"These letters evince the degree of enthusiasm to which their writers, and others of the same persuasion, had attained, before their pretensions to the gift of tongues. Having adopted, by means of their spiritual instructors, extravagant views of the operation of the Holy Spirit, they were, in a peculiar sense, in the Spirit, and had the mind of Christ ; and, modelling the Scriptures on these topics to their favourite prepossessions, they came to the conclusion that they were enlightened to understand the mind of the Spirit in the Scriptures, as perfectly as the Apostles were inspired to write it! This prepared them for the next stage of delusion, namely, that the same power which enabled the Apostles to speak in tongues, was also in them, and that their thoughts and words were not their own, but the Spirit’s.

I offered that this certainly shed some light on his noticeable absence from the building and his inattendance to our affairs, particularly the faint yet menacing odor of natural gas emanating from the stub of rusting pipe...

But I am no gumptionless Eve, that he should beguile me.

Ma-tsu hai-hsai (strait), situated between Ma-tsu shan and Pei-kan-tang tao, north-eastward, has a navigable width of nearly one mile between the reefs on either side.]