Religious Studies, Sketches and Poems

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

There was something in his rapt appearance, his pale, upturned face and eager eyes, that caused a moment's silence.

In a voice of exultation and awe he said:—

"Behold! I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God."

The Son of man!—the very words that Christ had used when he stood before Caiaphas about fifty days before, when he said, "Hereafter ye shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven!"

There was a frantic shriek of rage. The court broke up and became a blind, infuriate mob. All consideration was forgotten in the blind passion of the hour. Though they had no legal right to take life without a Roman sentence, they determined to have the blood of this man, cost what it might.

They hurried him out of the city with curses and execrations. The executioners stripped off their outer garments to prepare for the butchery, and laid them down at the feet of a young zealot named Saul of Tarsus.

There are many paintings of this scene in the galleries of Europe. We may imagine him, pale and enraptured, looking up into the face of that Jesus whom he saw in glory, and as they threw him violently down he cried, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Rising to his knees, wounded and bleeding, he added, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." And then, says the narrative, "He fell asleep."

The sweetness and tenderness of this expression shows more than anything else how completely the faith of Christ had conquered death. Christians spoke of death simply as a sleep. And here amid the hootings and revilings of a mob, the crash of stones and insult and execration, nothing could hinder Christ's beloved from falling asleep. At peace within, with a heaven of love in his soul, he pitied and prayed for the wretched creatures who were murdering him, and passed to the right hand of Jesus—the first who had sealed his testimony with his blood.

Thus was sown again the first perfected seed of the new wheat which rose from the grave of Christ! Jesus was the first whom the world ever saw praying with his dying breath for his murderers; and Stephen, who had risen to the same majesty of denunciation and rebuke of sin which characterized his master, was baptized into the same tenderness of prayer for the miserable mob who were howling like wild beasts around him. Heavenly love never shrinks from denouncing sin; but it has a prayer for the sinner ever in its breast, and the nearer it comes to the higher world the more it pities this lower one.