This is a study of Jesus receiving the spirit of Stephen. As he was dying he prayed for Jesus to receive his spirit.

1. JESUS WAS RECEIVING STEPHEN'SSPIRIT
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
Acts 7:59 59Whilethey were stoning him, Stephen
prayed, "LORD Jesus, receive my spirit."
GreatTexts of the Bible
Faithful unto Death
They stoned Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive
my spirit. And he kneeleddown, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this
sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.—Acts 7:59-60.
When we read St. Luke’s Gospeland the Book of Acts we are constantly
finding history presented in pictures which live in the imagination and which
have been reproduced on the canvas of our greatartists. This story of the
martyrdom of St. Stephen is one of them. It has been regardedall through the
Christian ages as a theme of never-failing and most touching interest. But it is
more than this. It has been representedby Christian Art in devotional
pictures more frequently perhaps than any subjectnot immediately connected
with our blessedLord. The few words in which St. Luke has recordedit are
full of suggestiveness. In the vision, for instance, which was vouchsafedto
nerve Stephen for his doom, we are told that he saw Jesus standing at the
right hand of God; whereas elsewherein Scripture our Lord is describedas
sitting. This, however, is not the posture in which we should wish to find one
to whom we went for help in time of trouble and distress. It was doubtless for

2. this reasonthat when the veil was drawn, Jesus was manifestedto His faithful
servant as standing, as One who has risen from His seatand is stretching out a
helping hand to him in the crisis of his need. The Church of England has been
careful to preserve this beautiful idea in one of her most beautiful Collects:
“Grant, O Lord, that in all our sufferings here upon earth for the testimony of
Thy truth, we may steadfastlylook up to heaven, and by faith behold the glory
that shall be revealed; and, being filled with the Holy Ghost, may learn to love
and bless our persecutors, by the example of Thy first martyr, Saint Stephen,
who prayed for his murderers to Thee, O blessedJesus, who standestat the
right hand of God to succourall those that suffer for Thee, our only Mediator
and Advocate.”
One of the pictures which Tintoret conceivedmost rapidly and painted with
passionate speedis his picture of the martyrdom of St. Stephen. It is in the
greatChurch of St. George atVenice. Entirely ideal, it shares in the weakness
which sometimes belongedto this artist’s work when he was painting what
was impossible. Not one of the stones which lie in hundreds round the
kneeling figure of the martyr has touched him; he is absolutely unhurt. It
would have suited Tintoret’s characterfar more to have filled the air with a
rain of stones, and to have sent the saint to the ground with a huge mass
crashing on his Shoulder. And he could have done this without erring against
our sense ofbeauty if he had chosen. But he was ordered otherwise;and we
have now from his hand the Spiritual idea of martyrdom, not the actual
reality.
The picture somewhatfails, because he wished to do it otherwise;but the
kneeling figure, with claspedhands and face upturned in ecstasy—its absolute
forgetfulness of the wild cries and the violence of death, its rapturous
consciousnessofthe glory which from the throne of God above strikes upon
the face—is a concentrationofall the thoughts which in many ages have
collectedaround the idea of the sacrifice oflife for the love of truth conceived
of as at one with the love of Christ.

3. But this is not all that was representedon the canvas of this thoughtful and
imaginative painter. Tintoret, who knew his Bible well, knew that Stephen
had won his martyrdom by bold speaking, andthat though he prayed for
those who slew him, he had not been patient with their blindness to good. So
there is in the whole picture a sense of triumph—the triumph and advance of
Christianity. “Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our
Lord Jesus Christ.” That is the note. The glorious group above in Heaven is
dominant. We see the future joy of the martyr in the triumph flashing from
the face of Stephen, and the circle of the witnessesseatedaround in light seem
to form an aureole round the dying figure. Not a stone touches the martyr.
Nothing is fairer, nothing more victorious than his face.1 [Note:Stopford
Brooke.]
This is the only narrative in the New Testamentof a Christian martyrdom or
death. As a rule, Scripture is supremely indifferent as to what becomes of the
people with whom it is for a time concerned. So long as the man is the organ
of the Divine Spirit he is somewhat;as soonas the Spirit ceasesto speak
through him he drops into insignificance. So this same Acts of the Apostles
kills off James the brother of John in a parenthesis;and his is the only other
martyrdom that it concerns itselfeven so much as to mention. Why, then, this
exceptionaldetail about the martyrdom of Stephen? Fortwo reasons:because
it is the first of a series, and the Acts of the Apostles always dilates upon the
first of eachsetof things which it describes, andcondenses the others. But
more especiallybecause,if we come to look at the story, it is not so much an
accountof Stephen’s death as of Christ’s power in Stephen’s death. And the
theme of this book is not the acts of the Apostles, but the acts of the risen Lord
in and for His Church.
I

4. Stephen’s Life
i. The Deacon
1. Stephen was originally a Hellenistic Jew. The Hellenistic Jews were made
up, partly of men of purely Gentile parentage who were proselytes to the
Mosaic Law, and partly of Jews, who, by long settlement in foreign lands, had
adopted the language and manners of Greek civilization. To say that a man
was a Hellenist proved nothing as to his descent;but it showedthat he
acceptedthe religion of Israel, while yet he used Greek speechand followed
Greek customs. Stephen’s name, although Greek, does notexclude the
possibility of his having been a Jew by birth; and he is said to have had a
Syriac name of the same meaning.
2. Of his conversionto the Faith of Christ we know nothing; he is first
mentioned when he was chosenone of the sevenDeacons.The Church of
Jerusalemin the earliestApostolic age had a common fund, into which its
members at their conversionthrew their personalproperty, and out of which
they were assistedaccording to their needs. The administration of this fund
must have come to be a serious and complicatedbusiness within a few months
from its establishment. And as the higher ministries of the Church were
ordained, not with a view to carrying on a work of this kind, but for the
conversionand sanctificationofsouls, it was natural that, with the demands
upon their time which the Apostles had to meet, the finance and resources of
the Church should occasionallyfall into confusion. So it was that, before many
months had passed, “there arose a murmuring of the Grecians againstthe
Hebrews”—thatis, of the Hellenistic againstthe Jewishconverts—“because
their widows were neglectedin the daily ministration.” Probably these widows
or their friends may have been somewhatexacting. But the Apostles felt that
their time ought not to be spent in managing a bank. The Twelve, who were
all in Jerusalemstill, assembledthe whole body of the faithful, and desired

5. them to electseven men “of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and of
wisdom,” to be entrusted, as Deacons, with the administration of the funds of
the Church. Sevenpersons were chosen;and at their head Stephen, described
as “a man full of the Holy Ghostand of faith.” These sevenwere ordainedby
laying on of the Apostles’hands; and the result of this arrangement was that
“the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalemgreatly;and a great
Company of the (Jewish)priests were obedient unto the faith.”
3. Of St. Stephen’s exertions in the Organizationand direction of the public
charity we hear nothing; although we may be sure that this was not neglected.
We are told, however, that he was “full of faith and power,” and that he “did
greatwonders and miracles among the people.” No details are given, but his
miracles must not be forgottenin our estimate of the causes ofhis success. His
chief scene oflabour seems to have been in the synagogue, orgroup of
synagogues, “ofthe Libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and of them
of Cilicia and of Asia.” The Libertines were Jews who had been taken
prisoners, reduced to slavery, then enfranchisedby the Roman general
Pompey. Many of them had recently been banished from Rome, and would
naturally have had a synagogue to themselves in Jerusalem. At leastone
synagogue wouldhave belongedto African Jews from Cyrene and
Alexandria; and two or three others to the Jews of Cilicia and Asia Minor.
These were a very numerous class, andamong them the future Apostle of the
Gentiles was at this date still reckonedan enthusiastic Pharisee. It was among
these Jews from abroad that Stephen opened what we should calla mission;
he had more points of contactwith these men of Greek speechand habits than
had the Twelve. He engagedin a series ofpublic disputations; and although he
was almostunbefriended, and representeda very unpopular cause, his
opponents “were not able to resistthe wisdom and the spirit with which he
spake.”
4. But the victory which his opponents could not hope to win by argument,
they hoped they might win by denunciation and clamour. They persuaded

6. some false witnesses to swearthat in their hearing Stephen had spoken
blasphemous words againstMosesand againstGod. They combined against
him the jealousyof the upper classes andthe prejudices of the lower;and they
brought him, on trial for blasphemy, before the highest Jewishcourt—the
Sanhedrin.
ii. Before the Sanhedrin
1. “And all that sat in the Council, fastening their eyes on him, saw his face as
it had been the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15). There is one question which we
all want to have answered, and it is this: How came Stephen to he thus self-
possessedbefore the frowning Sanhedrin—fearless before anexcited
multitude in his home-thrusts of truth, brave in the crisis of trial, forgiving at
the moment of death? Men are not born thus. As we mentally put ourselves
into his circumstances, andtry to realize eachrapidly succeeding danger, our
hearts fail within us, and we feelthat no physical courage, no hardihood of
mere natural bravery, could sustainus here. There must have come some
supernatural change upon him, to have induced at once this undaunted
fortitude and this superhuman tenderness of love. Was it a miraculous
bestowment, limited in its conferment to the first ages, andto some specially
selectedand speciallymissionedmen? or is it within the reachand enjoyment
of believers in Jesus now? These are questions which are interesting to us, as
we dwell upon the developments of holy characterpresentedin the life of
Stephen.
2. How are we to accountfor this boldness? The secretof all the heroism and
of all the loveliness is in the delineationof the man. “He was a man full of faith
and of the Holy Ghost.” He did not leap into this perfect balance of character
in a moment—springing at once full-armed, as Minerva is fabled to have
sprung from the brain of Jupiter. There was no mystic charm by which the
graces clusteredround him; he had no mystery of soul-growth—no patented

7. elixir of immortal ripening which was denied to others less favoured. He had
faith; it was the gift of Godto him, just as it is the gift of God to us. He had the
indwelling of the Holy Ghost;which has been purchased for us in like manner
by the blood-shedding of our Surety. The only difference betweenourselves
and him is that he claimed the blessings with a holier boldness, and lived
habitually in the nearer communion with God. There is no bar to our own
entrance into this fulness of privilege; the treasury is not exhausted; the
Benefactoris not less willing to bestow. His ear listens to any prayer for the
increase offaith. He waits to shed forth the richer baptisms of the Holy Ghost
upon all those who ask Him for the boon.
3. It is not then in physical endowment that we are to find the source of this
moral courage. Some ofthe men who could lead the van of armies in the
field—who could fix the scaling-ladderagainstthe parapet and be the first to
scale the wall—who could climb the rugged slope that was sweptby the
bristling cannon—have displayed the most utter cowardice whena moral duty
has been difficult, when some untoward disasterhas surprised them, or when
they have had to maintain the right againstthe laugh of the scorner.
Sometimes, indeed, those who have been physically timid, and who have
shuddered sensitivelyat the first imagined danger, have been uplifted into the
bravery of confessorshipwhen the agonizing trial came.
The Sisterknew that the whole place was given over to evil purposes. She
knew that no help would be given from inside. In case ofviolence it would be
necessaryfor her to descendto the streets. She was not afraid, but she was
conscious ofapprehensionand a vague alarm. However many policemen may
walk the streets outside, it is no easymatter for a woman to face one of these
pandars in the seclusionofhis own establishment. But SisterMildred is a
saint, and there is no courage like the courage of the saint.1 [Note: Harold
Begbie, In the Hand of the Potter, 188.]

