fundamental error, on both sides too often, to have considered it necessary to the acceptance of any explanation that it should equally suit both the remarks of Paul and the account in Acts.(1) The only right course is to test the narrative by the distinct and authoritative statements of the Apostle; but to adopt the contrary course is much the same procedure as altering the natural interpretation of an original historical document in order to make it agree with the romance of some unknown writer of a later day. The Apostle Paul writes as a contemporary and eye-witness of phenomena which affected himself, and regarding which he gives the most valuable direct and indirect information. The unknown author of the Acts was not an eye-witness of the scene which he describes, and his narrative bears upon its very surface the clearest marks of traditional and legendary treatment. The ablest apologists freely declare that the evidence of Paul is of infinitely greater value than that of the unknown and later writer, and must be preferred before it. The majority of those who profess to regard the narrative as historical explain away its clearest statements with startling ingenuity, or conceal them beneath a cloud of words. The references to the phenomenon in later portions of the Acts are in themselves quite inconsistent with the earlier narrative in ch. ii. The detailed criticism of Paul is the only contemporary, and it is certainly the only trustworthy, account we possess regarding the gift of "tongues."(2) We must, therefore, dismiss from our minds, if possible, the bias which the narrative in the Acts has unfortunately {369} created, and attend solely to the words of the Apostle. If his report of the phenomenon discredit that of the unknown and later writer, so much the worse for the latter. In any case it is the testimony of Paul which is referred to and which we are called upon to consider, and later writers must not be allowed to invest it with impossible meanings. Even if we had not such undeniable reasons for preferring the statements of Paul to the later and untrustworthy narrative of an unknown writer, the very contents of the latter, contrasted with the more sober remarks of the Apostle, would consign it to a very subordinate place.