them by God and foretold by Moses. Warming as he went on, he quoted the poetical words of Isaiah, on the dwelling-place of the Almighty, as not being confined to the narrow bounds of the building which was to them an object of such idolatrous reverence, as the sole place of Jehovah's abode, but as being high in the heavens, whence his power and love spread their boundless grasp over sea and land, and all nations that dwelt beneath his throne. As the words of the prophet of the fire-touched lips rolled from the voice of Stephen, they kindled his soul into an ecstacy of holy wrath; and in open scorn of their mean cruelty, he broke away from the plan of his discourse, bursting out into burning expressions of reproach and denunciation, which carried their rage away beyond all bounds of reason. Conscious of their physical power to avenge the insult, the mob instantly rose up, and hurried him away from the court, without regard to the forms of law; and taking him without the city, they stoned him to death, while he invoked on them, not the wrath, but the mercy of their common God. In such prayers, gloriously crowning such labors and sufferings, he fell asleep, commending his spirit to the hands of that Lord and Savior, whom it was his exalted honor to follow, first of all, through the bitter agonies of a bloody death.
THE PERSECUTION.
Among the nameless herd of Stephen's murderers and disputants, there was one only whose name has been preserved from the impenetrable oblivion which hides their infamy. And that name now is brought to the mind of every Christian reader, without one emotion of indignation or contempt, for its connection with this bloody murder. That man is now known to hundreds of millions, and has been for centuries known to millions of millions, as the bright leader of the hosts of the ransomed, and the faithful martyr who sealed with his blood the witness which this proto-martyr bore beneath the messengers of death to which his voice had doomed him. In the synagogue of the Cilicians, which was so active in the attack on Stephen, was a young man, who was not behind the oldest and the fiercest, in the steady, unrelenting hate which he bore to this devouring heresy. He gave his voice amid the clamors of the mob, to swell the cry for the death of the heretic; and when the stout murderers hurled the deadly missiles on the martyr's naked head, it was he who took charge of the loose garments which they had thrown off, that they might use their limbs with greater freedom. Neither the
