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old gate which this represents, the martyr was hurried to his death. The vicinity of this gate to the area of the temple (now the mosque of Omar) is in favour of the tradition; and as there is a path leading direct from this gate to the garden of Gethsemane, we may conclude that our Lord often passed through it in his way to and from the Mount of Olives-at least that He did so on the awful night of his agony.

Arrived at the place, the convict was divested of his clothing, except a small covering about the loins; and his hands being bound, he was taken to the top of some eminence-a tower, a building, or a cliff-not less than twice a man's height. When the top was reached, the witnesses laid their hands upon him, and then cast off their upper clothing, that they might be the more ready for the active exertion their position imposedbeing virtually that of executing the sentence which had been the result of their evidence. To prevent their clothes from being lost, they were consigned to the care of some friend; and in the case of Stephen, the executing witnesses gave their garments in charge to 'a young man whose name was Saul' -of whom there will hereafter be much to say, and whose full and hearty complicity in the transaction is not only indicated by this fact, but is afterwards expressly affirmed in the words, Saul was consenting unto his death.' Indeed, from the stress that he himself, after his conversion, laid upon this circumstance-'When the blood of thy martyr Stephen was shed, I kept the raiment of them that slew him' (Acts xxii. 20) naught Square, is said to be the spot.' The change to the present practice of hanging the condemned just outside the prison-gate, was made in 1782, and was thus animadverted on by Dr. Johnson, according to Boswell :'He said to Sir William Scott, "The age is running mad after innovation, and all the business of the world is to be done in a new way; men are to be hanged in a new way; Tyburn itself is not safe from the fury of innovation." It having been argued that this was an improvement-" No, sir," said he, eagerly, "it is not an improvement. They object, that the old method drew together a number of spectators. Sir, executions are intended to draw spectators. If they do not draw spectators, they don't answer their purpose. The old method was most satisfactory to all parties; the public was gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away?""'

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VOL. VIII.

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—we may gather that it implied an amount of active concurrence in the deed only a degree less than that of the witnesses; and the words themselves show, as we now proceed to explain, that the witnesses were also the executioners.

All being thus ready, one of the witnesses cast the condemned down from that high place with great violence, endeavouring to do it so that he should fall on a large stone, which was designedly placed below. The fall usually rendered him insensible, if it did not kill him; but if he was not dead, those below turned him upon his back, and then the other witnesses, remaining above, cast down a large stone aimed at the chest. This stroke was generally mortal; but if not, the people below hastened to cast stones at him till no life remained. Thus, the execution was quickly over, and was attended by fewer revolting circumstances than must have ensued from that indiscriminate pelting by the people, which is commonly supposed to have constituted the stoning to death. It would seem that Stephen rose from his fall to his knees, and in that posture prayed for the forgiveness of his murderers-a circumstance which imparts an additionally touching emphasis to his

prayer.

In the narrative of our Lord's death, it is made plainly to appear that the Jewish tribunals had no power of inflicting the punishment of death without the sanction of the Romans; and it may be, and has been asked, how it is that we have here what seems, at the first view, a regular trial before the Sanhedrim, with the deposition of witnesses, the prisoner's defence, and the ordinary capital punishment among the Jews inflicted, without any mention of the Romans. As to the trial merely, that is easily explained. The Jewish tribunal necessarily tried the prisoner to find the nature of his offence; and if they found him guilty of a capital crime, they pronounced sentence against him, and reported it to the Roman governor for confirmation. If confirmed, the offender was given to them for execution by their own mode of stoning, unless the offence was of a political nature, as for sedition, when the Romans took the matter into their own hands, and inflicted their punishment of crucifixion.

In the case of Stephen, however, it is very doubtful if even the trial was complete. But supposing that all the forms of legal process were observed, and sentence duly pronounced, it does not follow that they did not exceed the bounds of their authority in carrying their own sentence into effect before the Romans could interfere to prevent it. That it is reported as having taken place, by no means proves that the act was legally performed. The Roman governor ordinarily resided at Cæsarea, and was rarely at Jerusalem, except at the great festivals. In his absence they might feel more at liberty to carry out their own sentence, with little fear of being afterwards called to account on the report of the Roman commandant—partly because the Romans held cheaply the life of any one who was not a citizen of Rome, and partly because the governor stood in fear of the Jewish authorities at this time, and would be likely to wink at their proceedings. There was hence little to deter them from acting in the case, notwithstanding that the Roman check upon their authority did really exist.

All this is on the supposition that the trial was regular, and the execution irregular. But it will rather appear that the trial itself was irregular, and that the judicial act was not completed. There are, indeed, the witnesses, and part of the prisoner's defence; and here the legal action stops. The high priest does not, as in our Lord's trial, ask the opinion of the council, and then deliver sentence in accordance with their views. We read of no conference, no sentence. The defence itself is interrupted by the ungovernable rage of those who heard it; and when Stephen declared that he saw Jesus standing at God's right hand, they stayed to hear no more, but rushed upon him, and hurried him away to death. This has all the aspect of a tumultuary proceeding-a violent interruption of that course of action, by which they purposed, in the first instance, to arrive at a sentence, to be reported to the Roman governor for his sanction. Indeed, the matter reached a point at which they might have felt authorized to act without the usual formalities. The words Stephen uttered sounded in their ears as rank blasphemy; and, when that was the case,

the Jews seem always to have been ready to stone a man on the spot without any trial. There are several instances of this in the Gospels, which will readily occur to the reader's recollection. A man taken in the fact might be punished out of hand without trial; and this rule seems to have been popularly extended to blasphemy. So, when Stephen uttered words which seemed to them blasphemous, they may have felt there was no need of any further trial, the case having become one for instant and summary action, vindicable even to the Roman governor. It certainly appears from the narrative that Stephen was convicted, less on the evidence of the witnesses, than on that declaration of his own, which made them 'run upon him with one accord.'

It seems, therefore, that there is nothing in the case of Stephen to compel us to abandon our previous conclusion, that the Jewish tribunals had been by the Romans divested of the sovereign power of inflicting capital punishment.

Forty-second Week—First Day.

THE PERSECUTION.-ACTS VIII. I.

It has always been, that the ground on which the fertilizing blood of a martyr has been shed, has brought forth fruit, thirty, sixty, or a hundred-fold. Nations have been slow to learn this, and have been continually making the grand mistake of supposing that a great truth could be quenched in the blood of those who upheld it. So, in this case, the blood of Stephen cried from the ground with a voice more eloquent and persuasive than the accents of his living tongue had been. By showing that the Christian faith was stronger than death, the last resource of man's oppression, it ensured its triumph; and thenceforth every death, thus nobly and cheerfully endured, where it dismayed one dastard spirit, quickened a hundred noble ones, and made them, or prepared them, to be proselytes. To receive a man's testimony with implicit reliance, it is necessary to be assured that he himself is sincerely convinced of that which he teaches; and to lay down his life for what he deems the truth, is the most certain sign of his sincerity which it is possible for a man to give. His death thus brings credit upon the doctrines he taught, as proclaimed by surviving teachers.

In this case, the ever active Pharisees were now on the alert; and, enraged to find that the death of Stephen had no effect in suppressing the new religion, the Sanhedrim, now unanimous by the concurrence of the Pharisees with the Sadducees, brought into action all the resources it possessed, in a most rancorous and general persecution of the infant church, the nature of which may be learned from the conduct of Saul of Tarsus, who took a most active and violent part in the proceedings, having, assuredly at his own application, been

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