It has always been the characteristic mark of a Christian that he is "led by the Spirit of God": "if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His." It has never been the mark of a Chris- tian that because he is "led by the Spirit of God" he is a law to himself and free from the ordinances of God's house. It is very clear from the record of the New Testament that the extraordinary charismata were not (after the very first days of the church) the possession of all Christians, but special supernatural gifts to the
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few; and it is equally clear from the records of the sub-Apostolic church that they did not continue in it, but only a shadow of them lingered in doubtful manifestations of which we must say, Do not even the heathen so ? How little this whole representation accords with the facts the progress of the present discussion will show. For an examination of McGiffert's position, see The Presbyterian Quarterly, April, 1895, pp. 185-194. For a vivid popular descrip- tion of conditions in the early church as reconstructed from the "Liberal" view-point, and brought into relation to the "enthu- siasm" of later centuries, see The Edinburgh Review for January, 1903, pp. 148 ff.
7. R. Martin Pope, as cited, p. 450, speaks of modes of minis- try, "in addition to the more stable and authorized modes" men- tioned in I Cor. 1 : 4-12, 28, which were of "a special order, per- haps peculiar to the Corinthian Church, with its exuberant manifes- tations of spiritual energy, and certainly, as the evidence of later Church History shows, of a temporary character, and exhausting themselves {cf. H. B. Swete, The Holy Spirit in the N. T., London, 1909, p. 320) in the Apostolic or sub- Apostolic age." In contrast with these special modes of ministry, he speaks of "the charisms of miracle-working as lasting down to the second century, if we may trust the evidence of Justin Martyr (Apol., 2 : 6)." In the passage of Justin appealed to, as also in section 8, and in Dial., 30, 76, 85, it is said only that demoniacs are exorcised by Christians; cf. G. T. Purves, The Testimony of Justin Martyr to Early Christianity, 1889, p. 159. We shall see that the evidence of the second and subsequent centuries is not such as naturally to base Pope's con- clusion. When he adds of these "charisms of miracle-working" that "they never were intended, as the extreme faith-healer of to-day contends, to supersede the efforts of the skilled physician," he is of course right, since they were confined to the Apostolic age, and to a very narrow circle then. But when he goes on to say, "they represent the creative gift, the power of initiating new de- partures in the normal world of phenomena, which is rooted in faith (see A. G. Hogg, Christ's Message of the Kingdom, Edinburgh, 1 91 1, pp. 62-70); and as such reveal a principle which holds good for all time" — he is speaking wholly without book, and relatively to the charisms of the New Testament equally wholly without meaning.
8. A. Tholuck's figure ("Ueber die Wunder der katholichen Kirche," in Vermischte Sckriften, I, 1839, p. 28) is this: "Christ did not appear like the sun in tropical lands, which rises without a dawn and sets without a twilight, but, as millenniums of prophecy
CESSATION OF THE CHARISMATA 237
preceded Him, so miracles followed Him, and the forces which He first awoke were active in a greater or less measure for a subsequent period. Down into the third century we have credible testimonies of the persistence of the miraculous forces which were active in the first century." A mechanical conception of the miracle-work- ing of both Christ and His followers lurks behind such figures; Christ let loose forces which naturally required some time to ex- haust their energies.
9. Miscellaneous Works, London, 1755, vol. I, p. xli.
10. Works, New York, 1856, vol. V, p. 706.
11. E. T.,p. 169.
12. Persecution and Tolerance, pp. 55-56.
13. On the literary form of Hermas, see Kerr Duncan Macmil- lan in Biblical and Theological Studies, by the Faculty of Princeton Seminary, 191 2, pp. 494-543. The Didache tells of "prophets" who spoke "in the Spirit," as apparently a well-known phenomenon in the churches for which it speaks, and thus implies the persistence of the charism — or rather of the shadow of the charism — of "proph- ecy." Papias is reported by Philip of Side as having stated on the authority of the daughters of Philip that Barsabas (or Justus) drank serpent's poison inadvertently, and that the mother of Manaim was raised from the dead, as well as that those raised from the dead by Christ lived until the time of Hadrian (cf. Eusebius, H. E., Ill, 39, 9; below, note 25); these events belong, in any event, to the Apostolic age.
14. Cf. H. M. Scott, "The Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament Revelation," in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, July, 1892, vol. Ill, pp. 479-488.