Kate Newby had yielded herself fully to the new religious idea.  Kate was emotional.  When a girl she was easily mesmerized and always took everything that was going, diseases and all.  However, she was a good woman, and true, and conscientious.  During the week after she got her new experience she had dreams and visions, spoke in tongues, read the Bible, shouted at every meeting, danced, and became a willing worker.

Along toward the end of the week she began to feel depressed.  A stray thought or two forced its way into her excited brain as to the propriety of some of the demonstrations going on.  There were some extremes which her soul could not approve.  She began to pray earnestly for divine guidance.  She remembered her excursion into the wilds of false religion, into the Christian Science delusion.

Kate was somewhat in this frame of mind when Robert Davis and Mary went over to visit her.  At once she asked Robert what he thought of the “tongues.”

“Kate,” answered Robert, “if the Bible says that speaking in a tongue is the evidence of receiving the Holy Spirit it is plain that all should have that evidence.  But listen, Kate, are you ready to believe that for all these years, yes for centuries back, God’s children have not had the baptism of the Holy Spirit?  Can you believe that D.L.  Moody and John Wesley and George Whitefield and men like them did not have the Spirit?”

“Why, I never thought of that, Robert,” said Kate, “it does not look reasonable, does it?”

“Let us note, Kate,” he continued, “that the Bible nowhere says or intimates that speaking in tongues is the essential evidence of the reception of the Holy Spirit.  Speaking in tongues is a gift of the Spirit.  Paul asks, ‘Do all speak with tongues?’ (1 Cor. 12:30).  The inference is plain that he did not think they did.  These gifts are distributed to advantage, being given to every man as God wills (1 Cor. 12:4-11).  The idea that speaking in tongues is the essential evidence of the reception of the Holy Spirit is chiefly responsible for the fanatical extremism that these folks exhibit.  Why, Kate Newby, you know that this is not New Testament Christianity, this wild, riotous, noisy thing!  It cannot be.

“You see, when one decides that he must speak in tongues as the evidence of the Holy Spirit’s baptism, he becomes so eager to do so that he often receives a mental or spiritual deception which he considers the real evidence of the Holy Spirit baptism.”

“I am beginning to see the deception of it,” said Kate.  “Yesterday, I believe the good Spirit of God was talking to me.  I felt that something was wrong.  While I professed to be very happy, still there was a feeling that I was not right after all.  But I thrust the thought aside as not coming from God and held on.  But, honestly, I am not happy.  I did not consecrate.  I just fell in with the spirit of the meeting and got the ‘tongues’ in a few moments.  I doubt if God had any connection with it at all.”