



Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover]




[Illustration: Florence Morse Kingsley]




                                STEPHEN

                         A SOLDIER OF THE CROSS


                                   By
                        FLORENCE MORSE KINGSLEY

                            Author of Titus




                                TORONTO:
                   WILLIAM BRIGGS, WESLEY BUILDINGS.
                      C. W. COATES, MONTREAL, QUE.
                      S. F. HUESTIS, HALIFAX, N.S.




Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one
thousand eight hundred and ninety-six, by WILLIAM BRIGGS, at the
Department of Agriculture.




                                PREFACE.


There are those who have asked me to write this book.  There may be
others who shall question me because I have written it. "Assuredly,"
these will cry out, "it is justly forbidden to ascribe words and deeds
of one's own devising to them which have been set forever apart in the
pages of the Book of books.  The pen of inspiration has written of
Stephen all that God wills us to know of him, therefore let us be
content."

It is true that the story of Stephen is little known; scarcely for a
single day does the light shine clearly upon him, and that day the last
of his mortal life.  A tale is told of ancient alchemists, how that they
possessed the power of resurrecting from the ashes of a perished flower
a dim ghost of the flower itself.  In like manner, may not one gather
the fragrant dust of this vanished life from out the writings and
legends of past ages, and from it build anew some faint image of its
forgotten beauty?

Surely in these days, when the imagination hurries to and fro on the
earth, delving amid all that is low and evil and noisome for some new
panacea wherewith to deaden, if only for a moment, the feverish pain in
the hearts of men, it were a good thing to lift up the eyes of the soul
to the contemplation of those days when the memory of the living Jesus
was yet fresh in the hearts of His followers; when His voice still
echoed in their ears; when the glory of the cloud which had received Him
out of their sight lingered with transfiguring splendor on all the
commonplace happenings of their daily lives; when the words, "Lo, I am
with you alway, even unto the end," meant a living presence all
comforting, all powerful.

We are wont to look longingly back through the dark mists of the ages
and sigh, "Oh, that I had known Him as they knew Him!  But in these
hard, grey days there is no glory that shines, no voice that speaks, no
ecstatic vision of the Son of Man standing at the right hand of power."

Yet had we lived in those days the life which many of us live to-day,
going to church and to prayer because such attendance is a Christian
duty; giving of our abundance to the poor because our neighbors will
marvel if we withhold; and for the rest, living as those before the
flood, and since also--eating and drinking, and making such poor
merriment as we are able in a life which was given us for another
purpose--had we lived thus in those far-off days, would the Pentecostal
flames have descended upon us?  Could the crucified One have said unto
us, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end?"  Would we not rather
have cried out in terror and fled away from the light of those sad eyes
into darkness, even as did Peter after that he had denied with curses.

There is an Apostolic Church in the world to-day.  To-day Christ is on
earth and walks with men.  To-day the Spirit works mightily as of old;
the blind see, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up.  But it is not
alone in splendid temple, nor amid the solemn pomp of churchly
magnificence that these things are being accomplished, but in the humble
upper rooms where the good soldiers of the Salvation Army, and the
workers