Ananias and Sapphira

“ But if any one act otherwise (which may God forbid) , let him take care lest he meet the condemnation of Ananias and Sapphira, and be found guilty of sacrilege, as those were who lied as to the price of the property designated, of whom we read thus in the before-cited passage of the Acts of the Apostles: “But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold land (agrum) , and kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles’ feet. ”

“ As I make for myself by the trick of a thief, and a theft,
The confederates’ home for my own for my honor bereft.
Go! learn if he said this. Return ere the rise of the sun:—
Shall we look for another to save us, or is he the one?”{190}
ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA
Who is that coming? Look! They are bearing a body again.
It’s a woman now, I think. And the very same young men
Who brought Ananias’ body we buried a moment ago. ”

“ Guilt and falsehood are on your lip. Your eye, the eye of the proud Christian, quails before the gaze of the despoiled and despised Jew; were you innocent, you would stand firm as I do now, erect in your Maker's image. Do you not tremble lest God's own lightnings blast you? Did you ever read, and reading believe, the Christian story of Ananias and Sapphira!"
If Burrell had possessed an atom of human feeling, he would have sunk abashed to the earth, and entreated the forgiveness of the Rabbi, whose flashing eyes and extended features glared and swelled with indignation ”

“ Ananias and Sapphira have been dead so long, and since their time so many people have sworn falsely without affecting their health that the fear of sudden divine vengeance no longer pales the cheek of the perjurer. If the vengeance is not sudden, then, according to the church, the criminal will have plenty of time to repent; so that the oath no longer affects even the fearful. ”

“ He who with twofold thoughts turns to monastic life, and bestows one part of his property, holds one to himself, and has no trust in the Almighty, that he will provide for him food and garments and other needs, will receive the accursed sentence with Ananias and Sapphira, who deceived in their own property, and fell dying with sudden death before the apostles. ”

“ Christianity had no objective life, except in the person of Jesus Christ; and the subjective power which it possessed upon both intellect and consciousness had no assignable limits, inasmuch as it seemed to make the martyrs almost insensible to physical pain, and yet could produce a moral sensitiveness so acute that to be conscious of willful deception might work the death of the body, as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira when they lied to Peter about the consecration of their property to holy uses. ”

“ It is perhaps worthy of notice that Herodias and Sapphira are the only women mentioned by name in the New Testament against whom anything discreditable is charged.
As the number of believers increased in Jerusalem, trouble was encountered in regard to the daily provision. The communistic plan of living was by no means rigidly insisted upon, as is shown by the fact that Peter admits that Ananias was not obliged to make an offering of the whole or even of a part of the price of his possession. ”

“ But these leaders had to contend not only with enemies outside the Church but with the scheming, dishonest people who stole their way into the fold. There were men and women who had not repented of their sins before they were baptized; so they did not receive the Holy Ghost.
Two of these were Ananias and his wife Sapphira.
Everybody who joined the Church had everything in common. Those who had land and other property sold it and brought the money to the apostles. There were no rich and no poor—all had everything that anybody else had, and everyone possessed what belonged to all. ”

“ We are told in Acts xi. 19 that "they that were scattered abroad upon the tribulation that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phœnicia, and Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the word to none save only to Jews." Ananias was probably one of these fugitives from Jerusalem who came to Damascus, and there sought refuge from the rage of the destroyer. St. Paul himself tells us of the character which Ananias sustained at Damascus: "He was a devout man according to the law, well reported of by all the Jews that dwell there" (ch. xxii. 12) . ”

“ He could not touch food; he could only humble himself, and pray earnestly to God to forgive him, to grant him still more light, and to give him the grace to make amends for the wrong he had done. His prayer was heard. ↑ Ananias. According to tradition Ananias was one of our Lord’s seventy disciples, and, later on, died a martyr’s death. ↑ A vision. While he was praying. ↑ Lord. Ananias was amazed at the commission entrusted to him, and, in his astonishment, remonstrated in the words that follow. ↑ Thy saints. Thy disciples. ↑ Is a vessel. ”

“ Yet he immediately afterwards signifies what kind of rulers he spoke of "that were not to be resisted." "For rulers" (says he, in the very next verse,) "are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same; for he is the minister of God to thee for good." (But Ananias, as a ruler, was certainly the very reverse of this description, so that the practice of the apostle with respect to him, was by no means opposite to this doctrine.) ”

“ The abruptness and severity of the transition are, 45however, broken and relieved by the other human interests in the picture. The Ananias is a masterly, a stupendous figure. The attitude, the drawing, the expression, the ease, the force, are alike wonderful. He falls so naturally, that it seems as if a person could fall in no other way; and yet of all the ways in which a human figure could fall, it is probably the most expressive of a person overwhelmed by and in the grasp of Divine vengeance. This is in some measure, we apprehend, the secret of Raphael’s success. ”

“ For, notice how, in the case before us, St Peter, while tracing the fall of Ananias to the agency of Satan, yet prefixes his question with a why: "Why hath Satan jilted thine heart?" There had been a time when resistance was still possible. Ananias might have rejected the suggestion of the tempter: he was not bound to yield: but he had yielded. And very suggestive of why he had fallen so low, is that other word "filled." It brings before us the quiet, gradual manner in which evil takes possession of the heart of man. We have seen already that it was so in the case of Ananias. ”

“ The shallowest eye can express the deepest apprehension; the nature devoid of capacity for all other intense emotion, may yet be keenly and desperately subject to the power of fear. The study of cowardice reveals peculiar inconsistencies. For instance, here stood Ananias, a man of insignificant psychal stature, surpassing all his fellows in the height of his alarm. His eyes, often but vague films beneath the fumes of wine, were now clarified and made brilliant by the horror of their gaze. ”

