  Stephen, as a Christian preacher of brilliant genius and of growing fame, is selected by Saul to be his antagonist in the controversy resolved upon by him. To a vast concourse of people assembled in expectation of hearing Stephen preach, Saul takes the opportunity to address an impassioned and elaborate appeal, with argument, against Stephen's doctrine. His hearers are powerfully affected; among them, he not knowing it, Saul's own beloved sister Rachel. SAUL AGAINST STEPHEN.Like a wise soldier on some task intent Of moment and of hazard, who, at heart Secure of prospering, yet no caution counts, No pains, unworthy, but with wary feet Explores his ground about him every rood, All elements of chance forecalculates, Draws to his part each doubtful circumstance; Never too much provided, point by point Equips himself superfluously strong, That he prevailing may with might prevail, And overcome with bounteous victory; So Saul, firm in resolve and confident, And inly stung with conscience and with zeal Not to postpone his weighty work proposed, Would not be hasty found, nor rash, to fail Of any circumspection that his sure Triumph might make more sure, or wider stretch Its margin, certain to be wide. And prudence to prepare, refrained himself From word or deed in public; while, at home, Not moody, but not genial as his use, His gracious use, was, self-absorbed, retired In deep and absent muse, he nigh might seem A stranger to his sister well-beloved, Wont to be sharer of his inmost mind. Inmost, save one reserve. He never yet Had shown to any, scarce himself had seen, The true deep master motive of his soul, That fountain darkling in the depths of self Whence into light all streams of being flowed. Saul daily, nightly, waking, sleeping, dreamed Of a new nation, his belovÉd own, Resurgent from the dust consummate fair, And, for chief corner-stone, with shoutings reared To station in the stately edifice— Whom but himself? Who worthier than Saul? This beckoning image bright of things to be— Audacious-lovelier far than might be shown To any, yea, than he himself dared look, Was interblent so closely in his mind With what should be the fortune and effect Of his intended controversy nigh, That, though his settled purpose to dispute He had for public reasons publicly Declared, he yet in private, of that strife, Still future, everywhere to speak abstained, Abiding even unto his sister dumb. Rachel from Tarsus to Jerusalem Had borne her brother company, her heart One heart with his to cheer him toward the goal Of his high purpose, which she knew, to be Beyond his equals master in the law. Alone they dwelt together, their abode Between Gamaliel's and the synagogue Of the Cilicians. Beautiful and bright His home she made to him, with housewife ways Neat-handed, and with fair companionship. The sister, with that quick intelligence The woman's, first divined, for secret cause Of this her brother's travailing silentness, That he some pregnant enterprise revolved; To advise herself what enterprise it was, She, with the woman's tact of sympathy, In watchful quiet reverent of his mood, Strove with him and strove for him, in her thought, Her wish, her hope, her prayer; nor failed sometimes A word to drop, unconsciously as seemed, By lucky chance, that might perhaps convey A timely help of apt suggestion wise To Saul her brother for his purpose, he All undisturbed to guess that aught was meant. At home, abroad, reserved, Saul not the less All places of men's frequence and resort Still visited, and mixed with crowds to catch The whisper of the people; active not, But not supine, observing unobserved As if alone amid the multitude. The brave apostles of the Nazarene He heard proclaim their master Lord and Christ, And marked their method in the Scriptures; not With open mind obedient toward the truth, But ever only with shut heart and hard, Intent on knowing how to contradict. Proclaimers new. Of these more eminent Was none than Stephen, flaming prophet he, Quenchless in spirit, full of faith and power. Him oft Saul heard, to listening throngs that hung Upon the herald's lips with eager ear, The claim of Jesus to Messiahship Assert, and from the psalms and prophets prove. In guise a seraph rapt, with love aflame And all aflame with knowledge, like the bush That burned with God in Horeb unconsumed, The fervent pure apostle Stephen stood, In ardors from celestial altars caught Kindling to