8. It is related that in the Duke of Wellington’s campaigns two officers were once
despatchedupon a Service of considerable danger. As they were riding
together, the one observedthe other to be greatlyagitated, with blanched
cheek and quivering lip, and limbs shakenas with a paralysis of mortal fear.
Reining his steed upon its haunches, he haughtily addressedhim, “Why, you
are afraid.” “I am,” was the reply; “and if you were half as much afraid as I
am, you would relinquish the duty altogether.” Withoutwasting another word
upon his ignoble companion, the officergallopedback to headquarters, and
complained bitterly that he had been ordered to march in the companionship
of a coward. “Off, sir, to your duty,” was the commander’s sharp reply, “or
the cowardwill have done the business before you get there.”1 [Note:W. M.
Punshon.]
II
Stephen’s Prayers
1. The two dying prayers of Stephen carry us back in thought to the prayers
of our Lord at His crucifixion.
(1) “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”—Weare told in the sacred
narrative that St. Stephen “kneeleddown” while they were in the actof
stoning him. The picture fills us with amazement. It is so unlike what we
should have expected, that some have attempted to persuade us that this was
not a voluntary or deliberate actof the martyr. We are not, it is said, to
understand that it expresses the purpose of one who was resolved, despite all
the violence to which he was subjected, to spend his last moments in a posture
of calm resignationand prayer; that would have been next to impossible for
any human being to do under such circumstances.He had no alternative;
“anothercrashof stones brought him upon his knees.”But the Christian

9. consciencewillnot readily consentto have such a beautiful feature in the
scene explained away. It shows us the dying martyr gathering up his failing
strength and all the energyof his expiring life for one last, one crowning act of
homage to his Lord; and a recordof it Stands on the sacredpage, to teachus
what the greatestsaints have felt about the value of external forms or bodily
postures in expressing the worship that is due from the creature to the
Creator. Then let us hear his prayer: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”
What an echo it is of his Master’s dying words!—“Father, forgive them; for
they know not what they do.” Not the slightestthought of vengeance in the
prayer, but an unreserved entreaty that their sins may never be remembered
againstthem.
A generous prayer is never presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but
the petitioner is always, I believe, rewardedby some gracious Visitation.1
[Note:Robert Louis Stevenson, The Merry Men.]
I saw an angry crowd
Gatheredabout a youth, that loud
Were crying: Slay him, slay,
And stonedhim as he lay.
I saw him overborne by death,
That bowed him to the earth beneath:

10. Only he made his eyes
Gates to behold the skies,
To his high Lord his prayer outpouring,
Forgivenessfor his foes imploring:
Even in that pass his face
For pity making place.2 [Note:Dante, Purg. xv. 106–114, trans. by Dr.
Shadwell.]
(2) “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”—We need not dwell now upon the fact
that here we have a distinct instance of prayer to Jesus Christ, a distinct
recognition, in the early days of His Church, of the highestconceptionof His
person and nature, so that a dying man turns to Him, and commits his soul
into His hands. Passing this by, though not overlooking it, let us think of the
resemblance, and the difference, betweenthis entrusting of the spirit by
Stephen to his Lord, and the committing of His spirit to the Fatherby His
dying Son. Christ on the Cross speaksto God; Stephen, on his Calvary, speaks
to Jesus Christ. Christ, on the Cross, says, “Icommit.” Stephen says,
“Receive,” orrather, “Take.”The one phrase carries in it something of the
notion that our Lord died not because He must, but because He would; that
He was active in His death; that He chose to summon death to do its work
upon Him; that He “yielded up his spirit,” as one of the Evangelists has it,
pregnantly and significantly. But Stephen says, “Take!” as knowing that it

11. must be his Lord’s powerthat should draw his spirit out of the coilof horror
around him. So the one dying word has strangelycompactedin it authority
and Submission; and the other dying word is the word of a simple waiting
servant.
2. How was Stephenstrengthened for the trial? What were the manifestations
granted to him, and which sustainedhim through the bitterness of
martyrdom? You find these recordedin the preceding part of the chapter:
“But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, lookedup stedfastlyinto heaven, and
saw the glory of God, and Jesus Standing on the right hand of God.” We may
not pretend to explain what Stephen saw in seeing the glory of God. We can
only suppose that, as with St. Paul caughtup to the third heaven, it was not
what human speechcould express, for it is very observable that when he
asserts whathe saw he makes no mention of “the glory of God,” but confines
himself to the opening of the heavens, and the manifestation of Christ at the
right hand of the Father. It is not for us to speculate where the martyr is
silent. We canonly suppose that “the glory of God” that was shown to him
was some specialdisplay of the Divine presence calculatedto reassure the
sufferer.
To stretch my hand and touch Him,
Though He be far away;
To raise my eyes and see Him
Through darkness as through day;

12. To lift my voice and call Him—
This is to pray!
To feel a hand extended
By One who standeth near;
To view the love that shineth
In eyes serene and clear;
To know that He is calling—
This is to hear!
3. The supreme thought which these prayers suggestis the great possibilities
that lie in faith in Christ. We see the soulof the suffering disciple leaning on
the Lord who had suffered. We see that the secretofstrength in all trials lies
in appealing to the love and power of the blessedJesus. In the death-struggle
St. Stephen had faith to hang upon his Lord, and his Lord bore him through
the agonies ofthat hour. This is what we are most likely to think of in reading
of the martyr’s death. But was this the greatestproofof St. Stephen’s faith?
Was his greatesttrial in this world? Did it not lie beyond this world? The life
was nearly crushed out of him. The pains of death were Coming thick and fast
upon him. But was death the end? What was awaiting him after death? He

13. was entering on the unseenstate. All was dim, unknown, untried before him.
And if his spirit passedaway, to whom would it go? It must return to God,
who gave it. It must go before God, meet Him, and give up its accountto Him.
It is such thoughts as these which add so wonderful a powerand force to those
words, “Lord Jesus, receivemy spirit.” I know not where I go; all nature
seems to open out into vast untried depths beneath me; take me, hold me in
Thine everlasting arms; I am safe with Thee. I know not who may attack me,
how the powers of evil may gather againstme; take me, guard me. I know not
how to meet the Judgment. I know only that I have been dear to Thee in this
life. Thou hast loved me, died for me, kept me. Take me now; to Thee do I
commit my cause;“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Here is indeed a strange,
calm faith in the powerof our blessedLord to keepand bless the soul in that
unseen world. One who could speak thus must have felt that our Lord had
conquered in that world, as in this, and emptied it of its horrors. He looked, as
it were, through the mist and darkness that was gathering around him; he
pierced with the steady gaze of his mind through the veil that was drawn
betweenhim and the state on which he was entering, and there he saw his
Lord waiting and ready for him. Or rather, with a surer faith, though he did
not see, he felt certainthat the Lord was King in that realm of the departed,
and he was ready to pass into it, because he knew that the Lord had powerto
keepand uphold him there. It may be that we shall never know the full force
of those calm words of St. Stephen till we are on the edge of that unseenworld
ourselves.
4. His faith was faith in Christ, in the crucified Lord Jesus Christ. Observe the
words of the prayers. While they stoned Stephen St. Luke says, according to
the Authorized Version, that he was “calling upon God.” In the original text
the Personupon whom he called is not named. The Authorized Version has
supplied what seemedto be wanting, “God,” intimating that it was the First
Personof the Trinity. But the last Revisers have substituted “The Lord,” to
indicate that it was the SecondPerson:and this is certainly more in
accordancewith the prayer that follows:“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

14. The Revisers were anticipatedin their interpretation by Bishop Cosin, who, in
view of perpetuating anothercharacteristic feature of St. Stephen’s
martyrdom, has addressedhis Collectto God the Son. With very rare
exceptions (there are three others only in our Prayer Book)Liturgical Collects
have always been addressedto the Father, because they form part of an office
in which the Son joins with the Church in presenting to the Father the
Memorialof 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 reasonthat certain of the Early Councils directed that “whenwe are
officiating at the altar, prayer should always be addressedto the Father.”1
[Note:H. M. Luckock.]
5. And now, one greatlessonrises out of all that has been said. If God has
given us but little clearknowledge ofthe state of the departed, if we have been
obliged to guess atwhat passesin that State, and are not able to speak with
absolute certainty, one thing at leastis clearand certain. Every hope of the
soul as it passes from the body centres in our blessedLord. 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 lastmoment, “Lord Jesus, receivemy 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;

15. Give all thy substance for His Love, and be
Beatifiedpast earth’s experience.
Serve Him in bonds, until He set thee free;
Serve Him in dust, until He lift thee thence;
Till death be swallowedup in victory
When the greattrumpet sounds to bid thee hence.
Shall setting day win day that will not set?
Poorprice wert thou to spend thyself for Christ,
Had not His wealth thy poverty sufficed:
Yet since He makes His garden of thy clod,
Waterthy lily, rose, or violet,
And offer up thy sweetnessunto God.1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti.]

