The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 1 — Section 252

I. EA0H HAD A DIVINE 0ALL, Both in childhood : Moses in his mysterious pre- ecrvo.tion ; Messie.h in his mysterious birth. Both in early manhood ( each early rclativoly to the o.ge they lived): Moses in the vision of the flaming bush; Messiah in tho dove-vision 11nd heavenly voice at his baptism. • II. EA0H HAD A SPE0IAL PREPARATION. Moses in the experience of the Egyptian court and in the solitudes of Horeb; Messiah in the experiences of the carpenter's house at Naza.reth, and in the temptations of the Jordan desert. III. EAoH FOUNDED A DISPENSATION. Moses, one which was both e.n advance and e. decline from the older patristic dispensation; an advance as a fuller revelation of God's will, and a decline as imprisoning spiritual truth, for a time and purpose, in stiff religious rites and ceremonies. Messiah, o_ne _which was in every way an advance, liberating men from all ritual bonds, and bnngmg to open hearts the fuller revelations of the Father.' IV. EACH WAS A NEW SPIRITUAL FOROE. As bringin~ God near to men; exhibit- ing afresh his claims, and revealing himself. Every man who seea God thereby becomes a power on his fellows. Moses, in a surprising manner, saw God on Sinai; and with his vision there may be compared our Lord's vision on the Mount of Transfi11:uration. V. EA.OH WAS A TEACHER. Precisely of that which man could not gain by any studies and inquiries of his own. Both were (1) moral teachers; (2) religious teachers; (3) teachers of a specific Divine truth; (4) each enabled, by the_power of miracle, to attest their teaching claims. VI. EAOH 0LAU4ED A HEARING ON DIVINE AUTHORITY. Moses made it continually known that God sent him and God spake by him. Messiah made it fully known that he did not speak of himself, but the words which the Father gave him he gave forth to men. This claim, based on Divine authority, Stephen presses on the attention of the Sanhedrim, urging that it makes their rejection of Christ positively criminal VII. EACH WERE REJECTED BY THEIR OWN GENEB.A.TION. Seever. 35 and compare the rejection of Messiah. Impress that the many-sided and abundant proofs that Jesus is indeed the Christ, the Son of God, and the Saviour, bring his personal claims closely home to us, and make great indeed the guilt of our rejecting him. "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?"-R. T. Vere. 55, 56.- Visions of the risen (Jhrist. It is hardly to be doubted that St. Paul preserved the record of these incidents; and we may realize how such a cry from the persecuted Nazarene, as we have in the text, would fix itself in the thought and memory of one so religious and so impulsive as St. Paul. It would be most vividly recalled to mind when he too was smitten down with the glory on the Damascus road, and himself heard the voice of Jesus, the risen and exalted One. Evidently the thing that most impressed St. Paul was Stephen's firm conviction that the crucified Jesus was risen, living, exalted, glo1i6.ed, Divine. However intensely St. Paul resisted this conviction at first, it had more power on him than he estimated. .And the scene is a most impressive one. The howling mob; the reverend officials, borne away from all their proprieties by fanatical excitement; the young Pharisee, too aristocratic to take any actual part in carrying off the victim, or throwing the stones, helping to raise the excitement with stirring words ; and amidst all the noise and the violence, the man of God, calm, rapt beyond present scenes, seeing the unseen, and uttering a last splendid testimony to the one truth he had laboured to declare. Say what men may of the Impostor of Nazareth, who was shamefully crucified, Stephen saw him livil.l~{, and "standing on the right hand of Qod." We need not think that there was any "external spectacle;" the vision was that kind of internal vision men have had when in a state of ecstasy. The fact of the vision was "inferred partly, we may believe, from the rapt, fixed expression of the martyr's face, partly from the words that followed, interpreting that upward gaze." The vision may be treated as- I. A 0OMFORT TO THE PERSEOUTED ONE. Recall the promises of the Saviour•~ prosence always with his people, but especially when they should be brought before kings and g,3vernors for his Name's sake. Even making due account of the excitement produced by the surroundings of martyrdom, and its power to raise a heroic spirit, it has never been found an easy thing to face torture and death. But the story of the  THE AOTS OF THE APOSTLES. [ell, VII, 1-60,