The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 1 — Section 208

the prcco<ling description of a prayerful, obedient, spiritually minded Church. How ciilierent the result might have been had the murmuring gone on to increase and become a strife which would have broken up fellowship, dishonoured the Name of Jesus, anrl stopped the mouths of the preachers I I. THE FIELD in which such fruits were gathered-Jerusalem and neighbourhood. 1. In some measure prepared for the n:w _seed. God works by a deeply laid method of orderly progress. The gospel the begmnrng of the new world because it was the end of the old; taking up into itself all that was really Divine in Judaism. 2. Broken up by the new ministry, so different from that of scribes and Pharisees. 3. A continua- tion of Christ's own work, upon the basis of the great facts of his history. II. THE LABOURERS. 1. .Apostles. Their spirit and method adapted to achieve spiritual success; informal ; earnest; devout ; inspired. Accompanied wi.th miraculous attestation. 2. The multitude of believers. All spoke more or less. Their fellowship was an eloquent fact. Their order and self-denial and separation from the world. III. Tm: HARVEST. 1. Large. Immense population of Jerusalem; continually changing. 2. Representative of the future. The centre of religious life, sending streams of light over the world; devout men of all nations. Special adaptation of the Jewish mind to preaching. Knowledge of the Old Testament. Connection with Greek through Alexandria, with Latin through Rome. 3. Wonderful. Overcoming Jewish prejudice; winning many of the priests, notwithstanding opposition and persecution; foretellin:; the downfall of Judaism. Multiplication of disciples a spiritual fruit. Let God add to the Church. Preserve the distinction between the Church and the world.-R. Vers. 8-15.-Stephenbefore the counci'l. The conflict between the spirit of Judaism and the Spirit of Christ. Show the importance of this conflict in the early Church, lasting for more than a whole generation, lingering into the second century. But chiefly brought to an end through one (Saul of Tarsus), himself a trophy of the Spirit, exalted out of the very midst of the fiercest fire of Jewish bigotry. I. THE DIVINE WITNESS. Stephen. 1. Natural gifts; Jewish training; Hellenistic. Union of faith and freedom. 2. Special gifts of the Spirit. Leader of the seven. "Grace and power," Wrought wonders and signs. The wisdom and spirit; raised the highest by Divine afflatus. II. THE OPPOSING JUDAISM. 1. From the foreign synagogues. Therefore probably not so much on the ground of a narrow Pharisaism, but as a resistance of the Holy Spirit's manifestations in the spirit of rationalism and literalism. 2. The resort to the Sanhedrim, already leagued with the Sadducees, and therefore kindred with the Alexanddan latitudinarians. Instructive as showing that Judaism was going off into rationalism, as it still does. 3. The falsehood and the violence which wrought in the persecution. Suborned men. Appeal to the Pharisaic party, though the synagogues had no real sympathy with them. They were not really guardians of the Mosaic customs. People, elders, scribes,-all stand up by the Alexandrian party. III. THE MIRACULOUS TESTIMONY OF GoD TO BIB SERVANT. His face" as the face of an angel" (cf. the similar manifestation on the face of Moses). 1. Spiritual mani- festation appealing to faith. 2. Testimony to the purity and angelic character of Stephen. 3. Contrast between the heavenly and the earthly in the men, the_methods, the doctrines, and the final results.-R. Vera. 1-6.-Thefirst crystallizings of ecclesia.~ical institution, This short section has much to say, more to suggest, to us. 'l.'he day of Pentecost had receded no distance whatever into the past; the holy enthusiasm of the days when new-born disciples sold their individual property in order to turn it into common property was literally but of yesterday; and Jerusalem, Christianity's cradle of associations the venerable sacredness of which was now superseded by a new, a young, a surpassing sacredness, had not yet been left of the apostolic missionaries. If other things were to date their "beginning from Jerusalem," things of brighter and more blessed omen, so 3:lso the Church's earliest acquaintance with division and strife was to be made and m part provid,~d against within the precincts of that same city, centre o~ cit_ies, and_" mother of all. However, the strife was not fierce at present, ';!Or the d1vmon malignant 1n its type. Yet, looked at under the light of the centuries that have succeeded, the1:e  2M THE AOTS OF TlIE APOSTLES, tott, VI. 1-15,