ABSTRACT
Men and women of the different nationalities, present in Jerusalem on that occasion, could at once distinguish their own language, when the disciples came down to the crowd from the "upper room", and the messages brought to them through it. But they only understood what was said in their own tongue. Religion has never, in any period, sustained itself except by the instrumentality of the tongue of fire. In many periods of the history of the Church, as this gift has waned, every natural advantage has come to replace it: more learning, more system, more calmness, more profoundness of reflection everything in fact, which, according to the ordinary rules of human thought, would insure to the Christian Church a greater command over the intellect of mankind, yet it has ever proved that the gain of all this, when accompanied with an abatement of the Fire, has left the Church less efficient.
