an irreverent finger upon some difficulty, it is not of this I now complain. It is natural that it should be bitter and prejudiced. He who feels himself an unbeliever is conscious also that he has to wage with the Word of God a battle of life and death. LECT. V. home to the pro fessor. No. I leave all this, to bring the command- Brought ment home. What is our profession when we call the Bible "The Word of God"? Is it not that God speaks to us in it? Whatever our idea of inspiration, it includes so much. And surely "so much" claims for the Bible the deepest reverence in our use of it, in our very handling of it, in the way in which we quote it. An adverse I must refer to a tendency of the age. It is an age bent on amusement, with a great craving for easy excitement. It is ready to tolerate anything, in the theatre, the casino, or even in the church, which will serve to cause laughter. It demands to be made to laugh. Therefore to aim at being thought witty is a special temptation into which many are liable to fall. And what jest comes so easily as that which caricatures religion or extracts broad farce out of the sacred page? It is a fact, Irreveraccount for it as we may, that the jest which perilously verges on irreverence is the easiest jest of all to concoct. The more solemn the material, the more grotesque the forms into which it can ence an easy task. LECT. V. What is fitting? Is it profit- be woven. Besides, texts are familiar, and because they are laden with religious associations there is even a kind of fascination to use them irreverently, as if it made a man appear to stand out above superstition and puritanical ideas. But my appeal is to the Christian sense of reverence. Is it fitting that the words of holiness spoken by saints under spiritual influence, either as the result of communion with God, or during aspiration after Him, or forced from the lips by an inner experience of woe or rapture, or connected with some Divine work, should be used only as words to point a jest or raise a laugh? There are some names and feelings which, I think, even the lowest would not expose in a frivolous company-the thought of a mother's prayers, a sister's tears, or a father's pleadings. However lost to virtue and self-respect, there is some loved one's name that has a secret hallowed shrine within the heart. The Word of God claims such a shrine, by all it speaks of, by all it offers, by the tears and passion and love of Christ, by the Cross, by the holy heaven of purity and love to which it points the soul. Is it profitable for the spiritual life that Scripture words should come to be associated with the joke or the tale, however witty? It may be a real damage even to hear such stories. A text is read out in the pulpit or crops up in the chap- LECT. V. ter of public worship; but a few days before you have heard a "good story" associated with it, and that flashes across your mind again, and that is the thing you see in it! Does not the best self shrink from such an association under such circumstances as from the touch which degrades? Let none of us fear in this matter the hard names which may be thrown at reverence-as narrow, bigoted, puritanical, bibliolatry. Reverence is sooner lost than found, and he who trifles with the words of Scripture may easily come to scorn its truths. cation to Archbishop Leighton, in his 'Exposition of Applithe Commandments,' suggests another similar religious application of the subject, viz.: "Scoffing and taunting at holiness, and the exercises of religion." Here, once more, is a cheap and ready method of raising a laugh. Religious people have an unworldly profession, but they have also peculiarities and oddities. Make the oddities do duty against the profession. The caricature is easy, the ridicule effective, the result very comforting to those who are afraid of being straitlaced. It somehow seems to justify the idea that spiritual religion is only oddity! persons. It would be difficult to decide which is the The danger more dangerous work of the two-to treat the of ridicule. LECT. V. The possible injustice of ridicule. Wit in the pulpit: is it lawful? Bible as a jest, or its believers as ridiculous. Do it persistently enough, and we all know there is scope enough, and the conviction is forced on the minds of the young and thoughtless that the whole Christian life is only sham and hollow pretence. The world scores two points out of scandal and ridicule. It makes light of profession, and at the same time makes light of religion. But what about sin in professors? It is just as bad, of course, as sin in an unbeliever; and, therefore, if judgment must be passed, let it be treated as a crime and not as a jest. But even so, yet he who has any practical knowledge of Christian experience will be loath to cast the first stone. He knows that the bitterest punishment of all to one who has fallen is the sense that he has fallen; he suspects the sighs and groans and achings in the secret heart which none but God sees. Let it never be forgotten by us Christians, at least, that if David fell, he also watered his couch with tears; let it never be forgotten that, next to holiness, the Divinest thing is repentance. They who perceive that will neither be scorners nor mockers. We pass fron the Word of God to the House of God, from the reader to the preacher. Has wit a place in the pulpit? It would be a pity if it had not, for "true wit is the sparkle of real wisdom." Besides, it is a gift of God, and therefore has a right to serve Him. Indeed, it has served Him, and that in the pulpit, as appears directly I mention the names of Jewel and Jeremy Taylor, Fuller and Bishop Hall. He who has wit may well give God thanks, and use it. I can no more believe that the pulpit is bound to solemn dulness than that a place of worship should be ugly, and its music a penance. But how comes it then that apparently the majority of religious people would vote it out of the pulpit? For two reasons it may be. LECT. V. The prejudice against it. 1. Of those whom it 1. In the first place, true wit is apt to be very homely and very direct. It deals largely in the condemns. exposure of all that is unreal in motive and character, and its stroke is very keen. It bites so as to be felt when it insists upon religion as a real moral power in daily life. But of all hateful things this to many is one of the most hateful. To use the witty metaphor of a living preacher, they look upon religion as a kind of mad dog during week-day, which ought to be carefully chained up and kennelled between Sunday and Sunday, lest it should bite any one and spoil his pleasure or ruin his business. If wit, therefore, makes religion very real, the less of it the better for such as these. "No, no; let us have the old style and sound doctrine, let us have the simple I |