The Three Forms of the Divinely-Wrought Ecstasy, and the Theopneustia

THE THREE FORMS OF THE DIVINELY-WROUGHT ECSTASY, AND THE THEOPNEUSTIA.

Sec. V.

We begin by recapitulation. The natural spirit-life of man is rooted in the still undistinguished unity of the will: it acts in the self-consciousness proceeding therefrom, which comprehends the acts of thought and will that have now become distinctive (w>C< ; or X070?); and it culminates in the mind (irvevfia Tov Voo?, cr irvevfia in the narrower sense), in which thought and will are dissolved into a third form of life—of a view or perception situated beyond their distinction.¹ Conformably to this, the supernatural spirit-life (the spiritual) is threefold. There are (1) operations of divine grace which stimulate or move our will, and precede the self-consciousness; (2) such as proceed upon our self-consciousnessj and aim at becoming taken up, from conscious thought into conscious will; (3) such as give to our mind the experience of heavenly blessedness, and the view of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.² In the operations of grace of the third kind, so far as they do not exceed the mea

¹ It will be remembered here that Plato distinguishes the »oSf as seeing and as comprehending (effecting the inirrtifiti): the New Testament wfifix Tov roi; corresponds in some measure to that perceiving votf which Plato considers as the innermost highest pilot (xvfitpttmn) of the soul.

² We place first experience, as Ps. xxxiv. 8, }KH }Dj?B- "Nisi gustaveris," says Bernard, " non videbis. Manna absconditum est, nomen novum est, quod nemo scit, nisi qui accipit. Non illud eruditio, sed unctio docet, non scientia, sed conscientia comprehendit."

sure of that which is customary in the work of grace, there prevail indeed experience and perception beyond the reflecting will and discursive thought; nevertheless, these still always make themselves observable therein, as ascending and descending impulses. But there are also extraordinary operations of grace of this kind, which act on the human spirit in its nature, in such a way that all reflection of the spirit upon itself, and upon that which has happened to it, is lost in the power of the alldevouring impression. This is the state of ecstasy. We have already considered phenomena of this kind—so far as they are composed of influences natural, demoni-angelic, and divine¹— in the final paragraphs of Div. IV. They now concern us only as pure miracles of grace.²

There is a threefold kind of such ecstasy pertaining to the new life from God—the mystic, the prophetic, and the charismatic. (1.) The mystic.—The more manifestly and perfectly the man loves God above everything, and the more earnestly and constantly he crucifies his flesh, with the affections and lusts, the deeper, clearer, and stronger becomes his spirit-life, the more richly his death to all earthly things is compensated by supra-terrene experiences. It happens sometimes, that the indwelling of Christ and God and His Spirit—which, besides, is the supporting and originating ground of the life of the new man (Gal. ii. 20; 1 Cor. xiv. 25; Horn. viii. 14; 1 John iii. 24) —signalizes itself with such an energy in the believer, that the human individual life is overflowed and swallowed up by the divine, as by a river of delight (Ps. xxxvi. 8), in respect of which our fathers quote the example of the holy Ephrem, who, after his conversion, experienced such wondrous consolation, that he often cried to God, " Lord, withdraw Thy hand a little,

¹ "L'extase n'est qu'une forme indifferente en elle m6me," says very truly Theophile Rivier, in his Etude sur Balaam, Lausanne 1856, "ce qui lui donne une valeur morale, e'est le fond bon ou mauvais qui la rempht, la puissance salutaire ou pernicieuse qui agit en elle."

⁸ We call grace everything which proceeds from the principle of the divine love turned back again to humanity in Christ, and nature all that belongs to the natural constitution of man creatively established, and become through sin selfish, and subjected to the influences of the kingdom of darkness. The extraordinary phenomena of the soul-life take for granted, without distinction, so-called magic or mystic capabilities based in man; but they are distinguished according to the cause which brings these capa

for my heart is too weak to receive such excessive joy." It is the presence of the divine love which, in such extraordinary cases, hurries along with it man's will and self-consciousness, and breaks out with such force in his mind (Rom. v. 5), that it is altogether occupied and taken possession of by it. In other cases it is confirmed, that the walk of the Christian is in heaven (Phil. iii. 20, comp. Zech. iii. 7) actually, by the fact that the future glory is not merely revealed to his perception as a subject of hope (1 Cor. ii. 9), but ia given him for a moment to see and to share in by way of foretaste, as e.g. Thomas Aquinas, in his last illness, after a long-continued ecstasy, cried out, Arcana verba audivi; and John Arndt, awaking from a short sleep, cried, "We saw His glory;" but chiefly, as Paul relates of himself (2 Cor. xii. 1-4), that he once was caught up into the third heaven, and indeed into the heavenly paradise, and there heard unspeakable things, which it is not permitted to any man to utter. Emphatically, he repeats that he knows not whether at that time he was ev awfian or eiiro? (^wpU) Tov awfiaro<;, God knoweth. At any rate, what is experienced in such ecstasies is a prelude of that separation of the soul from the body that results in death (Div. IV. Sec . XIV.), during which separation the body is usually found in a cataleptic condition, i.e. a state similar to the rigidity of a corpse: but it remains an enigma whether the soul is actually separated from the body, and whether this does not draw death after it, only for the reason that what is experienced is compressed, like eternity, into a momentary now; or whether the union of the soul with the body continues to subsist, in that the withdrawal is an extra-local one, and therefore may be regarded just as

bilities into action, and their moral worth is measured according thereto. Only in the light of the religion of revelation experimentally attested, is it possible to see one's way in this region. The works of Bastian (Der Mensch in der Geschichte. Zur Begrundung einer psychologischen Weltanschauung, 3 vols. 1860) and of Perty (Die mysiischen Erscheinungen der menschlichen Natur, 1861) show in what a labyrinth one is lost who despises the criteria offered to Christians in God's word. The former refers everything to nature and deception; the latter to the magical power of man, to which he most credulously entrusts the incredible, and to the participation in the knowledge and power of the Geo-dsemon (earth spirit), which his fancy (like Fechner's, in his Zendavesta) interpolates between the universal Spirit (God) and man.

much as a condescension of that which is heavenly, as an exaltation to the same.¹

We distinguish the kind of ecstasy which has as its aim the strengthening and recompensing of personal faith, from the prophetic. For (2) the prophetic has, as its characteristic attribute, the purpose, according to its vocation, of announcing that which is given to be experienced and to be seen. If we consider prophecy in general, there cannot be perceived a qualitative distinction between that of the Old and New Testament. They are distinguished neither in regard of manifold spiritual operations, which are removed sometimes more and sometimes less remotely from the limits of natural life; nor in respect of the manifold vocation, which is by no means exhausted in special foreseeing and foretelling. That which is common to all prophecy of both Testaments, subsists in the fact, that it is the receiver and the bearer of direct revelations of God, significant in respect of salvation.² The prophet speaks always on divine impulse, with divine power, from divine communication or information, which has to justify its authenticity as well by its substance as by the circumstances that accompany it (1 Cor. xiv.; Eph. iii. 5). Among the many Hebrew synonyms of vision, ntn is the standing general expression for prophetic perception, whether vision or word be the form in which the divine is announced to the prophet.³ In both cases he sees it, in that he distinguishes, by means of the spiritual eye of the inward sense—which is designated after the noblest of the five external senses—this divine thing in its supernatural objectivity

¹ Tertullian considers this question, de anima, c. 44. Lactantius expresses the view, abit animus, vianet anima; but Tertullian, omnia magis conjectes, quam islam licentiam anims e sine morte fugitivse et quidem ex forma continuam (read continuse); but he does not venture to deny the possibility of a rapid anticipatory loosing of the soul from the body. V. Rudloff believes that in such cases the soul remains united to the body by the nerve-spirit. But in the supposition that the soul, remaining within this neighbouring medium of bodily animation, is removed out of the body, the riddle becomes still more insoluble.

1 The name t033i signifies the announcer. See Fleischer, in my

Commentary on Genesis, pp. 634-636.

¹ The Indian name of the prophet, rishi, is explained, "seer of the divine word." See Neve, Etudes sur les Hymnes du Rig- Veda, p. 21.

from his own imagination and thinking. For the manner of revelation is not always the specifically visionary. Prophecy, even in respect of the mode of revelation, has a progressive history. In the range of the later prophecy, the dream almost wholly disappears: it is the lowest stage of revelation; and the ecstasy or vision in the waking state, in the maturity of prophecy that came in with Joel and Obadiah, serves only for extraordinary purposes. The forms of revelation named in Num. xxiv. 3 continue, but only as extraordinary occurrences, within the range of a more constant intercourse with God, which approximates to God's revelation by Moses,¹—an intercourse which is effected without vision only by means of the word, and therefore after the manner of inspiration; while the willing, thinking, feeling spiritual life of the prophet, in the condition of perfect waking power over himself, is elevated and supported by a gentle divine influence, which he (as is indispensable) is able to distinguish from his own personal agency (2 Pet. i. 21). This is the condition of inward penetration by which is explained the change of persons so frequent in the Old Testament books of prophecy. The prophet sometimes speaks himself from God, sometimes God speaks Himself from the prophet; sometimes the divine Ego asserts itself with a supreme power that absorbs all other, sometimes the human in the entire fulness of sanctified humanity; but in both cases it is the personality of the prophet, in the totality of its spiritual, psychical powers, which becomes the active or passive organ of the divine. Ecstasy, on the other hand, consists in this, that the human spirit is seized and compassed by the divine, which searcheth all things, even the deep things of God, with such force, that being averted from its life'—in itself in the soul and in the body—and fixed in the third of its forms of life, it is altogether a seeing eye, a hearing ear, a perceiving sense for the world and the things of eternity, or of the future, whither the mighty agency of God has withdrawn it from its customary sphere of life. Thus Isaiah in ch. vi. is withdrawn into the temple-palace of the heavenly King, where he is consecrated as a prophet; thus he exists and lives in ch. zl. to lxvi., as if cut off from his actual presence in the exile; and from this his

¹ More cannot be said, for the standing of Moses is not attained to; comp. Kurtz in the Dorpater Zeitschr. fUr Theologie in Kirche, 1861, p. 127.

ideal presence, held fast through twenty-seven chapters, looks forth with an excellent spirit (irvevfiaT i fieyaXrp, as Ecclus. xlviii. 24 says) upon the last things; and from the clear vision which in the exile has become in form his natural condition, lie announces as with angel tongues the coming redemption. The withdrawal is in both cases a purely spiritual event, and to be distinguished from such occurrences as that at the baptism of Jordan, and at the mount of transfiguration, where there are external facts of sacred history, which are not merely represented in a spiritually perceptible manner for those for whom they are intended, but are actually transacted. That which is to be perceived has in these cases a subsistence independent of perception—of external, although not of grossly external historical reality: it happens not merely in the domain of the inward nature, as in the case of the prophetic withdrawal. The objectivity of the latter consists in the fact, that it is not a state into which the spirit of the prophet transposes itself out of itself, but into which he is transplanted by the spirit of prophecy. The future, indeed, has besides, at the time in which the prophet is enabled to see it and to experience it, only an ideal reality. But, moreover, the other world does not take up the prophet into itself, as if he were one blissfully separated thereto; but from the spiritual agency which operates on the prophet's spirit there is developed the supersensual, which he is to be permitted to behold, in that it becomes visible and audible to him by the mediation of his psychico-corporeal nature,¹ and according to the measure of his temporal limitations; but so that by virtue of the divine agency which rules future and present, heaven and earth, these are objective realities, into whose contemplation the prophet is transported, — objective

¹ An irritation of tho nerves of seeing and hearing proceeding from within (see Luthardt, in Tholuck, Die Proph. p. 56) is herein not to be supposed; only the affected ganglionic parts of the brain, as in all conceptions, so also in these, are projected outwardly, but in fact are engaged with internal forms. For the ecstasy is indeed, as Augustine rightly defines it, alienatio mentis a sensibus corporis; and even hallucinations do not always originate through irritation of the nerves of Sense, but through irritations which may proceed from the most distinct points of the body furnished with nerves, and thence lay hold of the brain-ganglia,—in other words, through any influence upon the brain, and indeed upon those parts of it which are the media of the impressions of sense for the subject, and

occurrences, which bring their nature to manifestation in his mind, in a clothing which is taken up from the individual nature of the prophet.