incandescence—stood and forged, With ringing blow on blow, his argument, A vivid weapon edged and tempered so, And in those hands so wielded, that its stroke No mortal might abide and bide upright. Stephen is such as Saul erelong will be Risen from the baptism of the Holy Ghost! Saul felt the breath of human power that blew Round Stephen like a morning wind, he felt And glorified, that bright auroral ray Of genius which forever makes the brow It strikes on from its fountain far in God Shine like the sunrise-smitten mountain peak— Saul felt these things in Stephen by his tie With Stephen in the fellowship of power; Kindred to kindred answered and rejoiced. But that in Stephen which was more and higher Than Stephen at his native most and highest, The inhabitation of the Holy Ghost— This, Saul had yet no sense to apprehend. The Spirit of God, only the Spirit of God Can know; the natural man to Him is deaf And blind. Saul, therefore, seeing did not see, And hearing heard not. But no less his heart, In seeing and in hearing Stephen speak, Leapt up with recognition of a peer In power to be his meet antagonist And task him to his uttermost to foil. Beyond Saul's uttermost it was to be, That task! though this of Stephen not, but God. Still goaded day by day with such desire And wrestle of antagonistic thews Tempting his might and stirring up his mind, Saul felt, besides, the motion and ferment And great dilation of a patriot soul, Magnanimous, laboring for his country's cause. He thought the doctrines of the Nazarene Pernicious to the Jewish commonwealth, Not less than was his person base, his life Unseemly, and opprobrious his death. He saw, or deemed he saw, in what was taught From Jesus, only deep disparagement Disloyally implied of everything Nearest and dearest to the Hebrew heart. The gospel was high treason in Saul's eyes; Suppose it but established in success, The temple then would be no more what erst It was, the daily sacrifice would cease, The holy places would with heathen feet Be trodden and profaned, the middle wall Of old partition between Jew and Greek Would topple undermined, the ritual law Of Moses would be obsolete and void, Common would be the oracles of God, Of Jewish name and nation what were left? Such thoughts, that seemed of liberal scope, were Saul's, Commingled, he not knowing, with some thoughts, Less noble, of his own aggrandizement. It came at length to pass that on a day The spacious temple-court is thronged with those Come from all quarters to Jerusalem, Or dwellers of the city, fain to hear Once more the preacher suddenly so famed. Present is Saul, but not as heretofore To hearken only and observe; the hour Has struck when his own voice he must uplift, To make it heard abroad. He dreamed it not, But Rachel too was there, his sister. She Had, from sure signs observed, aright surmised That the ripe time to speak was come to Saul. In her glad loyalty, she doubted not That he, that day, would, out of a full mind, Pressed overfull with affluence from the heart, Pour forth a stream of generous eloquence— Of reason and of passion intermixed— For such she proudly felt her brother's power— Which down should rush upon his adversaries And carry them away as with a flood, Astonished, overwhelmed, and whirled afar; Rescued at least the ruins of the state! So glorying in her high vicarious hope For Saul her brother, Rachel came that morn Betimes and chose her out a safe recess For easy audience, nigh, and yet retired, Between the pillars of a stately porch, Where she might see and not by him be seen. Thence Rachel watched all eagerly; when now The multitude, expecting Stephen, saw A different man stand forth with beckoning hand As if to speak. The act and attitude Commanded audience, for a king of men Stood there, and a great silence fell on all. Some knew the face of the young Pharisee, These whispered round his name; Saul's name and fame To all were known, and, ere the speaker spoke, Rachel the hush Felt with a secret sympathetic awe, And for one breath her beating heart stood still; It leapt again to hear her brother's voice Pealing out bold in joyous sense of power. That noble voice, redounding like a surge Pushed by the tide, on swept before the wind, And all the ocean shouldering at its back, Which seeks out every inlet of the shore To brim it flush and level from the brine— Such Saul's voice swelled, as from a plenteous sea, And, wave on wave of