Ἔκκριτος ἦν τῶν ἀποστόλων, καὶ στόμα τῶν μαθητῶν, καὶ κορυφὴ τοῦ χοροῦ.—CHRYS. InJoan.Hom. 88.
Πέτρος ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς αρθοδοξίας, ὁ μέγας τῆς ἐκκλησίας ἱεροφάντης.—PS. CHRYS. Orat.Encom. 9.
WHATEVER may have been the cause of Saul’s absence from Jerusalem during the brief period of the ministry of Jesus, it is inevitable that, on his return, he must have heard much respecting it. Yet all that he heard would be exclusively from the point of view of the Pharisees, who had so bitterly opposed His doctrines, and of the Sadducees, who had so basely brought about His death. But he would have abundant opportunities for seeing that the Infant Church had not, as the Jews of Jerusalem had hoped, been extinguished by the murder of its founder. However much the news might fill him with astonishment and indignation, he could not have been many days in Jerusalem without receiving convincing proofs of the energy of what he then regarded as a despicable sect.
Whence came this irresistible energy, this inextinguishable vitality? The answer to that question is the history of the Church and of the world.
For the death of Jesus had been followed by a succession of events, the effects of which will be felt to the end of time—events which, by a spiritual power at once astounding and indisputable, transformed a timid handful of ignorant and terror–stricken Apostles into teachers of unequalled grandeur, who became in God’s hands the instruments to regenerate the world.
The Resurrection of Christ had scattered every cloud from their saddened souls. The despair which, for a moment, had followed the intense hope that this was He who would redeem Israel, had been succeeded by a joyous and unshaken conviction that Christ had risen from the dead. In the light of that Resurrection, all Scripture, all history, all that they had seen and heard during the ministry of Jesus, was illuminated and transfigured. And though during the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, the intercourse held with them by their risen Lord was not continuous, but brief and interrupted,1 yet— as St. Peter himself testifies, appealing, in confirmation of his testimony, to the scattered Jews to whom his Epistle is addressed—God had begotten them again by the Resurrection unto a lively hope, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.2 But besides this glorious truth, of which they felt themselves to be the chosen witnesses,3 their Risen Lord had given them many promises and instructions, and spoken to them about the things which concerned the Kingdom of God. In His last address He had specially bidden them to stay in Jerusalem, and there await the outpouring of the Spirit of which they had already heard.4 That promise was to be fulfilled to them, not only individually, but as a body, as a Church; and it was to be fulfilled in the same city in which they had witnessed His uttermost humiliation. And they were assured that they should not have long to wait. But though they knew that they should be baptised with the Holy Ghost and with fire “not many days hence,” yet, for the exercise of their faith and to keep them watchful, the exact time was not defined.5
Then came the last walk towards Bethany, and that solemn parting on the Mount of Olives, when their Lord was taken away from them, and “a cloud received Him out of their sight.” But even in His last discourse He had rendered clear to them their position and their duties. When, with lingerings of old Messianic fancies, they had asked Him whether He would at that time re–constitute6 the kingdom for Israel, He had quenched such material longings by telling them that it was not for them to know “the times or the seasons,”7 which the Father placed in His own authority.8 But though these secrets of God were not to be revealed to them or to any living man, there wasa power which they should receive when the Holy Ghost had fallen upon them—a power to be witnesses to Christ, His sufferings, and His Resurrection, first in the narrow limits of the Holy Land, then to all the world.