Scripture calls this ecstatical state yeveadai ev eKardaet, (Acts xxii. 17), or else yeveadai ev wvevfiart (Apoc. i. 10); for elvai ev irvevfiari (Rom. viii. 9) is indeed the fundamental state of the regenerate person generally, so far as his personal life has broken with the fleshly life, and is the life of the spirit in God's Spirit. But in those passing acts of ecstasy, as in the mystic ecstasy, this habitual reciprocal immanence of the human and the divine spirit is so greatly enhanced, that the essential connection of the human spirit with all that lies on this side, and below this immanence, is, as it were, severed. Thus upon the prophets of the schools of Samuel came the ^u hand of Jehovah," not without a forcing down of the external man. Saul is violently taken hold of by the spirit of prophecy in Gibeah, and goes thence with another heart ("ins 3?, 1 Sam. x. 5). In Naioth of Ramah, overcome by the Spirit, he strips off his clothes, in order to make (so it appears, comp. Jer. xx. 9) the inward burning more supportable, begins to prophesy, and lies naked the whole day and the whole night on the ground (1 Sam. xix. 20-24). It may be easily explained why the prophetic endowment of just the time of the judges has this violent form. We are reminded of Balaam (Num. xxiv. 4): "That falling down," observes Baumgarten,¹ *' from which Balaam calls himself is the perfect prostration, the sinking away of the directly natural standing and condition. The less the natural life is glorified into the spirit, the more forcibly is expressed the might of the divine Spirit that comes over the man." And, in fact, where the Spirit of revelation has to make use of

which are able to represent the places of actual impressions of sense. When, for the rest, through pathologic irritation, or moreover internal spiritual causation, lively perceptions may come into our circle of vision without external agency, it will have to be conceded from the scientific standing, that such like subjective seeing and hearing in certain cases may be produced by God; and there may be due to what is perceived at the same time a higher truth and reality, a divine objectivity. I miss the acknowledgment of this possibility in Hecker'a Vorksung ilber Vmonen, 1848, according to which Th. Sickel, in his treatise on Jeanne d'Arc, 1861, estimates the visions of the heroine.

¹ Theologischer Comm. zum Pentateuch, ii. 370.

instruments such as Balaam and the Samson natures of the time of the judges, it does not occur without such violence, and constraint, and rending asunder of the strong links that still unite spirit and flesh. But even still later, when the prophetic endowment has already, so to speak, a nobler form, the prophetic state, indeed, is not in itself associated with abalienatio mentis and deliquium sensuum but probably the ecstasy is so, which generally is not to be represented without cessation of the external agency of the senses, and without a temporary death to the external world. The true prophets, however, are distinguished from the false, by the fact that there are no special pathologic phenomena under which the visionary state comes on; further, by the fact that they do not, by any influence upon themselves, throw themselves into this state, and that generally in order to behold divine visions, they are not first thrown into that state by way of preparation; but the continuity of their spirit's life is suddenly broken through by the extraordinary operation of God, as when Ezekiel, sitting before the elders of the exiles, is met by the hand of Jehovah, and snatched away to Jerusalem, and not till after long vision is placed back by the Spirit of God which has taken him away, into the external and conscious reality of his situation (Ezek. viii. 1-3, comp. xi. "24). And it is the awe-inspiring, overpowering impression of the vision itself which throws them upon their face (Ezek. i. 28, iii. 23, xliii. 3),—that they are, as it were, sunken in deep sleep (Dan. viii. 18, x. 9, comp. Zech. iv. 1), and lie upon the ground, as if, as far as the outer man was concerned, they were dead (Dan. x. 8; Apqc. i. 17). Their ecstatic state, moreover, is distinguished from the forced false one (irapeKaraai<;), by the fact that they remember what has been given them to see, hear, and speak in the ecstasy: their consciousness therefore suffers no dislocation in the withdrawal; it does not happen to them as to the Cumsean Sibyl,² who, when the inspiration left her, had no memory of what had been spoken.³ But, in all cases, the

¹ Thus Philippi, Kirchliche Glaubenslehre, i. 169. This is the Montanist view, which Bitschl (Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, pp. 465-477, ed. 2) rightly refers to the heathen-Christian confusion of prophecy with soothsaying.

¹ Justin, Cohort, ad Grsecos, c. xxxvi.

¹ Comp Kurtz' Darstellung der Unterschiede der prophetischen und

ecstatic vision never comes on without the life of the prophet withdrawing itself from without, inwardly to the innermost foundation of the spirit. And, moreover, Balaam and Caiaphas are not the only examples of the person prophesying—prophesying what he would not, and prophesying without knowing the prophetic character of what was said. As Balaam blesses where he would curse, so Jehovah's prophets at times are compelled to curse where they would bless; and as Caiaphas prophesied on account of his high-priestly office, so David also prophesies frequently in the Psalms, without knowing it, on account of his typical character. The prophecy in all these cases is of like character. The hand of God is laid on the prophet; the Spirit of God effects the capacity, and the substance of the prophecy; but this ranges from perfectly conscious free service, to unconscious or unwilling instrumentality, down through a number of mingled relations.

Whilst, however, the mystic ecstasy is not able to compress that which is seen, for the most part, in words, although it has been seen in clear and not restrained but exalted consciousness— and thus the remembrance of it remains present—it is involved in the purpose of the prophetic ecstasy of which it is the calling, that the prophet should bring the visions, seen ev irvevfiari, and, becoming gradually conscious to him under the influence of the vow and of the psychical agencies, to adequate and intelligible expression. For that which the prophet, as such, receives to see and to apprehend, he sees and apprehends, not for himself alone, but, as being the appointed mediator of the divine thoughts respecting the order of salvation and divine decrees, for his people and for humanity. Thus the prophetic ecstasy is distinguished, as from the mystic, so also (3) from the charismatic, for instance, the glossolalic ecstasy, i.e. from that whence proceeded the speaking with tongues, or speaking in strange languages (whether they be languages actually existing, as at Pentecost, or languages newly created¹)—an exalted speech in an ecstatic state,

mantischen Ekstase, I.e. p. 129. Meanwhile, also, a striking treatise by Oehler, on the relation oi the Old Testament prophecy to the heathen soothsaying, appeared in 1861 (Programm zur Begliickwiinschung der Univ. Breslau bei ihrem Jubiliium).

¹ In this accidental double form subsists the essential unity of the Glossolalia in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and in the Acts of. the

which did not bring to the congregation any conscious advantage, unless either some other (1 Cor. xii. 10, xiv. 27) or the speaker himself (ibid. v. 13) interpreted it (Siepfirjveve), and so translated it out of the eternal sphere of the irvevfia into the region of the vow. Hilgenfeld, indeed, is mistaken in explaining the unintelligibility of the ykaxraai, only by the transcendent nature of what they expressed to the merely human consciousness ;^l but he observes with great truth, that that which is common to prophecy and to glossolalia consisted in the exaltation of the consciousness above the merely human sphere. But that which is distinct consisted in this: that he who was prophetically inspired was in the full possession of his reflecting spiritual powers; whilst the other inspiration expressed itself only by the agency of the intuitive God-directed side of the human spirit, with suppression of the discursive thought (vow). We have already spoken on this subject, Div. IV. Sec. V., where we showed that there is a human irvevfia in a narrower sense, a capacity of immediate perception and insight. As all ecstasy, so also glossolalia was perfected in this irvevfia :² it was a miraculous agency of the Spirit of God (Acts ii. 4, x. 45,

Apostles. For that the ecstatic sayings of the apostles had first been, by additional interpretation, transferred into the special popular languages, as Wieseler (Studien u. Krit. 1860, p. 117) supposes, is contrary to the verbal tenor of the narrative; and that the proclamation was made in a spiritual language, distinct from all popular tongues, is contrary to the historical import of the fact (see v. Hofmann, Schriftb. iii. 22). Whether glossolalia repeated itself in this prominent pentecostal form, we know not; it cannot be gathered from Acts x. 46. Iu 1 Cor. xii.-xiv. it appears throughout as a speaking in unknown, new spirit-created tongues, which, instead of hipxi -/'hZumtti or xMinatl "y'kumon, are called absolutely yhuaadoi, because y'huaaxi in itself has also the meaning of a foreign obscure language; wherefore Wieseler refers to Plutarch, de Pyth. orac. c. xxiv., where the expressions of the Pythia are called 'yhutraxi, and Pollux, Onom. ii. 4, according to which even poetical expressions were so named tx; voivrtkx; <pufx; -/"hurrX;

ixxXovv). Irenaeus (v. 6, 1) says, irouno&XxOii; -/'hLaaW, COmp. zii/ofumh by Montanus in Euseb.'h. e. v. 16.

¹ Glossolalia in the Ancient Church, 1850; comp. the work of Rossteuscher, that appeared about the same time, The Gift of Tongues in the Apostolic Age, 1850. The charisma in itself is in the latter work more justly apprehended.

