Acts 7:1-53

Chapter 16

Prayer

Almighty God, we do not know thy way: it is in the sea, it is in the great waters, it is in the midst of the firmament of heaven, and the clouds are the dust of thy feet, and thine eye shineth like lightning from the east even to the west. We have heard of thee, and our hearts have trembled with fear. We have thought of thee, and our spirits have glowed with love. Sometimes clouds and darkness are round about thee; sometimes the light is thy robe. We cannot tell what thou art, or what thou wilt be to us at any moment, but this great prayer we can utter through Jesus Christ our sacrifice: Give us thy Holy Spirit, and it shall be well with us. Let thy grace dwell in our hearts, beautiful as a guiding cloud in the daytime, radiant and warm as a flame of fire in the night season. If our hearts are filled with thy grace, there shall be no room for the enemy. Fill our hearts with thy truth, and our minds with thy light, as thy truth and thy light are known in the Son of God, and in our soul there shall be the seal of heaven.

We thank thee for thy book, so grand in doctrine, so wondrous in its outlook, so tender in its benedictions, so beautiful in all its gospels. May we know it, love it, reproduce it in our lives, and show that we are men in whom is the indwelling and inspiring God. May our life be a secret like thine own; may men take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus and have learned of him. May we surprise them not by our information, but by our wisdom. Behind and above all that we say, may there be a mystery of light and of love, not to be solved by the common understanding. May we in Christ, thy Son, our Saviour, have bread that the world knoweth not of, and of the fulness of grace may we eat and drink abundantly day by day. Thou hast led us out of sin, and through a long wilderness of education and discipline. Lead us into Canaan's gardens, into the wider liberty, into the ampler spaces, and may our souls enjoy all the comfort and hope of spiritual freedom. Give us understanding of thy word. Show us how thy book is full of seed; show us that nothing in thy book has come to fruition; that we have in thy book the great seed house. May we sow the seed in good and honest hearts, and may it be watered with dew from heaven, warmed by the sun of thy righteousness and love, and may it bring forth not only according to its kind, but according to the kind of soil in which it is sown. Then shall thy church be a beautiful garden, a wondrous landscape with all beauteous growths adorning and enriching it, and heaven will smile to see a world so blest.

Thou knowest us altogether, our sharpest pain, our dullest care, the anxiety that gnaws the inmost heart, the joy that sings in the spring air like a bird, the hope that lures us with heavenly persuasion on to some nobler conquest and greater peace. According to our necessity and various condition, do thou now command thy blessing to rest upon every soul. We thank thee for all thy love; it comes before the rising of the sun, it remains through the shining of the stars, it is never withheld. We live upon it; without it we must needs die. Show us that though we are here but for a little while thou art preparing us for great revelations and supreme destinies; and in view of the joy that has yet to be, may we forget our little sorrows, may our woes be lost in the sea of gladness which thou hast prepared for us.

The Lord hold the light above his own book whilst we read it. The Lord cause a light to shine out of the book whilst we peruse it. The Lord turn over the pages with his own fingers. The Lord whisper to us the meaning of the spirit whilst we read the letter. The Lord speak to us from the cross of forgiveness, pardon, absolution, complete, entire, final; and to the release of forgiveness add the joy of sanctification. Amen.

Act 7:1-53

1. Then said the high priest, Are these things so?

2. And he said, Men, [omit Men ] brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory [the term is applied to the Incarnate Word, Joh 1:14 ] appeared unto our father [Stephen if even a proselyte might use this expression] Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, [his ancestral home was called Ur of the Chaldees] before he dwelt [the Greek word implies a settled residence] in Charran,

3. And said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee. [The destination of the emigrants was known before they started from Ur.]

4. Then came he out of the land of the Chaldæans, [with Babylon for its capital] and dwelt in Charran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed [caused him to migrate] him into this land, wherein ye now dwell.

5. And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child.

6. And God spake on this wise, [ Gen 15:13-14 ] That his seed should sojourn in a strange land; and that they should bring them into bondage, and entreat them evil four hundred years.

7. And the nation to whom they shall be in bondage will I judge, said God: and after that shall they come forth, [with great substance] and serve me in this place, [these words are not in the promise given to Abraham, but are taken from Exodus 3:12 .]

8. And he gave him the covenant of circumcision: [given the year before Isaac was born] and so Abraham begat Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat the twelve patriarchs.

9. And the patriarchs, moved with envy, [the same word is used Act 17:5 ] sold Joseph into Egypt: but God was with him, [the argument being that as God's presence is not circumscribed, neither should his worship be confined to place].

10. And delivered him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favour and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and he made him governor over Egypt and all his house.

11. Now there came a dearth over all the land of Egypt [the oldest MSS. omit the land of"] and Chanaan, and great affliction: and our fathers found no sustenance.

