yi The Sister knew that the whole place was given over to evil purposes. She knew that no help would be given from inside. In case of violence it would be necessary for her to descend to the streets. She was not afraid, but she was conscious of apprehension and a vague alarm. However many policemen may walk the streets outside, it is no easy matter for a woman to face one of these pandars in the seclusion of his own establish- ment. But Sister Mildred is a saint, and there is no courage like the courage of the saint.1
1 Harold Begbie, In the Hand of the Potter, 188.
ACTS vn. 59, 60 91
% It is related that in the Duke of Wellington's campaigns two officers were once despatched upon a service of considerable danger. As they were riding together, the one observed the other to be greatly agitated, with blanched cheek and quivering lip, and limbs shaken as with a paralysis of mortal fear. Beining his steed upon its haunches, he haughtily addressed him, " Why, you are afraid." " I am," was the reply ; " and if you were half as much afraid as I am, you would relinquish the duty altogether." Without wasting another word upon his ignoble companion, the officer galloped back to headquarters, and complained bitterly that he had been ordered to march in the companionship of a coward. " Off, sir, to your duty," was the commander's sharp reply, " or the coward will have done the business before you get there."1
II.
Stephen's Pkayers.
1. The two dying prayers of Stephen carry us back in thought to the prayers of our Lord at His crucifixion.
(1) " Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." — We are told in the sacred narrative that St. Stephen " kneeled clown " while they were in the act of stoning him. The picture fills us with amazement. It is so unlike what we should have expected, that some have attempted to persuade us that this was not a voluntary or deliberate act of the martyr. We are not, it is said, to under- stand that it expresses the purpose of one who was resolved, despite all the violence to which he was subjected, to spend his last moments in a posture of calm resignation and prayer ; that would have been next to impossible for any human being to do under such circumstances. He had no alternative; "another crash of stones brought him upon his knees." But the Christian conscience will not readily consent to have such a beautiful feature in the scene explained away. It shows us the dying martyr gathering up his failing strength and all the energy of his expiring life for one last, one crowning act of homage to his Lord ; and a record of it stands on the sacred page, to teach us what the greatest saints have felt about the value of external forms or bodily postures in expressing the worship that is due from the creature to the Creator. Then let us hear his prayer :
1 W. M. Puiishon.
92 FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH
" Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." What an echo it is of his Master's dying words ! — " Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do." Not the slightest thought of vengeance in the prayer, but an unreserved entreaty that their sins may never be remembered against them.
TJ A generous prayer is never presented in vain ; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner is always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation.1
I saw an angry crowd
Gathered about a youth, that loud
Were crying: Slay him, slay,
And stoned him as he lay. I saw him overborne by death, That bowed him to the earth beneath:
Only he made his eyes
Gates to behold the skies, To his high Lord his prayer outpouring, Forgiveness for his foes imploring:
Even in that pass his face
For pity making place.2
(2) " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" — We need not dwell now upon the fact that here we have a distinct instance of prayer to Jesus Christ, a distinct recognition, in the early days of His Church, of the highest conception of His person and nature, so that a dying man turns to Him, and commits his soul into His hands. Passing this by, though not overlooking it, let us think of the resemblance, and the difference, between this entrusting of the spirit by Stephen to his Lord, and the committing of His spirit to the Father by His dying Son. Christ on the Cross speaks to God ; Stephen, on his Calvary, speaks to Jesus Christ. Christ, on the Cross, says, " I commit." Stephen says, " Eeceive," or rather, " Take." The one phrase carries in it something of the notion that our Lord died not because He must, but because He would ; that He was active in His death ; that He chose to summon death to do its work upon Kim ; that He " yielded up his spirit," as one of the Evangelists has it, pregnantly and significantly. But Stephen says, " Take ! " as knowing that it must be his Lord's power that should draw his spirit out of the coil of horror around