TONGUES, GIFT OF
485
TONGUES, GIFT OF
1. The liistory of the Old Test, presents us with some instances in which the gift of prophecy has ac- companiments of this nature. The word includes some- thing more than the utterance of a distinct message of God. Saul and his messengers come under the power of the Spirit, and he lies on the groinid all night, stripped of liis kingly armor, and joining in the wild chant of the company of ])rophets, or pouring out his own utterances to the sound of their music (1 Sam. xix, 24; comp. Stanley, loc. cii.).
2. We cannot exclude the false prophets and divin- ers of Israel from the range of our inijuiry. As they, in their work, dress, pretensions, were counterfeits of those who truly bore the name, so we may venture to trace in other things that which resembled, more or less close- ly, what had accompanied the exercise of the divine gift. And here we have distinct records of strange, mysterious intonations. The ventriloquist wizards (oi tyycirrrpiiiniBoi, o'i tK TiJQ KoiXiciQ (paii'otxjiv) " peep and mutter" (Isa. viii, 19). The " voice of one who has a familiar spirit'' comes low out of the ground (xxix, 4). The false prophets simulate with their tongues (Sept. tKf3d\\o7'Ta(; Trpo'pr]Teiag yXdjamji;) the low voice with which the true prophets announced that the Lord had spoken (Jer. xxiii, 31; comp. Gesenius, Thesaui; s. v. DX5).
3. The quotation by Paul (1 Cor. xiv, 21) from Isa. xxviii, 1 1 (" With men of other tongues \_h' kripoyXwir- (Totc] and other lips will I speak unto this people") has a signiiicance of which we ought not to lose sight. The common interpretation sees in that passage only a dec- laration that those who had refused to listen to the prophets should be taught a sharp lesson by the lips of alien conquerors. Ewald {Prophet, ad loc), dissatisfied with tliis, sees in the new teaching the voice of thunder striking terror into men's minds. Paul, with the phe- nomena of the "tongues" present to his mind, saw in them the fulfilment of the prophet's words. Those who turned aside from the true prophetic message should be left to the darker, " stammering," more mj'sterious utter- ances, whicli were in the older what the " tongues" were in the later Ecclesia. A remarkable parallel to the text thus interpreted is found in Hos. ix, 7. There also the people are threatened with the withdrawal of the true prophetic insight, and in its stead there is to be the wild delirium, the ecstatic madness of the counter- feit (comp. especially the Sept., o ■rrpo(p)iTiiQ 6 waptaTTj- K(iig, dvBpioTTog o irvtviinToipopoQ).
4. The history of heathen oracles presents, it need hardly be said, examples of the orgiastic state, the con- dition of the fjidvTiQ as distinct from the ■Kpo<p>}T)]Q, in which the wisest of Greek thinkers recognised the lower type of inspiration (Plato, Timceus, 72 b ; Bleek, loc. cit.). The Pythoness and the Sibyl are as if possessed by a power which they cannot resist. They labor under the afflatus of the god. The wild, unearthly sounds (" nee mortale sonaus''), often hardly coherent, burst from their lips. It remained for interpreters to collect the scattered utterances, and to give them shape and meaning (Vir- gil, vS/«. vi,45, 98 sq.).
5. More distinct parallels are found in the accounts of the wilder, more excited sects which have, from time to time, appeared in the history of Christendom. Ter- tullian (De A nim. c. 9), as a Montanist, claims the " rev- elationum charismata" as given to a sister of that sect. They came to her "inter dominica solemnia;" she was, "per ecstasin, in spiritu," conversing with angels, and with the Lord himself, seeing and hearing mysteries ("sacramenta"), reading the hearts of men, prescribing remedies for those who needed them. The movement of the mendicant orders in the 13th century, the proph- esyings of the lOth in England, the early history of the disciples of George Fox, tliat of the Jansenists in France, the revivals under Wesley and Whitefield, those of a later date in Sweden, America, and Ireland, have, in like manner, beeu fruitful in ecstatic phenomena more or
less closely resembling those which we are now consid- ering.
6. The history of the French prophets at the com- mencement of the 18th century presents some facts of special interest. The terrible sufferings caused by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes were pressing with intolerable severity on the Huguenots of the Cevennes. The persecuted flocks met together with every feeling of faith and hope strung to its highest pitch. The ac- customed order of worship was broken, and laboring men, children, and female servants spoke with raptur- ous eloquence as the messengers of God. Beginning iu 1686, then crushed for a time, bursting forth with fresh violence in 1700, it soon became a matter of almost Eu- ropean celebrity. Kefugees arrived in London in 1706 claiming the character of prophets (Lacy, Cry from the Desert; Peyrat, Pastors in the Wilderness). An Eng- lishman, John Lacy, became first a convert and then a leader. The convulsive ecstatic utterances of the sect drew down the ridicule of Shaftesbury {O71 Enthusiasm). Calamy thought it necessary to enter the lists against their pretensions (Caveat against the New Prophets). They gained a distinguished proselyte in Sir R. Bulkley. a pupil of Bishop Fell's, with no inconsiderable learn- ing, who occupied in their proceedings a position which reminds us of that of Henry Drummond among the fol- lowers of Irving (Bulkley, Defence of the Prophets). Here, also, there was a strong contagious excitement. Nicholson, the Baxter of the sect, published a confession that he had found himself unable to resist it (Falsehood of the New Prophets), though he afterwards came to look upon his companions as "enthusiastic impostors." What is specially noticeable is that the gift of tongues was claimed by them. Sir R. Bulkley declares that he had heard Lacj' repeat long sentences in Latin, and an- other speak Hebrew, though, when not in tlie Spirit, they were quite incapable of it (Narrative, p. 92). The characteristic thought of all the revelations was that they were the true children of God. Almost every or- acle began with " Mj' child !" as its characteristic word (Peyrat, i, 235-313). It is remarkable that a strange revivalist movement was spreading nearly at the same time through Silesia, the chief feature of which was that boys and girls of tender age were almost the only subjects of it, and that they too spoke and prayed with a wonderful power (Lacy, Relation, etc., p. 31 ; Bulkley, Narrative, p. 46).