12. But when Jacob heard that there was corn in Egypt, he sent out our fathers first [before he himself went away from Canaan into Egypt].

13. And at the second time Joseph was made known to his brethren; and Joseph's kindred was made known unto Pharaoh.

14. Then sent Joseph, and called his father Jacob to him, and all his kindred, threescore and fifteen souls.

15. So Jacob went down into Egypt, and died, he, and our fathers,

16. And were carried over into Sychem, [Shechem] and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem.

17. But when [as] the time of the promise drew nigh, which God had sworn [vouchsafed] to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt,

18. Till another king arose, which knew not Joseph.

19. The same dealt subtilly with our kindred, and evil entreated ["made them to cut a great many channels for the river, and set them to build pyramids, forced them to learn all sorts of mechanical arts, and to accustom themselves to hard labour." Josephus. ] our fathers, so that they cast out their young children, to the end they might not live.

20. In which time Moses was born, and was exceeding fair, and nourished up in his father's house three months:

21. And when he was cast out, Pharaoh's daughter took him up, and nourished him for her own son.

22. And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.

23. And when he was full forty years old, [the verb in the original intimates that the forty years were just being completed] it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel.

24. And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian:

25. For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not.

26. And the next day he showed himself unto them as they strove, and would have set them at one again, saying, Sirs, ye are brethren; why do ye wrong one to another?

27. But he that did his neighbour wrong thrust him away, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?

28. Wilt thou kill me, as thou diddest the Egyptian yesterday?

29. Then fled Moses at this saying, and was a stranger in the land of Madian, [probably the peninsula on which Mount Sinai stands] where he begat two sons [Gersham and Eliezer].

30. And when forty years [making Moses eighty years old] were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sina an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush.

31. When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight: and as he drew near to behold it, the voice of the Lord came unto him,

32. Saying, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Then Moses trembled, and durst not behold.

33. Then said the Lord to him, Put off thy shoes from thy feet: for the place where thou standest is holy ground.

34. I have seen, I have seen [the Greek is an attempt to imitate an emphatic Hebrew construction, and is literally "having seen, I have seen"] the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt.

35. This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send [the verb is in the perfect tense in the original] to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush.

36. He brought them out, after that he had shewed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red sea, and in the wilderness forty years.

37. This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear.

38. This is he, that was in the church [congregation] in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us:

39. To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt,

40. Saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us: for as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.

41. And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands.

42. Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness?

43. Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.

44. Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness, as he had appointed, speaking unto Moses, that he should make it according to the fashion that he had seen.

45. Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David;

46. Who found favour before God, and desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob.

47. But Solomon built him an house.

48. Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet,

49. Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest?

50. Hath not my hand made all these things?

51. Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.

52. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers:

53. Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.

The Defence of Stephen

HOW does this speech happen to be here? It is a long one. Who put it down? It reads like a verbatim report; who reported it? It would be easy for the memory to carry a sentence or two; but who could record so long and so highly-informed a speech as the one which is given in this chapter? There was a young man listening to this speech with no friendly ear. His name was Saul. It is supposed that afterward, when he became Paul, he related this speech to Luke, who wrote it in this form. It is not a correct report. No man can report chain lightning. You may catch a little here and there of such eloquence, but the speech itself, in all the elements that lifted it up into historic importance, it was not in the power of memory to carry, or in the power of recollection to reproduce. This is not Stephen's speech, and you must not therefore hold him responsible for it; they did not give Stephen an opportunity of revising his speech. He spoke, and they hurried him on; the punctuation did not undergo the criticism of Stephen's eye. The speech itself is full of historic blunders and contradictions. It is Saul's recollection of Stephen's defence. It is little or nothing more. You have only to compare the Old Testament statements with the statements which Stephen is said to have made, and you will see at once discrepancy after discrepancy, and in one or two cases you will see blank and palpable contradiction. This gives us another view of inspiration than that which we have sometimes too narrowly held. The speech is true, and yet not factual. What is said here is Biblical, but not textual. There is no statement here made that is not spiritually true, and yet there are few sentences in the elaborate apology that may not be challenged on some technical ground. Some persons imagine that they are inspired when they are only technical. They forget that you may not have a single text in support of what you are stating, and yet may have the whole Bible in defence of it. The Bible is not a text, it is a tone; it is not a piece of technical evidence, it is an inspiration, a wind blowing where it listeth, to carry with it everywhere life, and freshness, and liberty.