* See Burger on 1 Cor. xiv. 2, 31, where, moreover, the ecstatic character of the speaking with tongues, which von Rudloff (p. 241) will not allow, is acknowledged.

comp. Mark xvi. 17, 1 Cor. xiv. 22) in the human irvevfia rov voo?, i.e. in the depth that lies below the customary daylight consciousness. He who spoke with tongues was in the condition of irpoaevx>j, i.e. of adoring, praising prayer,¹ and indeed, as the activity of his voik ceased, of supernatural prayer, as our ancients call it,² and whereof e.g. Joh. Arndt³ says, "Our spirit dissolves therein, and is sunken into the uncreated Spirit of God: the heart therefore becomes, by true faith, filled with God's love, in such a way that it can remember nothing but God. What the soul then perceives is inexpressible; and if in such high devotion it should be asked, What perceivest thou? it would answer, A good above all good. What seest thou? A beauty which transcends all beauty. What feelest thou? A joy above all joy. What tastest thou? A graciousness above all graciousness." In such a state of mystical ecstasy surrendered to God (1 Cor. xiv. 2,28, comp. 2 Cor. v. 13), in which the influence of the Holy Ghost, which moreover otherwise flows forth to the prayers of the faithful (Rom. viii. 26), is enhanced to the highest degree,⁴ he who speaks with tongues finds himself speaking to his own edification (1 Cor. xiv. 4); and this mystic ecstasy becomes a charismatic ecstasy, intended for a miraculous sign (1 Cor. xiv. 22), in that this prayerful disposition, triumphant and absorbed in God, creates to itself a form of speech in which it incessantly breaks forth from the heart as in sacred dithyrambics.⁵

¹ Confessedly, this is the idea of vpootv^v, in distinction from liwi;, t»t«w£/(, and ti^xpiattii (1 Tim. ii. 1). Evxxpiorltt, thus distmguished, iB giving thanks, not for the ordinary human, but for the special experiences of grace. But the apostle (1 Cot. xiv.) uses for irptmtvxtaftti, of the speaker with tongues, tiiyftpuntiv also; and iiAoye?», so far as thanks and praise (ro"ia), is also the general nature of ^pootvyji.

¹ In Tertullian, adv. Marc. v. 8, oratio spiritalls.

³ True Christianity, ii. 20, comp. the division on charismatic prayer in R. Lobers's Lehre vom Gebet (2d edit. 1860), p. 100, especially the beautiful and genuine Paulinian expression: "In the charismatic prayer, a man maintains a testimony of the living Christ, and a breathing of His power, but not in order to build tabernacles on the mount of transfiguration, but in order to carry the heavenly life into the valley of death, where resounds the cry for help."

⁴ Hilgenfeld, I.e. p. 67.

^£ That, as Wieseler supposes (I.e. pp. 113-116), the unintelligibility of the speaking with tongues (1 Cor. xiv. 7-11, where it is compared with the

A phenomenon very similar to glossolalia has often been observed in clairvoyance. Not only that the soul, in all conditions of more solemn excitement, or of enhancement of its powers, associated with a gradual detachment from the body, is accustomed to speak a purer, more select, more picturesque, and more rhythmic language: in the state of clairvoyance, moreover, it begins—as if feeling the insufficiency of customary language, and the need of one fuller of meaning and expression— to speak in tongues that are unintelligible to the hearers, but produce an effect upon them as if of spiritual voices from a distant world.¹ The degree of the soul's flight in the case of the female seer of Prevorst, was in this respect, as generally, only a very low one. Instead of other instances, I recur again here also to the case of the somnambulist, already more than once mentioned, who, although not without obscure intervals, still beyond all doubt, during his somnambulic state, continued under the protection of the Lord, to whom he was devoted in his waking state with simple, childlike faith. "The songs, prayers, and the like, which were made by our somnambulist in foreign languages," says the narrator of the account, " contain sounds akin to the oriental and classic, but not to the northern languages; yet he in no way confuses these languages together. But if, for example, he begins a song with Hebrew intonations, he continues to use them to the end. Many known words occur from the language chosen; but nevertheless, according to the judgment of one who knows the language, the whole is not to be understood. Often, moreover, he sings very softly, with trembling voice, a sorrowful oriental melody. Sometimes he begins in a whisper, sometimes he concludes thus, and speaks at length only in pantomime. Although in unintelligible language, he speaks with the most delicate voice. In the beginning of his somnambulism, he only at first spoke such words and sentences isolated, but now in connected discourses. It is

effects of sounding instruments) is maintained in respect of the delivery, and equally in vers. 10-12 (where the languages of intercourse are opposed) in respect of the language, I cannot find; but certainly there was associated with the foreign language of the ecstatic speaker with tongues (as Wiesinger acknowledges), doubtless also a foreign delivery or address.

