TJ The Kevisers were anticipated in their interpretation by Bishop Cosin, who, in view of perpetuating another characteristic feature of St. Stephen's martyrdom, has addressed his Collect to God the Son. With very rare exceptions (there are three others only in our Prayer Book) Liturgical Collects have always been addressed to the Father, because they form part of an office in which the Son joins with the Church in presenting to the Father the Memorial of His own Sacrifice. It seems, therefore, to introduce an incongruity to appeal at such a time to Him who is acting as Priest. It was for this reason that certain of the Early Councils directed that " when we are officiating at the altar, prayer should always be addressed to the Father." x
5. And now, one great lesson rises out of all that has been said. If God has given us but little clear knowledge of the state of the departed, if we have been obliged to guess at what passes in that state, and are not able to speak with absolute certainty, one thing at least is clear and certain. Every hope of the soul as it passes from the body centres in our blessed Lord. So then, if He is to be our hope and stay after death, He must be our hope and stay now. We must live in close, earnest, true communion with Him. We must live with Him as our Friend and Guide, our heart's inmost life. If we wish to feel that we can commit ourselves to Him, and lean upon Him, when our spirits shall have to venture forth at His call into the dim, uncertain, untried world beyond the grave, then we must familiarize ourselves now with His love, His power, His gifts, His might. If we hope to say with the calm, undoubting trust of St. Stephen, at that last moment, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," then we must learn such trust beforehand by commending our spirits to Him now.
Beloved, yield thy time to God, for He Will make eternity thy recompense;
Give all thy substance for His Love, and be Beatified past earth's experience.
1 H. M. Luckock.
96 FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH
Serve Him in bonds, until He set thee free; Serve Him in dust, until He lift thee thence;
Till death be swallowed up in victory
When the great trumpet sounds to bid thee hence.
Shall setting day win day that will not set?
Poor price wert thou to spend thyself for Christ, Had not His wealth thy poverty sufficed: Yet since He makes His garden of thy clod,
Water thy lily, rose, or violet,
And offer up thy sweetness unto God.1
III.
Stephen's Death.
1. "They stoned Stephen." Our ordinary English idea of the manner of the Jewish punishment of stoning is a very in- adequate and mistaken one. It did not consist merely in a miscellaneous rabble throwing stones at the criminal, but there was a solemn and appointed method of execution which is pre- served for us in detail in the Eabbinical books. And from it we gather that the modus operandi was this. The blasphemer was taken to a certain precipitous rock, the height of which was pre- scribed as being equal to that of two men. The witnesses by whose testimony he had been condemned had to cast him over, and if he survived the fall it was their task to roll upon him a great stone, of which the weight is prescribed in the Talmud as being as much as two men could lift. If he lived after that, then others took part in the punishment.
2. " And when he had said this, he fell asleep." How absolute the triumph over the last enemy which these words express ! When men court slumber, they banish from their hearts all causes of anxiety, and from their dwelling all tumult of sound ; they demand quiet as a necessity; they exclude the light and draw the curtains close ; they carefully put away from them all that will have a tendency to defeat, or to postpone the object after which they aim. But Stephen fell asleep under very different circumstances from these. Brutal oaths, and frantic yells, and curses loud and deep, were the lullaby which sang.
1 Christina G. Rossetti.
ACTS vii. 59, 60 97
him to his dreamless slumbers ; and while all were agitated and tumultuous around him,
Meek as an infant to its mother's breast, So turned he, longing, for immortal rest.
The evident meaning of the words is that death came to him simply as a release from suffering — as a curse from which the sting was drawn — so mitigated in its bitterness, that it was as harmless and as refreshing as sleep.
TJ The image of sleep as a euphemism for death is no peculiar property of Christianity, but the ideas that it suggests to the Christian consciousness art the peculiar property of Christianity. Any of you that ever were in the Vatican will remember how you go down corridors with Pagan marbles on that side and Christian ones on this. Against one wall, in long rows, stand the sad memorials, each of which has the despairing ending, " Farewell, farewell, for ever farewell." But on the other side there are carved no goddesses of slumber, or mourning genii, or quenched lamps, or wailing words, but sweet emblems of a renewed life, and the ever-recurring, gracious motto : " In hope." To the non- Christian that sleep is eternal ; to the Christian that sleep is as sure of a waking as is the sleep of the body. The one affects the whole man ; the Christian sleep affects only the body and the connexion with the outer world.1