The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 1 — Section 239

shippers, or that the minister of religion should fare in poverty while he supplies their spiritu11.l wants. A rich m&n 0&n surely afford to contribute as much to the pastor's necessities &s he pays in stipend to his cook. But there are higher truths. 'l'he taber- n11.cle p11.SBed away; the temple, as S~phen had predicted, was to p&ss &way; the spiritual verities eternally remain. II. THE TRUE SAORED PLAOE m EVER THE SOUL OF MAN. 1. The dwelling of God in visible temples is & symbolic thought, the reality to which it points is bis inter- coun,e with the soul of man. This was the great truth of prophetic teaching. 'l'he prophets were themselves living illustrations of it. God dwelt in them, spake through them, breathed upon them, turned their hearts unto his shrine, communed with them face to face, as a man with his lriend. "The trne Sbechinab is man," said a great Father of the Church. 2. It is the spiritual indwelling which is at the heart of all true religion. When it is once grasped, great consequences follow. The priest and tho ritual and the :fixed place are no longer necessary. Every one who has a truth from God, and feels that it mnst be spoken, is a prophet. New oracles may be opened at any moment, new witnesses may arise, the truth find a fresh utterance from unexpected lips. If this truth be not recognized, the sacred building becomes an empty shell, the priests mere mummers, the ritual a pantomime. To believe that God can care for splendid temples and ritual, for themselves, is imbecile superstition. To believe that he values all the expressions of living and loyal hearts is a part of rational piety. But at the highest point of religious intelligence it may be well asked, " What need of temple, when the walls of the world are that?" 3. The denial of the spiritual truth is the source of error, super- lltition, and crime. The earlier Jews killed the prophets, leaving posterity to find out their value and raise their monuments. Posterity did the like. 'l'he very men who waved the torch of truth more brightly in darkened ages, and those who had the best news to tell their times, were silenced and suppressed. The culmination of all was the betrayal and murder of Jesus. Snch a story of miserable persecution and suicidal hatred of the good carries its deep and permanent warnings. How dishonest if we take occasion from this passage to form an id.le opinion of the peculiar bigotry of the Jews! Was ever a corporation, a body with vested interests, or a Church, known to act otherwise towards the new truth and the new teacher? Has any great teacher in the Christian Church been received at first with welcome and owned as "sent from God"? Grudging toleration is the most he can expect. Only those who know that religion is an affair of the individual soul, not of the Church or the formal confession, will welcome him in whom religion now embodies itself, and throngh whom, in the decay of systems, God llpeak.s with freshness and power to the world.-J. Vers. 54--60.-7'ie martyrdom of Stephen. L THE BA.GE OF CO1'"VICTED CONBCJIENCEB. Pierced to the heart with the pain of the sense of guilt, though judges, they gnashed with their teeth upon Stephen," like chained dogs who would bite those who would set them free." "Contempt pierces through the shell of the tortoise," says the Indian proverb. On their high seat they were reached by the stinging words of the servant of Jesus; their obstinacy exposed, the contradiction between the part they were playing as the repre- sentatives of the Law and outwardly, while their spirit and aims were deadly opposed to its spirit, brought into the most glowing light. The most hellish of wrath is that where the mind is felt to be at variance with itself and seeks a victim on which to discharge its fury. If the truth does not convert men, it turns them into its foes. II. Tm: O."'"l\"'"EB JOY OF'THE MARTYR. The martyr is he whose life-interests are bound up with the truth, to whom nothing in the world can afford Batisfaction in which truth and reality are not. He cannot separate his consciousness of life and its sweetness from his consciouBness of God's light and love in him, which are dearer than life. With this clear light within his breast, he" sits in the centre and enjoys clear day." "No greater thinu can man receive, no more august boon can God bestow, than truth," sa.id one of the ~wblest of heathen writers, Plutarch. '!'his is the feeling in which the martyr lives in which he is willing to die. And he may be and doubtless is often favoured with' peculiar viBions, which foretell the triumph of truth and of faith, Stephen sees the heaven opened, and the crucified One, the "Son of man," sta.nding iu the place of glory and power, at God's right hand. 'l'here are secrets in the life of individual piety which, if known, might go far to explain the cheerfulness with which privation or persecution OH, VII, 1-60.] THE AOTS OF Tfrn APOSTLES. 236