Acts 7:48

Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples. — The sequel shows the impression which these words made on the hearers. Stephen had risen to the truth which, though it had been proclaimed before, had been practically dormant. It broke down the thought of any exclusive holiness in the Temple, and therefore placed its downfall among the chances and changes which might be involved in God’s chastisement of the people, and His education of mankind. The inference which we have seen reason to draw as to the probability of some connection, direct or indirect, between Stephen and the Samaritans (see Notes on Acts 7:16 and Acts 6:5), suggests the thought that we may trace here something like an echo of the teaching of our Lord in His dialogue with the woman of Samaria (John 4:21). It is a fact of singular interest to note how one who now listened to the words as applied to the Temple of the God of Israel, afterwards embraced them in all their fulness, and used them as his text in asserting the truth they embodied as against the Temples of Zeus and Athenè (Acts 17:24).

As saith the prophet. — The truth which Stephen asserted had been uttered in the very dedication prayer of the Temple (1 Kings 8:27). The builder of the Temple had himself felt that it was the witness not of a localised but a universal Presence. But he turns to what might seem to his hearers a yet higher authority — to the great prophet (Isaiah 66:1), who was preeminently the preacher of glad tidings, and who had closed his mission with the utterance of the truth that, whatever glory and greatness might attach to the Temple in Jerusalem, the prayer of him that was “poor and of a contrite spirit” was equally acceptable wherever it might be offered. The words were full of deep meaning in themselves. They were yet more significant as showing that the thoughts of Stephen had been turned to that great close of a great work, and that he must thus have been led to that wider vision of the future when all nations and tongues should be gathered to see the glory of the Eternal; and the work of Israel, especially of those who, like himself, belonged to the Dispersion, should be to declare His glory to the Gentiles, and when they, too, should be accepted as priests and Levites in the true Temple (Isaiah 66:21). Here also we may think of him as anticipating the widest and highest teaching of St. Paul.