16. III
Stephen’s Death
1. “Theystoned Stephen.” Our ordinary English idea of the manner of the
Jewishpunishment of stoning is a very inadequate and mistaken one. It did
not consistmerely in a miscellaneous rabble throwing stones atthe criminal,
but there was a solemnand appointed method of execution which is preserved
for us in detail in the Rabbinical books. And from it we gatherthat the modus
operandi was this. The blasphemer was takento a certainprecipitous rock,
the height of which was prescribedas being equal to that of two men. The
witnesses by whose testimony he had been condemned had to casthim over,
and if he survived the fall it was their task to roll upon him a greatstone, of
which the weight is prescribedin 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 lastenemy which these words express!When men court slumber, they
banish from their hearts all causesofanxiety, 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 awayfrom them all that will have a
tendency to defeat, or to postpone the objectafter which they aim. But
Stephen fell asleepunder very different circumstances from these. Brutal
oaths, and frantic yells, and curses loud and deep, were the lullaby which sang
him to his dreamless slumbers; and while all were agitatedand tumultuous
around him,
Meek as an infant to its mother’s breast,

17. 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.
The image of sleepas a euphemism for death is no peculiar property of
Christianity, but the ideas that it suggeststo the Christian consciousnessare
the peculiar property of Christianity. Any of you that everwere in the Vatican
will remember how you go down corridors with Paganmarbles on that side
and Christian ones on this. Against one wall, in long rows, stand the sad
memorials, eachof which has the despairing ending, “Farewell, farewell, for
ever farewell.” But on the other side there are carved no goddessesof
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 sleepis eternal; to the Christian that sleepis as sure
of a waking as is the sleepof the body. The one affects the whole man; the
Christian sleep affects only the body and the connexion with the outer world.1
[Note:A. Maclaren, LastSheaves, 248.]
There is none other thing expressed,
But long disquiet mergedin rest.
“He fell asleep.” Repose, safety, restoration—these are the ideas of comfort
which are held in the expressionof the text. Take them, and rejoice in the
majestic hopes which they inspire. Christ has died. He, dying, drew the sting
from death; and, properly speaking, there has been no death of a believer

18. since that day. What says the Scripture? “He that believeth on Jesus, though
he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoeverliveth and believeth in him shall
never die.” What fulness of consolationto those who are mourning for
others—to those who are dying themselves!With the banner of this hope in
hand, the believer may return with a full heart from the grave of his best
beloved, “giving thanks unto the Fatherwhich hath made us meet to be
partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light,” and may march calmly
down to the meeting of his own mortal foe.2 [Note:W. M. Punshon.]
Sleep, little flower, whose petals fade and fall
Over the sunless ground;
Ring no more peals of perfume on the air—
Sleeplong and sound.
Sleep—sleep.
Sleep, summer wind, whose breathing grows more faint
As night draws slowly nigh;
Cease thy sweetchanting in the cloistralwoods

19. And seemto die.
Sleep—sleep.
Sleep, thou greatOcean, whose wild waters sink
Under the setting sun;
Hush the loud music of thy warring waves
Till night is done.
Sleep—sleep.
Sleep, thou tired heart, whose mountain pulses droop
Within the Valley cold:
On pains and pleasures, fears andhopes of life,
Let go thine hold.
Sleep—sleep.

20. Sleep, for ’tis only sleep, and there shall be
New life for all, at day;
So sleep, sleepall, until the restful night
Has passedaway.
Sleep—sleep.1 [Note:S. J. Stone, Lullaby of Life.]
IV
The Resultof Stephen’s Martyrdom
Such was the first martyrdom. How soondid the martyr’s blood become the
seedof the Church! He had met his death for declaring the universality of
God’s Kingdom, that Christianity was destined to spreadthe blessing of
salvationfar beyond the Jewishrace, evenover the whole world; and his
dying prayer was answeredby the conversionof one, who, as the Apostle of
the Gentiles, helped most to preach the Gospelto “every creature which is
under heaven.” St. Augustine said, “If Stephen had not prayed, Paul would
never have been given to the Church” (Sermo ccclxxxii., De sancto Stephano).
It is true the answerwas delayed. There are some, however, who believe that
the effectwas immediate, and that the wild fury of the persecutor, which
broke out with such violence, was only a desperate attempt to stifle the
convictions which arose in his mind. Painters have caught up this idea and

21. expressedit by the strongestcontrastbetweenSaul’s face and the faces of the
others who witnessedthe end. It may have been so;it may be that a foregleam
of the coming dawn did touch him even then; but whether it came at once or
only in after days, no one will think of denying that there is an eternallink
betweenthe martyr’s prayer and the Apostle’s conversion.
Why was it that in the ten years after Livingstone’s death, Africa made
greateradvancementthan in the previous ten centuries? All the world knows
that it was through the vicarious suffering of one of Scotland’s noblestheroes.
Why is Italy cleansedof the plagues that devastatedher cities a hundred years
ago? BecauseJohnHoward sailedin an infected ship from Constantinople to
Venice, that he might be put into a lazaretto and find out the clue to that
awful mystery of the plague and stay its power. How has it come that the
merchants of our westernports send ships laden with implements for the
fields and conveniences forthe house into the South Sea Islands? Because
such men as Patteson, the pure-hearted gallant boy of Eton College,gave up
every prospectin England to labour amid the Pacific savagesandtwice
plunged into the waters of the coralreefs, amid sharks and devil-fish and
stinging jellies, to escape the flight of poisonedarrows of which the slightest
graze meant horrible death, and in that high service died by the clubs of the
very savageswhomhe had often risked his life to save—the memory of whose
life did so smite the consciencesofhis murderers that they laid “the young
martyr in an open boat, to float awayover the bright blue waves, with his
hands crossed, as if in prayer, and a palm branch on his breast.” And there, in
the white light, he lies now, immortal for ever.1 [Note:N. D. Hillis, The
Investment of Influence, 79.]
A patient minister was he,

22. A simple saint of God,
A soul that might no longerbe
Bound to this earthly clod;
A spirit that sought for the purer breath
Of the land of life, through the gates ofdeath,—
The path all martyrs trod,
That lies through the night of a speechless shame,
And leads to the light of a deathless fame.
Stoned to his death by those for whom
His soul’s last prayer was sped
Unto his God, “Avert the doom
That gathers o’er their head”;

23. And the stones that bruised him and Struck him down
Shone dazzling gems in his victor’s crown;
And as his spirit fled,
A light from the land where the angels dwell
Lingered saintly and grand where the martyr fell.
’Tis but a history in these days—
The cruel and final test
Of those who went life’s ruggedways
For faith they had confessed;
Yet the God who spake to the saints of old
Lacks not to-day in His mystic fold

24. Doers of His behest:
There are servants of men and saints of God
Who will follow, as then, where the Mastertrod.1 [Note: P. C. Ainsworth,
Poems and Sonnets, 45.]
Faithful unto Death
BIBLEHUB RESOURCES
Noble Dying Cries
Acts 7:59, 60
R. Tuck
Some accountmay be given of the mode of securing death by stoning. The
practice is first heard of in the deserts of stony Arabia, this mode having been
suggestedprobably by the abundance of stones, and the fatal effectwith which
they were often employed in broils among the people. Originally the people
merely pelted their victim, but something like form and rule were
subsequently introduced. A crier marched before the man appointed to die,
proclaiming his offence. He was takenoutside the town. The witnesses against
him were required to castthe first stones. But the victim was usually placed
on an elevation, and thrown clown from this, before he was crushed with the
stones flung upon him. For full details, see Kitto's 'Bibl. Illus.,' 8:63. It was the
mode of execution usual for the crimes of blasphemy and idolatry (see

25. Deuteronomy 13:9, 10; Deuteronomy17:5-7). Stephen's dying cries should be
compared with those of our Lord Jesus Christ, in order that the measures in
which Stephen caught the Christly spirit may be realized.
I. THE PRESENCEOF CHRIST TO HIS SPIRIT MADE STEPHEN DEAD
TO THE PRESENCEOF HIS FOES. In this we learn the secretofour
elevationabove the world, care, suffering, or trouble. It lies in our being so
full of" Christ and things Divine "as to have no room for them. Our hearts
may be so full of God's presence, andso restful in the assurance ofhis
acceptanceand smile, that we may say, "None of these things move me." "If
God be for us, who canbe againstus? 'One of the greatestpracticalendeavors
of life should be to bring and to keepChrist closelynearto heart and thought.
If outward circumstances reachto such an extremity as in the case ofStephen,
we shall then say with him, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."
II. To HIM WHO WAS SO NEAR, STEPHEN PRAYED FOR HIMSELF.
Observe that:
1. His prayer indicates submissive acceptanceofthe factthat he must die. He
does not ask for any bodily deliverance, any miracle-working for his personal
release. Compare in this our Lord's submission when his life came to its close.
2. His prayer indicates superiority to bodily suffering. There is no petition for
relief from pain or even for speedy release.Exactlywhat was God's will for
him he would bear right through. Compare our Lord's triumph in
Gethsemane, and his going forth to bodily sufferings calm and trustful.
Stephen fulfilled his Lord's words that his disciples should drink of the "cup"
that he drank of.
3. And his prayer indicates supreme concern, but absolute confidence
concerning his soul and his future. There is no tone of questioning; with full
faith in the Lord Jesus, he commends his spirit to him - a lastand
unquestioning testimony to his faith in the living, spiritual Christ.
III. To HIM IN WHOM HE HAD SUCH CONFIDENCEHE PRAYED FOR
HIS FOES, Compare our Lord's words, "Father, forgive them; for they know
not what they do." In the older clays of political execution by the axe, the

26. headsman used to kneeland ask the forgiveness ofthe victim, before
proceeding to place his head upon the block. Stephenknew how blinded by
prejudice and false notions of religion his persecutors were, andhe gives a
beautiful illustration of heavenly, Divine charity in thus pleading for his very
murderers. One point should not be lost sight of. Even in this lastword of the
noble man he assertedhis characteristic truth once more. The Lord Jesus is
living, and the exalted Savior, for he controls the charging and the punishing
of sin. "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge " - an unmeaning prayer if he
had not fully believed that Jesus had power on earth to dealwith, to punish,
and to forgive sin. Close by showing the wondrous calmness and the exquisite
tenderness of the words of the narrative, "He fell asleep." We hearthe
howlings of the people, the whirr and smashof the stones, but amid it all and
"in the arms of Jesus,"the saint and hero and martyr softly "falls asleep" -
asleepto earth, waking to heavenand peace and the eternalsmile of the living
Christ, for whose sakehe died. - R.T.
Biblical Illustrator

27. And they stonedStephen.
Acts 7:59
The clearing showerof life
H. W. Beecher.
When mists have hung low over the hills, and the day has been dark with
intermittent showers, greatclouds hurry across the sky, and the rain comes
pouring down, then we look out and say, "This is the clearing-up shower."
And as the clouds part to let the blue sky reappear, we know that just behind
them are singing-birds and glittering dew-drops. So the Christian, on whom
chilling rains of sorrow have long fallen, when the lastsudden storm breaks
knows it is but the clearing-up shower. Justbehind it he hears the songs of
angels and sees the glories ofheaven.
(H. W. Beecher.)
Transfigured stones
K. Gerok.
The stones which the world lifts againstthe witnessesofChrist are changed
into —
I.MONUMENTSOF SHAME for the enemies of truth.
II.JEWELS IN THE CROWNS ofthe glorified martyrs.
III.THE SEED OF A NEW LIFE for the Church of Christ.
(K. Gerok.)
Calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit
Stephen's dying prayer

