On Speaking in Tongues

QUESTION: How shall we treat those good people who profess to have the gift of tongues?

ANSWER: With Christian kindness, telling them that tongues are not an infallible sign of love, and much less of' perfect love, I Cor. 13:1, and that they "will cease" (ver. 8), but that "love never faileth." Tongues were the first gift on the day of Pentecost, but they did not continue in the primitive church so long as the other miraculous gifts. If the purpose of this gift was to facilitate the spread of this gospel, it would be advisable to use it now on the unsaved immigrants who make our great cities Babels. While Paul says, "Forbid not to speak with tongues," he, in the same chapter strongly discourages it when he writes, "I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue."

— Steele's Answers pp. 211, 212.

On Those Professing a Third Blessing

QUESTION: What should be my attitude towards an apparently sincere company, very bitter towards the churches, though professing the third blessing attested by the gift of tongues?

ANSWER: We should cherish a kindly feeling of pity toward these misguided people, who answer well to our definition of fanatic. Since they claim plenary inspiration it will do no good to try to show them their error, but it may save others from being led astray by them, just as the Bremen may save the exposed houses, although they cannot save that one which the fire is rapidly consuming. By these remarks we do not assert that the charisms, or extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, are limited to the Apostolic age, but that the phenomenon of unintelligible]e words without an interpreter, so that no thought is expressed for anyone's benefit, is not now needed as a Christian evidence.

— Steele's Answers pp. 195.