The ‘deacons’ were to be men ‘full of the Holy Ghost,’ and that would make them ‘full of wisdom.’ Stephen was ‘full of faith,’ and that made him ‘full of the Holy Ghost.’ Probably the same relation subsists in the third of our texts, of which the true reading is not, as it appears in our Authorised Version, ‘full of faith and power,’ but as it is given in the Revised Version, ‘full of grace and power.’ He was filled with grace-by which apparently is here meant the sum of the divine spiritual gifts-and therefore he was full of power.
In regard to the first and second of our three fragmentary texts, you will observe that the cause is put first and the effect second. The second and third of them are parts of the description of the foremost of these seven men, the martyr Stephen. The first of them is a description, given by the Apostles, of the sort of man whom they conceived to be fit to look after the very homely matter of stifling the discontent of some members of the Church, who thought that their poor people did not get their fair share of the daily ministration. I have taken the liberty of wrenching these three fragments from their context, because of their remarkable parallelism, which is evidently intended to set us thinking of the connection of the various characteristics which they set forth.
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