ded me, that any belief which I had in it must be for the
present unpractical. Soon after, a friend of mine applied by letter
for information as to the facts to a very acute and pious Scotchman,
who had become a believer in these miracles. The first reply gave us
no facts whatever, but was a declamatory exhortation to believe.
The second was nothing but a lamentation over my friend's unbelief,
because he asked again for the facts. This showed me, that there was
excitement and delusion: yet the general phenomena appeared so similar
to those of the church of Corinth, that I supposed the persons must
unawares have copied the exterior manifestations, if, after all, there
was no reality at bottom.

Three years sufficed to explode these tongues; and from time to time
I had an uneasy sense, how much discredit they cast on the Corinthian
miracles. Meander's discussion on the 2nd Chapter of the Acts first
opened to me the certainty, that Luke (or the authority whom he
followed) has exaggerated into a gift of languages what cannot have
been essentially different from the Corinthian, and in short from
the Irvingite, tongues. Thus Luke's narrative has transformed into a
splendid miracle, what in Paul is no miracle at all. It is true that
Paul speaks of _interpretation of tongues_ as possible, but without a
hint that any verification was to be used. Besides, why should a Greek
not speak Greek in an assembly of his own countrymen? Is it credible,
that the Spirit should inspire one man to utter unintelligible sounds,
and a second to interpret these, and then give the assembly endless
trouble to find out whether the interpretation was pretence or
reality, when the whole difficulty was gratuitous? We grant that
there _may_ be good reasons for what is paradoxical, but we need the
stronger proof that it is a reality. Yet what in fact is there? and
why should the gift of tongues in Corinth, as described by Paul, be
treated with more respect than in Newman Street, London? I could
find no other reply, than that Paul was too sober-minded: yet his own
description of the tongues is that of a barbaric jargon, which makes
the church appear as if it "were mad," and which is only redeemed from
contempt by miraculous interpretation. In the Acts we see that this
phenomenon pervaded all the Churches; from the day of Pentecost onward
it was looked on as the standard mark of "the descent of the Holy
Spirit;" and in the conversion of Cornelius it was the