CHAPTER II

Τνόμισαν ἀπηλλάχθαι τῆς ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις διαλέξεως ἀπαλλαγέντες Στέφανο, και Σréparov σpodpórepov εúpov krepov.-S. Chrysost. Hom. xx. in Act. App.

FUNERAL OF ST. STEPHEN.-SAUL'S CONTINUED PERSECUTION.-FLIGHT OF THE CHRISTIANS.-PHILIP AND THE SAMARITANS.-SAUL'S JOURNEY TO DAMAS CUS.-ARETAS, KING OF PETRA.-ROADS FROM JERUSALEM TO DAMASCUS.— NEAPOLIS.-HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF DAMASCUS.-THE NARRATIVES OF THE MIRACLE.-IT WAS A REAL VISION OF JESUS CHRIST.-THREE DAYS IN DAMASCUS.-ANANIAS. BAPTISM AND FIRST PREACHING OF SAUL.-HE RE

TIRES INTO ARABIA.-MEANING OF THE TERM ARABIA.-PETRA AND THE DESERT.-CONSPIRACY AT DAMASCUS.-ESCAPE TO JERUSALEM.-BARNABAS, -FORTNIGHT WITH ST. PETER.-CONSPIRACY.-VISION IN THE TEMPLE.SAUL WITHDRAWS TO SYRIA AND CILICIA.

THE death of St. Stephen is a bright passage in the earliest history of the Church. Where, in the annals of the world, can we find so perfect an image of a pure and blessed saint as that which is drawn in the con cluding verses of the seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles? And the brightness which invests the scene of the martyr's last moments is the more impressive from its contrast with all that has preceded it since the Crucifixion of Christ. The first Apostle who died was a traitor. The first disciples of the Christian Apostles whose deaths are recorded were liars and hypocrites. The kingdom of the Son of Man was founded in darkness and gloom. But a heavenly light reappeared with the martyrdom of St. Stephen. The revelation of such a character at the moment of death was the strongest of all evidences, and the highest of all encouragements. Nothing could more confidently assert the divine power of the new religion; nothing could prophesy more surely the certainty of its final victory.

To us who have the experience of many centuries of Christian history. and who can look back, through a long series of martyrdoms, to this, which was the beginning and example of the rest, these thoughts are easy and obvious; but to the friends and associates of the murdered Saint, such feelings of cheerful and confident assurance were perhaps more difficult. Though Christ was indeed risen from the dead, His disciples could hardly yet be able to realize the full triumph of the Cross over death

SAUL'S PERSECUTION.

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Even many years afterwards, Paul the Apostle wrote to the Thessalonians, concerning those who had "fallen asleep" more peaceably than Stephen, that they ought not to sorrow for them as those without hope; and now, at the very beginning of the Gospel, the grief of the Christians must have been great indeed, when the corpse of their champion and their brother lay at the feet of Saul the murderer. Yet, amidst the consterna. tion of some and the fury of others, friends of the martyr were found,' who gave him all the melancholy honours of a Jewish funeral, and carefully buried him, as Joseph buried his father, "with great and sore lamenta. tion." 5

After the death and burial of Stephen the persecution still raged in Jerusalem. That temporary protection which had been extended to the rising sect by such men as Gamaliel was now at an end. Pharisees and Sadducees-priests and people-alike indulged the most violent and ungovernable fury. It does not seem that any check was laid upon them by the Roman authorities. Either the procurator was absent from the 1 1 Thess. iv. 13. See Acts vii. 60.

› Maundrell says, after visiting the spot assigned by tradition to the death of Stephen: "not far from it is a grot, into which they tell you the outrageous Jewish zealots cast his body when they had satiated their fury upon him."-Travels, p. 103.

3 ’Avdpes evλabɛiç. (Acts viii. 2.)—“ Rabidos Judæos nihil veriti." Beza; probably Hellenistic Jews, and possibly Christians. (See Luke ii. 25. Acts ii. 5.) Hammond (on x. 2) thinks they were proselytes.

◄ Evveкóμoav. viii. 2. We are told by Baronius, on the authority of Lucian, a presbyter of Jerusalem, that Gamaliel, as a secret Christian, sent a number of Christians to remove the body of Stephen, and to bury it at his villa, twenty miles from Jerusalem, and that he made lamentation over him seventy days. Not to dwell on the untrustworthiness of Lucian's letter, known only in the Latin translation of Avitus (and Baronius says, "quinam fuerit Avitus iste haud penitus dixerim"), it should be observed that such a funeral is very inconsistent with all the other occurrences at the time. The whole story is very curious, and will be found in vol. vii., under the year 415,-a year remarkable as the time when "magnus ille protomartyr Stephanus rursus in miraculis redivivus apparuit." Gamaliel appeared to Lucian in a vision by night; and, besides recounting the funeral of Stephen, told how he had protected Nicodemus at the same villa till his death, when he was buried in the same tomb, as also ultimately Gamaliel himself, with his son Abibus,-his wife and his eldest son being buried elsewhere, for they were not Christians. The relics were duly found and authenticated by miracles, in the presence of John, Bishop of Jerusalem, who came from that Synod of Diospolis (Lydda) where Pelagius retracted his errors. The day which commemorates this in the Martyrologium Romanum is August 3; see the notes under that day. The story will be found also in Photius, clxxi. col. 383-6 (Rouen, 1653), and in Bede, Retract. in Acts v. 34.

