The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-09-10
TIE HUMOROUS ELEMENT or TIE
EARLY ENGLKSH PULPIT.

tbe amount of sin there is in this sad world
of Ours, then should we never know peace.
Without one ray Of sunshine in lite, we should
ali down face TO face with grim despair; not
onlv so. for we would be in fit mood at all
times to listen to his croonings, as did the Red
Cross knight of Sponsors immortal poem,
advising u.s.
"No further goe, no further stray, .,
But here lie down and to tiny reSt ,,od 0ei@Re
Aud give not cause II TO iorsake q .,s,e.
Fear, sickness, age, loss labor, s0tIoWs sS,lte,
Paine hunger, colde, that makes the heart 10
And ever fickle fortune rageth rife, ,...,.
All which and thousand more oo liSAe io"'"
full life"
Hinder the influence of such gloomy teaching
as tbis the business of life would stand still,
and the human race itself soon vanish from
the earth. But the human soul was made to
dwell in sunshine as well as in shade; and
fortunately there is ''time to laugh as well
as to mourn" The imperfect and the incon-
gruous may excite mirth; and even that higher
order of ridicule, which is animated by sense
OF right aud a love of goodness, is most wisely
permitted us while dwellers of this lower
sphere. Jeremy Taylor has most beautifully
and ittingly said:-"It is certain that all this
which can make a man cheerful can also make
him charitable; for grief and age, sickness and
wearine. 5, these are peevish and troublesome;
but mirth and cheerfulness are content, civil,
compliant, communicative, and love to do good,
and swell up to felicity only on the wings of
charity. If facete discourse and an amioable,
friendly mirth can refresh the spirit, and take
off from the vile temptation of a yeevish,
despsiring melan choly, it must needs be inno-
cent and commendable. We may as well be
refreshed by clean and humorous dis
course, as by the spirit of Campanian wine;
and our faces and heads as well be
anointed with wit and friendly intercourse
as by the fat of the balsam-tree."
In these genial words we have the cheerful
and forcible testimony of the pious pastor
of Golden Grove, who had breasted the
storm of sorrows until its waves had
gone almost over him. Humor, then,
provoking innocent mirth and laughter, can
not be out of place in this workday
world, and has equal claims upon our atten-
tion with matters of a more grave and serious
cast.
There is an innocency in humor that you
find not in satire. Humor is always harmless
IN its mirth; like charity, sit thinketh no
evil" 1t never excites passion, or stirs up
those baser elements that exist in the human
mind. Satire is bitter and corrosive. Humor
is gentle, soothing, entirely free from malice.
Satire is sometimes fierce and destructive, like
the red, fiery bolt launched from the angry
storm-cloud; while humor reminds us in its
harmlessness of that sheet of lightning which
one often sees disporting itself along the edge
of the horizon in the pleasant evenings of the
glad summertime. Satire may deal with wit
and have fun in it, but it is not humor. Satire
sometimes becomes necessity, just as apesti-
lence or thunderstorm, when a great
national sin is to be scourged or the atmo-
sphere cleared and purified; but the necessity is
happily only periodical. Humor, however, is
standing necessity, like water, air, and light
We could not live without it; the complex con-
dition of our nature requires it to round per-
fectly our existence, and harmonic what
otherwise would be rude and discordant.
HumOr, not being addressed to passion but to
fancy, may really be considered a species of
moral painting. The subject of humor is
always oharaoter but not everything in char
aoter. Its foibes generally, its caprices, little
extrovagancies, weak anXieties, childish pre-
ferenees, pertness, vanity, and selfoOnceit,
these seem to be its especial quarry.
The old English divines never scrupled to
indulge in it, where they conceived that truth
could be better enforced by it, the strain ON
the mind relieved, OF its WEAKNESS refreshed
by its use. 1t beams continually forth
from their more serious didcourses, like
the diamond, whose flashes appear more
brilliant the darker the setting that cur
rounds it. 1t Is, by very we'll meaning
people, expected that olergymen, let the
turn of their natural disposition be what it
may, should always struggle against any ex-
hibition of humor in the pulpit. melan-
choly asceticism, as mistaken as it is sense
less, forblds, by It's arbitrary ukase any re-
taxation from 'the rigors of ghostly white
Cravat, an unbending glacial muscle, or a sto-
lid, glazed eye." This same miserable, un-
reasonable asceticism demands that the clergy
should always incorporate this unbending
gravity into their efforts in the pulpit, re-
dueinE theI1 to the dead level of dull uni
formity, and never for an instant permitting
them to illuminate their discourses with the
mellow light of generous fancy or a chaste
humor. The advocates for such asceticism as
this constitute that class the genial Sydney
Smith describes, las persons who consider
ennui, melancholy, groans, and epileptic fits
as thank offerings to be presented to the good
God, who has covered the earth with gay
cOlors, scented it with rich Perfume and told
us there was time to dance as well as to
mourn"
Now, clearly, this was not the temper or
the tone of the earlier discourses from the
English pulpit. Cole, and the pious dean of
st. Paul's, studied Chaucer, from whose style
he sought and borrows that fertility of
illustration, raciness of wit, and r-abound-
ing humor that characterize it. Pous
DIR. Donne, George Herbert's bosom friend,
and whom Dryden styles "the greatest
wit, if not the greatest poet of the
nation,' was full Of a rich quaint humor
that overfOwed in all his discourses. Good,
honest old Latimer INDUCES in humor con-
tinually. He was terrible soourger of the
vices that prevailed in his day. and was quite
as powerful in satire as he was persuasive as
an humorist. The force of his satire was won
derfully strengthened by the fertility and APP
pOsteness of his illustrations. But he was
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