The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Corinthians — Section 457

fellows. Actuated wholly by brotherly sentiment, be comes down from the pedestal of complacent self-regard, and values hie endowment in the degree that he is able to take the common level, and thereby instruct and console bis brethren. Why then should the argument in this chapter follow the eulogy on love so closely? One 'reaso~ -the chief reason-we may suppose to be that the gift of" tongues" was overvalued, .and, as a consequence, the capacity to teach was depreciated. Without dispara~n"' the "tongues" when rightly used, St. Paul lays a very proper stress on teaching,"and gives it the preference, on the ground that it allows a fuller, freer, more effectiv' manifestation of love. "Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." And so, too, now abide the "spiritual giflR," the gifts in general, "tongues" and "prophecy" in particular, but the "greatest of these" is "prophecy." The parallelism is complete. And how easily St. Paul glides from the chapter on love as the greatest among virtues to the chapter on teaching as the greatest among gifts! One would have supposed that, after such an effort of analytic and descriptive intellect and its interblending with emotional outgoings, there would be a rebound, a pause for nature to recover from an intense exertion; but this is not apparent. The strong man is still strong, the eye beams as brightly and the hand mons as firmly as before, aud the eulogist of love passes into the eulogist of prophecy with no change other than that which the nature of the new topic necessitates. '!'he argument in ver. 2 takes an antithetic form. There is speaking in an unknown tongue. The speech is not a communication of wisdom to others, but a mysterious activity that exalts the speaker abo,e the ordinary sphere of self-consciousness and is ecstatic. "No man understandeth him." There is the outward hearing on man's part, but no inward hearing. God is the only listener who comprehends him: "He speaketh ... unto God;" "In the spirit he speaketh mysteries." 'l'he mysteries are things "which are hidt.len from the hearers, and sometimes also from the speaker himself" (Alford). Was language a sublimer function than we have comprehended? Are there uses of expressional power of which we know nothing? Are there utterances of intuition beyond our power to grasp? Is there some one vast generalization of speech as interiorily related to pure reason, under which, as fra~mentary forms of embodied thought and as representations of the functional energies of the mental faculties, all the utilities of speech are classified? We cannot tell. I. All we know is that the speaker here under notice speaks from his "spirit;" intellect, emotion, the en tire nature, are simultaneously excited. Barriers between the faculties are broken down; speech is no longer merely philosopbic, or poetic, or impMsioned, but it is in some occult way the articulation of the spirit in its wholeness. No man ever said anything that he could look upon as the complete expression or himself. Before he utters his greatest thoughts, he is very hope[ul of doing full justice to them; afterwards he is half abashed, tlcplores bis shortcoming, and gazes with a feeling somewhat reproachful on the ideal that retreated afar. Now, in the instance St. Paul has in view, the speaker is under the perfected sway of his spirit, ~nd he transcends the limits of habitual consciousness. 2. All we know is that this exceptional speaker utters "mysteries." And the "mysteries," out of whoso deep solitudes the voice comes, remain mysteries; neither woru nor tone, neither look nor gesture, gives any solution of the meaning. The secrets have taken on sound, but the sense is concealed, and the very sound is a deeper silence. And bas not such silence its uses? Is it a mere imago to the fancy that Milton irives when he so finely personifies Silence in paradise as pleased with the song of the "wakeful nightingale'''? Or when Thomson breathes the invocation: "Come, then, expressive t:iilencc, muse his praise"? And, in the present case, the sound falls back into silence, but, nevertheless, the" unknown tongue'' is among" spiritual gifts," and fills its sphere in the spiritual economy of Christ's universe. What, then, is the object of St. Paul's .~rgument? It is a question of comparative worth that he discusses. 'l'hese Corin- thians are fascinatecl by the "tongues," and, in their passion for high excitements, have been led to exaggerate beyond bounds the ecstatic singularity of the "unknown tongue." This unhappy craving for morbid and tumultuous agitation, this clclight in sensations and emotions, threatened the decay, ay, the destruction of spirituality. It was the spirit of man, indeed, but the spirit borrowing the impulses of the lower man, instead of holding itself aloof from a depraving alliance with ungoverned blood and nerves. The remedy of the evil wa,s in a proper estimate of the gift& as relative to I, CORINTIDANS. 2 H  466 THE FIRST EPISTLE 'l'O THE CORINTHIANS. [oll. x1v. 1-40;