• Ἐποιήσαντο κοπετὸν μέγαν ἐπ' αὐτῷ; see Gen. 1. 10. Chrysostom remarks that his own beautiful words are his best epitaph—Ἱκανὸν αὐτῷ ἐπιτάφιον διεξῆλθεν ὁ ἐναγ γελιστὴς, καὶ θεὶς τὰ γόνατα εἰπών, κ. τ. λ. Hom. xviii. in Act. Baronius, under the year 34 (vol. i.), where the same story is told more briefly, argues from it in favour of the opinion that sumptuous and prolonged honours ought to be paid to the remains of martyrs. See Jerome as there quoted.

city, or he was willing to connive at what seemed to him an ordinary religious quarrel.

The eminent and active agent in this persecution was Saul. There are strong grounds for believing that, if he was not a member of the Sanhedrin at the time of St. Stephen's death, he was elected into that powerful senate soon after; possibly as a reward for the zeal he had shown against the heretic. He himself says that in Jerusalem he not only exercised the power of imprisonment by commission from the High Priests, but also, when the Christians were put to death, gave his vote against them. From this expression it is natural to infer that he was a member of that supreme court of judicature. However this might be, his zeal in conducting the persecution was unbounded. We cannot help observing how frequently strong expressions concerning his share in the injustice and cruelty now perpetrated are multiplied in the Scriptures. In St. Luke's narrative, in St. Paul's own speeches, in his earlier and later epistles, the subject recurs again and again. He "made havoc of the Church," invading the sanctu aries of domestic life, "entering into every house :" and those whom he thus tore from their homes he "committed to prison;" or, in his own words at a later period, when he had recognised as God's people those whom he now imagined to be His enemies, "thinking that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth... in Jerusalem . . . he shut up many of the saints in prison."3 And not only did men thus suffer at his hands, but women also,—a fact three times repeated as a great aggravation of his cruelty.' These persecuted people were scourged-" often" scourged, "-in many synagogues." Nor was Stephen the only one who suffered death, as we may infer from the Apostle's own confession. And, what was worse than scourging or than death itself, he used every effort to make them "blaspheme" that Holy Name whereby they were called. His fame as an inquisitor was notorious far

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1 Kaτýνεуka ñpov. (Acts xxvi. 10.) If this inference is well founded, and if the qualification for a member of the Sanhedrin mentioned in the last chapter (page 71) was a necessary qualification, Saul must have been a married man, and the father of a family. If so, it is probable that his wife and children did not long survive; for otherwise, some notice of them would have occurred in the subsequent narrative, or some allusion to them in the Epistles. And we know that, if ever he had a wife, she was not living when he wrote his first letter to the Corinthians. (1 Cor. vii.) It was customary among the Jews to marry at a very early age. See Buxt. Syn. Jud. ch. vi. Acts viii. 3. See ix. 2. 3 xxvi. 9, 10. See xxii. 3. xxii. 4. 5 xxvi. 10.

4 viii. 3. ix. 2. "I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prison boun men and women" (xxii. 4); "and when they were put to death, I gave my vote against them." (xxvi. 10.)

7 'Hváуkašov Bhaoonμeiv. (Acts xxvi. 11.) It is not said that he succeeded in causing any to blaspheme. It may be necessary to explain to some readers that the Greek imperfect merely denotes that the attempt was made; so in Gal. i. 23, alluded to at the end of this chapter.

and wide.

FLIGHT OF THE DISCIF LES.

