary, crept close in horror to get a right look at the condemned man, and found that his fears were all too true. It was the Nazarene. He heard the nails being hammered through the hands. And from the lips he heard the anguished prayer escape: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." ... Crucified? He crucified? And dead? Clean gone for ever from the world? Oh, it cannot be true!
He had begun to build his hopes upon the Nazarene more strongly than he knew. With the terrible scene so burned in upon his soul, he must have gone for a time as one distracted, robbed, it would seem for ever, of his peace of mind. Perhaps peace came to him at Pentecost, when he heard Peter on the city street declare to the wondering crowd that this Man was the Messiah, and that He was risen from the dead. "It was not possible that He should be holden of death." There rose up before Stephen's vision the memory of the majestic Figure moving amid a tempest of excitement in the Temple courts, Himself wrapped in an air of unnatural sweetness and calm; and his hungry heart clutched at the words. "No, no, it was not possible that a Personality so tremendous could be holden of death. It is true, it is true! He is alive and at the right hand of God, and it is He, the same Mighty Personality that is moving in the heart of this Pentecost crowd today. His dreamHis dream of the invisible Temple has begun to become fact to-day." "There is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved," the speaker was saying. Lifted on the wings of ecstasy, Stephen named this Jesus "Lord."
There can be no doubt about what followed. This young man's giving of himself to Christ was perfect and flawless, one of the most thorough and wholehearted surrenders and consecrations there has ever been. How could it be otherwise? This Jesus with His mighty vision of the universal Father God and the world-wide Kingdom that was to be, was so obviously the answer to all his yearnings and dreams. It was the turning of the sun-flower to the Sun. Everybody saw and felt the change. Unmistakably the young man was a life dedicated and set apart. The writer of the book of Acts does his best to reproduce the general impression about him in varying phrase. The Apostles, when the problem arose which led to the appointing of the committee of Seven, said they wanted men "full of the Holy Spirit, and of wisdom"; and Stephen was elected at the head of the poll. He was a man "full of faith," the writer says; orif we follow the reading of the best MSS.the phrase is "full of grace." And he repeats it in other forms, so anxious is he to record aright what men thought of him: "full of the Holy Spirit," and again "full of power." Men felt that the Unseen had laid hold of him, had found in him a remarkable medium, and used him in the most direct and impressive way when he spoke. And this Christ-dedicated soul began at once to give his testimony.
Where would he speak? Where else but in the little chapel, the synagogue of the colonists of the South, whither he had resorted all his student days? The Jewish synagogue service was less formal, less ceremonial, less dependent on a single official than the acts of worship we are familiar with. Almost anyone who had the gift and the education could speak if he felt disposed. And in Jerusalem, where the Temple services overshadowed everything, these synagogues would be more of the nature of social centres and discussion clubs. Probably the young orator with the Greek culture had spoken there with acceptance in his Judaistic days. But after Christ won him, his old associates must have been surprised and startled at the change. By-and-by he began to say things that were very disconcerting. They were taken aback, but their curiosity was aroused. They let him speak and speak again. Yes, there could be no mistaking it at length; it was rank heresy the young man was talking. And soon all the Jewish congregations of Jerusalem were chattering about him and his views, and the other synagogue of Greek-speaking Jewsnot so strict, these colonials, as their Palestine compatriotswould invite him to speak to them. And there was that little thin-haired, sickly-faced fellowthe former student from Tarsus - sitting in the audience. They listened for a while complacently. By-and-by a glitter of intolerant fury began to blaze out in those eyes set in their swollen red lids, and there "As for this House, this Holy Temple within whose walls we are now met, it was not till the days of Solomon that it was built. Did God cease to be the One God whose presence is everywhere when this Temple was built? Did He gather and contract Himself, and confine Himself here? What say our own holy prophets? 'The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands. 'Heaven is God's throne, the earth is His footstool. What house would you build me, saith God.' "
Step by step the young orator had led his audience to this climax. And step by step he had felt the movement and consent of their minds growing slower and more reluctant; until at last at this point, though the argument was irrefutable, nevertheless he became conscious that the mind of his audience had come to a dead halt, and stubbornly refused to move a step further. They may have interrupted here, but there is no indication of that, though we are told of the interruption a moment later. It was probably the orator's instinct that guided him as to the feeling of the listeners. They saw what was coming, and they were terrified. Stephen felt as if he had been driving an ox and waggon, and then this terrifying thing loomed in front, and the beast stopped, and the waggon came on, and the pole slid the yoke right up to the back of its ears, and the neck stretchedand stiffened; not a step more would it budge. And then he applied the goad: "Ye stiff-necked, and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit. "..."
