f ideas for which his
ordinary vocabulary supplies no sufficient expression, his language
becomes broken, incoherent, struggling, and almost unnaturally
elevated; much more was it to be expected that when divine and new
feelings rushed like a flood upon the soul, the language of men would
have become strange and extraordinary; but in that supposed case, wild
as the expressions might appear to one coldly looking on and not
participating in the feelings of the speaker, they would be quite
sufficient to convey intelligible meaning to any one affected by the
same emotions.

Where perfect sympathy exists, incoherent utterance--a word--a
syllable--is quite as efficient as elaborate sentences. Now this is
precisely the account given of the phenomenon which attended the gift
of tongues. On the day of Pentecost, all who were in the same state of
spiritual emotion as those who spoke, understood the speakers; each
was as intelligible to all as if he spoke in their several tongues: to
those who were coolly and sceptically watching, the effects appeared
like those of intoxication. A similar account is given by the Apostle
Paul: the voice appeared to unsympathetic ears as that of a barbarian;
the uninitiated and unbelieving coming in, heard nothing that was
articulate to them, but only what seemed to them the ravings of
insanity.

The next was the gift of prophecy. Prophecy has several meanings in
Scripture; sometimes it means the power of predicting future events,
sometimes an entranced state accompanied with ravings, sometimes it
appears to mean only exposition; but prophecy, as the miraculous
spiritual gift granted to the early Church, seems to have been a state
of communion with the mind of God lower than that which was called the
gift of tongues, at least less ecstatic, less rapt into the world to
come, more under the guidance of the reason, more within the control
of calm consciousness--as we might say, less supernatural.

Upon these gifts we make two observations:

1. Even the highest were not accompanied with spiritual faultlessness.
Inspiration was one thing, infallibility another. The gifts of the
Spirit were, like the gifts of Nature, subordinated to the
will--capable of being used for good or evil, sometimes pure,
sometimes mixed with human infirmity. The supernaturally gifted man
was no mere machine, no automaton ruled in spite of himself by a
superior spirit. Disorder, vanity,