Unless, therefore, he that has the gift of tongues also possess the gift of interpreting his exclamations, or unless some one present can do so for him, he had not better exercise it in church.
The writer of Acts ii., anxious to prove that Providence from the first included the Gentiles in the Messianic Kingdom, assumes that the gift of tongues was a miraculous faculty of talking strange languages without having previously learned them.
The gift of tongues was suitable rather to children in the faith than to the mature.
It is to be noted that his own letters contain, both at this time and later on, express disproof of that miraculous gift of tongues with which he was credited even in his lifetime, and which is attributed to him in the Breviary office for his festival.
And for this reason it is customary to appoint diviners or interpreters to be judges of the true inspiration."' From such passages as the above we infer that the gift of tongues and of their interpretation was not peculiar to the Christian Church, but was a repetition in it of a phase common in ancient religions.