From the mountain slopes of Olivet they returned that Sabbath–day’s journey9 to Jerusalem, and at once assembled in the upper chamber,10 which was so suitable a place for their early gatherings. It was one of those large rooms under the flat roof of Jewish houses, which, for its privacy, was set apart for religious purposes; and in the poverty of these Galilæan Apostles, we can scarcely doubt that it was the same room of which they had already availed themselves for the Last Supper, and for those gatherings on the “first day of the week,”11 at two of which Jesus had appeared to them. Hallowed by these divine associations, it seems to have been the ordinary place of sojourn of the Apostles during the days of expectation.12 Here, at stated hours of earnest prayer, they were joined by the mother of Jesus13 and the other holy women who had attended His ministry; as well as by His brethren, of whom one in particular14 plays henceforth an important part in the history of the Church. Hitherto these “brethren of the Lord” had scarcely been numbered among those who believed in Christ,15 or, if they had believed in Him, it had only been in a secondary and material sense, as a human Messiah. But now, as we might naturally conjecture, even apart from tradition, they had been convinced and converted by “the power of His Resurrection.” Even in these earliest meetings of the whole Church of Christ at Jerusalem it is interesting to see that, though the Apostles were still Jews in their religion, with no other change as yet beyond the belief in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God,16 they yet suffered the women to meet with them in prayer, not in any separate court, as in the Temple services, not with dividing partitions, as in the worship of the synagogue,17 but in that equality of spiritual communion, which was to develop hereafter into the glorious doctrine that among Christ’s redeemed “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male and female,” but that, in Christ Jesus, all are one.18
During the ten days which elapsed between the Ascension and Pentecost, it was among the earliest cares of the Apostles to fill up the vacancy which had been caused in their number by the death of Judas. This was done at a full conclave of the believers in Jerusalem, who, in the absence of many of those five hundred to whom Christ had appeared in Galilee, numbered about one hundred and twenty. The terrible circumstances of the traitor’s suicide, of which every varied and shuddering tradition was full of horror, had left upon their minds a deeper faith in God’s immediate retribution upon guilt. He had fallen from his high charge by transgression, and had gone to his own place.19 That his place should be supplied appeared reasonable, both because Jesus Himself had appointed twelve Apostles—the ideal number of the tribes of Israel— and also because Peter, and the Church generally, saw in Judas the antitype of Ahitophel, and applying to him a passage of the 109th Psalm, they wished, now that his habitation was desolate, that another should take his office.20 The essential qualification for the new Apostle was that he should have been a witness of the Resurrection, and should have companied with the disciples all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among them. The means taken for his appointment, being unique in the New Testament, seem to result from the unique position of the Church during the few days between the Ascension and the Descent of the Holy Ghost. As though they felt that the swift power of intuitive discernment was not yet theirs, they selected two, Joseph Barsabbas, who in Gentile circles assumed the common surname of Justus, and Matthias.21 They then, in accordance with Old Testament analogies22 and Jewish custom,23 prayed to God that He would appoint24 the one whom He chose. The names were written on tablets and dropped into a vessel. The vessel was shaken, and the name of Matthias leapt out. He was accordingly reckoned among the twelve Apostles.25
We are told nothing further respecting the events of the ten days which elapsed between the Ascension and Pentecost. With each of those days the yearning hope, the keen expectation, must have grown more and more intense, and most of all when the day of Pentecost had dawned.26 It was the first day of the week, and the fiftieth day after Nisan 16. The very circumstances of the day would add to the vividness of their feelings. The Pentecost was not only one of the three great yearly feasts, and the Feast of Harvest, but it came to be identified—and quite rightly—in Jewish consciousness with the anniversary of the giving of the Law on Sinai.27 The mere fact that another solemn festival had come round, and that at the last great festival their Lord had been crucified in the sight of the assembled myriads who thronged to the Passover, would be sufficient on this solemn morning to absorb their minds with that overwhelming anticipation which was the forecast of a change in themselves and in the world’s history—of a new and eternal consecration to the service of a new law and the work of a new life.
