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Ver. 1 contains a resume of chaps, 12.-13. Charity holds the first place, and then spiritual gifts follow, and prophecy is preferable to others.

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.)

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KJV: Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy.

WEB: Follow after love, and earnestly desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.