(Scougal.)

1. Goodwill and friendship to mankind are natural to us, which we are led to by the original propensions and inclinations of our hearts. We are plainly made for the exercise of goodness and charity, and in the very constitution of our beings it is marked out to us as the course of life which we are to follow.

2. The circumstances in which we are placed render it necessary for us to exercise benevolence towards mankind. Men are a sort of creatures who have a natural and necessary dependence upon one another, and it is impossible for them to subsist — at least, to enjoy any comfort in life — without mutual succour and an exchange of all good offices.

3. Another motive to engage us to the love of mankind may be brought from the consideration of its excellency.

4. The exercise of humanity and kindness towards mankind is essential to religion, without which it is only an empty name, and all pretences to it are most vain and impertinent.

5. The last argument to engage us to the exercise of charity may be brought from the advantages which will from thence accrue to ourselves. It may be justly expected that it will have a happy influence even on our external fortune or estate in the world; for charity is the most engaging quality that we can be possessed of, which will not fail to procure us the esteem of others, and make them, in any cases of difficulty and danger in which we may be, to contribute to our assistance. But a much more considerable instance of happiness than any relating to our external interest, which proceeds from the exercise of charity, is that inward joy and pleasure which it always affords us. And besides all this, if we consider the other world, it is certain that the practice of charity will procure us the greatest advantages that can be in it.

II. SOME RULES FOR RAISING AND IMPROVING A TEMPER OF SINCERE AND UNIVERSAL BENEVOLENCE IN US.

1. In order to this, let us represent mankind in the most favourable light that we justly can to ourselves. We must have some esteem of those for whose advantage we exert ourselves with any high degree of zeal; and when we sincerely esteem any persons we shall be always ready to promote their interest as we have opportunity.

2. Another method of raising and improving a benevolent temper in us is to accustom ourselves to frequent thoughts and meditations on the goodness of God.

3. Further, let us guard not only against all contempt of others and unfair suspicions of evil in them, but against an indulgence of all immoderately selfish passions, and of all angry, peevish, discontented dispositions, and endeavour, as much as we can, to preserve ourselves in a serene state of mind.

4. It will likewise be of great use for forming and increasing a temper of benevolence in us to have an habitual recollection and a lively conviction of its great excellence and importance.

(J. Orr, D. D.)

I. A FEW OF THOSE GIFTS WINCH FORM APPROPRIATE OBJECTS OF THE CHRISTIAN'S DESIRE AND PURSUIT.

1. An ability for the edifying and acceptable discharge of ministerial duty.

2. A facility of acceptably engaging in social and public prayer.

3. A readiness for joining, or, if necessary, of leading the exercise of social and public praise.

4. An aptness in turning to some profitable account the ordinary and social intercourse of life.

5. A readiness in administering to others appropriate admonition, advice, or encouragement.

II. THE NATURE AND APPROPRIATE EXERCISE OF THE DESIRE RECOMMENDED IN THE TEXT.

1. It should be operative and practical in its character. We are not to sit down and be satisfied in wishing these gifts were possessed, but to make an effort to attain them.

2. This desire should be regulated, not by personal inclination, but by an anxiety for usefulness.

III. SUGGESTIONS TO EXCITE AND DIRECT IN PURSUING THE ATTAINMENT OF THESE GIFTS. "We should —

1. Cherish a deeper sense of the privilege and honour of being in any way serviceable to the Church of Christ.

2. Diligently and conscientiously use the gifts we already possess. They, like our bodily or mental faculties, are ever improved by appropriate exercise.

3. More assiduously cultivate the graces of religion in the soul. These, by inflaming the heart more with a Saviour's love, would constrain us to attempt honouring and serving Him in every possible way.

(Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)

1. Prophesying is speaking for God, whether the utterance regards present or future matters. The function of the prophet is indicated in ver. 3. and in vers. 24-25 the results of prophesying are described in terms precisely such as we should use to describe the results of efficacious preaching.

2. The gift of tongues, from Acts 2., would seem to have been the gift of speaking in foreign languages, and was communicated, not as a permanent acquisition, but only "as the Spirit gave utterance." It served the same purpose as other miracles; it called attention to the entrance of new powers into human nature; it was "for them that believe not, not for them that believe." It produced conviction that among the followers of Christ new powers were at work. The evidence of this took a shape which seemed to intimate that the religion of Christ was suitable for every race of mankind.

3. Comparing these two gifts, Paul gives the preference to the former, and this mainly on the score of its greater utility. Apart from interpretation speaking with tongues was like the blare of a trumpet, mere unintelligible sound. Prophesying, however, all could understand, and profit by it.

