The life and work of St. Paul

BT. FETEB AND THE FIEST PENTECOST 53
ehore to shore until the earth is
waters cover the sea.
full of the knowledge of the Lord as tho
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, 1 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 hoars
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." a
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 hitter revived a world. The former led to an
immediate conversion ; the hitter is the power of a holy life. The former was
a new and amazing outburst of strange emotion the hitter 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
them to utter." *
tongues as the Spirit gave
The primd facie aspect of the narrative whicft 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 Galileans spoke a multitude of languages which they
had never learned j and this has led to the inference that throughout their
* Aots ii. 2, 3, Sxnrtp . . . ucrci.
1 " It did me much harm that I did not then know it was possible to see anything
otherwise than with the eyes of the body " (St. Teresa, Vida, vii. 11).
8 Acts ii. 4. XoAeiv, "to apeak," as distinguished from \iyav, "to say," points rather
to the actual articulations than to the thoughts which words convey ; an-tx&de'yyccrdac,
eloqui, implies a brief forcible utterance. Neither frpat nor yAwovat throw light on the
nature of the phenomena, except as referring to ISA, xxviii. 11,