It was early morning. Before “the third hour of the day” summoned them to the Temple for morning prayer,28 the believers, some hundred and twenty in number, were gathered once more, according to their custom, in the upper room. It has been imagined by some that the great event of this first Whit–Sunday must have taken place in the Temple. The word rendered “house”29 might equally well mean a “chamber,” and is actually used by Josephus of the thirty small chambers which were attached to the sides of Solomon’s Temple, with thirty more above them.30 But it is supremely improbable that the poor and suspected disciples should have been able to command the use of such a room; and further, it is certain that if, in the Herodian Temple, these rooms were no larger than those in the Temple of Solomon, the size of even the lower ones would have been wholly inadequate for the accommodation of so large a number. The meeting was probably one of those holy and simple meals which were afterwards known among Christians as the Agapœ, or Love Feasts. It need hardly be added that any moral significance which might attach to the occurrence of the event in the Temple would be no less striking if we think of the sign of a new era as having hallowed the common street and the common dwelling–place; as the visible inauguration of the days in which neither on Zion nor on Gerizim alone were men to worship the Father, but to worship Him everywhere in spirit and in truth.31
It is this inward significance of the event which constitutes its sacredness and importance. Its awfulness consists in its being the solemn beginning of the new and final phase of God’s dealings with mankind. To Abraham He gave a promise which was the germ of a religion. When He called His people from Egypt He gave them the Moral Law and that Levitical Law which was to serve as a bulwark for the truths of the theocracy. During the two thousand years of that Mosaic Dispensation the Tabernacle and the Temple had been a visible sign of His presence. Then, for the brief period of the life of Christ on earth, He had tabernacled among men, dwelling in a tent like ours and of the same material.32 That mortal body of Christ, in a sense far deeper than could be true of any house built with hands, was a Temple of God. Last of all, He who had given to mankind His Son to dwell among them, gave His Spirit into their very hearts. More than this He could not give; nearer than this He could not be. Henceforth His Temple was to be the mortal body of every baptised Christian, and His Spirit was to prefer
“Before all temples the upright heart and pure.”
He who believes this in all the fulness of its meaning, he whose heart and conscience bear witness to its truth, will consider in its true aspect the fulfilment of Christ’s promise in the effusion of His Spirit; and regarding the outward wonder as the leastmarvellous part of the Day of Pentecost, will not, as Neander says, be tempted to explain the greater by the less, or “consider it strange that the most wonderful event in the inner life of mankind should be accompanied by extraordinary outward appearances as sensible indications of its existence.”33
Suddenly, while their hearts burned within them with such ardent zeal, and glowed with such enkindled hope— suddenly on the rapt and expectant assembly came the sign that they had desired—the inspiration of Christ’s promised Presence in their hearts—the baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire—the transforming impulse of a Spirit and a Power from on high—the eternal proof to them, and through them, in unbroken succession, to all who accept their word, that He who had been taken from them into heaven was still with them, and would be with them always to the end of the world.
It came from heaven with the sound as of a rushing mighty wind, filling the whole house where they were sitting, and with a semblance as of infolded flame,34 which, parting itself in every direction,35 played like a tongue of lambent light over the head of every one of them. It was not wind, but “a sound as of wind in its rushing violence;” it was not fire, but something which seemed to them like quivering tongues of a flame which gleamed but did not burn—fit symbol of that Holy Spirit which, like the wind, bloweth where it listeth, though we know not whence it cometh or whither it goeth; and, like the kindled fire of love, glowing on the holy altar of every faithful heart, utters, not seldom, even from the stammering lips of ignorance, the burning words of inspiration.
And that this first Pentecost marked an eternal moment in the destiny of mankind, no reader of history will surely deny. Undoubtedly in every age since then the sons of God have, to an extent unknown before, been taught by the Spirit of God. Undoubtedly since then, to an extent unrealised before, we may know that the Spirit of Christ dwelleth in us. Undoubtedly we may enjoy a nearer sense of union with God in Christ than was accorded to the saints of the Old Dispensation, and a thankful certainty that we see the days which kings and prophets desired to see and did not see them, and hear the truths which they desired to hear and did not hear them. And this New Dispensation began henceforth in all its fulness. It was no exclusive consecration to a separated priesthood, no isolated endowment of a narrow Apostolate. It was the consecration of a whole Church—its men, its women, its children—to be all of them “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people;” it was an endowment, of which the full free offer was meant ultimately to be extended to all mankind. Each one of that hundred and twenty was not the exceptional recipient of a blessing and witness of a revelation, but the forerunner and representative of myriads more. And this miracle was not merely transient, but is continuously renewed. It is not a rushing sound and gleaming light, seen perhaps only for a moment, but it is a living energy and an unceasing inspiration. It is not a visible symbol to a gathered handful of human souls in the upper room of a Jewish house, but a vivifying wind which shall henceforth breathe in all ages of the world’s history; a tide of light which is rolling, and shall roll, from shore to shore until the earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
