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."