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Even at Damascus Ananias had heard "how much evil he had done to Christ's saints at Jerusalem." He was known there as "he that destroyed them which call on this Name in Jerusalem." It was not without reason that, in the deep repentance of his later years, he remembered how he had "persecuted the Church of God and wasted it," 3—how he had been "a blasphemer, a persecutor and injurious;"—and that he felt he was "not meet to be called an Apostle," because he "had persecuted the Church of God."5

From such cruelty, and such efforts to make them deny that Name which they honoured above all names, the disciples naturally fled. In consequence of "the persecution against the Church at Jerusalem, they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria." The Apostles only remained. But this dispersion led to great results. The moment of lowest depression was the very time of the Church's first missionary triumph. "They that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word." First the Samaritans, and then the Gentiles, received that Gospel, which the Jews attempted to destroy. Thus did the providence of God begin to accomplish, by unconscious instruments, the prophecy and command which had been given :-"Ye shall be witnesses anto Me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." 8

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The Jew looked upon the Samaritan as he looked upon the Gentile. His hostility to the Samaritan was probably the greater, in proportion as he was nearer. In conformity with the economy which was observed before the resurrection, Jesus Christ had said to His disciples, "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Yet did the Saviour give anticipative hints of His favour to Gentiles and Samaritans, in His mercy to the Syrophenician woman, and His interview with the woman at the well of Sychar. And now the time was come for both the "middle walls of partition" to be destroyed. The dispersion brought Philip, the companion of Stephen, the second of the seven, to a city of Samaria. He came with the power of miracles and with the news of salvation. The Samaritans were convinced by what they saw; they listened to what he said; "and there was great joy in that city." When the news

1 ix. 13.

10

Gal. i. 13; see also Phil. iii. 6.

2 ix. 21.

4 1 Tim. i. 13.

$ 1 Cor. xv. 9. It should be observed that in all these passages from the Epistles the Gama 3 word (διώκω, διώκτης) is used.

Acts viii. 1.

si. 8.

7 viii. 4. See xi. 19-21.
9 Matt. x. 5, 6.

Пó The Lauapeías. (Acts viii. 5.) This was probably the ancient capital, at that time called "Sebaste." The city of Sychar (John iv. 5) had also received a Greek name. It was then "Neapolis," and is still "Nablous."

came to Jerusalem, Peter and John were sent by the Apostles, and the same miraculous testimony attended their presence, which had been given on the day of Pentecost. The Divine Power in Peter rebuked the powers of evil, which were working1 among the Samaritans in the person of Simon Magus, as Paul afterwards, on his first preaching to the Gentiles, rebuked in Cyprus Elymas the sorcerer. The two Apostles returned to Jerusalem, preaching as they went "in many villages of the Samaritans" the Gospel which had been welcomed in the city.

Once more we are permitted to see Philip on his labour of love. We obtain a glimpse of him on the road which leads down by Gaza' to Egypt. The chamberlain of Queen Candace3 is passing southwards on his return from Jerusalem, and reading in his chariot the prophecies of Isaiah. Ethiopia is "stretching out her hands unto God," and the suppliant is not unheard. A teacher is provided at the moment of anxious inquiry. The stranger goes "on his way rejoicing;" a proselyte who had found the Messiah; a Christian baptized "with water and the Holy Ghost." The Evangelist, having finished the work for which he had been sent, is called elsewhere by the Spirit of God. He proceeds to Cæsarea, and we hear of him no more, till, after the lapse of more than twenty years, he received under his roof in that city one who, like himself, had travelled in obedience to the Divine command "preaching in all the cities."

Our attention is now called to that other traveller. We turn from the "desert road" on the south of Palestine to the desert road on the north; from the border of Arabia near Gaza, to its border near Damascus. "From Dan to Beersheba" the Gospel is rapidly spreading. The dispersior of the Christians had rot been confined to Judæa and Samaria. "On the persecution that arose about Stephen" they had "travelled as far as Phoenicia and Syria." "Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaugh

1 Проüπйрxεν. (Acts viii. 9.) Simon was in Samaria before Philip came, as Elymas was with Sergius Paulus before the arrival of St. Paul. Compare viii. 9–24, with xiii. 6--12. There is good reason for believing that Simon Magus is the same person mentioned by Josephus (Ant. xx. 7, 2), as connected with Felix and Drusilla. See Acts xxiv. 24.

2 See some remarks on the words avτn korìv kpnμos in Greswell's Dissertations, vol. 1. pp. 177-180.

3 Candace is the name, not of an individual, but of a dynasty,-like Aretas in Arabia, or like Pharaoh and Ptolemy. By Ethiopia is meant Meroë on the Upper Nile. Queens of Meroë with the title of Candace are mentioned by Dio Cass. liv. 5. Strabo, xviii. Plin. H. N. vi. 29, 35. See also Euseb. H. E. ii. 1. Probably this chamberlain was a Jew. See Olshausen.

4 Ps. Ixviii. 31.

"But Philip was found at Azotus; and, passing through, he preached in all the cities, till he came to Cæsarea." (Acts viii. 40.) "And the next day we that were of Paul's company departed, and came to Cæsarea; and we entered into the house of Philip the Evangelist, which was one of the seven, and abode with him." (xxi. 8.) 6 Acts xi. 19.