(Fifth Sunday after Trinity, 1832.)
TEXT: ACTS vii. 60. “And Stephen kneeled down and cried with, a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.”
FREE and unrestricted as we are in our church as to our choice of subjects for meditation from the treasuries of the divine Word, many of you may still perhaps wonder why I have selected this passage. For you are aware that I have often lately taken occasion to express the opinion that the state of things brought before us in this narrative no longer exists in our times: that when people boast of having had to bear sufferings for Christ’s sake, it has usually been only a self-deception on their part; for when the thing has been more closely looked into, either it has been found to be no suffering at all, judged by the ordinary measure of human life; or, if it was real suffering, then it was not for Christ’s sake, but for the sake of some man’s system or opinion. But all Scripture given by God is profitable for doctrine and instruction in righteousness; and there is no part of it, however slight its direct bearing on our circumstances may be, about which that statement does not always hold good; and that, without our having to wander into applications of the words widely different from the direct meaning of the writers. Therefore, with this belief, we will take to-day, as the subject of our devout meditations, this prayer of Stephen in its various aspects.
I. I shall call your attention first to the thought that most deeply touches and stirs our feelings, that we may then be able to take a calmer view of other points,—the thought, namely, that these words are the prayer of a dying man. And it is the utterance, not of one who was merely experiencing the common lot of men, but of one who was dying for the Saviour’s sake, and for the confession of His name,—the prayer of him who was, after the Saviour Himself, the first martyr in the Christian Church.
What a joyful thing it is to think of these words in their original connection! how immediately and vividly they recall to us those words which they so closely resemble, the words of the Saviour on the cross; Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do! And yet we do not even know if he who uttered them had ever heard of those words of the Saviour; for it was not until later that the plan so rich in blessing to believers was systematically set about, of collecting and handing down the sayings of the Lord, so that every one might easily acquire a knowledge of the most important of them. But if Stephen had not heard them, it only proves the more certainly that the same Spirit who had spoken in the Master was speaking in the disciple. And because this Spirit has never since that time been withdrawn from the Christian Church, because it is He who is the source of all good gifts, of all words and deeds that tend to the advancement of the kingdom of God, we may all claim this utterance as our own. For remember the words of the apostle, that “all things are ours,”—each individual with his gifts and his works,—so that in the Church of God every deed pleasing to Him is not only a common benefit, but something that all, as members of one body, may appropriate as their own. And how often may similar prayers have gone up inaudibly from the hearts of those who followed the first preachers of the gospel on this thorny path! For how much precious “blood was poured out in later times through this same animosity of men against the greatest proof of goodwill that God had ever shown them! And how could it but be that in those who were impelled by the same feeling to brave such dangers and sufferings, the same Spirit should stir their hearts and speak through their lips in a similar way?
But now that the Christian faith is enthroned in so many nations; now that, ready as the heart of man would still be to rise against the name of the Lord and to fight against it with the sword of earthly power, none are tempted to do so, because there would be no chance of success; now that through the increase of intellectual gifts and the manifold outward blessings produced by the beneficent spirit of Christianity wherever it has reached, the Christian nations maintain so clear a supremacy over all others;—whence now should come any such sufferings for the Saviour’s sake? The more remote from us those times become, the more rare become such instances of persecution. Christians themselves have indeed sometimes been found in fierce antagonism against each other, each party sure that truth and pure love to the Saviour are on his own side; while their party feeling makes all real knowledge and perception of His teaching impossible. But seeing that this has only occurred on passing occasions and in times of unusual excitement, we gladly throw over it a veil of loving oblivion. And yet we cannot but say that though the trial may not perhaps come in exactly the same form, yet times of a similar nature may be before us. Tor just because the spread of the Christian faith brings in its train so rich an enlargement of all human faculties, of all mental endowments, of all the comforts of common life; because, at the same time, on its doing so depends the possibility of making known the word of the Lord ever more widely among men, till it gradually fills the whole earth,—for these very reasons everything that concerns the true prosperity of men in all their affairs stands in close connection with the kingdom of God. And if differing opinions arise as to what does advance the well-being of men; if men engage in hot controversy,—each seeing in him who differs from him an enemy of all good, whether as hindering human development, or as an enemy to repose and peace and to the secure enjoyment of what God has given us; if from feelings they go on to action, each believing that he has a right, or that, in fact, it is his duty to crush the other by all lawful means; and so cripples him in his work, and prejudices others against him and alienates them from him so far as he can; then indeed there is suffering for the sake of convictions and for the sake of what is good. And the more really such disputants are Christians according to the Spirit, and not merely desiring to be called so; and the more they therefore connect all the good that they might wish or effect for men with the Fountain of all good, desiring that it should conduce to the advancement of God’s kingdom; just so much the more sure are they to see, in everything that opposes them in their efforts, sin that is specially sinful as rising in hostility against the Lord.