Looking at this speech therefore not as a verbatim report, but as a résumé given by an unfriendly hearer, but a most friendly reporter, we may take it as giving the principal features in Stephen's character. The man who reported this speech to Luke made it the basis and the model of his own immortal apologies. Truly we sometimes borrow from unacknowledged sources; certainly we are sometimes indebted to unknown influences for some of our best inspirations. To think that a man whom they appointed with six others to watch over the ministration of tables should have become the first Christian martyr apologist, and should have given the model for the greatest speeches ever delivered by man, namely, the speeches of Paul himself when put upon his trial and defence, is surely a very miracle of Providence! How little Stephen knew what he was doing. Who really knows the issue and full effect of any action or speech? Who can tell what little sentences are quoted in the sick room, what suggestions are taken from the speaker's lips and sent in letters to those far away and ill at ease? Who can tell what echoes of spent eloquence follow the hearer through his daily engagements, and cheer him in days of dejection? Life is not marked off in so many inches and done with; it is full of reference, allusion, collateral and incidental bearing, so that an act done is not self-complete, but may be the beginning of endless other acts nobler than itself. Compare the great orations of Paul with the speech of Stephen, and you will be struck with the manner in which the scholar reproduced the master, and how Stephen transfused himself into Paul's very spirit, and was under God the making of that sublime Apostle.

I think it is fair criticism to infer the man from the speech on all occasions. It is sometimes proverbially said, "The voice is the man." We may enlarge that common saying, and declare with wisdom, I believe, that the speech is the character. Following this suggestion, what kind of man was Stephen, judged by the speech which is reported in this chapter? Accused of blasphemy, he is called upon for his defence. How does he reveal himself? Surely we may in the first instance describe him as a man well versed in the Scriptures. From beginning to end his speech is a Scriptural one; quotation follows quotation like shocks of thunder. There is very little of Stephen himself until he comes to the application of his Scriptural references. Stephen was a man who had read his Bible; therein he separates himself from the most of modern people. Personally I cannot call to mind a single person who ever read the Bible and disbelieved it. It belongs peculiarly to the Bible to get hold of its readers little by little; subtly it gets round about their souls, so that when they come to the amen of the Apocalypse they find themselves spiritually, if not literally, on their knees in homage to the Spirit of the Book. We all know numerous persons who abuse the Bible who have never read it. Such opposition is natural, and when lunacy becomes philosophy it will be about the most rational course to pursue. Not that such persons have not read parts of the Bible; such parts they have perused without understanding; they misquote every passage which they cite, and they make imperfect reference to every Biblical proposition they undertake to dispute. They do not distinguish between verse and Bible, fractions and whole numbers. Who really knows the Bible by heart? It is the boast of some of us that we can recite from end to end five plays of Shakespeare, Who can recite the Book of Psalms? You call upon your little children to recite nonsense verses, and it is well enough that now and then the little ones should do so. Which of your children can recite a chapter of the Gospel according to John? Where is the man who can repeat word for word one of Paul's letters to the Corinthians? And would not some of us be posed if we were called upon at a moment's notice to recite six verses of Paul's letter to the Romans? Only the men who know the Bible should quote it. Only those who are steeped in the Scriptures, saturated through and through with Divine truth, should undertake to express any opinion about it. This is the law in all other criticism, and in common justice it ought to be the law in relation to the Book which we believe to be the inspired revelation of God. Is this not just? Are we asking for anything in the Church which would not be granted in the Polytechnic and the Lyceum? To undertake to discuss an author without knowing him, knowing him within his very spirit and purpose, is to trifle with the occasion, not to rise to its dignity and responsibility. When the Church knows its Bible well, we may trust it anywhere. When other voices arise to charm its ear, what piping voices they will be, what pitiful moans and feeble notes, after the infinite thunder and ineffable music of Moses and the Prophets, of the Psalms, and Evangelists of Christ?

Having this complete knowledge of Scripture, Stephen next shows himself to have been a man who took a broad and practical view of history. It is as difficult to find a man who has read history as to find a man who has read the Bible. History itself is a term which needs definition. A man does not know history because he can glibly repeat all the kings of England from the Conquest until now that is not history. We justly ask our younger students to construct a party. Giving them this or that Pope as president of the Council, we say, collect around him the leading men of his day. It is interestng to watch how the table is supplied with visitors, how every chair is filled up, and how the symposium is completed with accuracy but that is not history. You will find that history is not a letter, and is not to be reported in letters: it is a tone, an inspiration, a subtle, impalpable, all-involving something full of voices, full of music, vibrating, throbbing with indefinable life and energy. You do not learn history from the books. From the books you learn the facts, but, in a sense which might be defended at length if requisite, having ascertained the facts, you must make history. The novelist is a better historian than the mere annalist, because history is an atmosphere. It is not only a panorama of passing incidents and anecdotes great and small; it is a spirit which only the wizard can evoke and express. Stephen lived in history. His was not a little rootless life that lay on the surface, that the sun could smite with withering fire. Stephen belonged to the past, and therefore to the present. Stephen was a member of a great and noble household, he was a link in a far-stretching chain, he was an element in a great composition. Why should we live the shallow life of men who have no history behind them? We are encompassed by a great cloud of witnesses. Behind us, the undying dead; beyond us, the immortal living. By what right do we dissociate ourselves from currents, historic and providential? We have no right to disennoble ourselves, and commit an act of dismembership which separates us from the agony, the responsibility, and the destiny of the race. In Christ we have all to be one. "The whole family in heaven and on earth" was the language of Paul; and that language ought to be ours if we would realize what it is to be sons of God, mighty in the Scriptures, and inspired by history.