28. R. L. Dabney, D. D.
This seems to teachus —
I. THAT STEPHEN REGARDED JESUS CHRIST AS VERY GOD. There
are sundry places where this prime doctrine is not so much dogmatically
assertedas clearlyimplied. These are, in one aspect, evenmore satisfactory
than formal assertions, becauseso obviouslysincere expressions ofthe heart,
and show how this cardinal truth is interwoven with the believer's whole
experience. Our text in the Greek reads, "TheystonedStephen, invoking, and
saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." The intention of the evangelistwas to
state that Christ was the objectof his prayer. In every office of the Redeemer
the enlightened Christian feels that he could not properly rely on Him for
salvationunless He were very God. "It is because He is God, and there is none
else," that Isaiahinvites "allthe ends of the earth to look unto Him and be
saved." But in the hour of death especiallythe Christian needs a Saviour who
is no less than God. An angel could not sympathise with our trial, for he
cannot feelthe pangs of dissolution. A human friend cannot travel with us the
path through the dark valley. The God-man alone can sustain us; He has
survived it and returns triumphing to succourus, for He is God. Unless this
Divine Guide be with us, we must fight the battle with the last enemy alone
and unaided.
II. TO EXPECT AN IMMEDIATE ENTRANCEINTO THE PRESENCEOF
CHRIST. Stephen evidently did not expect that the grave would absorb his
spirit into a state of unconscious sleepuntil the final consummation; or that
any limbus, or purgatory, was to swallow him for a time in its fiery bosom.
His faith aspireddirectly to the arms of Christ, and to that blessedworld
where His glorified humanity now dwells. He manifestly regardedhis spirit as
separate from the body, and therefore, as true, independent substance. The
latter he relinquishes to the insults of his enemies, the former he commits to
Christ. If only we are in Christ by true faith, the grave will have naught to do
with that which is the true, conscious being, and no purgatorial fires after
death can be inflicted upon believers;for "Lazarus died and. was carried by
angels to Abraham's bosom." To the thief it was said, "This day thou shalt be

29. with Me in paradise." "To be absent from the body is to be present with the
Lord."
III. TO WHAT GUIDANCE THE CHRISTIAN MAY COMMIT HIS SOUL
DURING THE JOURNEYINTO THE WORLD OF SPIRITS. Heavenis as
truly a place as was paradise. When we first arrive there we shall be
disembodied spirits. But spirits have their locality. The clearerevidence,
however, that heavenis a literal place is that it contains the glorified bodies of
Enoch, of Elijah, of Christ, and of the saints who rose with their Redeemer.
But where is this place? In what quarter of this vast universe? When death
batters down the walls of the earthly tabernacle, whither shall the
dispossessedsoulset out? It knows not; it needs a skilful, powerful guide. But
more: it is a journey into a spiritual world; and this thought makes it awful to
the apprehensionof man. The presence ofone disembodied spirit in the
solitude of night would shake us with a thrill of dread. How, then, could we
endure to be launched out into the untried oceanof space, peopledby we
know not what mysterious beings? How could we be certainthat we might not
lose our way in the pathless vacancy, and wanderfor ever, a bewildered,
solitary rover amidst the wilderness of worlds? This journey into the
unknown must issue in our introduction to a scene whose awfulnovelties will
overpowerour faculties; for even the very thought of them when we dwell
upon it fills us with dreadful suspense. Truly will the trembling soul need
some one on whom to lean, some mighty, tender guardian, who will point the
way to the prepared mansions, and cheerand sustain its fainting courage.
That Guide is Christ; therefore let us say in dying, "Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit." It is a delightful belief to which the gospelgives most solid support,
that our Redeemeris accustomedto employ in this mission His holy angels.
"Are they not ministering spirits?" etc. When Lazarus died he was carriedby
angels to Abraham's bosom.
IV. THE ARMS OF CHRIST MAY BE LOOKED TO AS OUR FINAL
HOME. We are authorisedto say, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit"; not only
that Thou mayest sustainit in the pangs of dying, and guide it to its heavenly
home, but that it may dwell with Thee world without end. "Father, I will that
they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am," etc. Oh,
blessedresting-place!In Thy presence is fulness of joy: at Thy right hand are

30. pleasures for evermore. Let us live and die like believing Stephen, and our
spirits will be receivedwhere the God-man holds His regalcourt, to go out
thence no more for ever.
(R. L. Dabney, D. D.)
The close ofthe Christian life
W. Harris, D. D.
I. THERE IS A SPIRIT IN MAN DISTINCT FROM THE BODY. The body
is the habitation of the soul, and only the instrument by which it acts. This is
the frame of human nature, and agreeable to the original accountof its
formation. We find it representedas a principle of life (Genesis 2:7). The dust
of the earth was animated by a living soul. The dissolution of our constitution
is described by the wise man, agreeablyto this account(Ecclesiastes12:7). It is
principle of thought and reason, of understanding and choice (Job 20:2, 3; Job
32:8). It is representedas a principle both of natural and religious action:we
not only live and move, but worship Godin the spirit (John 4:24). It is
representedas a distinct thing from the body, and of another kind (Matthew
10:28;Matthew 24:39;2 Corinthians 4:16). And although we do not know the
precise nature of a spirit, or the manner of its union with the body, which is a
greatmystery in nature; as neither do we the substratum or abstractessence
of matter; yet we do know the essentialand distinguishing properties of them.
The soul is a thinking conscious principle, an intelligent agent, a principle of
life and action, which bears a near resemblance of Godthe Infinite Spirit, and
of angels, who are pure unbodied spirits.
II. AT DEATH THE SPIRIT WILL BE SEPARATED FROM THE BODY,
AND EXIST APART FROM IT. Though they are closelyunited to one
another in the present state, yet the bonds of union are not indissoluble. But
then as it is a vital principle, and all life and actionproceeds from the union of
soul and body; so the separationof the soul from the body is the death and
dissolution of it. It is destroying our present being and way of existing: the
body dies and returns to the dust when deserted of the living soul. This is

31. plainly implied here, when Stephen prays, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit";
not only that he had a spirit distinct from the body, but that the spirit was
now dislodging, and ready to depart from the body. It was to be then out of
the body. So the apostle says (2 Corinthians 5:1, 4; 2 Timothy 4:6). To the
same purpose St. Petersays (2 Peter 1:14, 15). The separationof soul and
body is properly the death of our present nature. This came into the world by
sin, and is the proper fruit of it. It is the sentence ofthe law executedupon the
breach of it (Genesis 2:17;Genesis 3:19). Our death is appointed by the Divine
will, though we know not the day of our death. Nature tends to a dissolution,
and gradually wears out, though no evil befall it; and it is liable to many
distempers, and many accidents, whichoften prove fatal, and hastena
separation,
III. THE LORD JESUS WILL RECEIVE THE DEPARTING SPIRITSOF
GOOD MEN. This was the matter of Stephen's payer. And we cannotsuppose
that he would have prayed in this manner, who was full of faith and of the
Holy Ghost, if the case hadbeen otherwise;if it did not belong to Him to
receive it, or He was not disposedto do it. This is a more distinct and
particular accountof the matter, and proper to the Christian revelation. In
the Old Testamentwe are only told that the spirit returns to God who gave it,
and who is the Father of spirits; but here we are told that the Lord Jesus
receives our departing spirits. It is through the Mediator, and by His
immediate agency, that the whole kingdom of providence and grace is now
administered in all the disposals oflife, and the issues ofdeath. But what is the
import of His receiving the departed spirits of goodmen?
1. The taking them under His protection and care, He is their Refuge and
Guide, to whom they fly, and whom they follow, when they go into a new and
unknown state. He preserves the nakedtrembling spirit by a guard of holy
angels from affrightment and amazement, from the terror and power of
envious spirits, who would gladly seize it as a prey, and distress and terrify it,
as the devil now goes up and down seeking whomhe may devour.
2. He conveys them to God, and to a state of blessedness.Whatthis state will
be we canhave no more clearconceptions than Scripture gives us, and what
arises from the natural notions of a spirit, and the essentialdifference between

32. goodand evil. That they are in a state of activity, and in a state of rest and
happiness, and vastly different from that of wickedspirits.
IV. CHRISTIANS SHOULD COMMENDTHEIR DEPARTING SPIRITS
TO CHRIST BY PRAYER. This was directly the case here, and is the form of
the expression, "LordJesus, receive my spirit." This prayer was directed to
Christ in His exalted state, standing at the right hand of God, and in the
quality of a Mediator, who ever lives to make intercessionfor us. But upon
what grounds may a dying Christian offer up such a prayer to Christ? With
what warrant and hope of success? Ianswer, upon goodgrounds and
sufficient security.
1. His great love to the spirits of men. Will He deny us anything when He
freely gave His life for us? Will He forsake them at last, and leave them
exposedin an unknown state, whom He has preserved all their lives, and
whereverthey have been in this?
2. His relation to them. He is their Lord and Saviour, their Head; they are His
subjects and servants, His members and friends, to whom He stands in a
specialrelation, and who is endearedto them by specialmarks of favour. And
He is concernedin the protection and care of His faithful servants, as a prince
is concernedto secure his subjects.
3. His ability and powerto take care of them (Hebrews 7:27).
4. His engagements andundertaking. He who by the grace ofGod tasteddeath
for every man, was to bring the many sons unto glory (Hebrews 2:9, 10). And
He would fail in His trust if any of them miscarried, and came short of the
glory of God. Besides, He is engagedby His promise and faithfulness to
preserve and secure them (John 10:28).Inferences:
1. That the soul does not die with the body, or sleepin the grave.
2. We should be often thinking and preparing for a time and state of
separation.
3. The peculiar happiness of goodmen, and the greatdifference betweenthem
and others.

