the laying on of the hands of Apostles.47 There is no in- stance on record of their conference by the laying on of the hands of any one else than an Apostle.48 The case of the Samaritans, recorded in the eighth chapter of Acts, is not only a very instructive one in itself, but may even be looked upon as the cardinal instance. The church had been prop- agated hitherto by the immediately evangelistic work of the Apostles themselves, and it had been accordingly the Apostles themselves who had received the converts into the church. Apparently they had all received the power of working signs by the laying on of the Apostles' hands at their baptism. The Samaritans were the first converts to be gathered into the church by men who were not Apostles ; and the signs of the Apostles were accordingly lacking to them until Peter and John were sent down to them that they might "receive the Holy Ghost" (Acts 8 : 14-17). The effect on Simon Magus of the sight of these gifts spring- ing up on the laying on of the Apostles' hands, we will all remember. The salient statements are very explicit. "Then laid they their hands upon them, and they received the Holy Ghost." "Now when Simon saw that through the laying on of the Apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given." "Give me also this power, that, on whomsoever I lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost." It could not be more emphatically stated that the Holy Ghost was conferred by the laying on of the hands, specifically of the Apostles, and of the Apostles alone; what Simon is said to have seen is precisely that it was through the laying on of the hands of just the Apostles that the Holy Ghost was given. And there can be no question that it was specifically the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit that were in discus- sion; no doubt is thrown upon the genuineness of the con- version of the Samaritans ; on the contrary, this is taken as a matter of course, and its assumption underlies the whole narrative; it constitutes in fact the very point of the nar- rative.
CASE OF THE SAMARITANS 23
This case of the Samaritans was of great importance in the primitive church, to enable men to distinguish between the gifts of grace and the gifts of power. Without it there would have been danger that only those would be accred- ited as Christians who possessed extraordinary gifts. It is of equal importance to us, to teach us the source of the gifts of power, in the Apostles, apart from whom they were not conferred: as also their function, to authenticate the Apostles as the authoritative founders of the church. It is in accordance with this reading of the significance of this incident, that Paul, who had all the signs of an Apostle, had also the power of conferring the charismata, and that in the entire New Testament we meet with no instance of the gifts showing themselves — after the initial instances of Pentecost and Cornelius — where an Apostle had not con- veyed them. Hermann Cremer is accordingly quite right when he says49 that "the Apostolic charismata bear the same relation to those of the ministry that the Apostolic office does to the pastoral office"; the extraordinary gifts belonged to the extraordinary office and showed themselves only in connection with its activities.5? ..
The connection of the supernatural gifts with the Apos- tles is so obvious that one wonders that so many students have missed it, and have sought an account of them in some other quarter. The true account has always been recognized, however, by some of the more careful students of the subject. It has been clearly set forth, for example, by Bishop Kaye. "I may be allowed to state the conclu- sion," he writes,51 "to which I have myself been led by a comparison of the statements in the Book of Acts with the writings of the Fathers of the second century. My conclu- sion then is, that the power of working miracles was not extended beyond the disciples upon whom the Apostles conferred it by the imposition of their hands. As the num- ber of these disciples gradually diminished, the instances of the exercise of miraculous powers became continually less
24 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES