the end of all the promises, the end of the whole development of the Theocracy-the advent of the Messiah, and the work to be accomplished by him. But with this narrative he blends his charges against the Jewish nation. He shows that their ingratitude and unbelief, proceeding from a carnal mind, became more flagrant in proportion as the promises were fulfilled, or given with greater fulness; and their conduct in the various preceding periods of the development of God's kingdom, was a specimen of the disposition they now evinced towards the publication of the gospel.* The first promise which God made to the patriarchs, was that respecting the land which he would give to their posterity for a possession, where they were to worship him. In faith the patriarchs went forth under the constant guidance of God himself, which, however, did not bring them to the fulfilment of the promise. This promise was brought to the eve of its accomplishment by Moses. His divine call, the miracles God wrought for him and by him, are especially brought forward, and likewise the conduct of the Jews while under his guidance, as unbelieving, ungrateful and rebellious towards this highly accredited servant of God, through whom they had received such great benefits: and yet Moses was not the end of the divine revelation. His calling was to point to that prophet whom God would raise up after him, whom they were to obey like himself. The conduct of the Jews towards Moses is therefore a type of their conduct towards that last great prophet whom he announced and prefigured. The Jews gave themselves up to idolatry, when God first established among them by Moses a symbolical sanctuary for his worship. This sanctuary was in the strictest sense of divine origin. Moses superintended its erection according to the pattern shown to him by God, in a symbolic higher manifestation. The sanctuary was a movable one, till at last Solomon was permitted to erect an abiding edifice for divine worship on a similar plan. With this historical survey, Stephen concludes his argument against the superstitious reverence for the temple felt by the carnally-minded Jews, against their narrow-hearted sensuous tendency to confine the essence of religion to the temple-worship. Having expressed this in the words of the prophet Isaiah, it was a natural transi * In this species of polemical discussion, Stephen was a forerunner of Paul. De Wette justly notices, as a peculiarity of the Hebrew nation, that conscience was more alive among them than any other people; often, indeed, an accusing conscience, the feeling of guilt, the feeling of a high office assigned to them from which they cannot, though they would, be released, the feeling of a schism between knowledge (the law) and the will, so that sin accumulates and comes distinctly into view; Rom. v. 20. See "Studien und Kritiken," 1837, 4th No., p. 1003. On this account, the history of the Hebrew nation is the type of the history of the race and of men individually. Stephen had, perhaps, two distinct aims in mind, to intimate, on the one hand, that it was necessary, in order to guard against idolatry to which the Jews were so prone, tɔ confine the worship of God to a fixed visible sanctuary, and, on the other hand, that this sanctuary could not communicate the divine, but could only represent it in a figure, an idea which pervades the Epistle to the Hebrews. tion to speak of the essential nature of true spiritual worship, and of the prophets who in opposition to the stiff-necked, carnal dispositions of the Jews, had testified concerning it, and the Messiah by whom it was to be established among the whole human race. A vast prospect now opened before him; but he could not complete the grand picture of the theocratic development, nor proceed even to the limits he had proposed ;* while contemplating it, the emotions it excited carried him away; his holy indignation gushed forth in a torrent of rebuke against the ungodly, unbelieving, hypocritical disposition of the Jews, whose conduct in reference to the divine communications had been the same from the time of Moses up to that very moment. "Ye stiff-necked, although boasting of your circumcision, yet who have never received the true circumcision, ye uncircumcised in heart and ear (who want the disposition to feel and to understand what is divine), ye always withstand the workings of the Holy Ghost. Ye do as your fathers did. As your fathers murdered the prophets who predicted the appearance of the Holy One, so have ye· yourselves given Him up to the Gentiles, and thus are become his murderers. Ye who boast of a law given by God through the ministry of angels, (as organs of making known the divine will,) and yet are so little observant of this law!" Till this rebuke was uttered, Stephen had been quietly heard. But as soon as they perceived the drift of his discourse, their blind zeal and spiritual pride were roused. He observed the symptoms of their rage, but instead of being terrified