33. 4. We learn what is the proper close ofa Christian's life. When we have
finished our course ofservice, and done the work of life, what remains but the
lifting up of our souls to God, and commending them into His hands?
(W. Harris, D. D.)
Prayer in death
Life of Dr. Livingstone.
Passing inside, they lookedtowardthe bed; Dr. Livingstone was not lying on
it, but appeared to be engagedin prayer, and they instinctively drew
backwardfor the instant. Pointing to him, Majwara said, "WhenI lay down
he was just as he is now, and it is because I find that he does not move that I
fear he is dead." They askedthe lad how long he had slept. Majwara saidhe
could not tell, but he was sure that it was some considerable time. The men
drew nearer. A candle stuck by its own wax to the top of the box shed a light
sufficient for them to see his form. Dr. Livingstone was kneeling by the side of
his bed, his body stretchedforward, his head buried in his hands upon the
pillow. For a minute they watchedhim; he did not stir, there was no sign of
breathing; then one of them — Matthew — advancedsoftly to him, and
placed his hands to his cheeks. It was sufficient; life had been extinct for some
time, and the body was almostcold: Livingstone was dead.
(Life of Dr. Livingstone.)
The martyrdom of Wishart
Speaking of the martyrdom of Wishart, in 1546, Mr. Froude writes: "In
anticipation of an attempt at rescue, the castle guns were loaded, and the port-
fires lighted. After this, Mr. Wishart was led to the fire, with a rope about his
neck and a chain of iron about his middle and when he came to the fire, he sat
down upon his knees and rose up again, and thrice he said these words:'O
Thou Saviour of the world, have mercy on me. Father of heaven, I commend
my spirit into Thy holy hands.' He next spoke a few words to the people; and

34. then, lastof all, the hangman that was his tormentor fell upon his knees and
said, 'Sir, I pray you forgive me, for I am not guilty of your death'; to whom
he answered, 'Come hither to me,' and he kissedhis cheek and said, 'Lo, here
is a tokenthat I forgive thee. Do thy office.' And then he was put upon a
gibbet and hanged, and then burned to powder."
Fellowshipin death
H. T. Miller.
"Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit" (Luke 23. 46). "Lord Jesus,
receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59).
I. FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING.
II. FELLOWSHIP OF VISION.
III. FELLOWSHIP OF PITY. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do." "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge."
IV. FELLOWSHIP OF ATTITUDE. With hounding might and "loud" voices
the lastenemy was confrontedand destroyed.
V. FELLOWSHIP OF BURIAL. Devoutduty to the dead. This is the work of
the living. Let us bury our friends reverently. They have an undying history.
Let us bury our friends sympathetically. They ask a brother's interest. Let us
bury our friends hopefully. They have a lasting destiny.Lessons:
1. This precious coincidence is surely not accidental.
2. Here is a proof of the true humanity of Jesus Christ. We wonder less that
Stephen was like the Saviour than that the Saviour was so like Stephen.
3. How completelyone are the Lord and His people! "Thoushalt be with Me."
With Him heaven is not only near, but accessible.
4. Fellowshipwith Jesus Christ in life is the surestguarantee of His presence
in death.

35. (H. T. Miller.)
The lastrequest
J. Parker, D. D.
Human history is a recordof the thoughts and exploits of human spirits.
Wherever we touch the history of spirit, we find it invested with the gravest
responsibilities. Whereverwe look, we behold memorials of spirit-power. I am
anxious to impress you with the fact that you are spirits, and that your history
here will determine all your conditions and relationships in the endless ages!
I. MAN'S SUPREME CONCERN SHOULD BE THE WELL-BEING OF HIS
SPIRIT. Becauseyour spirit —
1. Is immortal. Only eternity can satisfyit. It claims the theatre of infinitude!
Yet many occupy more time in the adornment of the flesh, which is to turn to
corruption, than in the culture of the spirit which no Lomb can confine! You
pity the imbecility of the man who estimates the casketmore highly than the
gem, but your madness is infinitely more to be deplored if you bestow more
care on the body than on the soul.
2. Can undergo no posthumous change, whereas the body may. There is no
repentance in the grave. "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still," etc. Moral
change after death is an eternalimpossibility. Not so with the body; Christ
will change our vile body, and make it like unto His own glorious body.
3. Has been Divinely purchased. "Ye are not redeemedwith corruptible
things," etc.
4. Is capable of endless progress. There is no point at which the spirit must
pause and say, "It is enough!"
II. MAN IS APPROACHING A CRISIS IN WHICH HE WILL REALISE
THE IMPORTANCE OF HIS SPIRIT. Stephen was in that crisis when
uttering this entreaty. Amid the commotion of the world — the strife for
bread and the battle for position — men are apt to overlook the moral claims

36. of their nature. But remember that there hastens a time in which you must
give audience to the imperious demands of your spiritual nature! I have
visited the prodigal in the chamber of death; and he who was wont to scorn
the appeals of Christianity — who had drunk at the broken cisterns of crime
— even he has turned upon me his glazed eye, and stammered out with dying
breath, "My soul!" I have stoodat the bedside of the departing rich; and he
whose aim it was to build around himself a golden wall— who consideredno
music so entrancing as that produced by the friction of coin — even he has
turned his anxious gaze to me, and, with stifled utterance, has said, "My soul,
my soul!" I have watchedthe votary of fashion — whose ambition it was to
bedeck his mortal frame, whose godwas elegance, andwhose altar the mirror
— and even he has wept and cried, "My nakedsoul, my naked soul!" I have
stoodin the chamber where the goodman has met his fate: has he displayed
anxiety or given way to despair? Nay, he exclaims, "Into Thy hands I
commend my spirit!" Now, seeing that the approach of this momentous hour
is an infallible certainty, two duties devolve upon us.
1. To employ the best means for meeting its requirements. What are those
means? Those who know the deceitfulness of riches and the cares of this
world, emphatically testify that they cannotmeet the requirements of the
spiritual constitution. Faith in Christ and obedience to His will constitute the
true preparation for all the exigencies oflife, and the true antidote for the
bitterness of death!
2. To conduct the business of life with a view to its solemnities. "How will this
affectmy dying hour?" is an inquiry too seldom propounded, but, when
conscientiouslyanswered, must produce a powerfully restraining influence on
man's thoughts and habitudes. Few men connectthe present with the future,
or reflect that out of the present the future gathers its materials and moulds
its character.
III. MAN KNOWS OF ONE BEING ONLY TO WHOM HE CAN SAFELY
ENTRUST HIS SPRIT — the "Lord Jesus."This prayer implies —
1. Christ's sovereigntyof the spiritual empire. Whom does Stephen see? There
are ten thousand times ten thousand glorified intelligences in the heavento

37. which he directs his eyes:but the triumphant martyr sees "no man but Jesus
only." All souls are Christ's. All the spirits of the just made perfect are loyal
to His crown.
2. Christ's profound interest in the well-being of faithful spirits. He said that
He went to "prepare a place" for His people, and that where He was, there
they should be also. Now one of His people proves this.
3. Christ's personalcontactwith departed Christian spirits. Stephen
acknowledgesno intermediate state; looking from earth, his eye beholds no
objectuntil it alights on the Son of Man. Stephen's creedwas — "absentfrom
the body, present with the Lord."
4. Christ's unchanging relationship to human spirits. Lord Jesus was the
name by which Christ was knownon earth. How He was designatedin the
distant ages ofeternity none can tell! But when He uncrowned Himself He
assumedthe name of Jesus, for He came to save His people from their sins!
And now that He has returned to His celestialgloryHe has not abandoned the
name.
IV. MAN ALONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ETERNALCONDITION
OF HIS SOUL. You make your own heavenor hell, not by the final actof life,
but by life itself. Your spirit is now undergoing education. Two results ought
to be produced by your trials.
1. They should discipline your spirit; bring it into harmony with the Divine
will, by curbing passion, checking error, rebuking pride.
2. They should develop the capabilities of your spirit. Trials may do this, by
throwing you back on great principles. But for trial, we should never know
our powers of endurance. Trial brings out the majesty of moral character.
(J. Parker, D. D.)
Prayer in death
Homiletic Review.

38. A Christian should die praying. Other men die in a way fitting their lives. The
ruling passionof life is strong in death. Julius Caesardied adjusting his robes,
that he might fall gracefully; Augustus died in a compliment to Livia, his wife;
Tiberius in dissimulations; Vespasianin jest. The infidel, Hume, died with
pitiful jokes about Charon and his boat; Rousseauwith boasting;Voltaire
with mingled imprecations and supplications; Paine with shrieks of agonising
remorse;multitudes die with sullenness, others with blasphemies faltering on
their tongues. But the Christian should die praying; for "Prayeris the
Christian's vital breath," etc. "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit! " This is the
prayer of faith, commending the immortal spirit to the covenantcare of Jesus.
(Homiletic Review.)
The sold
D. Thomas, D. D.
From this prayer we infer —
I. THAT MAN'S SOUL SURVIVES CORPOREALDEATH. This was now a
matter of consciousnesswithStephen. He had no doubt about it, and hence he
prays Jesus to take it. This is with all men rather a matter of feeling than
argument. The Bible not only addressesthis feeling, but ministers to its
growth.
II. THAT IN DEATH THE IMPORTANCE OF MAN'S SOUL IS
ESPECIALLY FELT. The "spirit" was now everything to Stephen. And so it
is to all dying men. Deathends all material interests and relations, and the
soul grows more and more conscious ofitself as it feels its approachto the
world of spirits.
III. THAT THE WELL-BEING OF THE SOUL CONSISTS IN ITS
DEDICATION TO JESUS. "Receive my spirit." What does this mean?
1. Notthe giving up of our personality. Such pantheism is absurd.
2. Notthe surrender of our free agency.

39. 3. But the placing of its powers entirely at Christ's service, and its destiny
entirely at His disposal. This implies, of course, strong faith in the kindness
and powerof Jesus.
IV. THAT THIS DEDICATION OF THE SOUL TO JESUS IS THE ONE
GREAT THOUGHT OF THE EARNEST SAINT. It is the beginning and end
of religion, or rather the very essenceofit. The first breath, and every
subsequent respiration, of piety is, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."
(D. Thomas, D. D.)
St
R. Paisley.
Stephen is not a prodigy. He is aa example; he is a Christian; he is a believer,
nothing more; nothing more than all of us would become and be this day if we
were followers of his faith.
I. HE DIED IN CHARITY.
II. HE DIED AS A TRUE MARTYR, CONDEMNINGTHE WORLD,
REARING THE CROSS OF CHRIST. His defence is no apology, as if he were
pleading for life, or deprecating either death or their displeasure. Thus in
Christ's spirit did he go forth, faking up his cross, andconfronting all that
was not of God in the world and in the Church.
III. HE DIED CONTENDING AS A TRUE MARTYR FOR THE COMMON,
OR CATHOLIC, FAITH. His was no sectarianstand, or fight. What was the
Christianity for which he pleaded, and for Which he was ready to sacrifice his
life againsttheir dead form of godliness, andconventional faith, and mere
Judaism? It was a Christianity that revealedthe way of accessto this living
God, and admission to this communion in Jesus Christ; a Christianity that
revealedthat new and better covenantin which these unspeakable gifts of
grace were now published as man's birthright, in the faith of which he became
alive unto God, the faith of which was eternallife.

40. IV. HE DIED, AS HE HAD LIVED, BY FAITH. That opened his eyes to "see
the heavens opened, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God." That made
his face to the spectators in the council "as the face of an angel." The Holy
Ghostwrought in him visibly. God thus sealedHis martyr's ministry by a
tokenwhich even his murderers could not deny, and said, as audibly as by a
voice from heaven, "Welldone, goodand faithful servant, enter thou into the
joy of thy Lord." Stephen-like, men in general, Christians and others, die as
they live.
1. There are, it is evident, few deathbeds like Stephen's. Those who are
familiar with the history of the Church in ancient times could cite many a
parallel to Stephen among the glorious company of its martyrs and confessors.
Nor are modern biographies without instances corresponding or similar. But
what are these, or the greaternumber still of unrecorded triumphs over death
and suffering, to the multitudes that are different, to the myriads that furnish
a contrastrather than a counterpart? To how few is death without a sting, a
conquered enemy!
2. There are, perhaps, as few lives like Stephen's as there are deathbeds like
his. What is the value of a deathbed testimony, even of triumph like Stephen's,
if what has gone before has either ill corresponded, orhas contradicted? Look
at family life, and sociallife, and Church communion among us, as compared
with the fellowshipof Stephen's day (Acts 2:46, 47). We shall then cease to
wonder that there are few deathbeds like Stephen's. Stephen's was but the
appropriate close ofa consistentlife.
3. The spirit, the faith of the Church certainly now is not Stephen's, nor like
those of the Church of Stephen's day. How many fail to claim the fulness of
the Holy Ghost, to walk worthily of their vocationby living in the faith of this
vocation?
4. Hence the Church's weakness — want of faith like Stephen's; want of the
Holy Ghost. Not a withholding on God's part of grace, orof the Spirit, but a
want of response, orreciprocalactionon ours. We are not straitened in Him,
but in ourselves.
(R. Paisley.)

41. A watchwordfor life and death
J. Parker, D. D.
(Text and Psalm31:5; Luke 23:1. 46.)
1. David said in his lifetime, "Into Thy hand I commit my spirit." In the hour
of torture and dissolution Christ and His servant used almost the same
expression. It is not, then, necessarilya dying speech. It is as appropriate to
youth as to old age, to the brightness of life as to the shadow of death.
2. The greatestconcernof man should be about his spirit. His clothes wear
out; his house crumbles away;his body must return to dust: it is in his spirit
alone that man finds the supreme possibilities of his being. Care for the spirit
involves every other care. Regardthe words as supplying —
I. THE TRUE WATCHWORD FOR LIFE. Life needs a watchword. Our
energies, purposes, hopes, shouldbe gatheredround some living and
controlling centre. We stray far from the right line when we take ourselves
into our own keeping. When we commit our spirit into the hand of God, three
results accrue.
1. We approach the duties of life through a series ofthe most elevating
considerations.
(1)We are not our own.
(2)We are parts of a great system.
(3)We are servants, not masters.
(4)The things round about us are beneath our serious notice, except for
momentary convenience orinstruction.
2. We acceptthe trials of life with the most hopeful patience. They are —
(1)Disciplinary.
(2)Under control.

42. (3)Needful.
3. We recognise the mercies of life with joyful gratitude. The name of God is
on the smallestof them (Psalm 31:7, 8, 19). To the atheist the morning is but a
lamp to be turned to convenience;to the Christian it is the shining of the face
of God. All things are ours if the spirit be Christ's. What is your life's
watchword? Have you one? What is it? Self-enrichment? Pleasure?The one
true watchwordis, "Into Thy hands I commit my spirit," my ease, my
controversies,disappointments, whole discipline and destiny.
II. THE TRUE WATCHWORD FOR DEATH. If a living man requires a
watchword, how much more the man who is dying! How strange is the
country to which he is moving; how dark the path along which he is
travelling; how short a way canhis friends accompanyhim! All this, so well
understood by us all, makes death very solemn. This watchword, spokenby
Jesus and Stephen, shows —
1. Their belief in a state of being at present invisible. Was Christ likely to be
deceived? ReadHis life; study the characterof His thinking; acquaint
yourselves with the usual tone of His teaching; and then say whether He was
likely to die with a lie in His mouth. And Stephen — what had he to gain if no
world lay beyond the horizon of the present and invisible? Jesus and Stephen,
then, must at leastbe credited with speak, ing their deepestpersonal
convictions. It is something to us to show who have believed this doctrine.
2. Their assurance ofthe limitations of human malice. The spirit was quite
free. Evil ones cannot touch the Divine side of human nature.Conclusion:
1. When the spirit is fit for the presence of God, there is no fear of death.
2. All who die in the faith are present with the Lord.
3. Jesus Himself knows whatit is to pass through the valley of the shadow of
death.
4. The prayer for entrance among the blest may come too late.We have no
authority for the encouragementof a death-bed repentance. It is but poor
prayer that is forcedfrom a coward's lips.

43. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The dying testimony of Stephen
R. P. Buddicom, M. A.
I. THE PRAYER OF STEPHEN
1. Stephen expectedan immediate transfer of his soul, in the full possessionof
is powers and consciousness,from a state of earthly to a state of heavenly
being. He understood its high relation to the Father of spirits; and expected
from Him protection and provision for its unembodied existence.
2. The prayer of Stephen contained a plain, positive acknowledgmentofthe
Saviour's proper Deity, as one with the Father, over all, God blessedfor ever.
II. THE CIRCUMSTANCESIN WHICH THE PRAYER OF STEPHEN
WAS OFFERED.
1. Saint Stephen was, beyond all controversy, a man of uprightness and
integrity.
2. Will it be answered, "The integrity of Stephen remains unimpeached: he
must, however, be ranked among those every-day characters, whose
intellectual weakness is in some degree retrieved by the uprightness of their
principles?" Such an apologywill hardly serve the turn of those who impugn
or deny the Divinity of our blessedLord. For Stephen was a wise man, no less
than a man of moral honestyand integrity. The knowledge andintellect of
Jerusalemdoubtless sat upon the seats of the Sanhedrin: yet they were cut to
the heart with what they heard him declare, and could only answer"by
gnashing upon him with their teeth." Now, it is not the part of wisdomto
brave scorn, mockery, and death for an opinion unfounded in truth. Even
Erasmus, one of the most amiable and learned men of modern times, who
lived when the torch of the Reformationfirst shed its glorious light upon the
benighted Church of Christ, confessedthat, though he should know the truth
to be on his side, be had not courage to become a martyr in its behalf. Was it,
then, for one of Stephen's wisdomfalsely to ascribe Godheadto Jesus Christ,

44. when his life was endangeredby the assertion, "Behold, I see the heavens
opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God"?
3. I add, however, that Stephen was a partaker of knowledge more than
human: he was a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost. "He had an unction
from the Holy One, and he knew all things." No man can saythat Jesus is the
Christ, but by the Holy Ghost.
4. Once more: Stephen was a dying man. Whateverour previous sentiments
may have been, yet when the things of this world are passing fast away, and
the realities of eternalexistence are opening upon our view, the mists of
delusion are dissipated, and the true light of conviction usually flashes upon
the soul.
III. THE DEATH BY WHICH THE PRAYER WAS FOLLOWED. Lessons:
1. It is a deduction, easilyand naturally made from our review of the passage,
that doctrinal religion is not a matter so unimportant as rational divines
would persuade us to believe.
2. I add that faith in doctrines, unattended and unevidenced by practical
religion, will serve rather to condemn than to save.
(R. P. Buddicom, M. A.)
COMMENTARIES
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers
(59) Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.—The words are memorable as an instance
of direct prayer addressed, to use the words of Pliny in reporting what he had
learned of the worship of Christians, “to Christ as God” (Epist x. 97). Stephen
could not think of Him whom he saw at the right hand of God, but as of One
sharing the glory of the Father, hearing and answering prayer. And in the
prayer itself we trace an echo of words of which Stephen may well have heard.
The Son commended His Spirit to the Father (Luke 23:46);the disciple, in his

45. turn, commends his spirit to the Son. The word “God,” in the sentence
“calling upon God,” it should be noted, is, as the italics show, an insertion to
complete the sense.
MacLaren's Expositions
Acts
THE DEATH OF THE MASTER AND THE DEATH OF THE SERVANT
Acts 7:59 - Acts 7:60.
This is the only narrative in the New Testamentof a Christian martyrdom or
death. As a rule, Scripture is supremely indifferent to what becomes ofthe
people with whom it is for a time concerned. As long as the man is the organ
of the divine Spirit he is somewhat;as soonas that ceasesto speak through
him he drops into insignificance. So this same Acts of the Apostles-ifI may so
say- kills off James the brother of John in a parenthesis;and his is the only
other martyrdom that it concerns itselfeven so much as to mention.
Why, then, this exceptionaldetail about the martyrdom of Stephen? Fortwo
reasons:because it is the first of a series, and the Acts of the Apostles always
dilates upon the first of eachset of things which it describes, and condenses
about the others. But more especially, I think, because if we come to look at
the story, it is not so much an accountof Stephen’s death as of Christ’s power
in Stephen’s death. And the theme of this book is not the acts of the Apostles,
but the acts of the risen Lord, in and for His Church.

46. There is no doubt but that this narrative is modelled upon the story of our
Lord’s Crucifixion, and the two incidents, in their similarities and in their
differences, throw a flood of light upon one another.
I shall therefore look at our subject now with constantreference to that other
greaterdeath upon which it is based. It is to be observedthat the two sayings
on the lips of the proto-martyr Stephen are recordedfor us in their original
form on the lips of Christ, in Luke’s Gospel, which makes a still further link
of connectionbetweenthe two narratives.
So, then, my purpose now is merely to take this incident as it lies before us, to
trace in it the analogies andthe differences betweenthe death of the Master
and the death of the servant, and to draw from it some thoughts as to what it
is possible for a Christian’s death to become, when Christ’s presence is felt in
it.
I. Consider, in generalterms, this death as the last act of imitation to Christ.
The resemblance betweenour Lord’s last moments and Stephen’s has been
thought to have been the work of the narrator, and, consequently, to cast
some suspicionupon the veracity of the narrative. I acceptthe
correspondence,I believe it was intentional, but I shift the intention from the
writer to the actor, and I ask why it should not have been that the dying
martyr should consciously, and of setpurpose, have made his death
conformable to his Master’s death? Why should not the dying martyr have
sought to put himself {as the legend tells one of the other Apostles in outward
form sought to do} in Christ’s attitude, and to die as He died?

47. Remember, that in all probability Stephen died on Calvary. It was the
ordinary place of execution, and, as many of you may know, recent
investigations have led many to conclude that a little rounded knoll outside
the city wall-not a ‘green hill,’ but still ‘outside a city wall,’ and which still
bears a lingering tradition of connectionwith Him-was probably the site of
that stupendous event. It was the place of stoning, or of public execution, and
there in all probability, on the very ground where Christ’s Cross was fixed,
His first martyr saw ‘the heavens openedand Christ standing on the right
hand of God.’ If these were the associationsofthe place, what more natural,
and even if they were not, what more natural, than that the martyr’s death
should be shaped after his Lord’s?
Is it not one of the great blessings, in some sense the greatestofthe blessings,
which we owe to the Gospel, that in that awful solitude where no other
example is of any use to us, His pattern may still gleambefore us? Is it not
something to feel that as life reaches its highest, most poignant and exquisite
delight and beauty in the measure in which it is made an imitation of Jesus, so
for eachof us death may lose its most poignant and exquisite sting and
sorrow, and become something almostsweet, if it be shapedafter the pattern
and by the powerof His? We travel over a lonely waste atlast. All clasped
hands are unclasped; and we setout on the solitary, though it be ‘the
common, road into the greatdarkness.’But, blessedbe His Name!‘the
Breakeris gone up before us,’ and across the waste there are footprints that
we
‘Seeing, may take heart again.’
The very climax and apex of the Christian imitation of Christ may be that we
shall bear the image of His death, and be like Him then.