4. From this preference for the less showy but more useful gift, we may gather that to make public worship the occasion of self-display or sensational exhibitions is to degrade it. Preachers must resist the temptation to make a sensation, to produce fine sermons; and worshippers must resist the temptation to merely exhibit a good voice or find greater pleasure in what is sensational in worship than in what is simple and intelligible.

5. Worship in which the understanding bears no part receives no countenance from Paul (ver. 15). Where the prayers of the Church are in Latin the worshipper may indeed pray with the spirit and be edified, but his worship would be better did he pray with the understanding also. Music unaccompanied by words induces a devoutness which is apt to be either hazy or sentimental, or both, unless by the help of words the understanding goes hand in hand with feeling.

6. No countenance can be found in this chapter to the idea that worship should exclude preaching. Some temperaments incline towards worship, but resent being preached to or instructed. St. Paul, however, puts prophesying in the forefront. But St. Paul puts —

II. THE MANNER IN WHICH THE PUBLIC SERVICES SHOULD BE CONDUCTED.

1. The services at Corinth were characterised by great freedom (ver. 26). Each member of the congregation had something to contribute for the edification of the Church. One with a natural aptitude for poetry threw his devotional feeling into a metrical form, and furnished the Church with her earliest hymns. Another set forth some important aspect of Christian truth. Another, fresh from contact with the world, entered the meeting with the glow of conflict on his face, and had eager words of exhortation to utter. And so passed the hours of meeting, without any fixed order, appointed ministry, or uniformity of service. And certainly the freshness and variety of such services is greatly to be desired. We lose much by a silent membership.

2. And yet, as Paul observes, there was much to be desired in those Corinthian services. To appeal to this or any part of this letter in proof that there should be no distinction between clergy and laity would be a very bad policy. True there were no rulers of any kind, but then the want of them had given rise to disorder. The ideal condition, however, would be one in which authority should be lodged in certain office-bearers, while the faculty and gift of each member in some way contributed to the good of the whole Church.

3. While Paul abstains from appointing Church officers, he is careful to lay down two principles which should regulate their procedure.(1) "Let everything be done decently and in order." This advice was greatly needed in a Church in which the public services were sometimes filmed into tumults.(2) "Let all things be done unto edifying." Keep the great end of your meetings in view, and you need no formal rubrics.

4. It might be difficult to say whether the somewhat selfish ambition of those Corinthians to secure the surprising gifts of the Spirit or our own torpid indifference and lack of expectation is less to be commended. Certainly every one who attaches himself to Christ ought to indulge in great expectations. From Him we may expect at least His own Spirit. And in this "least" there is promise of all. But lack of expectation is fatal to the Christian.

(M. Dods, D. D.)

I. THE GIFT OF PROPHECY was not simply the power to predict future events. The Old Testament prophets predicted, but they had also to expostulate and comfort. Here are three marks of a prophet.

1. He speaketh unto man (ver. 3) — face-to-face conversation.

2. He speaketh to edification, exhortation, and comfort.

3. He speaketh so that souls are converted (ver. 24).

II. THE GIFT OF TONGUES was the power imparted to speak foreign languages, which is plainly the teaching of Acts 2. One of the great reasons for the bestowal of the gift was that the disciples might preach Christ to all without undergoing the usual tedious instruction in the language of the hearer.

III. THE GIFT OF PROPHECY IS GREATER THAN THE GIFT OF TONGUES.

1. It is better to be definite than learned (vers. 7-12). Speak with as many tongues as you can, but take care that whatever is spoken is understood.

2. It is better to appeal to the understanding than to the emotions (ver. 16). I do not undervalue the emotional in religions worship, but it is better for a man to understand what he feels than to feel what he does not understand. If an unlearned man go into a Roman Catholic chapel, e.g., everything appeals to the emotions — the paintings, the music, the incense; you have a sense of the beautiful, but you don't know why. Better be in the poorest meetinghouse listening to the rudest preacher, for then you may learn what you can understand and apply what your own soul can interpret.

3. It is better to be useful than brilliant (ver. 19).

4. It is better to honour God by winning souls than to excite ridicule and contempt (vers. 23, 24). Conclusion:

1. Preaching should be plain, but not vulgar.

2. Worship should be intelligent, not mystical.

3. It should be orderly, not confused.

(A. F. Barfield.)

1. Note the difference between a grace and a gift. It is not that the former is from God and the latter from nature, for both are from God; but grace is that which has in it some moral quality. A man may be fluent, learned, skillful, etc., and yet be a bad man. Now this distinction explains at once why graces are preferable. Graces are what the man is, gifts what he has. He is loving, he has eloquence, etc. You only have to cut out his tongue, or to impair his memory, and the gift is gone But you must destroy his very being before he ceases to be a loving man. Yet while the Corinthians are to "follow after charity" they are not to undervalue gifts.

