over-weening self-estimation, might
accompany these gifts, and the prophetic utterance itself might be
degraded to a mere brawling in the Church; therefore St. Paul
established laws of control, declared the need of subjection and rule
over spiritual gifts: the spirits of the prophets were to be subject
to the prophets; if those in the ecstatic state were tempted to break
out into utterance and unable to interpret what it meant, those so
gifted were to hold their peace.

The prophet poured out the truths supernaturally imparted to his
highest spirit, in an inspired and impassioned eloquence which was
intelligible even to the unspiritual, and was one of the appointed
means of convincing the unconverted. The lesson derivable from this is
not obsolete even in the present day. There is nothing perhaps
precisely identical in our own day with those gifts of the early
Church; but genius and talent are uncommon gifts, which stand in a
somewhat analogous relation--in a closer one certainly--than more
ordinary endowments. The flights of genius, we know, appear like
maniac ravings to minds not elevated to the same spiritual level. Now
these are perfectly compatible with mis-use, abuse, and moral
disorder. The most gifted of our countrymen has left this behind him
as his epitaph, "The greatest, wisest, _meanest_ of mankind." The most
glorious gift of poetic insight--itself in a way divine--having
something akin to Deity--is too often associated with degraded life
and vicious character. Those gifts which elevate us above the rest of
our species, whereby we stand aloof and separate from the crowd,
convey no moral--nor even mental--infallibility: nay, they have in
themselves a peculiar danger, whereas that gift which is common to us
all as brethren, the animating spirit of a divine life, in whose soil
the spiritual being of all is rooted, cannot make us vain; we _cannot_
pride ourselves on _that_, for it is common to us all.

2. Again, the gifts which were higher in one sense were lower in
another; as supernatural gifts they would rank thus--the gift of
tongues before prophecy, and prophecy before teaching; but as
blessings to be desired, this order is reversed: rather than the gift
of tongues St. Paul bids the Corinthians desire that they might
prophecy. Inferior again to prophecy was the quite simple, and as we
should say, lower faculty of explaining truth. Now the principle upon
which that was