The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 1 — Section 55

tl,oee who hnd It not, it is against the plain no language at all, only thrilling emotional language of the text, whfoh telle us that BOuntls. Renan'e view of the day of Pente- " they began to epeak with other tonguee," cost is u. curious specimen of ntionalietio and that "every man heard them speaking interpretation. "One clay when the brethren in his own language." "Speaking," said were come together there was a tern pest. they," in our own tongues the mighty worke A violent wind burst open the windows, and of God." Thero may, indeed, have been the sky was one sheet of fire. In that cli- something ecstntio besides in these utter- mate tempests are often accompanied by an ances, but there is no reference to such extraordinary amount of electric light. The rondo either by St. Luke or by tho audience atmosphere is on all eicles furrowed with whose words he report~. 'fhe no.rrative jets of flame. On this occasion, whether before us does not hint nt any after use of the electrio flnid actually pas.sed through the gift of tongues for missionary purposes. the room, or whether the faces of all present In eh. x. 46; xi. 15-17; xix. 6, a~ well as were soddenly lit up by an extremely brigL t in the passages above referred to in the flash of lightning, all were convinced that First Epistle to the Corinthians, the spoo.k- the Holy Spirit had entered their assembly, ing with tongues is always spoken of-often and had sat upon the head of each in the in connection with prophecy-simply as " shape of a tongue of fire . . . . In these gift and a manifestation (1 Cor. xii. 7) of momenta of ecstasy, the disciple possessed by the power of the Holy Spirit. In this case tho Spirit nttcred sounds inarticulate and and in eh. x. 46 the subject-matter of the incoherent, which the hearers fancied were utterance is the greatness of God's works; T<Z the words of a strange language, ancl in µ,,,a>-,ia TOV e,ou· µ<")'aAUVOVTWII TOIi e,011. their simplicity tried to interpret. ... They In 1 Cor. xiv. 2 it is" mysteries;" in ver.15, listened eagerly to the medley of sounds, " prayers and psalms; " in ver. 16 it is and explained them by their own extem- " blessing" and " thanksgiving " ( ,/,>.o-yla poraneous tllonghts. Each of them had aud •vxap,CTTla). But nowhere, either in recourse to his own native patois to supply Holy Scripture or in the Fathers of the some meaning to the unintelligible accents, tllree first centuries, is the gift of tongues and generally succeeded in affixing to them spokan of in connection with preaching to the thoughts that were uppermost in his foreign nntions (see Alford's just remarks). own mind" (' Les Apotrcs,' pp. 66-68). Farrar(' Life of St. Paul,' vol. i. pp. 98-101) Elsewhere (pp. 64, 65) he suggests that tlld' takes tile same view, but is much less "·hole conception of speal<ing with tonaues distinct in his conception of what is meant arose from tile anticipation on the part of here by speaking with tongues. He adheres the apostles that great diiliculty would to the view of Schneckenburger, that " the arise in propagating the gospel from the tongue was, from its own force and sig- impossibility of lenrni ng to speak the nificance, intelligible equally to all who necessary langnages, The solution with heard it; " he agrees with the dictum of some was that, under the ecstasy cansed N eander that "any foreign languages which by the Holy Spirit, the hearers would be were spoken on this occasion were only able to translate what they heard into their something accidental, and not the essential own tongne; others rather thought that by element of the language of the Spirit." the same power the apostles would be able He says, "The voice they uttered was to speak any dialect they pleased at the awful in its range, in its tones, in its modu- moment. Hence the conception of ihe day lations, in its startling, penetrating, almost of Peutecost as described by St. Lulw ! appalling power; the words they spoke Meyer, age.in, fully admits, as "beyond all were exalted, intense, passionu.te, full of doubt," thnt St. Luke intended to narrate mystic significance; the language they used that the persons possessed by the Spirit was not their ordinary and familiar tongue, spoke in foreign fo.nguages previously un- but wu.s Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin, or known by them; but adds that "the sudden Aramaic, or Persian, or Arabic, as some communication of a facility of spell.king 01·erpowering and nuconscious impulse of foreign languages is neither logically po~- the moment might direct, , •. and among sible nor psychologically e.nd ruorally con• these strange sounds . • . there were some ceivable" (a pretty bold assertion); and which noue could interpret, which rang on therefore he sets down St. Luke's account the air like the voice of barbarous lan- of what occurred as" u. la.tar legendary for- guages, nnd which • • • conveyed no mation," based upon the existing ")'>-010-uo- tlefinile significance beyond the fact that >-a>-la.. Zeller, travelling a little further on they were reverberations of one and the the same ro11d, comes to the conclu~ion that surue ecstasy." The writer seems to suggest "the narrative before us is not based on thut when u.ny renl language was spoken it any definite faot" (p. 205). Leaving, how- was one more or less known previously by ever, these fanciful varieties of increduioua the speaker, e.nd t4u.t ip. oth01 ~P it WIii criticism, and interpreting the statement, of 41l1'tl. J  THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [ou. 11, 1-4T.