2. Many religious persons go into the contrary extreme; they call gifts dangerous and worldly. No, says the apostle, "desire" them; not as the highest goods, but still desirable. Only remember you are not worthy or good because of them. And remember other people are not bound to honour you for them. Admire a Napoleon's genius, but do not let your admiration of that induce you to give honour to the man. Let there be no mere "hero-worship."

3. The apostle states the principle on which one gift is preferable to another. "Rather that ye may prophesy." He prefers those which are useful to those that are showy (see ver. 12).

I. WHAT WAS PROPHECY? A prophet was commissioned to declare the will of God either as to the future or as to the present.

1. In ver. 3 is the essence of the prophet's office, but there is not one word spoken of prediction. In order fully to expound a spiritual principle, or a principle of Divine politics, it was necessary to foretell the result or transgression against it; as when the Captivity, or the fate of Babylon and Nineveh was predicted: but this was not the essence of the prophet's duty: that was to reveal truth.

2. In ver. 24 the exercise of this gift is spoken of as one specially instrumental in conversion, with which prediction has nothing to do, for before a prediction could be fulfilled the unbeliever "falls down, acknowledges God," etc. Moreover, the prophecy was something which touched his conscience.

II. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE GIFT OF TONGUES. From Acts

2. it is generally taken for granted that it was a miraculous gift of speaking foreign languages, and that the object of such a gift was the conversion of the heathen world; but I believe that the gift was a far higher one than that of the linguist.

1. St. Paul prefers prophecy to the gift of "tongues" as more useful, since prophecy edified others, and tongues did not. Now could he have said this had the gift been the power of speaking foreign languages?

2. The "tongues" were inarticulate or incoherent (ver. 2). The man spoke "not unto men, but unto God," did not try to make himself logically clear to men, but poured out his soul to God.

3. This gift was something internal, a kind of inspired soliloquy (ver. 4). There was an unconscious need of expressing audibly the feelings arising within, but; when so uttered they merely ended in "edifying" the person who uttered them; like the broken murmur of a poet full of deep thought in solitude.

4. The apostle compares the gift with the unworried sounds of musical instruments (vers. 7, 8), which have a meaning, but one which is felt rather than measured by the intellect. The mathematician would ask, "What does that prove?" the historian, "What information or fact does it communicate?" Have you ever heard the low moanings of hopelessness? or those, to us, unmelodious airs which to the Swiss mountaineer tell of home in a language clearer than the tongue? or have you ever listened to the unmeaning shouts of boyhood? Well, in all these you have dim illustrations of the way in which new, deep, irrepressible feelings found for themselves utterance in sounds which were called "tongues."

5. These utterances, weakly allowed full vent, were like the ravings of insanity (ver. 23). So, indeed, men on the day of Pentecost said, "These men are full of new wine." The apostle reminds the Corinthians that they were bound to control this power, lest it should degenerate into imbecility or fanaticism.

6. The gift is compared to a barbarian tongue (ver. 11), therefore not a barbarian tongue itself.

7. It could be interpreted (ver. 13). And without this interpretation the "tongues" were obviously useless (ver. 14). And this power of interpretation is reckoned a spiritual gift as much as tongues, a gift granted in answer to prayer. Now this we shall best understand by analogies. It is a great principle that sympathy is the only condition for interpretation of feeling. The apostle compares the gift of tongues to music. Now music needs an interpreter, and the interpretation must be given, not in words, but in corresponding feelings. There must be "music in the soul." To him who has not this the language of music is simply unintelligible. Again, a child is often the subject of feelings which he does not understand. Observe how he is affected by the reading of a tale or a moving hymn. He will not say, How touching, how well imagined! but he will hide his face, or he hums, or laughs, or becomes peevish, because he does not know what is the matter with him. He has no words like a man to express his new feelings. But the grown man can interpret them, and, sympathising with the child, he says, "The child cannot contain his feelings." Or, take the instance of a physician finding words for physical feelings, because he understands them better than the patient who is unable to express them. In the same way the early Christians, being the subjects of new, deep, and spiritual feeling, declared their joy in inarticulate utterances. But the explaining what they felt was the office of the interpreter, e.g., a stranger might have been at a loss to know what was really meant. "Are you happy or miserable, O Christian, by those wild utterances? Is it madness, or new wine, or inspiration?" And none but a person in the same mood of mind, or one who had passed through it, could say to the stranger, "This is the overflow of gratefulness; he is blessing in the Spirit; it is a hymn of joy that his heart is singing to itself"; or, "It is a burst of prayer" (vers. 15-17).

