class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 19]"/> black, with the utmost of our lives and fortunes.” The rebuke, in both cases, is the same.

IV.

What do these illustrations show? “That the Bible is, on the whole, a humorous book? Far from it. That religion is a humorous subject? that we are to throw all the wit we can into the treatment of it? No. But they show that the sense of the ludicrous is put into man by his Maker; that it has its uses; that we are not to be ashamed of it;” that we are not to be horrified at the mention of it in connection with things we deem most sacred. They show that the literature of the Bible contains the same elements that in any other literature we call Wit and Humor. They show us, also, that wit and humor do not of necessity produce hearty laughter or boisterous mirth; not always do they manifest themselves in “gibes and gambols and flashes of merriment that set the table in a roar.” Those, therefore, who may expect something in these chapters that will shake one’s sides with jollity, or make him “laugh till his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up,” will doubtless be disappointed. Wit and humor often lie too deep for laughter, as pathos often lies too deep for tears.

No attempt is here made at exact definition of the two words that are prominent in the general title of this book. Perhaps after they have passed through their final analysis we shall not be any wiser than before we cast them into the alembic. Barrow says of Humor: “It is a thing so versatile and multiform that it seems no less hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof, than to make a portrait of Proteus or to define the figure of the fleeting air.” We usually include under the general term all forms of pleasantry, grotesqueness, drollery, sarcasm, irony, ridicule. Our common acceptation shall serve us in these studies.

“There are many things,” says Prof. Matthews, “that definition helps us to understand, but there are other things that we understand better than we can any possible definition of them; among these are the cold, sparkling, mercurial thing we call wit, and that genial, juicy, unconscious thing we call humor.”

With these preliminary observations, we proceed to examine the subject in detail:

“Are there not two points in the adventure of the diver?
One when a beggar he prepares to plunge;
The other when a prince he rises with his pearl?
Festus, I plunge.”

II. CHARACTER SKETCHES.

CHARACTER SKETCHES.

“The history of the ancient Hebrews,” says George Eliot, “gives the idea of a people who went about their business and their pleasures as gravely as a society of beavers; the smile and laugh are often mentioned metaphorically; but the smile is one of complacency, the laugh of scorn.”

Against the authority of so illustrious a name, the writer of these pages confesses a somewhat different impression. It is difficult to believe that such sentiments as the following could have arisen among a people whose only smile was that of complacency, whose only laughter that of scorn:

“He that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast.”

“A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.”

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”

“Go thy way; eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart.”

“The voice of mirth,” “the voice of gladness” are phrases of frequent occurrence. The ancient Hebrews believed that there was a “time to laugh” as well as a “time to weep.” Grave and serious as they were, there must have been in them, after all, something sunny and pleasant. They did not find the heavens forever black and the earth forever cheerless.

When we turn to the historical and biographical portions of Scripture, we find here and there a bit of quaintness and drollery in pictures of life and delineations of character that must have brought to the faces of those who read them or heard them smiles other than those of complacency; that must have been enjoyed with laughter other than that of scorn.

Mr. Shorthouse says, “Nature and humor do not lie far apart; the source and spring of humor is human life.” “The essence of humor,” Carlyle remarks, “is sensibility; warm, tender fellow-feeling with all forms of existence.” “The man of humor,” writes another distinguished critic, “seeing at one glance the majestic and the mean, the serious and the laughable; indeed, interpreting what is little or ridiculous by light derived from its opposite idea, delineates character as he finds it in life, without any impertinent intrusion of his own indignation or approval.”

The writers of the Bible sketched manners and traits as they found them. Their pencils were faithful to nature. They reported what they saw. The features which provoke the smile, as well as those which move us to admire, condemn or weep, are pictured on their canvas. They had an eye for the ludicrous side of life, as well as for its more sober aspects. So, genial is much of their—often unconscious—humor, so far removed from bitterness or scorn, that it should seem as if Addison and Irving might have drawn some of their inspiration from these old Hebrews.

In this chapter we shall give some illustrations from their sketches of character.

I.—Abimelech.

In the time of the Judges the unprincipled Abimelech contrived to have himself proclaimed king in Shechem. Knowing his unfitness for the throne, and vexed at his successful machinations, Jotham, a man of ready wit, ridicules the pretensions of the monarch and the folly of the people, in an admirable fable. Addison says: “Fables were the first pieces of wit that made their appearance in the world, and have been still highly valued, not only in times of the greatest simplicity, but among the most polite ages of mankind. Jotham’s fable of the Trees is the oldest that is extant, and as beautiful as any that have been made since that time.”

Perching himself upon the top of a hill, that his parable may not be brought to an untimely end, he speaks to the multitude: “The Trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them. And they said to the Olive Tree, Reign thou over us. But the Olive Tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honor God and men, and go to be promoted over the Trees? Then said the Trees unto the Fig Tree, Come thou and reign over us. But the Fig Tree said unto them,