Page:The Power of the Spirit.djvu/65

60 he set them down. None the less, the Talents probably presented themselves to his mind in a logical sequence; nor do I think that we shall err in classifying them as they stand.

There seem to be three Mental gifts, and six which we should now call Psychic; and the list seems to move gradually away from the more ordinary and constant of these special gifts to the three last, which we may class as supernormal. Thus, keeping to the original order:

We need not dwell again on the word of Wisdom and of Knowledge. It is only necessary to repeat that the whole context shows a more than usual endowment of these qualities to be meant. The stress, moreover, is laid, not on the possession but the utterance of Wisdom and Knowledge—'the word of wisdom', 'the word of knowledge'. It is one thing to possess these qualities, but another to use them, and to use them in the service of the community. The same is true of Faith: it is surely mistaken of some commentators to maintain that S. Paul only means the 'faith, so as to remove mountains' of the great passage on Charity in the next chapter, since the words there are obviously rhetorical; and the writer no more means thus to