(F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

II. SOME "ENDOWMENTS ARE SUPERIOR TO OTHERS (ver. 5). The didactic faculty is greater than the linguistic. Sense is better than sound, ideas are better than words. It often happens that the man who has the most aptitude in acquiring languages has the least capacity either for attaining or communicating great ideas. But the language of which the apostle here speaks seems to have been the inarticulate voice of new and strong emotions. Tender emotions often choke us. If expressed at all they can only be in the quivering lip, and the gleaming eye, and the convulsive chest. Such have been manifested in all great revivals of religion. I have heard such untranslatable sounds under the mighty sermons of Welsh preachers. These "tongues" are valuable. Because —

1. They are symptomatic of a new spiritual life. You can talk about history, science, theology, but not about the deepest and divinest things of the heart. They only come out in "groanings that cannot be uttered."

2. In them the soul expresses its devotions (vers. 2, 4, 14). It is delightful to think of the human soul generally so immersed in the selfish and the sensuous, bathing itself in the rising tides of spiritual emotions.

3. By them the religious sympathy of the unbelieving is often excited (ver. 22). Sound expressive of human emotion often strikes potently on the heart of the listener. Take the most thoughtless man into some vast congregation in Wales, when all the people are singing their plaintive hymns in strains of weird music, and he will not be long, even if he understands not the language, before he feels the influence. Unsyllabled speech is often the mightiest. There are melodies that carry into the soul that which no word can express.

III. THE HIGHEST ENDOWMENT IS THE ABILITY FOR SPIRITUAL TEACHING (vers. 12, 18). Teaching is not the mere impartation of the acts of the gospel but the indoctrinating of the soul with its primary elements and spirit. Note —

1. That the gospel gives to its genuine disciples intelligent convictions that should be communicated to others. He who has accepted the gospel in reality becomes instinct with mighty and irrepressible ideas; ideas which he "cannot but speak," for "necessity is laid" upon him. They are given to him to communicate, not to monopolise, and on their communication the spiritual life, growth, and perfection of mankind depend.

2. That these intelligent convictions can only be conveyed to others by intelligible language (vers. 6-7 etc.). Mere "sound" is not worth much. "Things without life," such as the "pipe" and the "harp," produce sound. Nay, more, unless the sound gives out clear and distinct ideas, it is not only useless, but injurious (ver. 8). If in battle the trumpet does not sound clearly the advance or retreat when intended, it is worse than useless. So whatever might be the unintelligible utterances, whether an unvernacular language or the unsyllabled expressions of emotions. Paul indicates their inadequacy without interpretation to convey to the hearer intelligent convictions of gospel truth (ver. 9).

3. That the use of a language which the listener cannot understand should not be indulged in.(1) Not in public devotion (vers. 14-16). Unintelligible utterances in public devotion fail to excite in the assembly a spirit of united worship. So far as the individual himself is concerned, it does not matter with what tongue he speaks, or whether he speaks at all.(2) Not in public ministration. Alas! it is to be feared the language of many a sermon is an "unknown tongue." Such language gratifies the vanity of the speaker, but wastes the time and tries the patience of the hearer (vers. 18, 19). The apostle goes on to indicate that such unintelligible utterances in the Church are —

(a)Childish (ver. 20).

(b)Useless (ver. 21).

(c)Confounding (ver. 23).

(d)To be of any service must be interpreted (ver. 28).

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

(Prof. Godet.)

1. A demonstration of Divine power.

2. An evidence of Divine truth.

3. A gift of Divine grace.

(J. Lyth, D. D.)

II. ITS REQUISITES. It must be intelligible, Scriptural, etc.

III. THE SOURCE OF ITS POWER. It is a gift of the Spirit who qualifies the instrument, and applies the truth.

(J. Lyth, D. D.)

I. EDIFICATION denotes a new development and a confirmation of the faith by some new view fitted to strengthen the soul.

II. EXHORTATION denotes an encouragement addressed to the will, an energetic impulse capable of effecting an awakening or advancement in Christian fidelity, relating to love as the former relates to faith.

III. COMFORT points rather to hope, παραμυθείν, to soothe the ear with a sweet myth, putting pain to sleep, or reviving hope.

(Prof. Godet.)

1. What may edify one does not always edify another.

2. Public worship contemplates general edification.

3. What, therefore, only ministers to private edification must give way for the benefit of all.

(J. Lyth, D. D.)

II. THE MODE OF PREACHING.

1. It supposes the plain exposition of Divine truth — the communication of Divine knowledge.

2. Aims at edification (ver. 3) — at instruction in righteousness.

(J. Lyth, D. D.)

I. HOW THEY MAY BE ABUSED.

1. By display (ver. 6).

2. By using them to no purpose (vers. 7-9).

3. By employing them under improper circumstances (vers. 10, 11).

II. HOW THEY MAY BE IMPROVED — by using them for the edification of others (ver. 12) — which must be done intelligently (vers. 13, 14), wisely (vers. 15-17), in the spirit of love (vers. 18, 19).

(J. Lyth, D. D.)