The Man with the Angel Face
Stephen's death is as golden a sunset as ever made the Alpen-glow a dying splendour. His swan-song was the first missionary message ever given by the Christian Church: it was - in its setting aside of the Temple - a bold reaffirmation of our Lord's great Gentile word to the Woman by the Well, and it cleared men's minds forever of the thought that Christianity could only reach the nations through Judaism: it actually opened the door into all the earth by the persecution it created: it started the conversion of the Apostle of the Gentiles, who watched the tragic scene: it is the utterance of a young man, in the dawn of a new era, who scaled the supreme heights at a bound: it is the first missionary message sealed, at once, with the first martyr's blood. With the extraordinary significance that always attaches to Scripture names, 'Stephen' means a 'Crown'; for already, over the martyr brow, hovers the shadow of God's deathless amaranth.
It is largely a truth that what a man is can be read in his face. The face is a barometer of character: it is the only section of the body which obviously reflects and registers the soul: as a bird's claw will be stamped upon soft rock, and remain, when the rock is hard, indelible for a thousand years, so the face hardens, into visible destiny, under mobile character. The face of the babe is blank, because its character is unformed; but the changes wrought by a lifetime can be, for good or evil, a transfiguration. The drunkard's puffy, bloated face; the sensualist's brutishness; the shifty craft which writes 'hypocrite' across the eyes: - we all start with infancy's white, unspotted page: we stamp it all over, as the years pass, with our own handwriting: Cain himself will be branded with no clearer mark than we, who carry our signature in our face.
Now suddenly in the frightful uproar of lynch law, in the roar and the tumult of the first Christian martyrdom, we come upon the man with the angel-face. "And all that sat in the council, fastening their eyes on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel" (Acts vi. I 5). What an angel's face is like may be judged from the Resurrection scene: -
His appearance was as lightning, and his raiment white as snow (Matt. xxviii. 3). Stephen's face was a most extraordinary revelation. The whole Council sat with awed but angry gaze on one face: in that face was the dawn that was going to circle the globe yet it was a dying face, for "if a seed remain, it abideth alone, but if it DIE, it bringeth forth much fruit." If an angel came down among the sons of men, knowing all the facts of another world, and having them always before his eyes, how noble his carriage would be, how fearless his mien, how shining his countenance, even if his path was leading straight to martyrdom: he would move as the consecrate of the Lord, the commissioned of God. "They forget," said Samuel Rutherford, when summoned at the end of his life to what was probably martyrdom, "that I am already dead." How that face must have haunted the dreams of the Sanhearim all down the fevered years! Now look at the ethical marvel of it. It is possible in the midst of angry criticism, acute personal danger, profound misunderstanding, overwhelming obloquy, to have the face of an angel. We have no slightest conception of the natural beauty, or ugliness, of Stephen's face: the Negro, the Mongolian, the Indian-each can be the man with the angel-face. A Hindu trader in India once said to a native Christian, "What medicine do you put on your face to make it shine so?" With surprise, the other answered "I don't put anything on." "You may expect me to believe that if you like, but what do you put on?" "Nothing," answered the Christian, "I don't put anything on." By this time the heathen interrogator had well-nigh lost his patience, and he said with considerable emphasis: -"Yes, you do. All you Christians do. I have seen it in Agra, and I have seen it in Ahmedabad and Surat, and I have seen it in Bombay." Then the believer in Jesus understood, and his glowing face shone all the more as he said, "Yes, I'll tell you the secret - it is a shining from God." Which temple is the more inexpressibly wonderful - the Holy Place lit by the Shekinah Glory? Or a human face lit by the Holy Ghost? Here was a man standing with one foot in each world: he saw the Glory of God, and he saw the pack of human wolves: and his face blazed the one on to the other. He was the Son of God's foothold in the darkness. It has been said that a perfect man and an angel are brothers; and the angel is in the soul ere ever the angel is in the face. A beggar at once, appealing to a group of passers by, caught sight of Mr. Pennefather among them, and immediately cried, "You, Sir, with heaven in your face!" When Dr. Gordon of Boston was once on the doorstep, the maid went in and said: "There is a man at the door with the face of an angel." It is an expression that was in Eden before the Fall: it is a flicker of the uncreated beauty: it is something, far off, like "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."What an epitome of a missionary! Heaven was actually opened, but only Stephen saw into it. All they saw of Heaven was Stephen's face. A young lady missionary in Japan was travelling in a steamer on which there was a Japanese merchant, so worried by business that he was contemplating suicide. He saw her face, and it was a miracle beyond his ken. Knowing she was a Christian missionary he approached her in his despair, and asked for the secret of the joy and peace in her face. That day she led the storm-tossed soul into heaven.