48. Is it not a strange thing that generations ofmartyrs have gone to the stake
with their hearts calm and their spirits made constantby the remembrance of
that Calvary where Jesus died with more of trembling reluctance, shrinking,
and apparent bewildered unmanning than many of the weakestofHis
followers? Is it not a strange thing that the death which has thus been the
source of composure, and strength, and heroism to thousands, and has lost
none of its powerof being so to-day, was the death of a Man who shrank from
the bitter cup, and that cried in that mysterious darkness, ‘My God! Why hast
Thou forsakenMe?’
Dearbrethren, unless with one explanation of the reasonfor His shrinking
and agony, Christ’s death is less heroic than that of some other martyrs, who
yet drew all their courage from Him.
How come there to be in Him, at one moment, calmness unmoved, and heroic
self-oblivion, and at the next, agony, and all but despair? I know only one
explanation, ‘The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.’ And when He
died, shrinking and trembling, and feeling bewildered and forsaken, it was
your sins and mine that weighed Him down. The servant whose death was
conformed to his Master’s had none of these experiences becausehe was only
a martyr.
The Lord had them, because He was the Sacrifice for the whole world.
II. We have here, next, a Christian’s death as being the voluntary entrusting
of the spirit to Christ.
‘They stoned Stephen.’ Now, our ordinary English idea of the manner of the
Jewishpunishment of stoning, is a very inadequate and mistakenone. It did

49. not consistmerely in a miscellaneous rabble throwing stones atthe criminal,
but there was a solemnand appointed method of executionwhich is preserved
for us in detail in the Rabbinical books. And from it we gatherthat the modus
operandi was this. The blasphemer was takento a certainprecipitous rock,
the height of which was prescribedas being equal to that of two men. The
witnesses by whose testimony he had been condemned had to casthim over,
and if he survived the fall it was their task to roll upon him a greatstone, of
which the weight is prescribedin the Talmud as being as much as two men
could lift. If he lived after that, then others took part in the punishment.
Now, at some point in that ghastly tragedy, probably, we may suppose as they
were hurling him over the rock, the martyr lifts his voice in this prayer of our
text.
As they were stoning him he ‘called upon’-not God, as our Authorised Version
has supplied the wanting word, but, as is obvious from the contextand from
the remembrance of the vision, and from the language of the following
supplication, ‘calledupon Jesus, saying, Lord Jesus!receive my spirit.’
I do not dwell at any length upon the fact that here we have a distinct instance
of prayer to Jesus Christ, a distinct recognition, in the early days of His
Church, of the highest conceptions ofHis person and nature, so as that a
dying man turns to Him, and commits his soul into His hands. Passing this by,
I ask you to think of the resemblance, andthe difference, betweenthis
intrusting of the spirit by Stephen to his Lord, and the committing of His
spirit to the Father by His dying Son. Christ on the Cross speaksto God;
Stephen, on Calvary, speaks,as I suppose, to Jesus Christ. Christ, on the
Cross, says, ‘I commit.’ Stephen says, ‘Receive,’orrather, ‘Take.’The one
phrase carries in it something of the notion that our Lord died not because He
must, but because He would; that He was active in His death; that He chose to
summon death to do its work upon Him; that He ‘yielded up His spirit,’ as

50. one of the Evangelists has it, pregnantly and significantly. But Stephen says,
‘Take!’ as knowing that it must be his Lord’s powerthat should draw his
spirit out of the coilof horror around him. So the one dying word has
strangelycompactedin it authority and submission; and the other dying word
is the word of a simple waiting servant. The Christ says, ‘I commit.’ ‘I have
powerto lay down My life, and I have power to take it again.’Stephen says,
‘Take my spirit,’ as longing to be awayfrom the wearinessand the sorrow
and the pain and all the hell of hatred that was seething and boiling round
about him, but yet knowing that he had to wait the Master’s will.
So from the language I gather large truths, truths which unquestionably were
not presentto the mind of the dying man, but are all the more conspicuous
because they were unconsciouslyexpressedby him, as to the resemblance and
the difference betweenthe death of the martyr, done to death by cruel hands,
and the death of the atoning Sacrifice who gave Himself up to die for our sins.
Here we have, in this dying cry, the recognitionof Christ as the Lord of life
and death. Here we have the voluntary and submissive surrender of the spirit
to Him. So, in a very real sense, the martyr’s death becomes a sacrifice, andhe
too dies not merely because he must, but he accepts the necessity, and finds
blessednessin it. We need not be passive in death; we need not, when it comes
to our turn to die, cling desperatelyto the last vanishing skirts of life. We may
yield up our being, and pour it out as a libation; as the Apostle has it, ‘If I be
offered as a drink-offering upon the sacrifice ofyour faith, I joy and rejoice.’
Oh! brethren, to die like Christ, to die yielding oneselfto Him!
And then in these words there is further containedthe thought coming
gleaming out like a flash of light into some murky landscape-ofpassing into
perennial union with Him. ‘Take my spirit,’ says the dying man; ‘that is all I
want. I see Thee standing at the right hand. For what hast Thou started to
Thy feet, from the eternal repose ofThy sessionatthe right hand of God the

51. Father Almighty? To help and succourme. And dostThou succourme when
Thou dost let these cruel hands castme from the rock and bruise me with
heavy stones? Yes, Thou dost. For the highestform of Thy help is to take my
spirit, and to let me be with Thee.’
Christ delivers His servant from death when He leads the servantinto and
through death. Brothers, can you look forward thus, and trust yourselves,
living or dying, to that Masterwho is near us amidst the coilof human
troubles and sorrows, andsweetlydraws our spirits, as a mother her child to
her bosom, into His own arms when He sends us death? Is that what it will be
to you?
III. Then, still further, there are other words here which remind us of the final
triumph of an all-forbearing charity.
Stephen had been castfrom the rock, had been struck with the heavy stone.
Bruised and wounded by it, he strangelysurvives, strangelysomehow or other
struggles to his knees eventhough desperatelywounded, and, gathering all his
powers togetherat the impulse of an undying love, prays his last words and
cries, ‘Lord Jesus!Lay not this sin to their charge!’
It is an echo, as I have been saying, of other words, ‘Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do.’ An echo, and yet an independent tone! The one
cries ‘Father!’ the other invokes the ‘Lord.’ The one says, ‘They know not
what they do’; the other never thinks of reading men’s motives, of
apportioning their criminality, of discovering the secrets oftheir hearts. It was
fitting that the Christ, before whom all these blind instruments of a mighty
design stoodpatent and nakedto their deepestdepths, should say, ‘They know
not what they do.’ It would have been unfitting that the servant, who knew no

52. more of his fellows’heart than could be guessedfrom their actions, should
have offered such a plea in his prayer for their forgiveness.
In the very humiliation of the Cross, Christspeaks as knowing the hidden
depths of men’s souls, and therefore fitted to be their Judge, and now His
servant’s prayer is addressedto Him as actually being so.
Somehow or other, within a very few years of the time when our Lord dies,
the Church has come to the distinctest recognitionof His Divinity to whom the
martyr prays; to the distinctest recognitionof Him as the Lord of life and
death whom the martyr asks to take his spirit, and to the clearestperception
of the fact that He is the Judge of the whole earth by whose acquittalmen
shall be acquitted, and by whose condemnationthey shall be condemned.
Stephen knew that Christ was the Judge. He knew that in two minutes he
would be standing at Christ’s judgment bar. His prayer was not, ‘Lay not my
sins to my charge,’but ‘Lay not this sin to their charge.’Why did he not ask
forgiveness forhimself? Why was he not thinking about the judgment that he
was going to meet so soon? He had done all that long ago. He had no fear
about that judgment for himself, and so when the last hour struck, he was at
leisure of heart and mind to pray for his persecutors, and to think of his Judge
without a tremor. Are you? If you were as near the edge as Stephen was,
would it be wise for you to be interceding for other people’s forgiveness? The
answerto that question is the answerto this other one,-have you sought your
pardon already, and got it at the hands of Jesus Christ?
IV. One word is all that I need say about the last point of analogyand contrast
here-the serene passage into rest: ‘When he had said this he fell asleep.’

53. The New Testamentscarcelyeverspeaks ofa Christian’s death as death but
as sleep, and with other similar phrases. But that expression, familiar and all
but universal as it is in the Epistles, in reference to the death of believers, is
never in a single instance employed in reference to the death of Jesus Christ.
He did die that you and I may live. His death was death indeed-He endured
not merely the physical fact, but that which is its sting, the consciousnessof
sin. And He died that the sting might be blunted, and all its poisonexhausted
upon Him. So the ugly thing is sleekedand smoothed;and the foul form
changes into the sweetsemblance ofa sleep-bringing angel. Death is gone. The
physical fact remains, but all the misery of it, the essentialbitterness and the
poison of it is all suckedout of it, and it is turned into ‘he fell asleep,’as a
tired child on its mother’s lap, as a wearyman after long toil.
‘Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.’
Deathis but sleepnow, because Christhas died, and that sleepis restful,
conscious,perfectlife.
Look at these two pictures, the agony of the one, the calm triumph of the
other, and see that the martyr’s falling asleepwas possible because the Christ
had died before. And do you commit the keeping of your souls to Him now, by
true faith; and then, living you may have Him with you, and, dying, a vision of
His presence bending down to succourand to save, and when you are dead, a
life of rest conjoinedwith intensestactivity. To sleepin Jesus is to awake in
His likeness, andto be satisfied.
BensonCommentary

