His words gave displeasure on account of this freedom; as they could not refute him they soon resolved to calumniate him, waiting for a pretext to get rid of him. Witnesses were found; they are found everywhere. Stephen had preached that a more perfect worship was about to take the place of the worship of Moses, that the glory and the reign of the temple were soon to have an end, and that a better Jerusalem of larger destinies, was on the point of being built. It was but too easy to turn these words from their spiritual meaning, and convert them into threats against the city and the people. A purely moral and peaceful revolution was a thing, on the other hand, so entirely novel in the history of the world, that one would have naturally persisted in confounding it with a political and civil revolution. It was this gross and voluntary mistake that had furnished the text to the pretended lawsuit against our Lord Jesus Christ; it was equally the foundation of that which his disciples have been subjected to. To these accusations they took care to add that Stephen intended to change the ancient traditions, which thing in the eyes of the Pharisees was decisive.
The young deacon was therefore brought before the high-priest, that same Caiaphas by whom Jesus had suffered. When the accusers had been heard, the pontiff requested Stephen to answer them: "Are these things so?"
He rose up, and as soon as he could be seen, the book of the Acts observes, all the eyes in the assembly were fixed on him. Did he have already a glimpse of the martyr's crown, and did this vision transfigure him in advance? I know not, but it is said that his face appeared to their eyes as the face of on angel. "It was," says St. Hilary of Aries, "the flame of his heart overspreading itself upon his forehead; the candor of his soul was reflected on his features in a perfect beauty; and the Holy Ghost residing in Stephen's heart threw upon his face a jet of supernatural light."
The speech of Stephen was simple, but peremptory. To those who charged him with breaking off from the religion of his fathers, he opposed at the very beginning a long profession of faith from the books of Moses. But the question relating to the temple, whose fall he had foretold, was more serious. He viewed it firmly. He did not retract himself; but presently rising from the region of facts to that of superior principles which facts obey, he began to demonstrate that a material temple is nowise necessary to the honor of God. As a proof of this he pointed back to the times in which the patriarchs made their prayers on the top of the high places; when the Lord manifested his presence in a flame of fire in a bush; and when the Hebrew people carried through the desert the tabernacle, which was the sanctuary and the altar at the same time. When he had come to the time of the first temple he concluded, and his discourse suddenly assumed the character of a vivid and eloquent exaltation. Elevating himself from the imperfection of a national worship to the ideal of a universal and spiritual one, which would [{541}] have its sanctuary chiefly within man's soul, he said: "Yet the Most High dwelleth not in houses made by hands, as the prophet saith: 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth my footstool; what house will you build me, saith the Lord, or what is the place of my resting? Hath not my hand made all these things?"
Such a harangue was a manifesto. He did not abolish every temple, nor every worship, as some people are pleased to insinuate; but he erased at a single stroke the exclusive privilege of the temple of Jerusalem, he extended it's boundaries, and for the old Jewish monopoly substituted the catholicity of a new church, as large as the world.
The Jews understood him too well. They were already trembling with rage against him, when, from the accused becoming the accuser, Stephen charged them with the murder of the prophets, and principally with that of the God, our Saviour, whom they had crucified. "You have received the law by the disposition of angels," he said to them, "and have not kept it." On hearing these words, their rage, incapable of longer restraint, burst out; "they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed with their teeth at him," as the Acts relate. Stephen felt that his last hour was at hand.
The Holy Ghost filled him as it were with a holy rapture. He looked steadfastly to heaven, where the glory of God began to shine on him, and there, in the midst of that glory, recognizing and saluting Jesus Christ, who extended his hand to him, "Behold," he exclaimed, "I see the heavens opened, the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." These words sealed his doom. On hearing him, the Jews, shaking with horror, "cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and with one accord ran violently upon him," as wild beasts do on their prey.
No judgment was passed on him. A text in the book of Deuteronomy allowed any one to be put to death, who enticed the people into idolatry. This summary justice sometimes tolerated by the Roman pro-consul, was termed the judgment of zeal. To apply this judgment to the young deacon, was found more convenient than to go through the formalities of a regular sentence; and they seized him to put him to death. By a last relic of Pharisaism, however, they took care to observe the practices of the law, even in such an arbitrary and cruel deed. To the end, therefore, that the holy city should not be stained with blood, the innocent victim was "cast forth without" the walls of Jerusalem.
They went out by the northern gate along that side which leads to country of Kedar. At the west of the valley crossed by the Kedron, on a desolate places and at the right of the distant mountains of Galaad, the crowd stopped. The witnesses began by raising their hands over the head of Stephen, which was the rite of devoting a victim to death; then stones innumerable, as thick as hail, fell upon him. The atrocious deed went on with unrelenting fury, and the body of the heroic martyr was now noting but a wound; but he held his eyes immovably fixed on that celestial vision, and as life was gradually receding from his breast, he was ever "invoking and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!"
The Acts of the Apostles conclude this narrative, with giving us the name of the person who was the most noted accomplice in this murder: "Saulus autem erat consentiens neci ejus. "