ect it
touches into contempt, or is only fitly used in connection with light
subjects; while others regard it as merely a source of harmless
pleasure, and can even laugh at a joke against themselves. In like
manner some consider it inconsistent with the profession of religion to
attend balls, races, or theatres, or even to wear gay-coloured clothes.
Congreve has been blamed even for calling a coachman a "Jehu." On the
other hand, at the beginning of this century, "a man of quality" could
scarcely get through a sentence without some profane expletive. Sir
Walter Scott makes a highwayman lament that, although he could "swear as
round an oath as any man," he could never do it "like a gentleman." Lord
Melbourne was so accustomed to garnish his conversation in this way that
Sydney Smith once said to him, "We will take it for granted that
everybody is damned, and now proceed with the subject." In former times,
and even sometimes in our own day, the most eminent Christians have
occasionally indulged in jest. At the time of the Reformation, a martyr
comforted a fellow-sufferer, Philpot, by telling him he was a "pot
filled with the most precious liquor;" and Latimer called bad passions
"Turks," and bade his hearers play at "Christian Cards." "Now turn up
your trump--hearts are trumps." Robert Hall, a most pious Christian, was
constantly transgressing in this direction, and I have heard Mr. Moody
raise a roar of laughter while preaching.

Now it is quite impossible to say that in any of the above cases there
was a want of faith, although we are equally unable to agree with those
who maintain that profane jests are most common when it is the
strongest. What they show is a want of control of feeling, or a
deficiency in taste, so that people do not regard such things as either
injurious or important. A sceptic at the present day is generally less
profane than a religious man was in the last century. Such is the result
of civilization, although unbelief in itself inclines to profanity, and
faith to reverence.

It is self-evident that peculiar feelings and convictions will prevent
our regarding things as ludicrous, at which we should otherwise be
highly amused. Religious veneration, or the want of it, often causes
that to appear sacred to one person which seems absurd to another. Many
Jewish stories seem strange to Gentile comprehensions. Elias Levi states
that he had been told by many old and pious rabbis that at the costly
enterta