¹ Steinbeck, Der Dichter ein Seher, p. 547.

as though at first he had learned by degrees to imitate these heavenly tones, these angelic voices." When the narrator once asked him, What sort of strange languages are they that thou so often speakest; and wherefore dost thou speak and sing in these languages, although none of the hearers understand them? he answered, It is the Spirit's language, which only somnambulists understand, and can weakly imitate. Further, who has taught thee these languages? He replied, Elias speaks to me, and I hear his voice, and give heed to his words. Thou often breakest off when thou wishest to disclose to us the future, and then speakest in strange language: wherefore doest thou this? He said, My angel of peace, Elias, then enjoins me silence: he checks my speech, so that I can only speak to him.

This comparison of the somnambulic glossolalia with the charismatic is justified; for nothing is more true than (to adopt J. H. Pabst's view 1) that the supernatural and the natural ecstasy produce in many ways altogether similar phenomena. What the apostle says (1 Cor. xiv. 21) of glossolalia, that it is a sign of a judicial kind for the unbelieving, is also true in some measure even of the somnambulist. But our point of view in the comparison is not the similarity, but the great distinction in all this similarity. The charisma was conditioned by no kind of bodily constitution. There was no cataleptic state associated with it, such as is inseparable from the somnambulic clairvoyance, and such as occurs even in the mystic and prophetic ecstasy. He who possessed this charisma had himself so far in his own power, that he could come forth with it in the congregation or not (1 Cor. xiv. 18, 28). He was bound to, and was able to, enjoin silence on himself, if no interpreter were there; for God had ordained for the gift of languages, as its complement, also the gift of interpretation, which, even in somnambulic cases as relatively pure as the one just mentioned, has never appeared. And whilst idio-somnambulism, especially on this grade of clairvoyance, is always an exceedingly rare occurrence, the early church gift of speaking with tongues was at the same time possessed by several. It was one of the many fruits of the pentecostal Spirit shed forth upon the primitive congregation. It was a purely spiritual phenomenon. For whilst the somnambulist converses with the outer world in ¹ Ein Wort iiber die Ekstase, 1834, p. 29; comp. above, p. 355.

the full activity of his psychico-pneumatical powers, although not by means of the external senses, the speaker with tongues was altogether turned towards God with his heart, and an incomparably purer mirror of the divine mysteries.

- Nevertheless, we should be convinced, if a glossolalic discourse could be preserved to us in a faithful translation, that there is no lifting away of the man out of the bonds of the body, —no withdrawal of the spirit from the flesh-enslaved Psyche,— no ravishing of the spirit into the directness, proportionally freed from self, of his feeling and perceiving mind, wherein nevertheless, in spite of all the brightness, a shadow of the limited human individuality, and its temporal necessities, allows itself to be perceived. Between the future intuition of the blessed, and the visions of the most favoured seer of this world,—between the being at home with the Lord, and every kind of spiritual ecstasy,—there is, and will be, a large interval. In all prophetic visions, the power is given to contemplate the Godhead, and the spirit-world, and the decreed future, in a manner accommodated to the individuality of the prophet and the circumstances of the time. He therefore beholds that which is seen, not as it is in itself, but as it becomes visible to him in a symbol that yet is formed for the purpose, chiefly from materials that are found in his subjectivity. And even although the prophet apprehends the divine word in itself, in a condition distinct from ecstasy, it does not come to him without having first of all entered into the form of his individuality. The divine thoughts take their way to the Ego of the prophet through his nature. They clothe themselves in popular human language, even according to the prophet's individual manner of thinking and speaking; and they present themselves in a form manifoldly limited, even according to the existing circumstances, and the horizon of contemporary history. They maintain themselves in the objectivity and transcendency of their nature (1 Pet. i. 10), but in a human, finite, accidental expression, which often makes that which is in itself mysterious still more enigmatical. Even the glimpse into the future which is granted to the prophet, is conditioned, so to speak, according to the optical laws of his internal perception.¹ Things which are widely removed