And if this be the aspect under which it is regarded, the outward symbol sinks into subordinate importance. They who hold the truths on which I have been dwelling will not care to enter into the voluminous controversy as to whether that which is described as audible and visible was so in seeming only—whether the something which sounded like wind, and the something which gleamed like flame,36 were external realities, or whether they were but subjective impressions, so vivid as to be identified with the things themselves. When the whole soul is filled with a spiritual light and a spiritual fire—when it seems to echo, as in the Jewish legend of the great Lawgiver, with the music of other worlds—when it is caught up into the third heaven and hears words which it is not possible for man to utter— when, to the farthest horizon of its consciousness, it seems as it were filled with the “rush of congregated wings”— when, to borrow the language of St. Augustine, the natural life is dead, and the soul thrills, under the glow of spiritual illumination, with a life which is supernatural—what, to such a soul, is objective and what is subjective? To such questions the only answer it cares to give is, “Whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell. God knoweth.”37
But when from these mysterious phenomena we turn to the effects wrought by them in those for whom they were manifested, we are dealing with things more capable of being defined. Here, however, it is necessary to distinguish between the immediate result and the permanent inspiration. The former astounded a multitude; the latter revived a world. The former led to an immediate conversion; the latter is the power of a holy life. The former was a new and amazing outburst of strange emotion; the latter was the sustaining influence which enables the soul to soar from earth heavenwards in steady flight on the double wings of Faith and Love.
Yet, though there be no manner of comparison between the real importance of the transient phenomenon and the continuous result, it is necessary to a true conception of the age of the Apostles that we should understand what is told us of the former. “And they were all immediately filled,” it is said, “with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them to utter.”38
The primâfacieaspect of the narrative which follows— apart from the analogy of other Scriptures—has led to the belief that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was succeeded by an outburst of utterance, in which a body of Galilæans spoke a multitude of languages which they had never learned; and this has led to the inference that throughout their lives the Apostles possessed the power of speaking languages which they had not acquired.39
But if we examine other passages where the same phenomenon is alluded to or discussed, they will show us that this view of the matter is at least questionable. In Mark 16:17—waiving all argument as to the genuineness of the passage—the word καιναῖς, “new,” is omitted in several uncials and versions;40 but if retained, it goes against the common notion, for it points to strange utterances, not to foreign languages. In the other places of the Acts41 where the gift of the Spirit is alluded to, no hint is given of the use of unknown languages. In fact, that view of the subject has chiefly been stereotyped in the popular conception by the interpolation of the word “unknown” in 1 Cor. 16.42 The glossolalia, or “speaking with a tongue,” is connected with “prophesying”—that is, exalted preaching—and magnifying God. The sole passage by which we can hope to understand it is the section of the First Epistle to the Corinthians to which I have just alluded.43 It is impossible for any one to examine that section carefully without being forced to the conclusion that, at Corinth at any rate, the gift of tongues had not the least connexion with foreign languages. Of such a knowledge, if this single passage of the Acts be not an exception, there is not the shadow of a trace in Scripture. That this passage is notan exception seems to be clear from the fact that St. Peter, in rebutting the coarse insinuation that the phenomenon was the result of drunkenness, does not so much as make the most passing allusion to an evidence so unparalleled; and that the passage of Joel of which he sees the fulfilment in the outpouring of Pentecost, does not contain the remotest hint of foreign languages. Hence the fancy that this was the immediate result of Pentecost is unknown to the first two centuries, and only sprang up when the true tradition had been obscured. The inference that the gift of unlearnt languages was designed to help the Apostles in their future preaching is one that unites a mass of misconceptions. In the first place, such a gift would be quite alien to that law of God’s Providence which never bestows on man that which man can acquire by his own unaided efforts. In the second place, owing to the universal dissemination at that time of Greek and Latin, there never was a period in which such a gift would have been more absolutely needless.44 In the third place, though all other miracles of the New Testament found their continuance and their analogies, for a time at any rate, after the death of the Apostles, there is no existing allusion, or even early legend, which has presumed the existence of this power.45 In the fourth place, although Paul ‘spoke with a tongue’46 more than all his converts, it is clear from the narrative of what occurred at Lycaonia, that at a most crucial moment he did not understand the Lycaonian dialect. In the fifth place, early Christian tradition distinctly asserts that the Apostles did not possess a supernatural knowledge of foreign tongues, since Papias tells us that Mark accompanied St. Peter as an “interpreter” (ἑρμηνευτὴς), and Jerome that Titus was useful to St. Paul from his knowledge of Greek.47 We are, therefore, forced to look for some other aspect of the utterance of that inspiration which accompanied the heavenly signs of Pentecost. The mistaken explanation of it has sprung from taking too literally St. Luke’s dramatic reproduction of the vague murmurs of a throng, who mistook the nature of a gift of which they witnessed the reality. I do not see how any thoughtful student who has really considered the whole subject can avoid the conclusion of Neander, that “any foreign languages which were spoken on this occasion were only something accidental, and not the essential element of the language of the Spirit.”48
