"All have not every gift given unto them; for there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God. To some is given one, and to some is given another, that all may be profited thereby."
As the sophic forms of broader Christianity who care about solid exegesis can tell you, the list of gifts of the Spirit in 1 Cor 12 is not intended as an isolated excerpt, but is part of a larger discourse and serves a communicative purpose. Paul was correcting natural tendencies of diverse sub-groups of believers to faction out and glom on to the most persuasive humans, rather than seek Higher discernment. The Corinthian converts had longtime Jews among them, but also people from a wide variety of pagan traditions--mostly Greco-Roman, of course, but as a cosmopolitan center it had others as well--who each came with some baggage to let go of as they warmed up to new worship traditions after accepting the faith. Paul's purpose was to insist on unity through: a. doctrinal purity; b. appreciation of all contributions to the unified walk. Under Paul's purpose, the list was designed to help people value each other, and look for ways to serve and grow together in love.
Restored Christians who take a more mantic approach to scripture and revelation must also hold to high standards of exegesis, but have access to more contexts for some parallel passages from which to triangulate or at least derive comparative significance from. As a case in point, this particular list--with some substantive additions that will require a later study to fully explore--is essentially revealed in two other scriptural contexts: one in the Book of Mormon, the other in this Section.
The Book of Mormon's version is found in its last chapter. Moroni, final prophet at the end of a tradition of prophets stretching back a millennia, has scant space available for a last testimony and message, and he spends it on an appeal to the finders of his record to ask God if the compilation of revelations he and his father had made is true. The key he gives to knowing the answer to that question when it comes, is that the Spirit will make the truth manifest. Moroni has no congregation to convince to work together. In his context that's already out the window--his entire civilization has collapsed into genocidal, internecine war. His purpose for listing the gifts of the Spirit isn't so much to help present individuals have more patience with each other as they each grow more toward Christ by enriching their own gifts, seeking out ones they don't have yet, and benefiting the whole by their exercise. Instead it's to future converts to be able to recognize the signs when the Spirit diversely manifests itself.
In the Doctrine and Covenants version, the context more closely mirrors that of Paul's Corinth: recent converts learning to be one, learning to be the Lord's. There is a tighter focus, in the revelation to Joseph Smith, on a climate of outsiders and pretenders making false claims to know the way the Spirit should manifest in public meetings, thereby diluting or misdirecting the worship of new saints by degrees, but the function of avoiding deception through unity of doctrine, of authority, and of purpose in Christ is essentially the same as Paul's appreciation of diversity within the unified body of Christ.
What I was struck with in comparing the three, however, is not how similar they are or what purposes overlap or diverge, but rather what was missing.
We almost always refer to the Spirit as something that is accompanied by feelings. It's true that one of His descriptive names is "the Comforter," and it's true that the fruits He produces can be described as pure forms of emotions like peace, love, joy, temperance, meekness, patience, etc. as Paul also laid out for Galatians who weren't otherwise getting the point. It's true that a "burning in the bosom" is one sign of its confirmation of truth. But to limit the operation and effects of the Holy Ghost to mere sentiments is also missing the point. None of the "gifts" in any of the three scriptural lists is particularly emotion-based. Some of them are epistemological (gifts of wisdom, knowledge, belief), others are functional (tongues, interpretations, administration), some are revelatory (prophecy, discernment), and others have physical effects (healing, being healed, working miracles). But if you are trying to become one with Christ and His community of saints, and you are trying to receive His evidence of His Spirit working in you and others, and you are judging truth by scripture as well as by revelations God gives you and others around you, then if you're expecting God to "touch your heart" in some ineffable and uncontradictable way, and you're not open to the reason-based and diverse set of ways in which He animates you and those around you, you'll miss Him.
My testimony of Christ's divinity and the Book of Mormon's veracity came in two forms. In a single answer to a single prayer, the Lord spoke words to my heart that I cannot deny came from Him, in a way beyond whatever other rational reason can attempt to convince me otherwise. But that moment was build on the back of decades of swimming in the Spirit--yes, sometimes the peace, joy, love, and growth that the Spirit sponsors in all who honestly seek and act on the Good--but usually in the form of hundreds of little moments when I had to admit: "Yes, that's true, that makes sense, that's right and good, and I love it." The Spirit's effects don't look the same for all, but they are rarely mere feelings, and are often quite explicitly rational in nature. He testifies of Truth after-all, not just happiness, hope, and confidence. When you have doubts, look for signs in the rational, not just the emotional. The truly spiritual is not and never was opposed to the scientific or the philosophical.
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