VII: 1. "_ Then said the high priest, Are these things so? " Stephen responds in a long and powerful discourse._ There is great diversity of opinion among commentators, as to the logical bearing and connection of this discourse. We would naturally expect to find in it-if we regard it as properly a d... [ Continue Reading ]
VII: 1. “_ Then said the high priest, Are these things so?_” Stephen responds in a long and powerful discourse. There is great diversity of opinion among commentators, as to the logical bearing and connection of this discourse. We would naturally expect to find in it if we regard it as properly a de... [ Continue Reading ]
2 4. We will now take up the different sections of the discourse, treating each separately, and showing their connected bearing upon his main purpose. Before exhibiting the manner in which Moses was treated by the ancestors of his audience, he first shows that the mission on which Moses came was a s... [ Continue Reading ]
5-8. Having now introduced Abraham, and brought him into the land of Canaan, Stephen quotes the prophesy, connected with the fulfillment of which he is to find the chief points of his argument. (5) "_ And he gave him no inheritance in it, not a footprint: and he promised to give it for a possession... [ Continue Reading ]
9-16. The speaker next proceeds to recount the circumstances which brought the people down into Egypt, in order that the rejection of Joseph, and the final salvation of the whole family through him, might stand out before his hearers, and be made to bear upon his final conclusion. (9) "_ And the pat... [ Continue Reading ]
17-29. From this glance at the leading points in the history of Joseph, Stephen advances to the case of Moses, showing that his brethren rejected him in like manner, and were also finally delivered by him. (17) "_ But when the time of the promise of which God had sworn to Abraham was drawing near, t... [ Continue Reading ]
30-37. There were other incidents in the life of Moses fully as much to his purpose as this; and to these he proceeds to advert. (30) "_ And when forty years were completed, there appeared to him, in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush._ (31) _When Moses... [ Continue Reading ]
38-40. To keep prominent the ill treatment received by Moses at the hands of the people, the speaker proceeds to note their conduct in the wilderness. (38) "_ This is he that was in the congregation in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers, who received... [ Continue Reading ]
41-43. Stephen next shows that the same people who so often rejected the servants of God, likewise rejected God himself. (41) "_ They made a calf in those days, and brought sacrifice to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands._ (42) _And God turned, and gave them up to serve the host... [ Continue Reading ]
44-50. Instead of either admitting or denying the charge of blasphemy against the temple, he undertakes to show the true religious value of that building. This he does, by first alluding to the movable and perishable nature of the _tabernacle,_ which preceded the temple, and then, by showing, from t... [ Continue Reading ]
51-53. As Joseph, the divinely-selected savior of his brethren, had been sold by those brethren into slavery; and as Moses, divinely selected to deliver Israel from bondage, was at first rejected by them to become a sojourner in Midian, and was then sent back by the God of their fathers to be reject... [ Continue Reading ]
54-60. The exasperation of the Sanhedrim was the more intense, from the fact that the denunciation hurled upon them was not a sudden burst of passion, but the deliberate and sustained announcement of a just judgment. They had not been able to resist, in debate, the wisdom and the spirit by which he... [ Continue Reading ]