In ancient times—especially before Origen—there seems to have been an impression that only one language was spoken, but that the miracle consisted in each hearer imagining it to be his own native tongue.49 The explanation is remarkable as showing an early impression that the passage had been misunderstood. The modern view, developed especially by Schneckenburger (following St. Cyprian and Erasmus), is that the “tongue” was, from its own force and significance, intelligible equally to all who heard it. That such a thing is possible may be readily admitted, and it derives some probability from many analogies in the history of the Church. The stories of St. Bernard, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Louis Bertrand, St. Francis Xavier, and others who are said to have been endowed with the spiritual power of swaying the passions, kindling the enthusiasm, or stirring the penitence of vast multitudes whom they addressed in a language unintelligible to the majority of the hearers, are so far from being inventions, that any one who has been present at the speech of a great orator, though beyond the range of his voice, can readily understand the nature and the intensity of the effect produced.50 But neither of these theories taken alone seems adequate to account for the language used by St. Peter and St. Paul. Almost all the theories about the glossolalia are too partial. The true view can only be discovered by a combination of them. The belief that languages were used which were unknown, or only partially known, or which had only been previously known to the speaker; that the tongue was a mystic, exalted, poetic, unusual style of phraseology and utterance;51 that it was a dithyrambic outpouring of strange and rhythmic praise; that it was the impassioned use of ejaculatory words and sentences of Hebrew Scripture; that it was a wild, unintelligible, inarticulate succession of sounds, which either conveyed no impression to the ordinary hearer, or could only be interpreted by one whose special gift it was to understand the rapt and ecstatic strain—none of these views is correct separately, all may have some elements of truth in their combination. This is the meaning of St. Paul’s expression “kinds of tongues.” If we assume, as must be assumed, that the glossolalia at Corinth and elsewhere was identical with the glossolalia at Pentecost, then we must interpret the narrative of St. Luke by the full and earnest discussion of the subject—written, be it remembered, at a far earlier period, and in immediate contact with, and even experience of, the manifestation—by St. Paul. That the glossolaly at Corinth was not a speaking in foreign languages is too clear to need proof. St. Paul in speaking of it uses the analogies of the clanging of a cymbal, the booming of a gong,52 the indistinct blare of a trumpet,53 the tuneless strains of flute or harp.54 We learn that, apart from interpretation, it was not for the edification of any but the speaker;55 that even the speaker did not always understand it;56 that it was sporadic in its recurrences;57 that it was excited, inarticulate, astonishing,58 intended as a sign to unbelievers rather than as an aid to believers, but even on unbelievers liable, when not under due regulation, to leave an impression of madness;59 lastly, that, though controllable by all who were truly and nobly under its influence, it often led to spurious and disorderly outbreaks.60 Any one who fairly ponders these indications can hardly doubt that, when the consciousness of the new power came over the assembled disciples, they did not speak as men ordinarily speak. The voice they uttered was awful in its range, in its tone, in its modulations, in its startling, penetrating, almost appalling power;61 the words they spoke were exalted, intense, passionate, full of mystic significance; the language they used was not their ordinary and familiar tongue, but was Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin, or Aramaic, or Persian, or Arabic, as some over–powering and unconscious impulse of the moment might direct; the burden of their thoughts was the ejaculation of rapture, of amazement, of thanksgiving, of prayer, of empassioned psalm, of dithyrambic hymn; their utterances were addressed not to each other, but were like an inspired soliloquy of the soul with God. And among these strange sounds of many voices, all simultaneously raised in the accordance of ecstatic devotion,62 there were some which none could rightly interpret, which rang on the air like the voice of barbarous languages, and which, except to those who uttered them, and who in uttering them felt carried out of themselves, conveyed no definite significance beyond the fact that they were reverberations of one and the same ecstasy—echoes waked in different consciousnesses by the same immense emotion. Such—as we gather from the notices of St. Luke, St. Peter, and St. Paul—was the “Gift of Tongues.” And thus regarded, its strict accordance with the known laws of psychology63 furnishes us with a fresh proof of the truthfulness of the history, and shows us that no sign of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit could have been more natural, more evidential, or more intense.
