Now and then these strange phenomena were produced outside. The extatics, at the very moment when under the influence of their extravagant fantasies, had the hardihood to go out and display themselves to the crowd. They were taken for persons who were intoxicated.[4.41] However sober-minded in point of mysticism, Jesus had more than once presented in his own person the ordinary phenomena of the extatic state.[4.42] The disciples, during three or four years, were possessed with these ideas. The prophesyings were frequent, and were regarded as a gift analogous to that of tongues.[4.43] Prayer, mingled with convulsions, with harmonized modulations, with mystic sighs, with lyrical enthusiasm, with songs of thanksgiving,[4.44] was a daily exercise among them. A rich vein of "canticles," of "Psalms," and of "Hymns," copied from those of the Old Testament was thus discovered to be open to them.[4.45] Sometimes the lips and the heart were in mutual accord; sometimes the spirit sang alone, accompanied by grace in the inner man.[4.46] Any language which did not afford the new sensations which were being produced, they suffered to become an indistinct stammering, at once sublime and puerile; or that which they could denominate "the Christian language" was wafted aloud in an embryo state. Christianity, not finding in the ancient tongues a weapon appropriate to its needs, has destroyed them. But whilst the new religion was forming for itself an idiom of its own, ages of obscure efforts, and so to speak, of squalling, intervened. What is the characteristic of the style of St. Paul and, in general, that of the writers of the New Testament, but the stifled, panting, misshapen improvisation of the "Glossology?" Language failed them. Like the prophets, they began with the _a_, _a_, _a_ of the infant.[4.47] They knew not how to speak. The Greek and the Semitic tongues equally betrayed them. Thus arose that frightful violence which the new Christianity inflicted upon language. They would call it a stammering of the mouth, by which the sounds are stifled and confused, and wind up with a pantomime confused indeed, but nevertheless wonderfully expressive. All this was very far from the intention of Jesus; but to those whose minds were imbued with a belief in the supernatural, these phenomena were of the utmost importance. The gift of tongues, in particular, was considered as an essential sign of the new religion, and, as it were, a proof of its verity.[4.48] In every case it resulted in great fruits of edification. Many pagans were in this manner converted.[4.49]