Look at the different scale on which the incidents of the deaths of
these two are told: the martyrdom of the one is beaten out over
chapters, the martyrdom of the other is crammed into a corner of a
sentence. And yet, of the two men, the one who is the less noticed
filled the larger place officially, and the other was only a simple
deacon and preacher of the Word. The fact that Stephen was the first
Christian to follow his Lord in martyrdom is not sufficient to account
for the extraordinary difference. The difference is to be sought for in
another direction altogether. The Bible cares so little about the
people whom it names because its true theme is the works of God, and
not of man; and the reason why the 'Acts of the Apostles' kills off one
of the chief Apostles in this fashion is simply that, as the writer
tells us, his theme is 'all that _Jesus_' continued 'to do and to teach
after He was taken up.' Since it is Christ who is the true actor, it
matters uncommonly little what becomes of James or of the other ten.
This book is _not_ the 'Acts of the Apostles,' but it is the Acts of
Jesus Christ.
I might suggest, too, in like manner, that there is another contrast
which I have not included in my four, between the scale on which the
death of Jesus Christ is told by Luke, and that on which this death is
narrated. What is the reason why so disproportionate a space of the
Gospel is concerned with the last two days of our Lord's life on earth?
What is the reason why years are leaped over in silence and moments are
spread out in detail, but that the death of a man is only a death, but
the death of the Christ is the life of the world? It is little needful
that we should have poetical, emotional, picturesque descriptions of
martyrdoms and the like in a book which is altogether devoted to
tracking the footsteps of Christ in history; and which regards men as
nothing more than the successive instruments of His purpose, and the
depositories of His grace.
Another lesson which we may draw from the reticence in the case of the
Apostle, and the expansiveness in the case of the protomartyr, is that
of a wise indifference to the utterly insignificant accident of
posthumous memory or oblivion of us and our deeds and sufferings. James
sleeps none the less sweetly in his grave, or, rather, wakes none the
less triumphantly in heaven, because his life and death are both so
scantily narrated. If we 'self-infold the large results' of faithful
service, we need not trouble ourselves about its record on earth.
But another lesson which may be learned from this cursory notice of the
Apostle's martyrdom is--how small a thing death really is! Looked at
from beside the Lord of life and death, which is the point of view of
the author of this narrative, 'great death' dwindles to a very little
thing. We need to revise our notions if we would understand how trivial
it really is. To us it frowns like a black cliff blocking the upper end
of our valley, but there is a path round its base, and though the
throat of the pass be narrow, it has room for us to get through and up
to the sunny uplands beyond. From a mountain top the country below
seems level plain, and what looked like an impassable precipice has
dwindled to be indistinguishable. The triviality of death, to those who
look upon it from the heights of eternity, is well represented by these
brief words which tell of the first breach thereby in the circle of the
Apostles.