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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 607. The Accusation
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The Accusation
It seems that the foreign-born Jews in Jerusalem had synagogues of their own, named from their respective provinces, whenever their numbers were sufficient to maintain them. To these synagogues the visiting Jews from the different countries represented would naturally resort. It was here, mainly, that Stephen preached. After he had given utterance, in setting forth the claims of Christ, to views which ran counter to some of the Jewish prejudices of his hearers, he was challenged by their leaders to public disputation. But it soon became evident that they were no match for him. His power and skill as a controversialist were such that they were speedily discomfited.
2. Foiled in argument, the Hellenists of the synagogues adopted the usual resource of defeated controversialists who have the upper hand. They appealed to violence for the suppression of reason. They first stirred up the people-whose inflammable ignorance made them the ready tools of any agitator-and through them aroused the attention of the Jewish authorities. Their plot was soon ripe. There was no need to secure the services of the Captain of the Temple to arrest Stephen at twilight, as he had arrested Peter and John. There was no need even to suppress all semblance of violence, lest the people should stone them for their unauthorized interference. The circumstances of the day enabled them to assume unwonted boldness, because they were at the moment enjoying a sort of interregnum from Roman authority. The approval of the multitude had been alienated by the first rumour of defective patriotism. When every rank of Jewish society had been stirred to fury by false witnesses whom these Hellenists had suborned, they seized a favourable moment, suddenly came upon Stephen, either while he was teaching in a synagogue, or while he was transacting the duties of an almoner, and led him away, apparently without a moment's pause, into the presence of the assembled Sanhedrin.
Everything was ready; everything seemed to point to a foregone conclusion. The false witnesses were at hand, and confronted their victim with the charge of incessant harangues against “this holy place” (the expression seems to show that the Sanhedrin were for this time sitting in their famous “Hall of Squares”) and against the Law. In support of this general accusation, they testified that they had heard him say that Jesus-“of Nazareth,” as they indignantly added to distinguish Him from others who bore that common name-“shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered unto us.” It is evident that these false witnesses made some attempt to base their accusation upon truth. There was good policy in this, as false witnesses in all ages have been cunning enough to see. Half truths are often the most absolute of lies.
Part of the truth, as often happens in answer to a question, may be the foulest calumny. A fact may be an exception; but the feeling is the law, and it is that which you must neither garble nor belie. To tell truth, rightly understood, is not to state the true facts, but to convey a true impression; truth in spirit, not truth to letter, is the true veracity.1 [Note: R. L. Stevenson, Truth of Intercourse.]
One morning about two o'clock, two men came knocking loudly at the door of Dr. Kidd's house. When it was opened by the servant, they said they had come from a poor dying woman who implored Dr. Kidd, through them, to see her before she died, as she had something on her mind she could tell to no one but himself. Like himself, the simple-hearted man that he was, he rose immediately, nothing surprised, as he had so often before been the recipient of such confessions. The men took him to the Gallowgate, and into one of its low courts, where was a stair leading down to a cellar. On reaching the top of the stair they tripped him up, so that he fell headlong, and lay stunned for some time, while the scoundrels had some persons brought to witness his emerging from a place of ill-fame! “False witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things that I knew not.”2 [Note: J. Stark, Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 124.]
3. It is certain that if Stephen had not used the very expressions with which they charged him, he had used others not unlike them. It is his immortal glory to have remembered the words of Jesus, and to have interpreted them aright. Against the Moral Law-the great Ten Words of Sinai, or any of those precepts of exquisite humanity and tenderness which lie scattered amid the ceremonial observances-he is not even falsely accused of having uttered a word. But Stephen did not at all intend to confine his argument to this narrow range. Rather the conviction came upon him that now was the time to speak out-that this was the destined moment in which, even if need be to the death, he was to bear witness to the inner meaning of the Kingdom of his Lord. That conviction-an inspiration from on high-gave unwonted grandeur and heavenliness to his look, his words, his attitude. His whole bearing was ennobled, his whole being was transfigured by a consciousness which illuminated his very countenance. It is probable that the unanimous tradition of the Church is correct in representing him as youthful and beautiful; but now there was something about him far better than youth or beauty. In the spiritual light which radiated from him he seemed to be overshadowed by the Shechinah, which had so long vanished from between the wings of the Temple cherubim. While the witnesses had been delivering their testimony, no one had observed the sudden brightness which seemed to be stealing over him; but when the charge was finished, and every eye was turned from the accusers to a fixed gaze on the accused, all who were seated in the Sanhedrin-and one of the number, in all probability, was Saul of Tarsus-“saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.”
In the sudden hush that followed, the voice of the high priest was heard putting to the accused the customary and formal question: “Are these things so?”
What was the power of St. Stephen's face on which was riveted the gaze of the council? What? why, the angels are God's messengers; they see the face of the Father; they catch some expression of the uncreated beauty. Once on earth that had been seen in its real loveliness; no mere earthly attractiveness of exactly-chiselled feature, but the beauty of the Face which revealed, to those who gazed on the Incarnate, a Sinless Soul. Once it had awed the multitudes, subdued the intrusive band in the garden of Olives, flashed on Peter and melted him to penitence, gazed on the Magdalene and wakened her to heavenly love; now the likeness of its loveliness was seen on the face of the martyr, because in his soul was Jesus the crucified. Like Jesus in suffering, His martyr was like Him in unearthly beauty-“His face was like the face of an Angel.”1 [Note: Canon Knox Little, Manchester Sermons, 221.]
Did you ever notice that when the Jews said that Stephen blasphemed Moses, the Lord put upon him the same glory that He put upon Moses, and his face shone?2 [Note: Reminiscences of Andrew A. Bonar, 146.]
Crimsoning the woodlands dumb and hoary,
Bleak with long November winds and rains,
Lo, at sunset breathes a sudden glory,
Breaks a fire on all the western panes!
Eastward far I see the restless splendor
Shine through many a window-lattice bright;
Nearer all the farm-house gables render
Flame for flame, and meet in breathless light.
Many a mansion, many a cottage lowly,
Lost in radiance, palpitates the same,
At the torch of beauty strange and holy,
All transfigured in the evening flame.
Luminous, within, a marvellous vision,-
Things familiar half-unreal show;
In the effluence of Land Elysian,
Every bosom feels a holier glow.
Faces lose, as at some wondrous portal,
Earthly masks, and heavenly features wear;
Many a mother like a saint immortal,
Folds her child, a haloed angel fair.1 [Note: J. J. Piatt.]