Page:The Power of the Spirit.djvu/60

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THE TALENTS OF THE SPIRIT
55

the Spirit dwells in him.[1] But he also thought that some people had an exalted degree of inspiration.

We may pass over with little more than a bare mention those Seven Gifts of Service (as we may call them) which are mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans[2]: Prophecy, Administration ('ministry', or 'deaconship'), Teaching, Exhorting, Giving, Ruling (superintending), Succouring the afflicted ('showing mercy')—summed up, perhaps, in the next sentence as Charity ('love'). We must content ourselves also with the bare enumeration of what we may call the Nine Gifts of Office, which are mentioned in the chapter we are now coming to:[3] Apostles, Prophets, Teachers, Powers, Gifts of Healing, Helps ('ability to render loving service'), Governments ('wise counsels', 'powers of organization'), different kinds of Tongues, and their Interpretation.[4] It is interesting to place side by side with these the sevenfold list of special endowments set out by Justin Martyr some hundred years later, which are a curious mixture of the Gifts of Office and the ordinary Gifts of the Spirit—Understanding, Counsel, Might, Healing, Foreknowledge, Teaching, the Fear of God.[5]

Now these Gifts of Service and Office are clearly

  1. See, for instance, Rom. 55, 84-17; 1 Cor. 123; Gal. 32, 5, 14; 55, 16-25.
  2. Rom. 127.
  3. 1 Cor. 1228.
  4. Ibid. 30.
  5. Trypho, sect. 39. The substitution of Foreknowledge (?) for Knowledge is specially curious. (Most scholars would agree to the date c. 55 for the Epistles to the Corinthians, and c. 155 for S. Justin's Dialogue.)