The city of Jerusalem at that moment was crowded by a miscellaneous multitude of Jews and Proselytes. It was inevitable that the awful sound64 should arrest the astonished attention, first of one, then of more, lastly of a multitude of the inhabitants and passers–by. The age—an age which was in keen expectation of some divine event; the day—the great anniversary of Pentecost and of Sinai; the hour—when people were already beginning to throng the streets on their way to the Temple service—would all tend to swell the numbers, and intensify the feelings of the crowd. Up the steps which led outside the house to the “upper room” they would first begin to make their way in twos and threes, and then to press in larger numbers, until their eagerness, their obtrusion, their exclamations of fear, surprise, admiration, insult, could not fail to break the spell. The Church for the first time found itself face to face with the world—a world loud in its expressions of perplexity, through which broke the open language of hate and scorn. That which fixed the attention of all the better portion of the crowd was the fact that these “Galilæans” were magnifying, in strange tongues, the mercies and power of God. But most of the spectators were filled with contempt at what seemed to them to be a wild fanaticism. “These men,” they jeeringly exclaimed, “have been indulging too freely in the festivities of Pentecost.65 They are drunk with sweet wine.”66
It was the prevalence of this derisive comment which forced upon the Apostles the necessity of immediate explanation.67 “The spirits of the prophets,” as St. Paul says, with that masculine practical wisdom which in him is found in such rare combination with burning enthusiasm, “are subject unto the prophets.”68 The Apostles were at once able not only to calm their own exaltation, but also, even at this intense moment, to hush into absolute silence the overmastering emotion of their brethren. They saw well that it would be fatal to their position as witnesses to a divine revelation if anything in their worship could, however insultingly, be represented as the orgiastic exhibition of undisciplined fervour. It was a duty to prove from the very first that the Christian disciple offered no analogy to the fanatical fakeer. Clearing the room of all intruders, making a space for themselves at the top of the steps, where they could speak in the name of the brethren to the surging throng who filled the street, the Apostles came forward, and Peter assumed the office of their spokesman. Standing in an attitude, and speaking in a tone, which commanded attention,69 he first begged for serious attention, and told the crowd that their coarse suspicion was refuted at once by the fact that it was but nine o’clock. He then proceeded to explain to them that this was the fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel that, among other signs and portents of the last days, there should be a special effusion of the Spirit of God, like that of which they had witnessed the manifestations. It was the object of the remainder of his speech to prove that this Spirit had been outpoured by that same Jesus of Nazareth70 whom they had nailed to the cross, but whose resurrection and deliverance from the throes of death were foreshadowed in the Psalms of His glorious ancestor.
The power with which this speech came home to the minds of the hearers; the force and fearlessness with which it was delivered by one who, not two months before, had been frightened, by the mere question of a curious girl, into the denial of his Lord; the insight into Scripture which it evinced in men who so recently had shown themselves but ‘fools and slow of heart’ to believe all that the prophets had spoken concerning Christ;71 the three thousand who were at once baptised into a profession of the new faith—were themselves the most convincing proofs—proofs even more convincing than rushing wind, and strange tongues, and lambent flames—that now indeed the Promise of the Paraclete had been fulfilled, and that a new œonhad begun in God’s dealings with the world.