¹ Comp. on this subject the interesting remarks in the -work of v. Baadcr, Ueber die Ekstase Oder das Verzucktsein der magnetischen Schlafredner, 1818,

from one another, approach in the perspective: the prophet sees the conclusive future on the hrink of the present, without the long ascending and descending road that lies between. By the side of the remote perspective that is rendered possible by the spirit of prophecy, there is always also a close view that is not cancelled by the former; and hope, moreover, does its work of drawing near the remote future into the closest neighbourhood of the gloomy present. Prophecy is, indeed, not merely a deiov: it is, moreover, an avdpwinvov, and both aspects of its nature subserve the divine plan of salvation. God could do away with the limits that are incident to the prophetic view of the remote future; that He does not do so, is of His disciplinary wisdom. The like, moreover, is obvious with the Tiieopneustia, the divine factor in the origination of the canonical Scripture (2 Tim. iii. 16). It is indispensable to distinguish between inspiratio realis and verbalis. Substance and form are both the effect of the one divine act. As the soul came into existence when God breathed the spirit into man, so come into existence words of divine nature and human form, when God breathes the thoughts into man. This is a fact of experience, which is not so altogether exclusively pertinent to the future life, that every Christian has not occasionally been able to experience it in himself. Moreover, Theopneustia is a conception of a species which comprehends within itself variously diversified spiritual operations,—even according to the special charisma, the special professional position, and special literary occupation, i.e. even according as the writer is related productively and continuously, or reproductively and applicatively, to the revelation and the history of redemption. But in both cases the divine appears under the affections of the human. In the latter case, even errors are possible in the reproduction of the historical and transacted: failures of memory, failures of combination, generally failures above which the most spiritual human activity of all is not absolutely exalted. Our ancient dogmatists evade this avowal, but their idea of inspiration neither approves itself psychologically nor historically. It makes the influence of God, who takes the writer into the service of the revealed history, into a too stiff, uniform, forceful one-sidedness, without duly appreciating the co-opera

p. 15; and, in addition, Hambergcr, Cardinal Points of the Philosophy of Baader (1855), pp. 43-45.

tive individual manifold free agency of the writer. The act of inspiration should, and must, be represented as an organic vital interworking of the divine and human factor, without thereby jeopardizing the infallibility of the revealed truth written in the Scripture, and the faithfulness of the fundamental history of redemption contained therein for all times. Or are we, in order to open no breach to unbelief, to declare even the punctuation of the Old Testament to be inspired, and the New Testament Greek to be free from all offences against classicality of form ?¹ The time when such assertions were possible is irrevocably past. Scripture is no book fallen from heaven: its origination is just as much human as divine—iravra Oela Kcu avOpaymva iravra? He who is offended at this, sins against the Holy Spirit, whose condescension into humanity, absolute and not docetic, but full of love, he ought rather to admire and praise.

Man, indeed, is no angel, no pure spiritual nature perfected by trial. However mightily God may remove man above the limits of finite existence, of embodied spirituality, of nationality, of the range of idea, of his language, of the individuality of his endowment, and of his education, of the standing and the circumstances of his time,—and commune with him, as it were, isolated from his natural self in the irvevfia Iov Voo? avrov,—the limits continue to subsist still within the present state, because only an immediate sudden magical power could annihilate them; and their shadows reach even into that sanctuary of communion with God, and tinge the light that thence breaks forth on man. Therefore even the New Testament apostle, who possessed the gifts of prophecy and of speech with tongues in the highest measure (1 Cor. xiv. 18), and was favoured with lofty ecstasies, declares that prophecy is a fragment, and that we (including him) look upon the divine only through a mirror in an enigmatic form (1 Cor. xiii.). It is the same apostle who in Rom. vii. 24 sighs, ^u O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver, me from the body of this death 1" The divine does not give itself to us to inspect, without its beams being refracted in our

¹ See Schmid, Dogmatih der Ev. Luth. Kirche, p. 25.

s This expression, first of all transferred by Hamann to the spiritual province, is from Hippocrates, who says it, with reference to the itpq voieo; (epilepsy), of the diseases {Opp. ed. Littre", vi. 394).

manifoldly limited nature; and our life in God is not maintained, without being compelled constantly to resist the pressure of our sinful nature.