" It is the prevailing view that the charisms, some of them at least, as those of miracles and tongues, be- long not essentially and permanently to the Church, but were merely a temporary adventitious efflorescence of the apostolic period, an ornamental appendage, like the wedding-dress of a youthful bride, and afterwards disappeared from liistory, giving place to the regular and natural kind of moral and religious activitj'. So, among the ancients, Chrvsostom, who begins his twen- ty-ninth homilj' on the Epistle to the Corinthians with these words : ToiJro iiivai' to x^<>ptov afodpa tariv aaa- <f)tQ, Tijv Si dffaipHav ?'/ twv Trp ay fidnov dy v o id
TE KOI iWeiXplQ VOlli,TMV TOTi JXIV (Ti'/(/3rtl1'0)'-
Tiot\ vv i> c t o V yivoji'iviov. Among moderns compare, for example, Olshausen (JJomnic-rit . iii, G83), who makes the charismatic form of the Spirit's opera- tion cease with the third century. With s])ecial dis- tinctness, this view is expressed by Trautmann as fol- lows {Die A postal .Kirche, 1848, p. 309): 'As, in tlie case of marriage, the festivitj' of the wedding-day cannot alwaj's last, any more than the inspiration of the first love when the seriousness and steady activity of the common pilgrimage just begun comes on ; as, accord- ing to the universal order of Tiature, the blossom must fall away if the fruit is to thrive — though, on the oth- er hand, the fruit does not appear without the preced- ing blossom — so that gush of heavenly powers on the da}' of Pentecost could not, must not continue in the Church. It could not — because the earthly human na- ture is not able constantly to bear the bliss of ecstasj' and such mighty streams of'power from -above, as is shown liy tlie examjjle of the three chosen disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration. It must not — because
the continuance of the blossom would have hindered the development of the fruit. The splendor of these higher powers would unavoidably have fixed the eye and the heart too much on externals, and the proper object and work of faith, the inward conquest of the world, would have been neglected.' The Irvingites, on the contrary, like the Montanists of the second cen- tury, look upon these apostolic gifts and offices as the necessary conditions of a healthy state of the Church at any time ; make their disappearance the fault of Christianity ; and hold it impossible to remedy tiie de- fects of the Church without a revival of the charisms and the apostolate. They appeal to such passages as 1 Cor. xii, 27-31 ; Eph. iv, 11-13, where undue empha- sis is laid on 'till;' and to 1 Thess. v, 19, 20; 1 Cor. xii, 31 ; xiv, 1, where the apostle not only warns Chris- tians against quenching the holy fire of the Spirit, but also positively requires them to strive earnestly after his miraculous gifts. So Thiersch, the (only) scien- tific theologian of the Irvingite community, in his Vor- lesimrjen ither Kalholicismus und Protest aniismus, i, 80 (2d edit.) ; compare my articles on ' Irvingism and the Church Question' in the Denfsr/ie Kh\he7>frexmd, toI. iii, Nos. 2, 3, 5, and G, particularly p. 223 sq. The Mor- mons, too, or ' Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,' whose rise (April 6, 18.30) was almost simulta- neous with the appearance of Irvingism in England, notwithstanding their radical difference in spirit and conduct, likewise claim to possess all the offices and spiritual gifts of the apostolic Church. Their founder, Joseph Smith, lays down, among other articles of faith : ' We believe in the same organization that existed in the primitive Church, viz. apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, etc. We believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, inter- pretation of tongues,' etc. {Hist, of' all the Relig. De- nominations in the U. S. p. 348, 2d edit.). There seems to us to be here a mixture of truth and error on both sides. In these charisms we must distinguish between the essence and the temporary' form. The first is per- manent; the second has disappeared, yet breaks out at times sporadically, though not with the same strength and purity as in the apostolic period. In the nature of the case, the Holy Ghost, when first entering into humanity, came with peculiar creative power, copious- ness, and freshness; presented a striking contrast to the mass of the unchristian world ; and by this very exhibition of what was extraordinary and miraculous, exerted a mighty attraction upon the world, without which it could never have been conquered. Christian- ity, however, aims to incorporate herself in the life of humanity, enter into all its conditions and spheres of activity as the ruling principle, and thus to become the second, higher nature. As it raises tbe natural more and more into the sphere of the Spirit, so in this verj' process it makes the supernatural more and more natural. These are but two aspects of one and the same operation. Accordingly we find, that as fast as the reigning power of heathenism is broken, those charisms which exhibited most of tiie miraculous be- come less frequent, and after the fourth century al- most entirely disappear. This is not owing to a fault of (Mn-istianity, for at that very time the Church pro- duced some of her greatest teachers, her Athanasius and her Ambrose, her Chr_ysostom and her Augustine. It is rather a result of its victory over the world. Spir- itual gifts, however, did not then fully and forever dis- appear ; for in times of great awakening, and of the powerful descent of the Spirit, in the creative epochs of the Church, we now and then observe phenomena quite similar to those of the first century, along with the corresponding dangers and abuses, and even Sa- tanic imitations and caricatures. These manifestalions then gradually cease again, according to tlie law of the development of a new principle as just stated. Such facts of experience may serve to confirm and illustrato the phenomena of the apostolic age. In judging of