II. BOOK sation, which struck at the vital principles of their religious influence, or again taking alarm at the progress of Christianity, the Pharisaic party, which we found after the resurrection had lost their supremacy in the council, appear, from the active concurrence of Saul, and from the re-awakened hostility of the multitude, over whom the Sadducees had no commanding influence, to have re-united themselves to the more violent enemies of the faith. The defence of Stephen recapitulated in bold language the chief points of the national history, the privileges and the crimes of the race of Israel, which gradually led to this final consummation of their impiety and guilt, the rejection of the Messiah, the murder of the Just One. It is evidently incomplete; it was interrupted by the fury of his opponents, who took fire at his arraigning them, not merely of the death of Jesus, but of this perpetual violation of the Law; "who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.” * This charge struck directly at the Pharisaic party; the populace ever under their control, either abandoned the Christians to their fate, or joined in the hasty and ruthless vengeance. The murmurs, the gestures of the indignant Sanhedrin, and of others, perhaps, who witnessed the trial, betrayed their impatience and indignation: they gnashed their teeth; and Stephen breaking off, or unable to pursue his continuous discourse, in a kind of prophetic ecstasy declared that at that instant he beheld the Son of * Acts, vii. 53. Whether CHAP. I. Death of the proto martyr. Man standing at the right hand of God. legal or tumultuary, the execution of Stephen was conducted with so much attention to form, that he was first carried beyond the walls of the city*; the witnesses, whose office it was to cast the first stonet, A. D. 34. put off their clothes, and perhaps observed the other forms peculiar to this mode of execution. He died as a true follower of Jesus, praying the divine mercy upon his barbarous persecutors; but neither the sight of his sufferings, nor the beauty of his dying words, allayed the excitement which had now united the conflicting parties of the Jews in their common league against Christianity. Yet the mere profession of Christianity did not necessarily involve any capital charge; or if it did, the Jews wanted power to carry the sentence of death into execution on a general scale. ‡ Though then they had either deliberately ventured, or yielded to a violent impulse of fury, on this occasion, their vengeance in other cases was confined to those subordinate punishments which were left under * In one instance, it may be remembered, the multitude was so excited as to attempt to stone our Saviour within the precincts of the Temple. + Deut. xvii. 7. Michaelis, followed by Eichhorn, has argued, with considerable plausibility, that these violent measures would scarcely have been ventured by the Jews under the rigorous administration of Pilate. Vitellius, on the other hand, by whom Pilate was sent in disgrace to Rome, A. D. 36, visited Jeru salem A. D. 37, was received with BOOK II. their jurisdiction;-imprisonment; public scourging in the synagogue; and that which, of course, began to lose its terrors as soon as the Christians formed separate and independent communities, the once awful Excommunication. The martyrdom of Stephen led to the most important results, not merely as first revealing that great lesson which mankind has been so slow to learn, that religious persecution which stops short of extermination, always advances the cause which it endeavours to repress. It showed that Christian faith was stronger than death, the last resort of human cruelty. Thenceforth its triumph was secure. For every death, courageously, calmly, cheerfully endured, where it appalled one dastard into apostasy, made, or prepared the minds of a hundred proselytes. To the Jew, ready himself to lay down his life in defence of his Temple, this self-devotion, though an undeniable test of sincerity in the belief of facts of recent occurrence, was less extraordinary; to the heathen it showed a determined assurance of immortality, not less new, as an active and general principle, than attractive and ennobling. The more immediate consequences of the persecution were no less favourable to the progress of Christianity. The Christians were driven out of Jerusalem, where the Apostles alone remained firm at their posts. Scattered through the whole region, if not beyond the precincts of Palestine, they bore with them the seed of the religion. The most important progress was made in Samaria; but the I. extent of their success in this region, and the oppo- CHAP. sition they encountered among this people, deeply tinged with Oriental opinion, will be related in another part of this work. Philip, one of the most active of the deacons, made another convert of rank and importance, an officer* who held the highest station and influence with Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians. The name of Candacet was the hereditary appellation of the queens of Meroe, as Pharaoh of the older, and Ptolemy of the later Egyptian kings. The Jews had spread in great numbers to that region; and the return of a person of such influence, a declared convert to the new religion, can scarcely have been without consequences, of which, unhappily, we have no record. But far the most important result of the death Paul of of Stephen, was its connection with the conver- Tarsus. sion of St. Paul. To propagate Christianity in the enlightened West, where its most extensive, at least, most permanent, conquests were to be made; to emancipate it from the trammels of Judaism; a man was wanting of larger and more comprehensive views, of higher education, and more liberal accomplishments. Such an instrument for its momentous scheme of benevolence to the human race, Divine Providence found in Saul of Tarsus. Born in the Grecian and commercial town of Tarsus, where he had acquired The word "Eunuch " may be here used in its primary sense (cubicularius), without any allusion to its later meaning; as, according to the strict rites of the law, a Jewish eunuch was disqualified VOL. I. ·D D from appearing at the public assem- Regnare fœminam Candacen, BOOK no inconsiderable acquaintance with Grecian letters and philosophy; but brought up in the most celebrated school of Pharisaic learning, that of Gamaliel, for which purpose he had probably resided long in Jerusalem; having inherited, probably from the domiciliation of his family in Tarsus *, the valuable privilege of Roman citizenship; yet with his Judaism in no degree weakened by his Grecian culture, Saul stood as it were on the confines of both regions, qualified beyond all men to develop a system which should unite Jew and Gentile under one more harmonious and comprehensive faith. The zeal with which Saul urged on the subsequent persecution, showed that the death of Stephen had made, as might have been expected, no influential impression upon a mind so capable, unless blinded by zeal, of appreciating its moral sublimity. The commission from the Sanhedrin, to bring in safe custody to Jerusalem such of the Jews of Damascus as had embraced Christianity, implies their unabated reliance on his fidelity. The national confidence which invested him in this important office, the unhesitating readiness with which he appears to have assumed it, in a man of his apparently severe integrity, and unshaken sense of duty, imply, in all ordinary human estimation, that he had in no degree relaxed from that zeal which induced him to witness the execution of Stephen, if not with stern satis *Compare Strabo's account of Tarsus. The natives of this city were remarkably addicted to philosophical studies; but in general travelled and settled in foreign countries: Ovo' avroì ovroi μívovaIV αὐτόθι, ἀλλὰ καὶ τελειοῦνται ἐκδη μοῦντες, καὶ τελειωθέντες ξενιτεύουσιν ηδεως, κατέρχονται δ ̓ ὀλίγοι. Strabo, lib. xiv. p. 673. |