If we turn to other ancient documents, the Epistles to the seven Churches do not present us with a picture of supernatural perfection in those communities, though doubtless, like the rest, they had received these gifts. The other Epistles of the New Testament depict a state of things which by no means denotes any extraordinary or abnormal condition of the members. We may quote a short passage to show that we do not strain
this representation unduly. "But certainly," says Dr. von Dollinger, "in spite of a rich outpouring of spiritual gifts vouchsafed to it, a community could fall into wanton error. Paul had in Corinth, contemporaneously with his description of the charismatic state of the church there, to denounce sad abuses. In the Galatian community, Judaistic seduction, and the darkening of Christian doctrine through the delusion as to the necessity of the observance of the law, had so much increased that the Apostle called them fools and senseless, but at the same time he appealed to the proof which was presented by the spiritual gifts and miraculous powers, in which they had participated not through the observance of the law, but through faith in Christ (Gal. iii. 2, 5). Now at that time the Charismata of teaching and knowledge must already have been weakened or extinguished in these communities, otherwise so strong an aberration would not be explicable. Nowhere, however, in this Epistle is there any trace of an established ministry; on the contrary, at the close, the 'spiritual' among them are instructed to administer the office of commination.
But, generally, from that time forward, the charismatic state in the Church more and more disappeared, though single Charismata, and individuals endowed with the same, remained. In the first Epistle to the believers in Thessalonica, Paul had made it specially prominent that his Gospel had worked there, not as mere word, but with demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit (i. 5). In the Epistles to the Philippians and Colossians, there is no longer the slightest intimation of, or reference to, the Charismata, although in both communities the occasion for such an allusion was very appropriate—in Philippi through the Jewish opponents,
and in Colossæ on account of the heretical dangers and the threatening Gnostic asceticism. On the other hand, in the Epistle to the Philippians, bishops and deacons are already mentioned as ministers of the community. Then, in the Pastoral Epistles, not only is there no mention of the Charismata, but a state of the community is set forth which is wholly different from the charismatic. The communities in Asia Minor, the Ephesian first of all, are partly threatened, partly unsettled by Gnostic heresies, strifes of words, foolish controversies, empty babbling about matters of faith, of doctrines of demons, of an advancing godlessness corroding like a gangrene (1 Tim. iv. 1-3, vi. 3 ff. 20, 2 Tim. ii. 14 ff.). All the counsels which are here given to Timothy, the conduct in regard to these evils which is recommended to him, all is of a nature as though Charismata no longer existed to any extent, as though, in lieu of the first spiritual soaring and of the fulness of extraordinary powers manifesting itself in the community, the bare prose of the life of the Church had already set in."(1) Regarding this it is not necessary for us to say more than that the representation which is everywhere made, in the Acts and elsewhere, and which seems to be confirmed by Paul, is that all the members of these Christian communities received the Holy Spirit, and the divine Charismata, but that nowhere have we evidence of any supernatural results produced by them. If, however, the view above expressed be accepted, the difficulty is increased; for, except in the allusions of the Apostle to Charismata, it is impossible to discover any difference between communities which had received miraculous spiritual "gifts" and those which had not done so. On the contrary, it
might possibly be shown that a church which had not been so endowed, perhaps on the whole exhibited higher spiritual qualities than another which was supposed to possess the Charismata. In none are we able to perceive any supernatural characteristics, or more than the very ordinary marks of a new religious life. It seems scarcely necessary to depart from the natural order of nature, and introduce the supernatural working of a Holy Spirit to produce such common-place results. We venture to say that there is nothing whatever to justify the assertion of supernatural agency here, and that the special divine Charismata existed only in the pious imagination of the Apostle, who referred every good quality in man to divine grace.
We have reserved the gift of "Tongues" for special discussion, because Paul enters into it with a fulness with which he does not treat any of the other Charismata, and a valuable opportunity is thus afforded us of ascertaining something definite with regard to the nature of the gift; and also because we have a narrative in the Acts of the Apostles of the first descent of the Holy Spirit, manifesting itself in "Tongues," with which it may be instructive to compare the Apostle's remarks. We may mention that, in the opinion of many, the cause which induced the Apostle to say so much regarding Charismata in his first letter to the Corinthians was the circumstance, that many maintained the gift of tongues to be the only form of "the manifestation of the Spirit." This view is certainly favoured by the narrative in the Acts, in which not only at the first famous day of Pentecost, but on almost every occasion of the imposition of the Apostle's hands, this is the only gift mentioned as accompanying the reception of the Holy
