What was the private utility or advantage of the supernatural gift? How did he who spoke with a tongue edify himself? (v. 4.) Paul clearly states that he does not edify the church (vv. 2 ff.). In the passage just quoted the Apostle, however, says that the speaker "with a tongue" "speaketh to God"; and further on (vv. 18, 19) he implies that, although he himself does not use the gift in public, he does so in private. He admonishes (v. 28) any one gifted with tongues, if there be no interpreter present, to "keep silence in a church, but let him speak to himself and to God." But in what does the personal edification of the individual consist? In employing language, which he does not comprehend, in private prayer and praise? In addressing God in some unintelligible jargon, in the utterance of which his understanding has no part? Many strange purposes and proceedings have been attributed to the Supreme Being, but probably none has been imagined more incongruous than a gift of tongues unsuitable for the edification of others, and not intelligible to the recipient, but considered an edifying substitute in private devotion for his own language. This was certainly not the form of prayer which Jesus taught his disciples.(1) And this gift was valued {392} more highly in the Corinthian Church than all the rest! Do we not get an instructive insight into the nature of the other Charismata from this suggestive fact? The reality of miracles does not seem to be demonstrated by these chapters.(1) We have already stated that the vast majority of critics explain [------] as speech in an ecstatic condition;(2) and all the phenomena described by Paul closely correspond with the utterance of persons in a state of extreme religious enthusiasm, and excitement, of which many illustrations might be given from other religions before and since the commencement of our era, as well as in the history of Christianity in early and recent times. Every one knows of the proceedings of the heathen oracles, the wild writhings and cries of the Pythoness and the mystic utterances of the Sibyl. In the Old Testament there is allusion to the ecstatic emotion of the prophets in the account of Saul, 1 Sara. xix. 24; cf. Isaiah viii. 19, xxix. 4. The Montanists exhibited similar phenomena, and Tertullian has recorded several instances of such religious excitement, to which we have elsewhere referred. Chrysostora had to repress paroxysms of pious excitement closely resembling these in the fourth century;(3) and even down to our own times instances have never been wanting of this form of hysterical religion. Into none of this can we enter here. Enough, we trust, has been said to show the true character of the supposed supernatural Charismata of Paul from his own account of them, and the information contained in his epistles. {393}