CHAPTER VII.

FALSE CHARGES AGAINST STEPHEN-STEPHEN'S APOLOGY-OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT-ONE RELIGION-HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATIONSINTERRUPTION OF STEPHEN-SOLEMN AND AWFUL CHARGE AGAINST THE JEWS-EFFECT ON HIS AUDIENCE.

You will remember that in the previous chapter we read that they suborned. or bribed men to make false accusations against Stephen, and to charge him with having uttered what they called "blasphemous words" against Moses, and the whole economy of which Moses was the chief, and against God, whose temple they believed to be their own peculiar monopoly for ever in the midst of the land. It is said, that when they thus accused him, and brought false witnesses against him, those witnesses alleged that they had heard him say that "this Jesus of Nazareth "—the language of contempt-"shall destroy this temple, and change the customs which Moses delivered." All that sat in the council, we are told, when they beheld the accused, and looked upon his face, saw it radiant not only with the glory of heaven, but with the equal splendour of innocence, as if it had been the face of an angel." Then Stephen, evidently prepared to advocate his own cause and to vindicate himself, or rather that cause with which he was identified, said, when the high-priest

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asked him, "Are these things so?"-have you been guilty of such blasphemy? have you blasphemed Moses? have you said that this holy temple will be overturned? do you mean to say that our religion is false, that our customs are not sacred, and that our ancient and venerated economy, so long the glory of our land, is really empty and soon to pass away?—do you mean to persist in making such statements as these, or have these witnesses alleged against you that which is false? Stephen takes up the whole thing from the beginning; and in an apology-using the word apology in its strictly ancient and classical sense as a defence-and in an apology characterised by great historic learning, by profound acquaintance with every fact and feature in the ancient history of the Jews, he shows that, so far from having said anything that could be construed by the most malevolent as blasphemy against Moses, he himself honoured Moses as the servant of God, believed all the truths recorded of him, and was prepared to show that he believed as much in the divine mission of Moses as he believed in what he could prove to them, but which they denied the Messiahship of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing, therefore, can be more masterly as a mere piece of speech or defence than the discourse of Stephen; and nothing more fitted to convince an honest and impartial auditory that, instead of being opposed to Moses, he was putting Moses in his right place as the precursor of Christ Jesus; and that, instead of bringing in a new religion to subvert the old, he was only showing the flower and blossom of the old as it expanded into all the loveliness and beauty of evangelical Christianity. The truth is, the New Testament is not one religion, and the Old Testament another reli

gion, but the New Testament is simply the complement of the Old the perfection, the explanation, and the ultimate result of the Old. The New without the Old is incomplete; the Old without the New is still more incomplete. And therefore Stephen traces all the historical facts of the ancient economy, and shows how, like confluent streams proceeding from the same source, they all meet in that river that makes glad the city of our God—the river that proceedeth from the throne of God and of the Lamb, and which shall never be exhausted or cease to flow.

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He begins, first of all, by reminding them that he believed in all the facts recorded about Abraham. these facts, he says, I believe just as heartily and thoroughly as you. I believe Abraham's obedience by faith to the mandate of his God; I believe God's promise to him, to make of him a great nation, to be real; I believe the covenant of circumcision made with him to be real; I believe that the patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt. And you will see underlying this historical allusion, not sarcasm, but the insinuation, which was a just and a righteous one, that their fathers, in whom they prided, and against whom they would not allow a word to be spoken, were not all of them faultless; but, on the contrary, that some of the fathers of Israel, whose divine mission he believed as well as they, had committed great sins, and were stained by great flaws; and the inference he wants them to draw is this-“Well, if your fathers committed such faults,.do not you suppose that you are incapable of imitating their example. It is possible that you may sin as well as the twelve patriarchs from whom you profess to be descended.

Take care, lest in your zeal for the perfect innocence of the patriarchs, you overlook their sins, and your own liability to fall into the same sins also."

He then says: "Now there came a dearth over all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction: and our fathers found no sustenance. But when Jacob heard that there was corn in Egypt, he sent our fathers." And then he mentions Joseph being made known to his brethren, and Jacob going down into Egypt, and dying there, and "our fathers, carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem." "These facts," he

says, "I believe as well as you; I believe that the God of glory appeared unto Abraham, as you do; I believe that this God of glory gave him this promise; I believe that in obedience to his word the fathers went into Egypt; I believe that Jacob died there, and Joseph also, just as you do, looking for the fulfilment of that promise." And I may notice here that the phrase, "God of glory," which Stephen employs, is very suggestive. Our translation is not full enough: the ordinary reader would think "God of glory" meant simply "the glorious God." But it is in the original, literally rendered, "the God of the glory." Now, the glory was the shechinah, that appeared in the burning-bush, that moved in the pillar of cloud before Israel in the desert, and settled ultimately between the cherubim, and shone a bright splendour upon the mercy-seat. "Now," says Stephen, "I believe that our God is just that God of the shechinah, that God of the glory, that you saw." And he conveys, through that, that it may be possible that this glory is none else than Him whom

they had crucified by wicked hands, in whom God dwells; for in him God was manifest in the flesh.

He then comes on, after discoursing of the patriarchs, to speak of Moses. Moses exceeding fair-Moses preserved when all the rest of the male children of the Israelites in Egypt were slain. Then he states that he was forty years old, in the maturity of intellect, of strength and vigour, when he visited his brethren. He interferes to defend the oppressed, and, like men doing good offices still, getting very little thanks for it; but not looking for the thanks, but doing the duty of beneficence and justice that devolved upon him. Then, forty years after this—that is, when he was eightyGod appeared to him on Sinai in the burning bush, made to him a statement, "I am the God of Abraham." Moses trembled at it. God said: "Put off thy shoes from thy feet: for the place where thou standest is holy ground. I have seen, I have seen,”—that is, I have thoroughly examined, thoroughly looked into,-" the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them." "Now," says Stephen, "I believe these facts as thoroughly as you. Why, then, should you charge me with saying anything depreciatory of Moses, when I believe that his mission was a divine one, his services unprecedented?" And at the same time he conveys a hint to them, that they, too, might be unthankful and ungrateful: he got little thanks from those he benefited by the services which he rendered.

Then he goes on to bring all these historical allusions to an end. He says: "This is that same Moses who made the promise; and that promise was, 'A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your