“ He conversed calmly with the heavenly Visitor, raised his objections, received their solution, and then departed in humble obedience to fulfil the mission committed to him. There is a marvellous strength and power for the man of any age who lives, as Ananias did, with a clear vision of the eternal world constantly visible to the spiritual eye. ”

“ Let it be also remembered that the supposed breach of the precept ("thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people") could not rest on the circumstance of knowing Ananias to be the high priest; for, whether the apostle did know, or did not know that Ananias was high priest, yet he certainly knew, before he censured him, that he was a ruler of the people, and that he then sat in the quality of a judge; (for this is declared in the very censure itself—"sittest thou to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to law!") ”

“ But now the Sicarii went into the city by night, just before the festival, which was now at hand, and took the scribe belonging to the governor of the temple, whose name was Eleazar, who was the son of Ananus [Ananias] the high priest, and bound him, and carried him away with them; after which they sent to Ananias, and said that they would send the scribe to him, if he would persuade Albinus to release ten of those prisoners which he had caught of their party; so Ananias was plainly forced to persuade Albinus, and gained his request of him. ”

“ For near the green turf where he laid him,
They lighted the torch, and they brandished it high;
[138] It glared through the boughs on his tender black eye,
That fatally shone for the death-shaft to fly;
His beauty, his beaming betrayed him:
He cannot by flying now loosen the dart,
The end of his tortures to quicken,
By letting the life in one blood-gush depart.
He seeks a retreat, like the warm, wounded heart,
When, lone, slow, and silent, the victim of art,
It dies, as a deer that is stricken.
[139]
THE DEATH OF SAPPHIRA. [3]
Sapphira, Sapphira, awake! ”

“ Me? Dat I wouldn’t,” replied Ananias, emphatically—“dat I wouldn’t. [122] I’d ’a’ got my money, en I’d ’a’ come back home, kaze I boun’ you I wa’n’t a-gwine ter let Marster drap off and die widout knowin’ who run’d dem stock off. No, suh. I wuz des ’bleege ter come back.”
“Ananias,” said Lawyer Terrell, “you are a good man.”
“Thanky, suh!—thanky, marster!” exclaimed Ananias, taking off his weather-beaten cap. “You er de fus w’ite man dat ever tol’ me dat sence I bin born’d inter de worl’. Thanky, suh!” ”

“ Ananias answered, "Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to Thy saints at Jerusalem." But the Lord said unto him, "Go thy way, haste to his help, for he is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles, and to kings, and to the children of Israel." At last Ananias went his way, and visited the praying penitent. But even after this, when Paul had been preaching for some time with great success, and had made the greatest sacrifices, and braved even death itself, in the cause of Christ, there were numbers who doubted his sincerity. ”

“ Anania climbed on the heap of shining shale which marked the summit, and flung himself on the ground to escape the fury of the blasts which blew from all sides. The whole island was stretched out before him, with its blue mountains and its silver sea, glittering under the midday sun. Overhead the heaven was immense, infinite, void as human thought. The wind raged furiously in the great emptiness. Its assaults invested Anania in mad fury, in the violent anger of a formidable wild beast, which would permit the approach of no other being to the aereal cave where it was resolved to reign alone. ”

“ But Ananias was too hard for the rest, by his riches, which enabled him to gain those that were most ready to receive. Costobarus also, and Saulus, did themselves get together a multitude of wicked wretches, and this because they were of the royal family; and so they obtained favor among them, because of their kindred to Agrippa; but still they used violence with the people, and were very ready to plunder those that were weaker than themselves. ”

“ We should have respect to the opinion of our fellows, and strive to win it in a legitimate way. But Ananias and his consort desired the good opinion of the Christian community regardless of the approval or the watchful eye of the Supreme Judge, who interposed to teach His people by an awful example that in the new dispensation of Love, as well as in the old dispensation of Law, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and that they and they alone have a good understanding who order their lives according to that fear, whether in their secret thoughts or in their public actions. ”

“ Because he hath seen in a vision such a man coming to him, to restore him to his sight; and Ananias's coming to him must answer his dream, for it was of God (v. 12) : He hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias, and just such a man as thou art, coming in seasonably for his relief, and putting his hand on him that he might receive his sight. Now this vision which Paul had may be considered, [1.] As an immediate answer to his prayer, and the keeping up of that communion with God which he had entered into by prayer. ”

“ Among that number was Ananias (son of Eleazar?) , whose enormous wealth, either acquired or inherited, allowed him to ingratiate himself with all who were open to bribery, and set him free to practise acts of lawlessness and violence. Since the time when Herod had lowered the dignity of the high priest's office by permitting it to be sold or gained by pandering to most degraded sentiments, there were237 certain families who seemed to have acquired a right to it—those of Boëthus, Cantheras, Phabi, Camith, and Anan or Seth, and it was but seldom that any one was elected outside that circle. ”

“ But Anania stood at the window of his little room, watching the slow rising of the moon between the black teeth of Orthobene.
At last he was alone! Night reigned, passionate and sweet. Already the cuckoo was filling the lonely valley with her palpitating cries. Ah! thus sadly did Anania feel his heart palpitate and cry, out of an infinite solitude.
Why had he told that lie? And why had the stupid shepherd said not a word on hearing the stupendous falsehood? Clearly he knew nothing of love—love for a superior creature, love without limit and without hope. But why had Anania stooped to a lie? ”

“ The air was scented with heather blossom. A far off village with grey campanile against the violet sky came into sight. Anania looked at the strange outline of the mountains, at the quiet sky, at the cistus bushes among the rocks, and nothing kept back his tears but the fear of ridicule from his fellow-travellers: a priest, and a student from lowland Campidano who had once been his school-fellow.
At last he was a man! True he had thought himself a man ever since he was fifteen, but then he had thought himself a young man, now he was an "old young man." ”