into six classes. (1). He was distinguished for the angelic radiance which shone before the Council, and which has been aptly paralleled by St. Chrysostom and others with the intolerable glory of Moses as he descended from Mount Sinai. This angelic radiance, which had a natural base in the extreme beauty of his youthful person, symbolized the purity of his life and heart, his faithfulness to his Master's cause, and the divine rays of grace with which his soul was penetrated. (2). St. Stephen, as we have more than once said already, was the protomartyr of Christianity. (3). The miraculous powers with which he had been invested in his life-time, attached to his memorials and monuments -if we may believe various circumstantial narratives avouched by so grave an authority as St. Augustine—after his death, and before the discovery of his remains by Lucian. (4). To St. Stephen it was given to see the heavens opened, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God-not sitting, as in the Creed, in his capacity of Judge, but standing as an advocate to plead his cause while still his victory was incomplete; and standing, moreover, to receive him as a respected guest after his triumphant warfare had been accomplished. (5). The moral phenomena of his martyrdom were in many respects conformable with the Passion of our Lord. Both the Saviour and His protomartyr were charged with the same form of blasphemy. As Jesus had commended His departing spirit to the hands of His Heavenly Father; so Stephen prayed that his might be received by the Lord Jesus. As Jesus had prayed for His executioners, so did Stephen intercede in behalf of his murderers :"Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." The Venerable Bede points out what, so far as we know—but the observation is so natural, that it must have been in circulation at a very early period-St. Augustine was the first to remark, that Stephen, when praying for himself, prayed standing; when he wished to plead for his enemies, he sank upon his knees. Even in his death-pangs he begat the most illus

66 THE GENTLE WITNESS."

47

trious propagator of the faith for which he suffered. “O burning love!" exclaims St. Augustine. "O love without example! * * * If Stephen had not prayed, the church had had no Paul;" a sentiment which the same father repeats:-"It was the prayer of Stephen which gave Paul to the Church."

It is in this connection that we may introduce from Dr. Monsell's" Parish Musings" his hymn for St. Stephen's Day, entitled, "The Gentle Witness."

First of the martyred throng

To join his Lord above;

First to commence the endless song

Of His redeeming love;

First to essay the spear and shield,

The holy Stephen sought the field.

First to obtain a crown-
First-by the mercy-seat-

To lay the blood-bought trophy down
At its own Owner's feet;

Through the grave-gates his Saviour burst-
He homeward, heavenward, entered first.

Men thought the sufferer dead,

And high exultings kept ;

But on his blood-stained, stony bed,
The saint serenely slept.

Wrapped in the banner of the cross,
His all the gain-theirs all the loss.

Lord, grant Thy grace, that we,
Whate'er our lot may prove,

May learn his high fidelity,

His deep forgiving love;

The boldness that dare part with life,
And yet be gentle in the strife.

(6). The sixth and last distinction of St. Stephen is, that by his death he attained to each of what the schoolmen call the three aureoles, which marked the spiritual degrees of * Sermo in Natali Apostolorum Petri et Pauli.

martyrs, doctors, and virgins, in the glory of the blessed. The red aureole of martyrdom belongs to St. Stephen, for he was the protomartyr; the white aureole of virginity is due to his chastity; and the aureole of the doctors is his for that discourse (Acts vii.) which the impatient malice of his enemies compelled him to leave so magnificently incomplete.

It may be allowed, in conclusion, to repeat that martyrdom is not one of the evidences of Christianity. Proving only the force of internal and subjective convictions, it is of little value as a witness to the external and objective truth of those principles for which death is encountered.* Thrice happy they who, like St. Stephen, contend aright for the right! To them the church militant exultingly accords the honour of being enrolled among that "noble army " who swell the Te Deum of cherubim and seraphim.

*Bishop Latimer, himself a martyr, has, in his Fourth Sermon be fore the King (Edward VI.), made substantially the same assertion :"This is no good argument, my friends: A man seemeth not to feare death, therefore hys cause is good.' This is a deceaveable argument: 'He went to his death boldly; ergo, he standeth in a just quarrel.' -Sermons. Ed. 1575-7; Fols. 55 and 556.

St. John the Quangelist's Rag,

DECEMBER 27.

ETWEEN the festival of St. Stephen, the martyr in will and deed, and that of the Holy Innocents, martyrs in fact, but not in intention, the festival of St. John the Evangelist occupies a place as representing the intermediate class of martyrs in will but not in deed. St. John is the only one of the Apostles who is ascertained to be eligible for this particular position; for of him alone is it safe to conclude that he was not called upon to exhibit martyrdom in both kinds. Mr. L'Estrange conjectures that as a co-efficient with the desire of the Church to group together the celebrations of the typical martyrs, and to place all in their desired place in the immediate neighbourhood of the Nativity, there was a feeling of inconvenience arising from the fact of the incidence of the festival of St. John the Evangelist upon the same day as that of St. John the Baptist; a circumstance-both saints being so eminent as to demand a separate day--which had the effect of unsettling the festival of the Evangelist, which then naturally gravitated as near as possible to the Nativity of the Master he had loved and served so long and so well.* It is proper, on the broadest grounds, that in the calendar of a religion which recognises the heart as the central abode *Alliance of Divine Offices.

of purity; which regards thought as the root, flower, and fruit of action, and will as the subtlest form of deed; which proclaims that we are chiefly that which we chiefly love or affect, and which more and more jealously than any other system that the world has seen, guards the awful marches that separate sin from crime-it is proper, we say, that in the calendar of such a religion, there should be a day set apart to the apotheosis of Motive.

There is no mention of the festival of St. John the Evangelist in the records of the early centuries. According to Mr. Riddle, our own Venerable Bede is the first writer in whose works any trace of it occurs. Perhaps the observance of it, which was at first only local, became universal in the thirteenth century.

St. John was a native of Galilee, the son of Zebedee and Salome, and the younger brother of St. James the Greater, with whom he followed the business of a fisherman until his call to attend the Saviour, which is supposed to have occurred while he was yet under thirty years of age, so that he was considerably the youngest of all the Apostles.

It is unnecessary to attempt to reproduce in precise narrative sequence such events as are recorded in the Holy Gospels concerning the history of St. John, who appears to have been profound and speculative beyond his breeding, and of greater natural cultivation than his compeers, so that he was renowned throughout the ancient Church for a wisdom in advance of all the Apostles. The proof of this is found in the fact that whereas the other Evangelists occupy themselves more or less minutely with the humanity of Christ, he at once plunges into the sea of His Divinity, and the opening of his Gospel has been reckoned so splendid as to be beyond not only the wont, but even beyond the exceptions, of Scriptural magnificence. "If in the beginning of his Gospel," are words referred to the Venerable Bede, "John had flown higher, all the world would not have been able to understand him."