Here are our two great facts again displayed in a man of like passions with ourselves. Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit and his earnest gaze was fixed on a glorified Man in heaven. This is Christianity. This is the true, the normal idea of a Christian. He is a man full of the Holy Spirit, looking with the steady gaze of faith into heaven and occupied with a glorified Christ. We cannot accept any lower standard than this, short as we may come of it practically. It is very high and very holy. Moreover, we have to confess how very little we are up to it. Still it is the divine standard, and every devoted heart will aspire to it and nothing less. It is the happy privilege of every Christian to be full of the Holy Spirit and to have the eye of faith fixed on the glorified Man in heaven. There is no divine reason why it should not be so. Redemption is accomplished, sin is put away, grace reigns through righteousness, there is a Man on the throne of God, the Holy Spirit has come down to this earth and taken up His abode in the believer individually and in the Church corporately.

Thus it stands. Be it carefully noted that these things are not mere speculations or cold theories. Alas! They may be held as such, but in themselves they are not. On the contrary they are immensely practical, divinely formative, powerfully influential, as we can distinctly see in the case of the blessed martyr, Stephen.