Stephen: A Soldier of the Cross

by Florence Morse Kingsley

"A spot of leprosy indeed," muttered Saul to himself, "it hath by stealth crept into the very life-blood of the nation; and how hardly shall the deadly leprosy be cleansed."

Another hour and he was in the saddle pressing forward with all haste towards Damascus, for he hoped to overtake the fugitives before night. With him traveled a well-armed escort of tried and experienced men, to whom had been promised large rewards should the mission be successful. The journey to Damascus was a long one, the roads were rough and ill-made moreover, so that progress was necessarily slow. Hasten as he might, Saul could not hope to reach Damascus before the better part of a week. As for them that had escaped, it was impossible for him to decide whether or not they were still before him. Now and again he heard from the khans along his route, of a troop of horsemen with whom were traveling also women, but when on the third day he actually overtook such a company of wayfarers it turned out to be merely a caravan of wine merchants, traveling with their wives and little ones.

"I will at all events press on to Damascus," he decided, "for even should I not immediately lay hand upon the ones I seek, there are in that city other lost sheep of the house of Israel which I must needs bring back into the fold."

On this journey for the first time in many months Saul found time to think. Habitually taciturn and forbidding, his subordinates did not venture to address the haughty Pharisee save when it became necessary; so for long hours the man sat silent, while his beast picked its slow and difficult way along the rocky roads.

Strangely enough his thoughts wandered again and again from the object of his journey; in these vernal solitudes the wily words of Annas faded from his mind. Something in the pure-eyed flowers that leaned in shy welcome from the roadside grass put him in mind of Stephen, the dead apostate, as he bitterly termed him. Before his mental vision there arose again that never-to-be-forgotten face; now radiant with the fire of youth and enthusiasm, as he remembered it in many a heated debate over law and prophecy; now stern and unrelenting as he pronounced the terrible arraignment which yet echoed in the ears of the Pharisee: "Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears; ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which shewed before the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have now become the betrayers and murderers!" Then pallid beneath the icy shadow of approaching death, yet shining with a mysterious glory as he cried out, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of power." And yet again, touched with the mystic seal of the great deliverer as he had lain "asleep" on the stony ground beyond the Damascus Gate.

In vain did he endeavor to shake off these haunting visions, resolutely repeating aloud commands, prohibitions and long passages of the law, rigorously observing the ceremonial washings and cleansings whenever the company halted beside a running stream. All was in vain, "Ye who received the law as it was ordained by angels, and kept it not!" sounded the inexorable voice. And with and through it, mingled the wail of women bereft of their little ones, the groanings of strong men beneath the scourge, the sullen clang of prison doors, and the clank of chains.

On the fifth night of his journey the agony became so intolerable that he left his tent and wandered out beneath the open heavens. "My God!" he groaned aloud, "have I not kept thy law, and loved thy statutes? Yet have I no peace: my days are consumed with anguish. Surely thou hast hated iniquity and thou hast loved righteousness; behold now I have done all these things that thy name might be exalted before the people, that blasphemy and deceit might cease from out the land." And he vowed a great sacrifice before the Lord of fat sheep and oxen. But again came the haunting voice, "O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices for the space of forty years. But behold, I will carry you away beyond Babylon--who have received the law ordained of angels and have kept it not."

"I have kept the law!" he cried aloud, and the hills replied in melancholy echoes, "the law--the law."

Then there crowded into his thought the faces of the four who had escaped out of his hand, and he remembered the look in the eyes of the maiden as she said, "I believe that he was put to death upon the cross that he might draw all men unto him and heal them from their sins, even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness that the stricken Israelites might look and be saved," and with these words there mingled the solemn voices of prophecy, "Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all."

"God, if it be true," he murmured; and for a moment the soft radiance of that ever brooding presence of love had well nigh penetrated his dark soul, then he lifted his head stubbornly. "I cannot believe," he cried. "I will not believe.--Shall I, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, accept a Messiah who hath died the accursed death? I am mad. I will not believe--unless I too can see the heavens opened."