And then the clamour broke out, and in their fury they gnashed on him with their teeth. And there was a young man there in the crowd, on tiptoe to see over the shoulders of his neighbours, and his voice was the loudest of them all - kicking with the rest against the prick. And the young prisoner-at-the-bar stood facing them, fearlessness written on his handsome, god-like face. Nay, it had become all lighted and glowing with the rapture of the momentthat he should have been called to do and suffer this for Jesus, his Lord! What delusion! thought Saul; that "a cause so foul should so wear the brows of grace." And yet and yet? ... As those serene, blue, far-off, dreaming eyes looked round on his accusers, perhaps they caught a glimpse of those other red, fiery and vindictive eyes looking over the shoulder of some haughty and disdainful Pharisee; and a message of recognition passed between the two; and Stephen's look was full of a mute, but eager appeal. And then he lifts his eyes upwards. Hark! What is he saying? " I see Jesus, the Son of Man, standing on the right hand of God." For an instant the memory of a despised felon on a cross flashed on Saul's vision. Then he thrust his fingers into his ears, like the rest of the crowd. And they rushed on the accused man and dragged him out and lynched him.
Surely we see the supreme importance of this young man's story in the divine economy of Providence. By that deed of his, and by his sacrifice, the Gospel truth was wrenched free for ever from the trammels of the past; for in a few weeks the hunted Christians who had scattered to Antioch and elsewhere, were proclaiming the message for the first time without any misgiving to the Gentiles. And it was from that Antioch Church that by-and-by the great world-mission was organised. But crowning glory!through this same episode the great persecutor came at last to be the great protagonist of the Cross. Stephen's death wrought into fact the truth he proclaimed.
Outside the city walls, where the martyr knelt amid the hurtling stones, this other fellow-student stood, consenting to his death, keeping the coats of those who did the dirty work. Why did he not join in himself? Had the sword of the Spirit already begun to pierce and reach home to the heart of his pride? We wonder ... And listen! The lips of the dying man are moving. He is in spirit with Jesus in His agony; he is remembering again the scene on Calvary, and hearing from the gentle lips the prayer breathed as they battered in the nails, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." And following his Lord's example, he too prays, "Lord Jesus, lay not this sin to their charge." Aye, so the Arch-deceiver Himself had died. No, not deceiving, but deluded; no deceiver would suffer so for his word. ... Deluded? ... Was He deluded? ...
From that hour the fate of Saul of Tarsus was sealed. For a few weeks he went like a madman, fighting against remorse of conscience, resisting furiously the haunting conviction that the dead Stephen was right and he was wrong; keeping his questioning to himself, haling men and women to judgment; kicking against the pricks still. For "Who lights the faggot? Not the full faith; no, but the lurking doubt."
His expedition to Damascus has recently been described in memorable words: "Six days' ride from Jerusalem gate, with a clump of constables behind the Sheriff of the Sanhedrin. Six silent rides in that cloddish company; lonely rides, but is there One who rides at his bridle unperceived? The debate goes on, insistent, truceless, tireless, without discharge. The question pursues him, masterful, merciless, a tyrant o'er a slave, a ghost behind the haunted, till the haunted seems a ghost to his own self." At last as the long journey drew to an end, his restless soul, fretting against the tedium of the way, tired of the long debate within, sank into a horror of darkness. He was lost! All that he had stood for so rigidly in the past had failed him. And through the darkness he seemed to hear the roar of an angry crowd, and a voice that cried, as though some angel's heart had been riven through with sudden sorrow, "Lord Jesus, lay not this sin to their charge." And then behind the tumult loomed the shadow of a Cross. "Accursed tree! Execrable death!" his pride kept saying; but his conscience answered, "Who cursed it? Who made it cursed? You and your people's sin!"
Then suddenly the spiritual darkness was rent, and the light leapt into his souldawn light, morning light, broad day, flooding in more and more, until he flung himself to earth, for it had grown brighter than the noonday sun. "Saul, Saul," he heard the Voice that he had once scorned declare "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" "Who art thou, Lord?" But he needed not to ask, for already he had said "Lord." "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest. It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." ... "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?"
O Saul, "Then flashed it on thy spirit mightily, That thou hadst spurned a love that died for thee; And all thy pride went down in whelming flood Of boundless shame, and boundless gratitude."