_THE FIRST CHRISTIAN MARTYRDOM._
"And they cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the
witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man
named Saul. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and
saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. 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. And Saul was
consenting unto his death."--ACTS vii. 58-60; viii. 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. Stephen's career was a type of all martyr
lives, and embraces every possible development through which Christ's
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 Stephen's martyrdom. Let us see how this came
about. One hundred and forty years later than Stephen's 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."[132] The
Church of Lyons, according to the loving usage of those early times,
sent an account of 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 God's 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.
Stephen's Day are closely united,--the commemoration of Christ's 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. Stephen's, St. John's, 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 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 specially 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. Stephen's Day are both natal days. In the
language of the ancient Church, with its strong realizing faith, men
spoke of a saint's 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. Stephen's 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, no 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.
[132] Epistle of the Church of Lyons in Eusebius, _Eccles. Hist._,
v. 1. This letter relates the earliest Celtic martyrdoms of which
we have any knowledge. They took place at the annual Convention of
the Celtic tribes of Gaul, which assembled at Lyons and Vienne.
These conventions were much the same as the assembly at Tara in
Meath, where St. Patrick began the work of converting Ireland. See
my _Ireland and the Celtic Church_, chap. iv., and also p. 9
above.
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 orator's 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. Christ's 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 Christ's
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 Christ's flock, and will not seek, as St.
Stephen and the apostles did, to recommend God's 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
God's 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
Stephen's 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. Paul's life was threatened in a similar
Jewish outburst. But the political circumstances, as we have already
shown, were now different.[133] 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 Judæa are upon personal authority
and individual lives. In case of a ruler's 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.
[133] See chap. xiii., p. 248, above.
The scene of Stephen's 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.[134] Another
tradition assigns the open country north-east 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 Stephen's 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.
[134] See _Survey of Western Palestine_, iii., 126 and 383-88,
where an account is given of the ruins of the ancient church
erected in honour of St. Stephen by the Empress Eudocia, about
A.D. 440. It is on the north side of Jerusalem.
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 _Horæ Hebraicæ_,
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. xxiv. 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 pre-historic 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 an
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 Lightfoot's more
prolonged and detailed statement that the leading ideas of Jewish
practice were retained in St. Stephen's 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, raised 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.[135]
[135] Dr. John Lightfoot in his _Horæ Hebraicæ_ on Acts vii. 58,
when dealing with this incident, enters into copious details as to
the Jewish method of execution by stoning.
Stephen's 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 Christ's 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.[136] 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 Cæsars. 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.
[136] The termination of St. Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians,
discovered some few years ago, is most instructive on this point.
It is a litany or liturgical prayer used in the primitive Roman
Church. Bishop Lightfoot, in his new edition of Clement, vol. i.,
p. 382, commenting on it, has some very interesting thoughts on
the relation between early Christianity and the Roman State.
IV. Let us now briefly notice the various points of interest, some of
them of deep doctrinal importance, which gather round St. Stephen's
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 Stephen's 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
man's 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
Stephen's 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. Stephen's 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 Lord's 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 Lord's, 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" (ch. ix. 14). The Damascene Jews are
amazed at the converted Saul's preaching of Jesus Christ, saying, "Is
not this he that in Jerusalem made havoc of them which called on this
name?" (ch. ix. 21). While again Rom. x. 12 and 1 Cor. i. 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. Paul's teaching at a much
later period than St. Stephen's 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 Pliny's 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.
Paul's day. One of the leading features of the new sect as it appeared
to an intelligent pagan was this: "They sang an 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."[137] 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 Christ's 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.
[137] See on this point a note in Liddon's _Bampton Lectures_,
14th edition, pp. 531-43, on the worship of Jesus Christ in the
services of the Church of England.
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. Paul's 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."[138]
[138] See Malalas' _Chronographia_, lib. xi., and the article on
Malalas in the _Dict. Christ. Biog._, where this story is given at
length.
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 Arimathea. 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 Stephen's death are
twofold. Stephen's 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 Stephen's martyrdom was to render the Church's
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 in the city of Jerusalem for twelve years after the Ascension,
in order that every one there might have an opportunity of hearing the
truth.[139] 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 Church's 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
Church's 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."[140]
[139] See Eusebius, v. 18; Clem. Alex., _Strom._, vi. 5.
[140] St. Augustine, in his sermons on the festival of St.
Stephen, concisely puts the matter thus: "Si Stephenus non nasset,
ecclesia Paulum non haberet" ("If St. Stephen had not prayed, the
Church would not have had St. Paul").