If we found, in any modern literature, a sketch of the ruling deacon in a church, like John’s description of Diotrephus, we should say it was tinged with satire. “I wrote unto the Church, but Diotrephus, who loveth to have the pre-eminence among them, receiveth us not. Wherefore if I come, I will remember his deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words; and not content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the brethren, and forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the Church.” Evidently there was a deacon in one of the apostolic churches, who always had to be consulted. Everything must go as he dictated. He did not even stand in awe of an accredited apostle. The minister must preach according to his views of theology, or signify his willingness to accept a call to a new field. Those members of the church who upheld a minister whom Diotrephus did not like, found their connection with the body severed without the formality of asking their consent. In the matter of having a Diotrephus within their borders, some churches to-day find themselves in the direct line of apostolic succession.
In the book of Acts, there is an account of Paul’s reception at Athens. “And they took him and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine is, whereof thou speakest? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears; we would know, therefore, what these things mean.” In the comment which follows this account, the writer indulges in a touch of ridicule upon the Athenian gossips and curiosity mongers. We should say it was a touch of ridicule if we found it in Addison. “For all the Athenians and strangers which were there, spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.” Indeed there is a sketch in Addison of which this might easily have been the ground-work. “There is no humor of my countrymen which I am more inclined to wonder at than their general thirst after news. A victory or defeat is equally agreeable to them. The shutting of a cardinal’s mouth pleaseth them one post, and the opening of it another. They are delighted to hear the French Court is removed to Marli, and are afterwards as much delighted with its return to Versailles. They read the advertisements with the same curiosity as the articles of public news; and are as pleased to hear of a pye-bald horse that is strayed out of a field near Islington, as of a whole troop that has been engaged in any foreign adventure. In short, they have a relish for anything that is news, let the matter of it be what it will. They are men of a voracious appetite.” Is not the comment of the Scriptural writer upon the Athenians in the same vein with Addison’s comment upon the English?
Isaiah rebukes those “who call evil good and good evil; who put darkness for light and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter,”—thus confusing moral distinctions. This is the same sort of sophistry that Addison exposes, in his gentle way, by proposing the following form of agreement: “We whose names are hereunto subscribed, do solemnly declare that we do in our consciences believe that two and two make four; and that we shall adjudge any man whatever to be our enemy who endeavors to persuade us to the contrary. We are likewise ready to maintain, with the hazard of all that is near and dear to us, that six is less than seven in all times and at all places; and that ten will not be more three years hence than it is at present. We do also firmly declare that it is our resolution as long as we live to call Black black and White white. And we shall upon all occasions oppose such persons that upon any day of the year shall call Black white or White 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.”