Old Testament. The prophetic spirit is represented in the
Hebrew books as a breathing which penetrates man and inspires him. In
the beautiful vision of Elijah, God passes by in the form of a gentle
wind, which produces a slight rustling noise.

Among all these "descents of the Spirit," which appear to have been
frequent enough, there was one which left a profound impression on the
nascent Church. One day, when the brethren were assembled, a
thunder-storm burst forth. A violent wind threw open the windows: the
heavens were on fire. Thunder-storms, in these countries, are
accompanied by prodigious sheets of lightning; the atmosphere is, as it
were, everywhere furrowed with ridges of flame. Whether the electric
fluid had penetrated the room itself or whether a dazzling flash of
lightning had suddenly illuminated the faces of all, everyone was
convinced that the Spirit had entered, and that it had alighted on the
head of each in the form of tongues of fire. The idea that the Spirit
had alighted on them in the form of jets of flame, resembling tongues of
fire, gave rise to a series of singular ideas, which took a foremost
place in the thought of the period.

The tongues of fire appeared a striking symbol. People were convinced
that God desired to signify in this manner that he poured out upon the
apostles his most precious gifts of eloquence and of inspiration. But
they did not stop there. Jerusalem was, like the majority of the large
cities of the East, a city in which many languages were spoken. The
diversity of tongues was one of the difficulties which one found there
in the way of propagating a universal form of faith. One of the things,
moreover, which alarmed the apostles, at the commencement of a ministry
destined to embrace the world, was the number of languages which were
spoken there: they were asking themselves incessantly how they could
learn so many tongues. "The gift of tongues" became thus a marvellous
privilege. It was believed that the preaching of the Gospel would clear
away the obstacle which was created by the diversity of idioms. There
was in this a liberal idea; they meant to imply that the Gospel should
have no language of its own; that it should be translatable into every
tongue; and that the translation should be of the same value as the
original.

The custom of living together, holding the same faith, and indulging the
same expectation, necessarily produced many common habits. All lived in
commo