54. Acts 7:59-60. And thus they stoned Stephen — Who, during this furious
assault, continued with his eyes fixed on the heavenly glory, of which he had
so bright a vision, calling upon God — The word God is not in the original,
which is literally, invoking; and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit — For
Christ was the personto whom he prayed: and surely such a solemnprayer
addressedto him, in which a departing soul was thus committed into his
hands, was such an act of worship as no goodman could have paid to a mere
creature;Stephen here worshipping Christ in the very same manner in which
Christ worshipped the Father on the cross. And he kneeleddown, &c. —
Having nothing further relating to himself which could give him any
solicitude, all his remaining thoughts were occupiedin compassionto these
inhuman wretches, who were employed in effecting his destruction. Having,
therefore, as we have reasonto suppose, receivedmany violent blows, rising as
well as he could upon his knees, he cried, though with an expiring, yet with a
loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge — With severity
proportionable to the weightof the offence, but graciouslyforgive them, as
indeed I do from my heart. The original expression, μη στησης αυτοις την
αμαρτιαν, has a peculiar emphasis, and is not easyto be exactlytranslated,
without multiplying words to an improper degree. It is literally weighnot out
to them this sin; that is, a punishment proportionable to it; alluding, it seems,
to passages ofScripture where God is represented as weighing men’s
characters andactions in the dispensations of his justice and providence. This
prayer of Stephen was heard, and remarkably answered, in the conversionof
Saul, of whose history we shall shortly hear more. When he had said this —
Calmly resigning his soulinto the Saviour’s hand, with a sacredserenity, in
the midst of this furious assault, he sweetlyfell asleep — Leaving the traces of
a gentle composure, rather than a horror, upon his breathless corpse.
Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary
7:54-60 Nothing is so comfortable to dying saints, or so encouraging to
suffering saints, as to see Jesus atthe right hand of God: blessedbe God, by
faith we may see him there. Stephen offeredup two short prayers in his dying
moments. Our Lord Jesus is God, to whom we are to seek, andin whom we
are to trust and comfort ourselves, living and dying. And if this has been our
care while we live, it will be our comfort when we die. Here is a prayer for his

55. persecutors. Thoughthe sin was very great, yet if they would lay it to their
hearts, God would not lay it to their charge. Stephendied as much in a hurry
as ever any man did, yet, when he died, the words used are, he fell asleep;he
applied himself to his dying work with as much composure as if he had been
going to sleep. He shall awake againin the morning of the resurrection, to be
receivedinto the presence of the Lord, where is fulness of joy, and to share the
pleasures that are at his right hand, for evermore.
Barnes'Notes on the Bible
Calling upon God - The word God is not in the original, and should not have
been in the translation. It is in none of the ancientmss. or versions. It should
have been rendered, "Theystoned Stephen, invoking, or calling upon, and
saying, Lord Jesus," etc. Thatis, he was engaged"inprayer" to the Lord
Jesus. The word is used to express "prayer" in the following, among other
places:2 Corinthians 1:23, "I callGod to witness";1 Peter1:17, "And if ye
call on the Father," etc.;Acts 2:21, "whosoevershall call on the name of the
Lord," etc.; Acts 9:14; Acts 22:16;Romans 10:12-14. This was, therefore, an
act of worship; a solemn invocationof the Lord Jesus, in the most interesting
circumstances in which a man can be placed - in his dying moments. And this
shows that it is right to worship the Lord Jesus, and to pray to him. For if
Stephen was inspired, it settles the question. The example of an inspired man
in such circumstances is a safe and correctexample. If it should be said that
the inspiration of Stephen cannotbe made out, yet the inspiration of Luke,
who has recordedit, will not be called into question. Then the following
circumstances show that he, an inspired man, regardedit as right, and as a
proper example to be followed:
(1) He has recordedit without the slightestexpressionof an opinion that it
was improper. On the contrary, there is every evidence that he regardedthe
conduct of Stephen in this case as right and praiseworthy. There is, therefore,
this attestationto its propriety.
(2) the Spirit who inspired Luke knew what use would be made of this case.
He knew that it would be used as an example, and as an evidence that it was
right to worship the Lord Jesus. It is one of the caseswhichhas been used to

56. perpetuate the worship of the Lord Jesus in every age. If it was wrong, it is
inconceivable that it should be recorded without some expressionof
disapprobation.
(3) the case is strikingly similar to that recordedin John 20:28, where Thomas
offered worship to the Lord Jesus "as his God," without reproof. If Thomas
did it in the presence ofthe Saviour without reproof, it was right. If Stephen
did it without any expressionof disapprobation from the inspired historian, it
was right.
(4) these examples were used to encourage Christians and Christian martyrs
to offer homage to Jesus Christ. Thus, Pliny, writing to the Emperor Trajan,
and giving an accountof the Christians in Bithynia, says that they were
accustomedto meet and "sing hymns to Christ as to God" (Latriner).
(5) it is worthy of remark that Stephen, in his death, offeredthe same act of
homage to Christ that Christ himself did to the Father when he died, Luke
23:46. From all these considerations, itfollows that the Lord Jesus is a proper
objectof worship; that in most solemn circumstances itis right to call upon
him, to worship him, and to commit our dearestinterests to his hands. If this
may be done, he is divine.
Receive my spirit - That is, receive it to thyself; take it to thine abode in
heaven.
Jamieson-Fausset-BrownBible Commentary
59, 60. calling upon God and saying, Lord Jesus, &c.—Anunhappy
supplement of our translators is the word "God" here;as if, while addressing
the Son, he was really calling upon the Father. The sense is perfectly clear
without any supplement at all—"calling upon [invoking] and saying, Lord
Jesus";Christ being the Persondirectly invoked and addressedby name
(compare Ac 9:14). Even Grotius, De Wette, Meyer, &c., admit this, adding
severalother examples of direct prayer to Christ; and Pliny, in his well-known
letter to the Emperor Trajan (A.D. 110 or 111), says it was part of the regular
Christian service to sing, in alternate strains, a hymn to Christ as God.

57. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit—In presenting to Jesus the identical prayer
which He Himself had on the cross offeredto His Father, Stephen renders to
his glorified Lord absolute divine worship, in the most sublime form, and at
the most solemnmoment of his life. In this commitment of his spirit to Jesus,
Paul afterwards followedhis footsteps with a calm, exultant confidence that
with Him it was safe for eternity (2Ti 1:12).
Matthew Poole's Commentary
Stephen calledupon him whom he saw standing, and that was our Saviour.
My spirit; or, my soul: thus our Saviour commended his spirit into his
Father’s hands, Luke 23:46 and this disciple imitates his Master, and comforts
himself with this, that to be sure his soul should be safe, whateverbecame of
his body.
Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible
And they stonedStephen, calling upon God,.... As he was praying, and putting
up the following petition;
and saying, Lord Jesus receive my Spirit; from whence we learn, that the
spirit or soulof man sleeps not, nor dies with the body, but remains after
death; that Jesus Christ is a fit person to commit and commend the care of the
soul unto immediately upon its separation;and that he must be truly and
properly God; not only because he is equal to such a charge, whichnone but
God is, but because divine worship and adorationare here given him. This is
so glaring a proof of prayer being made unto him, that some Socinians,
perceiving the force of it, would read the word Jesus in the genitive case, thus;
"Lord of Jesus receive my Spirit": as if the prayer was made to the Father of
Christ, when it is Jesus he saw standing at the right hand of God, whom he
invokes, and who is so frequently called Lord Jesus;whereas the Fatheris
never called the Lord of Jesus;and besides, these words are used in like
manner in the vocative case, inRevelation22:20 to which may be added, that
the Syriac version reads, "our Lord Jesus";and the Ethiopic version, "my
Lord Jesus".

58. Geneva Study Bible
And they stonedStephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive
my spirit.
EXEGETICAL(ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)
Meyer's NT Commentary
Acts 7:59-60. Ἐπικαλούμενον]while he was invoking. Whom? is evident from
the address which follows.
κύριε Ἰησοῦ] both to be takenas vocatives (Revelation22:20)according to the
formal expressionκύριος Ἰησοῦς (Gersdorf, Beitr. p. 292 ff.), with which the
apostolic church designates Jesus as the exaltedLord, not only of His church,
but of the world, in the government of which He is installed as σύνθρονος of
the Fatherby His exaltation (Php 2:6 ff.), until the final completionof His
office (1 Corinthians 15:28);comp. Acts 10:36. Stephen invoked Jesus;for he
had just beheld Him standing ready to help him. As to the invocation of Christ
generally(relative worship, conditioned by the relation of the exaltedChrist
to the Father), see on Romans 10:12; 1 Corinthians 1:2; Php 2:10.
δέξαι τὸ πνεῦμά μου] namely, to thee in heavenuntil the future resurrection.
Comp. on Php 1:26, remark. “Fecistime victorem, recipe me in triumphum,”
Augustine.
φωνῇ μεγάλῃ]the last expenditure of his strength of love, the fervour of which
also disclosesitselfin the kneeling.
μὴ στήσῃς αὐτοῖς τ. ἁμαρτ. ταύτ.]fix not this sin (of my murder) upon them.
This negative expressioncorresponds quite to the positive: ἀφιέναι τὴν
ἁμαρτίαν, to let the sin go as regards its relation of guilt, instead of fixing it

59. for punishment. Comp. Romans 10:3; Sir 44:21-22;1Ma 13:38; 1Ma 14:28;
1Ma 15:4, al. The notion, “to make availing” (de Wette), i.e. to impute,
corresponds to the thought, but is not denoted by the word. Linguistically
correctis also the rendering: “weighnot this sin to them,” as to which the
comparisonof ‫קָׁש‬ ַ‫ל‬ is not needed(Matthew 26:15;Plat. Tim. p. 63 B, Prot. p.
356 B, Pol. x. p. 602 D; Xen. Cyr. viii. 2. 21; Valcken. Diatr. p. 288 A). In this
view the sense wouldbe: Determine not the weightof the sin (comp. Acts
25:7), considernot how heavy it is. But our explanation is to be preferred,
because it corresponds more completely to the prayer of Jesus, Luke 23:34,
which is evidently the pattern of Stephen in his request, only saying negatively
what that expresses positively. In the case ofsuch as Saul what was askedtook
place;comp. Oecumenius. In the similarity of the last words of Stephen, Acts
7:59 with Luke 23:34;Luke 23:40 (as also of the words δέξαι τὸ πν. μου with
Luke 23:46), Baur, with whom Zeller agrees,seesanindication of their
unhistorical character;as if the example of the dying Jesus might not have
sufficiently suggesteditselfto the first martyr, and proved sufficient motive
for him to die with similar love and self-devotion.
ἐκοιμήθη]“lugubre verbum et suave,” Bengel;on accountof the euphemistic
nature of the word, never used of the dying of Christ. See on 1 Corinthians
15:18.
Expositor's Greek Testament
Acts 7:59. καὶ ἐλιθ. τὸν Σ. ἐπικ.: imperf., as in Acts 7:58, “quia res morte
demum [60] perficitur,” Blass. ἐπικ., presentparticiple, denoting, it would
seem, the continuous appeal of the martyr to his Lord. Zeller, Overbeck and
Baur throw doubt upon the historicaltruth of the narrative on accountof the
manner in which the Sanhedrists’action is divided betweenan utter absence
of formal proceedings and a punctilious observance ofcorrectformalities;but
on the other hand Wendt, note, p. 195 (1888), points out with much force that
an excited and tumultuous crowd, even in the midst of a high-handed and
illegalact, might observe some legalforms, and the description given by St.
Luke, so far from proceeding from one who through ignorance was unable to