thereby, he looked up to heaven, full of believing confidence in the power of Him of whom he testified, and saw with a prophetic glance, in opposition to the machinations of men against the cause of God, the glorified Messiah, denied by these men, but exalted to heaven, armed with divine power, and about to conquer all who dared to oppose his kingdom. This prophetic view was presented to him in the form of a symbolic vision. As he looked up to heaven it appeared to open before his eyes. In more than earthly splendor, there appeared te him a form of divine majesty; he beheld Christ (whose glorious image was probably present to him from actual early recollection) glorified and enthroned at the right hand of God. Already in spirit raised to heaven, he testified with full confidence of what he beheld. In all periods of the * We must certainly maintain against Baur that Stephen's discourse is left unfinished, that he could not complete the plan he had proposed; that just when he had reached the principal point, for which all that went before was preparatory, he was interrupted; unless, perhaps, the discourse as we have received it, is imperfectly reported. This was confessedly a frequent mode among the Jews of marking the superhuman origin of the law; so that, according to Josephus, Herod, in a speech to the Jewish army, made use of this universally acknowledged fact, that the Jews had received their law from God through angels, (δι' ἀγγέλων παρὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ μαθόντων), in order to show how holy the ambassadors sent to them must be, who filled the same office as that of the angels between God and men; άyyɛλ01=πpéoßeis, kýpukɛs, angels=ambassadors, heralds. Joseph. Antiq. xv. 5, 3. We shall refer to the varied application of this idea in the section on Doctrine. church, a blind zeal for adherence to the letter and ceremonial services has been wont to interpret a highly spiritual state, which will not follow the rules of the reigning theological school, nor suffer itself to be confined by ancient dogmas, as mere fanaticism or blasphemy ;* and so it was on this occasion. The members of the Sanhedrim stopped their ears, that they might not be defiled by his blasphemies. They threw themselves on Stephen, and dragged him out of the city in order to stone him as a blasphemer. It was sentence and execution all at once; an act of violence without regular judicial examination; especially as according to the existing laws, the Sanhedrim could decide only on disciplinary punishment, but was not allowed to execute a capital sentence without the concurrence of the Roman governor. With the same confidence with which Stephen, amidst the rage and fury of his enemies, saw the Saviour of whom he testified, ruling victorious—with the same confidence he directed his eyes towards him in the prospect of death, and said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit !" And as he had only Him before his eyes, it was his Spirit which led him to adopt the Saviour's last words, thus making him a pattern in death, as he had been in life. He who, when carried away with holy zeal for the cause of God, had so emphatically censured the baseness of the Jews, now that their fury attacked his own person, prayed only that their sins might be forgiven. Thus we see in the death of Stephen the new development of Christian truth apparently stopped; he died a martyr, not only for the truth of the gospel in general, but in particular for this freer and wider application of it, which began with him and seemed to expire with him. Yet from the beginning it has been the law of the development of the Christian life, and will continue to be down to the last glorious result, which shall consummate the whole with the final triumph over death-that out of death a new life comes forth, and martyrdom for the divine truth, both in its general and particular forms, prepares for its victory. Such was the issue here. This first new development of evangelical truth had to be checked in the germ in order to shoot forth with greater vigor, and to a wider extent, in the person of Paul; and the martyrdom of Stephen was *Thus, at the Council of Constance, it was condemned as a violation of ecclesiastical subordination, that Huss had dared to appeal to Christ. + See Life of Christ, p. 412. I can find no reason whatever for recognising (as Baur has done) in Stephen's manner of speaking and acting, instead of the image of Christ as impressed by his Spirit on his genuine disciples, nothing but the impress of the subjective fiction which makes Stephen a copy of Christ. To support the latter view, it is urged that such words as Stephen used occur in Luke xxiii. 