pure elastic tone, Rejoicing ran through every gallery, And every echoing endless colonnade, And every far-retreating least recess Of building round about that temple-court, And filled the temple-court with silver sound— As thus, with haughty summons, he began: "Ye men of Israel, sojourners from far Or dwellers in Jerusalem, give heed. The lines are fallen to us in evil times: Opinions run abroad perverse and strange, Divergent from the faith our fathers held. On us, this living generation, big With promise, or with threat, of mighty doom. Which will ye have it? Threat, or promise, which? Yours is the choosing—choose ye may, ye must. "Abolish Moses, if ye will; destroy The great traditions of your fathers; say Abraham was naught, naught Isaac, Jacob, all The patriarchs, heroes, martyrs, prophets, kings; That Seed of Abraham naught, our nation's Hope, Foretold to be an universal King; Make one wide blank and void, an emptied page, Of all the awful glories of our past— Deliverance out of Egypt, miracle On miracle wrought dreadfully for us Against our foes, path cloven through the sea, Jehovah in the pillar of cloud and fire, And host of Pharaoh mightily overthrown; The law proclaimed on Sinai amid sound And light insufferable and angels nigh Attending; manna in the wilderness; The rock that lived and moved and followed them, Our fathers, flowing water in the waste— The seal of God upon you as His own, And marks you different from the heathen round— Shekinah fixed between the cherubim, The vacant Holy of Holies filled with God, The morning and the evening sacrifice, Priest, altar, incense, choral hymn and psalm, Confused melodious noise of instruments Together sounding the high praise of God; All this, with more I will not stay to tell, This temple itself with its magnificence, The hope of Him foreshown, the Messenger Of that eternal covenant wherein Your souls delight themselves, Who suddenly One day shall come unto His temple—blot, Expunge, erase, efface, consent to be No more a people, mix and merge yourselves With aliens, blood that in your veins flows pure All the long way one stream continuous down From Abraham called the friend of God—such blood Adulterate in the idolatrous, corrupt Pool of the Gentiles—men of Israel! Or are ye men? and are ye Israel? I stand in doubt of you—I stand in doubt Such things as seems that ye with pleasure hear! "Say, know ye not they mean to take away Your place and name? Are ye so blind? Or are Ye only base poor creatures caring not Though knowing well? Oft have ye seen the fat Of lambs upon the flaming altar fume One instant and in fume consume away; So swiftly and so utterly shall pass, In vapor of smoke, the glorious excellency, The pomp, the pride, nay, but the being itself, Of this our nation from beneath the sun, Let once the hideous doctrine of a Christ Condemned and crucified usurp the place In Hebrew hearts of that undying hope We cherish of Messiah yet to reign In power and glory more than Solomon's, From sunrise round to sunrise without end, And tread the Gentiles underneath our feet." Indignant patriot spirit in the breast Of Rachel mixed itself with kindred pride And gladness for her brother gleaming so Before her in a kind of fulgurous scorn She could not stay a sudden gush of tears. But Saul's voice now took on a winning change, As, deprecating gently, thus he spoke: "Forgive, my brethren, I have used hot words Freely and frankly, as great love may speak. But that I love you, trust you, hope of you The best, the noblest, when once more you are Yourselves, and feel the spirit of your past Come back, I had not cared to speak at all. I simply should have hung my head in shame, Worn sackcloth, gone with ashes on my brow, And sealed my hand upon my lips for you Forever. Love does not despair, but hopes Forever. And I love you far too well To dream despair of you. Bethink yourselves, My brethren! Me, as if I were the voice Of your own ancient aspiration, hear. Bear with me, let me chide, say not that love Lured me to over-confidence of you. "Be patient now, my brethren, while I go, So briefly as I may, through argument That well might ask the leisure of long hours, From reason and from nature too not less, Why we should hold to our ancestral faith, And not the low fanatic creed admit Of such as preach for Christ one crucified. Be patient—I myself must patient be, Tutoring down my heart to let my tongue Speak calmly, as in