Stephen, after thus being set apart for the service of the church,
though faithfully discharging the peculiar duties to which he was
called, did not confine his labors to the mere administration of the
public charities. The word of God had now so spread, under the ministry
of the apostles, that the number of the disciples in Jerusalem was
greatly enlarged, and that not merely from the lower and ignorant
orders; but a great number of the priests, who, in their daily service
in the temple, had been frequently unintentional hearers of the word
preached in its courts, now professed themselves the submissive friends
of the new faith. This remarkable increase excited public attention
more and more, and required redoubled exertions to meet the increasing
call for instruction. Stephen, therefore, immediately entered boldly
and heartily on this good work; and, inspired by a pure faith, and
the confidence of help from above, he wrought among the people such
miracles as had hitherto followed only the ministry of the apostles.
The bold actions of this new champion did not fail to excite the wrath
of the enemies of the cause of Christ; but as the late decision of
the Sanhedrim had been against any further immediate resort to violent
measures, his opponents confined themselves to the forms of verbal
debate for a while. As Stephen was one of those Jews who had adopted
the Greek language and habits, and probably directed his labors more
particularly to that class of persons, he soon became peculiarly
obnoxious to those Hellenist Jews who still held out against the
new doctrine. Of the numerous congregations of foreign Jews that
filled Jerusalem, five in particular are mentioned as distinguishing
themselves by this opposition,――that of the freed-men, or captive Jews
once slaves in Rome, and their descendants,――that of the Cyrenians,――of
the Alexandrians,――the Cilicians and the Asians. Some of the more
zealous in all these congregations came out to meet Stephen in debate,
with the polished points of Grecian logic which their acquaintance with
that language enabled them to use against him. But not all the combined
powers of sacred and profane literature availed any thing against their
learned and inspired opponent. Prepared beforehand, thoroughly, in all
sorts of wisdom, and borne on resistlessly, moreover, by that divine
influence whose movements they could see but could not understand, he
foiled them completely at all their own weapons, and exposed them, in
their low bigotry and stupidity, baffled and silenced by his single
voice. But among all the refinements and elegances with which their
classical knowledge had made them acquainted, they had failed to
learn that noblest effort of the rhetorical art, which is to know how
to bear a fair defeat in open debate, gracefully. These low-minded,
half-renegade bigots, burning with brutal rage for this defeat, which
their base behavior made more disgraceful, determined to find a means
of punishing him, which no logic nor rhetoric could resist. They found
men base enough for their vile purposes, and instructed them to testify
that they had heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and
against God. On the strength of this heinous charge, they made out to
rouse some of the people, as well as the elders and the scribes, to a
similar hostile feeling; and coming upon him with a throng of these,
they seized him and dragged him away to the Sanhedrim, to undergo the
form of a trial. They then brought forward their perjured witnesses,
who testified only in vague terms of abuse, “This man ceases not to
speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the law. For we
have heard him say that this Jesus, the Nazarene, will destroy this
place, and will do away with the customs which Moses delivered to
us.” This was, after all, a kind of accusation which brought him more
particularly under the invidious notice of the Pharisees, whose leader
had lately so decidedly befriended the apostles; for that sect guarded
with the most jealous care all the minute details of their religion,
and were ever ready to punish, as a traitor to the national faith
and honor, any one who spoke slightingly, or even doubtingly, of the
perpetuity of the law of Moses, and its hallowed shrine. Perhaps there
was no one of all the sayings of Jesus himself, which had given deeper
offense than his remark about destroying the temple and re-building it
in three days, which his silly hearers took up seriously, and construed
into a serious, blasphemous insult of the chief glory of the Jewish
name, and bore it in mind so bitterly, as to throw it back on him, in
his last agonies on the cross. Such a saying, therefore, when laid to
the charge of Stephen, could not but rouse the worst feelings against
him, in the hearts of all his judges. But he, calm and undisturbed amid
the terrors of this trial, as he had been in the fury of the dispute,
bore such an aspect of composure, that all who sat in the council were
struck with his angelic look. The high priest, however, having heard
the accusation, solemnly called on the prisoner to say “whether these
things were so.” Stephen then, with a determination to meet the charge
by a complete exhibition of his views of the character and objects of
the Jewish faith, ran over the general history of its rise and progress,
and of the opinions which its founders and upholders had expressed
concerning the importance and the perpetuity of those types and forms,
and of the glorious temple which was their chief seat, when compared
with the revelation to be expected through the prophet promised to
them by God and foretold by Moses. Warming as he went on, he quoted
the poetical words of Isaiah, on the dwelling-place of the Almighty,
as not being confined to the narrow bounds of the building which was
to them an object of such idolatrous reverence, as the sole place of
Jehovah’s abode, but as being high in the heavens, whence his power and
love spread their boundless grasp over sea and land, and all nations
that dwelt beneath his throne. As the words of the prophet of the
fire-touched lips rolled from the voice of Stephen, they kindled his
soul into an ecstacy of holy wrath; and in open scorn of their mean
cruelty, he broke away from the plan of his discourse, bursting out
into burning expressions of reproach and denunciation, which carried
their rage away beyond all bounds of reason. Conscious of their
physical power to avenge the insult, the mob instantly rose up, and
hurried him away from the court, without regard to the forms of law;
and taking him without the city, they stoned him to death, while he
invoked on them, not the wrath, but the mercy of their common God. In
such prayers, gloriously crowning such labors and sufferings, he fell
asleep, commending his spirit to the hands of that Lord and Savior,
whom it was his exalted honor to follow, first of all, through the
bitter agonies of a bloody death.