It is singular that Augustine has not indicated with greater clearness the meaning of Stephen's beholding in that hour of his agony his Lord standing at the right hand of God, for it is exactly such a point as he seldom suffers to escape him. He often indeed notes that this is the only instance in which He is described as standing, that on every other occasion he is sitting, at the right hand of the Majesty on high; but he does not proceed to explain or to account for this exceptional case. The right explanation we owe to Gregory the Great+-namely, that it belongs to the passion of the moment that the dying martyr, filled with confidence in his Saviour's present help, should thus behold Him, not sitting in majestic calmness, but uprisen from his throne, and thus standing at the right hand of the Father, as in act to come forth to the help of his suffering servant, all which we have taken up into our Collect on St. Stephen's day: "O blessed Jesus, who standest at the right hand of God to succour all those that suffer for Thee."

It is at least a pardonable play upon words, even if it

phanus? Dominus Christus venit, non in carne peccati, sed in similitudine carnis peccati: numquid hoc Stephanus ? Sic natus est ut tu; inde natus est, unde et tu; ab eo renatus est, a quo et tu.

:

* He connects, indeed, Stephen's standing with his Lord's (Serm. 314. §1) Jesum stantem videbat ; ideo stabat et non cadebat, quia stans sursum et deorsum certantem desuper spectans invictas militi suo vires, ne caderet, suggerebat.

†The passage is as follows (Hom. 29 in Evang.): Sedere judicantis [adde, imperantis] est, stare vero pugnantis vel adjuvantis. Stephanus in labore certaminis positus stantem vidit, quem adjutorem habuit.

is no more, in which Augustine allows himself when he urges the nomen et omen of Stephen's name. He who first, being steadfast unto death, received the crown of life, had borne long since the prophecy of this his martyr's crown in the name of Stephen (orέpavos) which he bore.*

The relation between a prayer and its answer is not always distinctly traced in Scripture. Like so much else which is there, it is left for us to draw out for ourselves from slight and scattered hints, rather than forcibly obtruded upon us. We are not told that there was any connexion between Peter's deliverance from the dungeon of Herod, and the prayer that " was made without ceasing of the Church unto God for him;" (Acts xii. 5;) yet who can doubt that there was such, and, his attention having been called to it, that it was the intention of the sacred historian to indicate such? Neither can we doubt that there was a deep inner connexion between Stephen's prayer and Paul's conversion. The apostle Paul was probably the direct fruit of the prayer which the dying martyr uttered for his enemies; of which enemies the "young man whose name was Saul" was so far the bitterest, that he was not content with having a single hand in the proto-martyr's death, but by keeping the clothes of the witnesses, and consequently the chief actors in the deed, and disencumbering them

* Serm. 314. § 2; Enarr. in Ps. Lviii. 3: Stephanus lapidatus est, et quod vocabatur accepit; Stephanus enim corona dicitur. Less tolerable than this is another pun in which he allows himself on this same occasion; Serm. 317. c. 4: Petris lapidabatur qui pro Petra moriebatur, dicente apostolo, Petra autem erat Christus.

for their work, had as it were many hands in the slaughter.*

The scattering of the disciples in the persecution that followed, which disciples yet "went everywhere preaching the word," Augustine triumphantly compares to the scattering of sparks of fire, which before were heaped upon a single hearth, but now were flung abroad to kindle wheresoever they alighted. The foolish Jews had thought to quench those torches, which indeed they only succeeded in scattering far and wide, and which presently set the world in a flame.t

*Serm. 316. § 7. Quantum sæviebat in illâ cæde, vultis audire ? Vestimenta lapidantium servabat, ut omnium manibus lapidaret. Serm. 279. § 1: Sic aderat lapidantibus ut non ei sufficeret si tantum suis manibus lapidaret. Ut enim esset in omnium lapidantium manibus, ipse omnium vestimenta servabat, magis sæviens omnes adjuvando quam suis manibus lapidando.

Serm. 316. c. 4: Fugati sunt fratres, sed tanquam ardentes faces, quocunque veniebant, accendebant. Stulti Judæi, quando illos de Jerosolymis fugabant, carbones ignis in silvam mittebant. And Serm. 116. c. 6, he compares the Church of Jerusalem to a heap of burning brands: Lapidato Stephano passa est illa congeries persecutionem; Sparsa sunt ligna, et accensus est mundus.

IT

CHAPTER VII.

is difficult not to regret that Augustine did not, among his other exegetical works, give to the Church a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, seeing that for such a work the character of his mind, and the whole training of his life, eminently fitted him. He was of a spirit more akin to the great apostle of the Gentiles than any Father of the early Church. He, too, like Paul, had been brought by wonderful ways, and after many fearful struggles, there where he had found rest for his soul. Out of this great conflict he did not bring merely his wounds and his scars, but also a deep acquaintance with the devices of the enemy, with the weaknesses and treacheries of the human heart, with the mighty power of Him that had stood on his side to help and to save. he has not bequeathed to the Church any such work. His brief Scholia on this Epistle, and his Inchoata Expositio, which, though it occupies sixteen columns, only handles the first five verses of the first chapter, and in which he did not proceed further, justly fearing the enormous size to which a commentary on that scale would grow, only slightly qualify this statement. His work on the Galatians, which might have been accepted as in part a substitute, belongs to an earlier period of his life, and with very

But

much of valuable, does not possess all the depth and fulness of his later exposition. For though that which Luther says of him, that "he was first roused up and made a man by the Pelagians when he strove against them," has something of that verbal exaggeration he often displays, yet to that controversy he did certainly owe much. In conflict with these gainsayers he learned to possess his truth as he had never done before, as but for this perhaps he never would have done at all, and not to possess only, but to enlarge and to deepen it.

But although we have not such a work from his pen, there is largest material for the exposition of this portion of Holy Scripture to be drawn, if one would bring it together, from almost all parts of his writings, and more especially from his treatises having reference to that controversy, and from several of his Letters. By most modern interpreters of the Romans, these rich and abundant mines have remained well nigh unwrought. It would be impossible in the compass of this present essay to do more than select two or three prominent passages of that Epistle, and to attempt to show from these the manner in which he has addressed himself to the exposition of this very deep and theologically central portion of God's word.*

And, first, in regard of Rom. v. 12-21. This is

* See an interesting passage in his book De Spir. et Litt. c. 8, in which he expresses himself on the subject matter of this Epistle, and generally on the fitness of St. Paul to be eminently the preacher of the grace of God.