doubtful argument, Where I am fixed and confident to scorn." As when Gennesaret, in his circling hills, By wing of wind down swooping suddenly Is into tempest wrought that, to his depths Astir, he rouses, and on high his waves Uplifts like mountains snowy-capped with foam; So, smitten with the vehement impact And passion of Saul's rash, abrupt Beginning, that mercurial multitude Had answered with commotion such as seemed Menace of instant act of violence: But, as when haply there succeeds a lull To tempest, then the waves of Galilee Sink from their swelling and smooth down to plane Yet deep will roll awhile from shore to shore So, when, with wise self-recollection, Saul, In mid-career of passionate appeal, Stayed, and those gusts of stormy eloquence Impetuous poured no longer on the sea Of audience underneath him, but, instead, Proposed a sober task of argument, The surging throng surceased its turbulence, And settled from commotion into calm; Yet so as still to feel the rock and sway Of central agitation at its heart, While thus that master of its moods went on: "What said Jehovah to the serpent vile Which tempted Eve? Did he not speak of One, Offspring to her seduced, Who should arise To crush the offending head? No hint, I trow, Of meekness and obedience unto death Found there at least, death on the shameful tree, Forsooth, to be the character and doom Of that foretokened Champion of his kind, That haughty Trampler upon Satan's head! "To Abraham our father was of God Foretold, 'In thee shall all the families Abroad upon mankind through Abraham's seed, Messiah, should Messiah, Abraham's seed, Prove to be such as now is preached to you, A shame, a jest, a byword, a reproach, A hissing and a wagging of the head, A gazing-stock and mark for tongues shot out— Burlesque and travesty of our brave hopes And of our vaunts, shown vain, rife everywhere Among the nations, that erelong a prince Should from the stem of Jesse spring, to sway An universal sceptre through the world? "Did God mock Abraham? Did He mean, perchance, That all the families of the earth should find Peculiar blessedness in triumphing Over that puissant nation promised him, His progeny, to match the stars of heaven For multitude, and be as on the shore The sands, innumerable? Was such the sense Of promise and of prophecy? Behooves, Then, we be glad and thankful, we, on whom This blessing to the Gentiles. But ye halt, Beloved. Slack and slow seem ye to greet The honor fixed on you. Why, hearken! Ye, Ye, out of all the generations, ye Fallen on the times of Jesus crucified, May count yourselves elect and called of God To bless the Gentiles, in affording them Unquenchable amusement to behold Your wretched plight and broken pride! Now clap Your hands, ye chosen! Let your mouth be filled With laughter, and your tongue with singing filled! "Nay, sons of Abraham, nay. No mocking words Spake He who cannot lie, Lord God of truth And grace. He meant that Abraham's race should reign From sea to sea while sun and moon endure. And ever a blessing true it is to men To bend the neck beneath an equal yoke Of ruler strong and wise and just to rule. Then will at last the Gentiles blessÉd be In Abraham, when, from Abraham's loins derived Through David, God's Anointed shall begin, Of the wide world, and every heathen name Shall kiss the rod and own Messiah king. "Our father Jacob, touched with prophecy, Spake of a sceptre that should not depart From Judah until Shiloh came, to Whom The obedience of the peoples was to be; A sceptre, symbol of authority And rule, law-giving attribute, resort Of subject nations speeding to a yoke— Such ever everywhere in Holy Writ The image and the character impressed On God's Messiah, hope of Israel. "What need I more? Wherefore to ears like yours, Well used to hear them in the temple chants Resounded with responsive voice to voice, Rehearse those triumphs and antiphonies Wherein Jehovah Father to His Son Messiah speaks: 'Ask Thou of Me, and I To Thee the heathen for inheritance Will give, and for possession the extreme Parts of the earth. Thou shalt with rod of iron Like a clay vessel from the potters hand. Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings, be ye Instructed, judges of the earth. Kiss ye The Son, lest He be angry, and His wrath, Full soon to be enkindled, you devour.' Tell me, which mood of prophecy is th at, The meek or the heroic? Craven he, Or king, to whom Jehovah deigns such speech, Concerning whom such counsel recommends? "'Gird Thou upon Thy thigh Thy sword, O Thou Most Mighty,'—so once more the psalmist, rapt Prophetical as to a martial rage, Breaks forth, Jehovah to Messiah speaking— 'Gird on Thy glory and Thy majesty; And in Thy majesty ride prosperously, And Thy right hand shall teach Thee terrible things. Sharp in the heart of the king's enemies Thine arrows are, whereby the peoples fall Beneath Thee.' Such Messiah is, a man Of war and captain of the host of God. Nay, now it mounts to a deific strain, The prophet exultation of the psalm: Messiah, to the unequalled dignity And lonely glory of the ONE I AM, Audacious figure—close on blasphemy, Were it not God who speaks—to represent The dazzling splendors of Messiahship. "Let us erect our spirits from the dust, My brethren, and, as sons of God, nay, gods Pronounced—unless we grovel and below Our birthright due, unfilial and unfit, Sink self-depressed—let us, I pray you, rise, Buoyed upward from within by sense of worth Incapable to be extinguished, rise, Found equal to the will of God for us, And know the true Messiah when He comes. Be sure that when He comes, His high degree Will shine illustrious, like the sun in heaven, Not feebly flicker for your fishermen From Galilee to point it out to you With their illiterate 'Lo, here!' 'Lo, there!'" At this increasing burst of scorn from Saul, Exultant like the pÆan and the cry When storming warriors take the citadel, Once more from Rachel's fixÉd eyes the tears Of sympathetic exultation flowed— The sister with the brother, as in strife Before the battle striving equally, Now equally in triumph triumphing. But Saul, his triumph, felt to be secure, Securer still will make with new appeal: "If so, as we have seen, the Scriptures trend, Not less the current of tradition too— No counter-current, eddy none—one stress, Steady and full, from Adam down to you, Runs strong the self-same way. Out of the past What voice is heard in contradiction? None. "Turn round and ask the present; you shall hear One answer still the same from every mouth Of scribe or master versed in Holy Writ. Tradition and authority in this Agree with Scripture, teaching to await For our deliverer an anointed king. What ruler of our people has believed In Jesus, him of Nazareth, Joseph's son, Self-judged unworthy of his rulership, Secret disciple, shunning to avow His faith, and justly therefore counted naught— Ruler in name, in nature rather slave. "And now I bid you look within your breast And answer, Does not your own heart rebel Against the gospel of the Nazarene? 'Gospel,' forsooth! Has God, who made your heart, Provided you for gospel what your heart Rejects with loathing? Likely seems it, pray, Becoming, fit, that He Who, on the mount Of Sinai once the law promulging, there Displayed His glory more than mortal eye Could bear to look upon or ear to hear— Who in the temple hid behind the veil Shekinah blazed between the cherubim— Nay, tell me, seems it tolerable even To you, that your Jehovah God should choose, Lover of splendor as He is, and power, To represent Himself among mankind Not merely naked of magnificence, But outright squalid in the mean estate At last apparent felon crucified? Reason and nature outraged cry aloud, 'For shame! For shame!' at blasphemy like this." A strange ungentle impulse moved the heart Of Rachel to a mood like mutiny, And almost she "For shame!" herself cried out In echo to her brother's vehemence; While murmur as of wind rousing to storm Ran through the assembly at such words from Saul, The passion of the speaker so prevailed To stir responsive passion in their breasts. This Saul perceiving said, in scornful pride, Fallaciously foretasting triumph won: "Ye men of Israel, gladly I perceive Some embers of the ancient fire remain, If smouldering, not extinguished, in your breasts. I will not further chafe your noble rage. You are, if I mistake not, now prepared To hear more safely, if less patiently, The eloquence I keep you from too long. Let me bespeak for Stephen your best heed." And Saul, as if in gesture of surcease, Toward Stephen, opposite not far, the while His nostril he dispread, and mobile lip Curled, in the height of contumelious scorn; And Rachel, where she stood, unconsciously, The transport of her sympathy was such, Repeated with her features what she saw. |
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