"Behold! I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing on
the right hand of God."
The Son of man!--the very words that Christ had used when he stood
before Caiaphas about fifty days before, when he said, "Hereafter ye
shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven!"
There was a frantic shriek of rage. The court broke up and became a
blind, infuriate mob. All consideration was forgotten in the blind
passion of the hour. Though they had no legal right to take life
without a Roman sentence, they determined to have the blood of this
man, cost what it might.
They hurried him out of the city with curses and execrations. The
executioners stripped off their outer garments to prepare for the
butchery, and laid them down at the feet of a young zealot named
Saul of Tarsus.
There are many paintings of this scene in the galleries of Europe.
We may imagine him, pale and enraptured, looking up into the face
of that Jesus whom he saw in glory, and as they threw him violently
down he cried, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Rising to his knees,
wounded and bleeding, he added, "Lord, lay not this sin to their
charge." And then, says the narrative, "He fell asleep."
The sweetness and tenderness of this expression shows more than
anything else how completely the faith of Christ had conquered
death. Christians spoke of death simply as a sleep. And here amid
the hootings and revilings of a mob, the crash of stones and insult
and execration, nothing could hinder Christ's beloved from falling
asleep. At peace within, with a heaven of love in his soul, he
pitied and prayed for the wretched creatures who were murdering him,
and passed to the right hand of Jesus--the first who had sealed his
testimony with his blood.
Thus was sown again the first perfected seed of the new wheat
which rose from the grave of Christ! Jesus was the first whom the
world ever saw praying with his dying breath for his murderers;
and Stephen, who had risen to the same majesty of denunciation
and rebuke of sin which characterized his master, was baptized
into the same tenderness of prayer for the miserable mob who were
howling like wild beasts around him. Heavenly love never shrinks
from denouncing sin; but it has a prayer for the sinner ever in its
breast, and the nearer it comes to the higher world the more it
pities this lower one.
But though the orator was crushed the cause was not lost.
Jesus, standing at the right hand of God, had only to reach forth
and touch that Saul of Tarsus who stood consenting to his death, and
he fell down at his feet trembling, crying, "Lord, what wilt thou
have me to do?"
The noble work which Stephen had begun, the message of universal
love to Jew and Gentile, passed from the hands of dying Stephen to
the living Paul, who from that hour spoke the sentiment that must
be the animating spirit of every true lover and follower of the
Master's footsteps: "I am crucified with Christ; and now it is no
more I that live, but Christ that liveth in me."