"But for Stephen's prayers," says Augustine, "the Church would never have had its Paul; the Church all down the ages is a creation from the light in somebody else's face.
" An old saying says: "A cloudy face strikes deeper than an angry blow." How blessedly true is the opposite! How profoundly more we are often helped by what people are, than by what they say; and it is an unconscious glow. Moses and Stephen kept no mirrors: Moses "wist not that the skin of his face shone"; and Stephen-had he had time to think of it-would have been puzzled by the startled stare of the Council. "Oh for the holy shining of the face! and oh for the holy ignorance of the shining!" (McCheyne). The shine of Stephen's was the unconscious response to "the countenance as the sun shineth in its strength": because Christ filled his eyes, he won and wore the angel-face: all faces are beautiful that look on Christ.So in this first martyrdom we get the secret of all martyrdom and of all radiant service. "Looking up steadfastly into heaven he saw Jesus." He saw God's Kingdom in its omnipotence, its vastness, its repose, its sanctity; and he saw the One who had called him, and commissioned him, standing on the right hand of power.
The great Chinese Statesman, Li Hung Chang, wrote in his diary, as a curious fact for which he could not account: - "This Christianity makes poor and lowly people bold and unafraid." Stephen was facing certain death. A London Divine said recently: - "A medical announcement that in a fortnight or in three months we should be dead, would throw everyone of us into a cold sweat of fear. Not the strongest man could face the announcement without almost complete collapse." Not so: for look at Stephen. All through he "SAW JESUS." When confronted with the angry law court, that Face shone-no passing fancy, but the passion of his life; as the stones began to fly, the vision still held his gaze; when the film gathered over the darkening eyes, he saw it still: the moment after, he saw it as none of us have ever seen it - yet. The death-hour can be the most radiant of the whole life; and if we cooperate with God, and He sees the need, it will be. Robert Glover, one of the ancient martyrs, was very gracious, very holy; yet God was pleased, during his last days in prison, to withdraw Himself from him, and leave him in great distress of soul. A friend visited him and advised him to continue waiting upon God. He did so; and the night before his execution he spent much of the time in prayer; but no comfort came, no Christ. The next day he was led forth to execution; but the moment he came in sight of the stake, he cried: - "Oh Austin, He is come! He is come!"For heaven can be proved by the heaven in the face. In a small township in the United States there lived a lawyer, a scholarly, refined skeptic, who lectured with great ability against Christianity. One evening he came to the officers of the Presbyterian Church and asked to be received into membership. Greatly astonished, they courteously concealed their surprise, and put to him the usual questions. He made a full, hearty confession of faith in Christ. Then the pastor said: "You know how astonished we are; would you kindly tell us what has led to this change of conviction?" Very quietly the lawyer replied, -"It was Judge Tate's face." "Judge Tate's face!" they all cried in astonishment: "what do you mean?" "Well," he said, "I had reason on one occasion to consult the judge on a legal matter. I was struck with something in his face-a light, a peace, very intangible but very real which caught me tremendously. I went to see him repeatedly, ostensibly for legal consultation, and without our ever speaking of religious things, I studied his face as I would any other bit of evidence. I sifted the thing through: it became irresistible that the thing which affected his face was his faith in Christ. I had never run across this fact in my study of Christian evidences; and I wanted to be honest; so I have gladly accepted Christ." And it is an exhaustless shine. An old Negro slave was once addressed by her mistress. "Sybil," she said, "when I heard you singing on the house-top, I thought you fanatical; but when I saw your shining face, I saw how different you were to me." "Ah, Missis," the old woman answered, "the light you saw in my face was not mine, but was reflected from the cross; and there is heaps more for every poor sinner who will come near enough to catch the rays. "THE BEAUTY OF THE LORD OUR GOD BE UPON US." (PS. XV. 7).
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