455
What effect had the Holy Ghost upon them?
Acts: They “began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” ([ii, 4]).
Concerning this “gift” Greg says: “Ignorance and folly too often became the arbiters of wisdom—and the ravings of delirium were listened to as the words of inspiration, and of God. If Jesus could have returned to earth thirty years after his death, and sat in the midst of an assembly of his followers, who were listening in hushed and wondering prostration of mind to a speaker in the ‘unknown tongue,’ how would he have wept over the humiliating and disappointing spectacle! how would he have grieved to think that the incoherent jargon of delirium or hysteria should be mistaken for the promptings of his Father’s spirit!” (Creed of Christendom, p. 250.)
456
Who heard them speak in new tongues?
Acts: “Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians” ([ii, 9–11]).
Did representatives of all these nations really assemble to hear the disciples, or was this merely an imaginary gathering of the writer? Evidently the latter.