accusations of blasphemy, Stephen endeavoured to show his hearers how mistaken they were in their ideas of the Messiah; and how differently they would act, if they would consider all that had been told to Abraham and the rest of their forefathers, by God Himself. To this end, Stephen reminded them of how God had called Abraham out of his own land to be the father of the Children of Israel, giving him many precious promises, and establishing with him and his seed the Covenant of Circumcision in token of their being His peculiar people. Then Stephen spake of Isaac and of Jacob, and of the twelve patriarchs; and of how Joseph had been sold into Egypt, and was in time followed by his Father and Brothers and their descendants; who remained in Egypt four hundred years, according to what the Lord had told Abraham. Then Stephen spake of the cruel treatment endured by the Children of Israel; and how, in His own appointed time, God had wonderfully preserved the infant Moses to be the deliverer of His chosen people. He reminded them of the unwillingness of the Hebrews to listen to Moses, although appointed by God for this very purpose; and then he said, "This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush. He brought them out, after that he had shewed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness forty years." All these things were well known to the Jews, who held Moses in great reverence: and Stephen now reminds them, that it was this very Moses himself who prophesied concerning the expected Messiah, "A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear." Then proceeding with his history, Stephen shortly noticed the giving of the Law; the idolatry and other sins of the Children of Israel, which caused them to wander for forty years in the wilderness, and caused the Almighty even then to warn them of a future punishment for forsaking Him, "I will carry you away beyond Babylon." Stephen then spake of "the tabernacle of witness," set up in the wilderness by the command of God, as a sign or token of the Covenant made between Him and His people. This tabernacle, he reminded them, had been brought by their fathers under the leading of Joshua, (for the word Jesus here used means Joshua,) into that land which had hitherto been "the possession of the Gentiles"; and that, about four hundred years after, David, "who found favour before God," "desired to find," or build, a more suitable tabernacle for the God of Jacob. "But Solomon built Him an house."