illery the armed hosts of Seraphim. Milton certainly
did not intend to subtract all humour from the celestial regions. The
only pity was that he had not himself emerged beyond the childish stage,
which finds its deepest amusement in the disasters and catastrophes of
stately persons.

It may be asked whether we have any warrant in the Gospel for the
Christian exercise of humour. I have no doubt of it myself. The image of
the children in the market-place who cannot get their peevish companions
to join in games, whether merry or mournful, as illustrating the
attitude of the Pharisees who blamed John the Baptist for asceticism and
Christ for sociability, is a touch of real humour; and the story of the
importunate widow with the unjust judge, who betrayed so naively his
principle of judicial action by saying "Though I fear not God, neither
regard men, yet will I avenge this widow, lest by her continual coming
she weary me," must--I cannot believe otherwise--have been intended to
provoke the hearers' mirth. There is not, of course, any superabundance
of such instances, but Christ's reporters were not likely to be on the
look-out for sayings of this type. Yet I find it impossible to believe
that One who touched all the stops of the human heart, and whose stories
are among the most beautiful and vivid things ever said in the world,
can have exercised His unequalled power over human nature without
allowing His hearers to be charmed by many humorous and incisive
touches, as well as by more poetical and emotional images. No one has
ever swayed the human mind in so unique a fashion, without holding in
his hand all the strings that move and stir the faculties of delighted
apprehension; and of these faculties humour is one of the foremost.
The amazing lightness of Christ's touch upon life, the way in which His
words plumbed the depths of personality, make me feel abundantly sure
that there was no dreary sense of overwhelming seriousness in His
relations with His friends and disciples. Believing as we do that He was
Perfect Man, we surely cannot conceive of one of the sweetest and most
enlivening of all human qualities as being foreign to His character.

Otherwise there is little trace of humour in the New Testament. St.
Paul, one would think, would have had little sympathy with humorists. He
was too fiery, too militant, too much preoccupied with the working out
of his ideas, to have the leisure or the inclination to take stock of
hu