Acts 7:59

59. And they stoned Stephen It is with exquisite pathos that Luke returns to say a second time that they stoned the holy martyr: in Acts 7:58 as one of the points of cruelty which they dealt upon him; in this verse as a fact contrasted with the holy demeanour of the blessed martyr himself. They stoned him, laying their garments coldly at Saul’s feet; they stoned him, breathing forth his spirit into the hands of his Lord Jesus. As if Luke was an eyewitness, the image of the brutal stoning seems to linger in his mental vision.

God A word strangely inserted by the translators, and obscuring the fact that Stephen called upon Jesus.

Lord Jesus Still does the faithful martyr, reeling under the force of their missiles, confess his Lord. Into the hands of that Lord, standing in glory before his eyes, captured even in death, he commits the spirit no violence can kill. Good proof that the spirit of man, like the Spirit of God, is no material substance. And thus may every dying follower of a faithful Lord humbly commit his parting spirit to His faithful keeping. Evidences are plenty in the history of dying saints that visions from the excellent glory dawning on their eyes anticipate the glory into which they are fast entering; and this visible presentation by the Lord Jesus of his own living person before the eyes of blessed Stephen does but furnish a type for all that die in the Lord.