e said about it. They must avoid
uneasiness, for such great graces as theirs can grow only in calmness
and tranquillity."

This is irony rather than humour, but it implies a capacity to see
the tragi-comedy of the world, without necessarily losing the power
of enthusiasm. It also explains why Father Faber regarded an honest
sense of the ridiculous as a help to goodness. The man or woman who
is impervious to the absurd cannot well be stripped of self-delusion.
For him, for her, there is no shaft which wounds. The admirable advice
of Thomas a Kempis to keep away from people whom we desire to please,
and the quiet perfection of his warning to the censorious, "In
judging others, a man toileth in vain; for the most part he is
mistaken, and he easily sinneth; but in judging and scrutinizing
himself, he always laboureth with profit," can make their just appeal
only to the humorous sense. So, too, the counsel of Saint Francis
de Sales to the nuns who wanted to go barefooted, "Keep your shoes
and change your brains"; the cautious query of Pope Gregory the First,
concerning John the Faster, "Does he abstain even from the truth?"
Cardinal Newman's axiom, "It is never worth while to call whity-brown
white, for the sake of avoiding scandal"; and Father Faber's own
felicitous comment on religious "hedgers," "A moderation which
consists in taking immoderate liberties with God is hardly what the
Fathers of the Desert meant when they preached their crusade in
favour of discretion";--are all spoken to those hardy and humorous
souls who can bear to be honest with themselves.

The ardent reformer, intolerant of the ordinary processes of life,
the ardent philanthropist, intolerant of an imperfect civilization,
the ardent zealot, intolerant of man's unspiritual nature, are
seldom disposed to gayety. A noble impatience of spirit inclines them
to anger or to sadness. John Wesley, reformer, philanthropist,
zealot, and surpassingly great in all three characters, strangled
within his own breast the simple desire to be gay. He was a young
man when he formed the resolution, "to labour after continual
seriousness, not willingly indulging myself in the least levity of
behaviour, or in laughter,--no, not for a moment"; and for more than
fifty years he kept--probably with no great difficulty--this stern
resolve. The mediaeval saying, that laughter has sin for a father
and folly for a mother, would have meant to Wesley more than a figure
of speech. N