Stephen was, in the third place, a man who was forced into action by his deep convictions. That is a word which has somehow slipped out of our vocabulary. Why should I say slipped out of our vocabulary? It has only done so because it has slipped out of our life. Who now has any convictions? Life is now a game, a series of expedients. It consists of a succession of experiments. It is a speculation, a bet, a fool's wager, a leap in the dark. It is not an embodied and sacrificial conviction. In the old, old days, men used to live because they could not help it. In those days they spoke because they believed. They had no necessity to get up a speech, to prepare and arrange it in words that would offend nobody, and would be recollected by no hearer. In old Christian days men spoke as naturally and as necessarily as they breathed. Without faith we cannot have eloquence; words innumerable, but not speech of the heart, sparks from the life, flashes from the inward and living altar. It is not enough to have information. It is not enough, my young brother, preparing for the pulpit, to have an encyclopaedia of mere knowledge of letters and of books; you must have the believing and the understanding heart, the resolute will, which can only come from the Holy Ghost. If you believe Christianity, you will not need any exhortation to speak it. Speech about Christianity, where it is known and loved, is the best necessity of this life. The fire burns, the heart muses, and the tongue speaks. If timidly, still clearly, and if timidly, not with the timidity of cowardice, but with the self restraint of modesty. It was not enough for Stephen; hence in the fifty-first verse you find that Stephen was a man whose information burned into religious earnestness. Having made his quotation he turned round as preachers dare not turn round now. "Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye." It was an offensive speech. It was unpardonable then, and it would be unpardonable now. Why was it unpardonable? Because it was truth made pointed. It was doctrine personalized, and that no man will ever endure. No man goes to church to be spoken to. There is not a man amongst us would be here today if he knew that the preacher would personally rebuke his sins. The man who would listen all day with delight to an eloquent malediction upon the depravity of the whole world would leave the church if you told him he was a drunkard or a thief. We live in generalities. So preaching is now dying, or it is becoming a trick in eloquence, or it is offering a grand opportunity for saying nothing about nothing. It used to turn the world upside down. It used to be followed by blows, and stones, and fires, and racks.

Stephen shows us the model of the great speaker; we need no book of rhetoric beyond this great apology. Called upon, he addresses his auditors with courtesy as "Men, brethren, and fathers." He begins calmly, with the serenity of conscious power. He quotes from undisputed authority. Every step he takes is a step in advance. There is not in all his narration one circular movement. Having accumulated his facts and put them in the most vivid manner, he suddenly, like the out-bursting of a volcano, applies the subject, saying, "Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do ye." Are these the people he described at the beginning of his speech? Then he called them, "Men, brethren, and fathers." This is the law of argumentative progress. Begin courteously, and beg the confidence and respectful attention of your hearers. At the beginning, before they had heard the statement, they are, "Men, brethren, and fathers," but your speech will be their responsibility. They will not be the same at the end of the speech as they were at the beginning. So the hearers who were "Men, brethren, and fathers" in the exordium, are "Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in hearts and ears" in the peroration! A preacher may begin as courteously as he pleases, but having got out the truth, having showed what God is and has done, and wants to be done, his conclusion should be a judgment as well as a gospel. Is it possible for any man today to be a Stephen? Why not? The Bible is still here. Every one of us can read it in the tongue in which he was born, and every one of us may by the grace and gift of the Holy Ghost have a calm and sovereign confidence in the truth. That is what is wanted. Do not put your case tentatively, interrogatively, suggestively. The Bible is either a revelation or it is an imposition. It is either the truth or the aggravation of all falsehood. Range yourselves upon the one side or the other, and, having the truth of God, speak it. But how did Stephen know all about the case? Was he, as suggested, the second disciple who travelled on that eventide from Jerusalem to Emmaus? None can decide that question. There is some inferential evidence in favor of the view. For my part, I think it is most probably true. On that, however, no definite and final opinion can be pronounced by any man. But suppose that Stephen was the very disciple when the two walked together and were sad, and as they went together Jesus himself drew near, but their eyes were holden that they should not know him. Having inquired into the circumstances of the case, he said, "Oh, fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken," and, beginning at Moses and the prophets, he expounded to them in all Scripture the things concerning himself. What if Saul reported Stephen, and Stephen reported Christ, and so the great Gospel goes on from man to man, from tongue to tongue, till the last man hears it, and his heart burns within him!