Acts 8:1-8 And Saul was consenting to his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem… One of the greatest demands that the Church makes on us is when she summons us to pass abruptly from Christmas Day to the feast of St. Stephen; from the peaceful joy of the holy family and angel songs to the violence of the mob; from the King of angels to the first who bore witness to his faith and patience. At a scene like that of St. Stephen's martyrdom it is a relief to place ourselves in the position of a bystander. There stands Saul, the very antithesis of Stephen, young and enthusiastic as he, but passionately attached to Pharisaism as Stephen was to the gospel. As we know Paul in his Epistles, his great characteristic gift was sympathy. How then could he have consented to this tragedy? I. THE REASONS FOR HIS CONSENT. 1. He was following the stream of opinion. All Jerusalem agreed that Stephen deserved his fate; and Paul had as yet no reason for resisting the will of the majority. 2. He was following the instincts of religious loyalty as he understood them. To him Stephen was a rebel against authority. 3. He was following the instincts of piety. The charge against him was that he calumniated God, Moses,the temple, and the law. The first was clearly an inference from the rest, and about the rest there was this much truth, that he no doubt preached to the Christians against attending temple worship. This he thought was at variance with the world-wide mission of Christ. Accordingly he proved before the Sanhedrin that there was nothing to show that God's presence was confined to the Promised Land, much less to a particular spot in it. All this to Paul was a blasphemous novelty. II. HIS REFLECTIONS ON THE TRAGEDY. When all was over the memories of what had passed came back, and as he saw Stephen's death in retrospect he felt the force of three forms of power — suffering, sanctity, truth. 1. Suffering is power — (1) When it is voluntary. This stirs in us a fellow feeling even when undergone for an object we condemn. (2) This power is great in proportion to the sacrifice it involves. The deaths of the very old or young touch us less than that of a young man just reaching and conscious of the maturity of his faculties. He gives the best human nature has to give. So it was with ,Stephen, and Saul as he remembered this young manly life crushed out felt the power of suffering. 2. Sanctity is power, greatest when associated with suffering. Stephen was not merely good, keeping clear of what is evil; he was holy. He had a spirit that reflects a higher world — "full of faith and of the Holy Ghost." This sanctity illuminated his bodily frame, and was made perfectly plain in his dying prayer. This was not lost on Saul. 3. Truth is power. When Saul heard of Stephen's declaration his whole soul rose against it; yet the ideas of Stephen's speech haunted the young Pharisee, and became the great characteristic positions of his after ministry. 4. These three characteristics of the martyr find their perfect ,embodiment only in Christ. III. CLOSING CONSIDERATIONS. 1. The view a Christian should take of an opponent of Christian truth — that of a possible convert and ally. 2. What persecutors can and cannot do. They can put clown a given belief by extermination as Christianity was crushed out in Northern Africa and Protestantism in Spain. But if persecution does not exterminate it only fans the flame, as did the persecuting emperors and Queen Mary. The persecution begun by the death of Stephen only contributed to the spread of the gospel. 3. The criminal folly of persecution by Christians since it is an attempt to achieve by outward and mechanical violence results which to be worth anything before God must be the product of His converting grace. 4. The signal service which martyrs have rendered to the world — enriching his country, church, age, with new and invigorating ideas of truth, and therefore while other sufferers die and are forgotten, the martyr rightly has his place in the calendar of the Church and in the hearts of her faithful children. (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles. |
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