The sense of humor often tempered his rebukes. There was often sunshine on
the cloud.
There were times, indeed, as we shall see, when he spoke with unmeasured
severity, when his words fell like fiery hail, beating and burning the
heads of offenders; but anon he spoke half smiling, half pitying, as if
disposed to laugh at the very inconsistencies he censured. In this respect
his spirit has been caught by Addison and Goldsmith, by Irving and
Dickens. Richter says that "no one has a right to laugh at men but he who
most heartily loves them." Taine says of Dickens, "Before reading him we
did not know there was so much pity in the heart." Jesus loved men, he
pitied them, even while his eye detected and his words exposed their
faults and foibles.
He had looked with pleasure (remembering his own childhood), upon the
games of the boys and girls in the streets of Jerusalem; he thought of
their whimsical complaints, as they played at weddings and funerals in the
market-place. On one occasion, his severity mitigated by his sense of the
ludicrous, he exclaimed, "Whereunto shall I liken this generation? and to
what are they like? They are like unto children sitting in the
market-places and calling to one another and saying, We have piped unto
you and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you and ye have not
lamented." Everything had gone wrong. The others would not play fair. They
would not dance when we wanted to play wedding; they would not be mourners
when we wanted to play funeral. We have done all we could to please them,
but they are "too mean for anything." To the mind of Jesus, the people of
that generation appeared to be making the same complaint. They were
childishly dissatisfied with every divine messenger,--none could please
them. "For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking
wine,"--solemn, gloomy, austere; but they would have none of him. He
mourned unto them, but they would not lament. They would not "play at
funeral" with him. They turned away and said, "He hath a devil." Then came
the Son of Man, bright and cheerful, "eating and drinking," but they would
not dance to his piping. They pointed at him and said, "Behold a
gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!" It
was impossible to please that generation.
If we place this passage side by side with the following from Goldsmith,
we shall see at once that if there be humor in the latter, there must also
be humor in the former. The subject is the reception accorded the Chinese
philosopher who tried to please his friends by his demeanor upon the death
of an English sovereign: "I thought it at least my duty to appear
sorrowful; to put on a melancholy aspect, or to set my face by that of the
people. The first company I came amongst after the news became general was
a set of jolly companions who were drinking prosperity to the ensuing
reign. I entered the room with looks of despair, and even expected
applause for the superlative misery of my countenance. Instead of that, I
was universally condemned by the company and desired to take away my
penitential phiz to some other quarter. I now corrected my former mistake,
and with the most sprightly air imaginable entered a company where they
were talking over the ceremonies of the approaching funeral. Here I sat
for some time with an air of pert vivacity, when one of the chief mourners
immediately observing my good humor desired me, if I pleased, to go and
grin somewhere else; they wanted no disaffected scoundrels there. Fum,
thou son of Fo, what sort of people am I amongst?" _Whereunto shall I
liken this generation?_
There was a certain time when multitudes followed Jesus, not knowing what
they were about, but simply swept along by the enthusiasm of the moment.
He saw that they understood not, so he turned and gave them this gentle
caution: "Which of you intending to build a tower sitteth not down first
and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest,
haply, after he hath laid the foundation and is not able to finish, all
that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build and was
not able to finish." Whoever comes after me and does not count upon
bearing his cross, is in the predicament of this foolish tower-builder,--a
ludicrous spectacle as he sits beside the unfinished structure, his
materials exhausted, while all his neighbors, as they pass by, wag the
head and point the finger. Such a spectacle as that will each one of you
be who does not count the cost of discipleship. With such gentle strokes
of humor did Jesus stay the thoughtless multitudes who imagined that their
empty zeal was genuine loyalty. He set forth their conduct in terms that
would most effectually impress upon them its folly,--in terms that
appealed to their sense of the ridiculous.
In a sarcastic paragraph of his _French Revolution_, Carlyle speaks of the
work of the National Convention thus: "In fact, what can be more
unprofitable than the sight of six hundred and forty-nine ingenious men
struggling with their whole force and industry, for a long course of
weeks, to do at bottom this; to stretch out the old Formula and Law
phraseology, so that it may cover the new, contradictory, entirely
uncoverable thing? Whereby the poor formula does but _crack_ and one's
honesty along with it. The thing that is palpably _hot_, burning, wilt
thou prove it by a syllogism to be a freezing mixture? This of stretching
out formulas till they crack is, especially in times of swift change, one
of the sorrowfullest tasks poor humanity has." Was it not this very
formula-stretching that Jesus satirized in more playful vein,--this
formula-stretching that existed in old times and that still exists,--when
he said: "No man putteth a piece of new garment upon an old; if otherwise,
then, both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the
new agreeth not with the old"? You can not patch up old terms with new
meanings. The new meaning agreeth not with the old term. "And no man
putteth new wine into old wine-skins; else the new wine will burst the
wine-skins and be spilled, and the wine-skins shall perish. But new wine
must be put into new wine-skins, and both are preserved." The man who
tries to put new senses into old words, new ideas into old formulas, is
like a man who cuts up a new garment to mend an old; like one who puts
wine not yet done fermenting into a skin whose capacity admits no further
strain. He spoils his new coat and he loses his new wine.
With such illustrations as these, illustrations embodying a figure or
comparison or situation essentially amusing, was Jesus wont to temper his
rebukes.