(8.) It is probable that, at this later period, and in the Corinthian Church (which appears, from other indica- tions, to have been a decidedly sensuous one), the gift in question had somewhat degenerated from its Pente- costal purity into a demonstrative form, in which the human fancy and nervous susceptibility had given a looser rein to the external manifestations of what was essentially and truly a divine impulse. The history of modern religious excitements affords abundant illustra- tion of this tendency.
4. As to other indications in early times we maj' re- mark :
(1.) Traces of the gift are founil, as has been said, in the epistles to the Romans, the (lalatians, the Ephe- sians. From the Pastoral Epistles, from those of Peter and John, the}' are altogether absent, and this is in it- self significant. The life of the apostle and of the Church has passed into a calmer, more normal state. Wide truths, abiding graces, these are what he him- self lives in and exhorts oihers to rest on, rather than exceptional i^ao/ff/iara, however marvellous. The "tongues" are already "ceasing" (1 Cor. xiii, 8), as a thing belongiug to the past. Love, which even when "tongues" were mightiest, he had seen to be above all gifts, has become more and more, all in all, to him.
(2.) It is probable, however, that the disappearance of the " tongues" was gradual. As it would have been impossible to draw the precise line of demarcation when the ■Kpo<pi)Tiia of the apostolic age passed into the Si- oaiTKaXiii that remained permanently in the Church, so there must have been a time when "tougues" were still lieard, though less frequently, and with less striking re- sults. The testimony of Irenaius (Adi\ Ilcer. v, 0) that there were brethren in his time "who had prophetic gifts, and spoke through the Spirit in all kinds of tongues," though it does not prove, what it has some-
times been alleged to prove, the permanence of the gift in the individual, or its use in the work of evangelizing (^Wordsworth, On A cts ii), must be admitted as evidence of the existence of phenomena like those which we have met with in the Church of Corinth. For the most part, however, the part which they had tilled in the worsinp of the Church was supplied by the "hymns and spiritual songs" of the succeeding age. In the earliest of these, distinct in character from either the Hebrew psalms or the later hymns of the Church, marked by a strange mixture of mystic names and half-coherent thoughts (such, e. g., as the hymn with which Clement of Alex- andria ends his IlaiOaywyfir, and the earliest Sibylline verses), some have seen the influence of the ecstatic ut- terances in which the strong feelings of adoration had originally shown themselves (Nitzsch, Christl. Lehre, ii, 2G8).
After this, within the Church we lose nearly all traces of them. The mention of them by Eusebius (Comm. in Psa.xlvi) is vague and uncertain. The tone in which Chrysostom speaks of them {Comm. in 1 Cor. xiv) is that of one who feels the whole subject to be obscure, because there are no phenomena within his own expe- rience at all answering to it. The whole tendency of the Church was to maintain reverence and order, and to repress all approaches to the ecstatic state. Those who yielded to it took refuge, as in the case of Tertul- lian {infra), in sects outside the Church. Svmptoms of what was then looked upon as an evil showed them- selves in the 4th century at Constantinople — wild, inar- ticulate cries, words passionate but of little meaning, al- most convulsive gestures — and were met by Chrysostom with the steruest possible reprooi {Horn, in Isa.vi, 2 [ed. Migne, vi, 100]).
It thus appears that the miraculous gifts of the first days bestowed upon the Church for a definite purpose were gradually but quickly withdrawn from men when the apostles and those who had learned Christ from their lips had fallen asleep. Among these supernatural pow- ers we can well believe that the earliest withdrawn were those new tongues first heard in their strange sweetness on that Pentecostal morning, needing then no inter- preter; those tongues which during the birth-throes of Christianity gave utterance to the rapturous joy and thankfulness of the first believers. They were a power, however, which, if misused, might lead men — as history has subsequently shown — into confusion, feverish dreams, and morbid imaginings, a condition of thought which would utterly unfit men and women for the stern and earnest duties of their several callings — in a word, a life unreal and unhealthy. Therefore that chapter of sa- cred history which tells of these communings of men with the unseen, that beautified with unearthly glory the lives of the brave witnesses who first gave up all for Christ, was closed up forever when the " tongues" had done their work (see De Wette, Apostelfjesch. p. 23-26).
III. Ancient ami Modern Quasi- Parallels. — A wider question of deep interest presents itself. Can we find in the religious history of mankind any facts analogous to the manifestation of the " tongues?" Kecognising, as we do, the great gap which separates the work of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost from all others, both in its origin and its fruits, there is, it is believed, no rea- son for rejecting the thought that there might be like phenomena standing to it in the relation of foreshadow- ings, approximations, counterfeits. Other ^apia^ara of the Spirit, wistiom, prophecy, helps, governments, had, or have, analogies, in special states of men's spiritual life, at other times and under other conditions, and so may these. The three characteristic phenomena are, especially in its Corinthian |)hase, as has been seen — (c?) an ecstatic state of y)artial or entire unconsciousness, the human will being, as it were, swayed by a power above itself; {b) the utterance of words in tones startling and impressive, but often conveying no distinct meaning; (c) the use of languages which the speaker was of him- self unable to converse in.