than a christian Charisma? "And the Lord said:...Go to, let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."(1) In spite of his abstract belief in the divine origin of the Charisma, Paul's language unconsciously betrays practical doubt as to its character. Does not such sarcasm as the following seem extremely indecorous when criticising a result produced directly by the Holy Spirit? (xiv. 23) "If, therefore, the whole church be come into one place and all speak with tongues, and there come in unlearned and unbelieving persons will they not say that ye are mad?" At Pentecost such an assembly was supposed to be drunken.(2) The whole of the counsel of the Apostle upon this occasion really amounts to an injunction to quench the Spirit. It is quite what might be expected in the case of the excitement of ecstatic religion, that the strong emotion should principally find vent in the form of prayer and praise (vv. 15 ff.), equally so that it should be unintelligible and that no one should know when to say "Amen" (v. 16), and that all should speak at once, and still more so that the practical result should be tumult (vv. 23, 33). All this, it might appear, could be produced without the intervention of the Holy Spirit. So far, is there and utility in the miracle? But we are told that it is "for a sign." Paul argues upon this point in a highly eccentric manner. He quotes (v. 21) Isaiah xxviii. 11, 12, in a form neither agreeing with the Septuagint nor with the Hebrew, a passage which has merely a superficial and verbal analogy with the gift of tongues, but whose real {390}