34 and 46, and that this agreement could not be merely accidental, but points to one source. But I do not perceive that the literal agreement which exists here, can only be so explained, since it may be very naturaìly accounted for on the ground that the Spirit of Christ, which expressed itself in the words of Christ transmitted to us by Luke, caused Stephen to express himself in the same way. That false testimony against Christ, of which (Baur would have us believe) the false testimony against Stephen is an imitation, does not in so many words appear in Luke. a necessary step in the process. If this new development had been fully exhibited at this time, the other publishers of the gospel would have been found unprepared for it, and not yet capable of receiving it. But in the meantime, these persons, by a variety of concurrent circumstances, were to be prepared in a natural way, under the constant guidance of the Holy Spirit, for this deeper insight into the truth. The martyrdom of Stephen was important in its direct effects for the spreading of the faith, since it might be expected that, under the immediate impression made by the sight of such a witness, and of such a death, many minds not altogether unsusceptible, nor altogether deluded by the power of error, would be led to the faith; but yet the indirect consequences were still more important, by which the third violent persecution was raised against the new church at Jerusalem. This persecution must have been more severe and extensive than the former; for by the manner in which Stephen entered into conflict with Pharisaism, he had roused to hostility against the teachers of the new doctrine the sect of the Pharisees, who had the most credit with the common people, and were powerful and active, and ready to leave no means untried to attain their object whatever it might be. The persecution proceeding from this quarter would naturally mark as its special victims those who were colleagues in office with Stephen as deacons, and who resembled him in their Hellenistic origin and education. It was, however, the occasion of spreading the gospel beyond the bounds of Jerusalem and Judea, and even among the Gentiles. With this progressive outward development of the gospel was also connected its progressive inward development, the consciousness of the independence and intrinsic capability of Christianity as a doctrine destined without foreign aid to impart divine life and salvation to all men, among all nations without distinction. As we have frequently seen that the hostilities waged against a truth when first brought to light, with which its publishers have had to contend, have very much contributed to render their consciousness of it more clear and complete, and to make them better acquainted with the consequences that flow from it, so here also the opposition of Pharisaical Judaism must have had a powerful and beneficial influence in developing freer views of the Gospel among the Hellenists. Here, then, we stand on the boundary-line of a new era, both of the outward and inward development of Christianity. BOOK II. TRANSITION FROM THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE JEWS, TO ITS DEVELOPMENT AMONG HEATHEN NATIONS. CHAPTER I. THE FIRST SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY FROM THE CHURCH AT JERUSALEM TO OTHER PARTS, AND ESPECIALLY AMONG THE HEATHEN. SAMARIA, which had been the scene of Christ's personal ministry, was the first place out of Judea where the gospel was preached by his apostles. Though the people of this country received no part of the Old Testament as sacred excepting the Pentateuch, yet from this portion of the Scriptures they had learned to exercise faith in a Messiah who was to come; on him they placed their hopes, as the personage who was to bring back all things to their right relations, and thus to be the universal Restorer. Political considerations did not with them, as with the Jews, stand in the way of their right apprehension of the idea of the Messiah, an idea specially clung to by them in their mental and bodily misery; but they were deficient in that right understanding of it which could only be obtained from its progressive development in the Old Testament; nor could the deep feeling of the need of redemption and restoration be clearly developed among them. A lively, but indefinite, obscure longing of the religious nature always exposes men to manifold and most dangerous delusions, and in times of vague but earnest inquiry, various kinds of extravagance are likely to prevail. This was the case with the Samaritans. As at that time in other parts of the East, a similar indefinite longing after a new communication from Heaven -an ominous restlessness in the minds of men, such as generally precedes great changes in the history of mankind, was diffused abroad; so there were not wanting persons to misdirect and deceive this longing, while they falsely promised it satisfaction. Such were the Goëtæ, in whom was to be found a mixture of unconscious self-deception and intentional falsehood; with ideas, proceeding from an amalgamation of *See Life of Christ, p. 180 ff. See Gesenius's Weihnachtsprogramm De Samaritanorum Theologia, (of the year 1822), and his Carmina Samaritana, p. 75. |