The fourth quality that I should like to see raised to
the highest rank among Christian graces is the Grace of Humour.
I do not think that Humour has ever enjoyed its due repute in the
ethical scale. The possession of it saves a man from priggishness;
and the possession of faith, hope, and charity does not. Indeed,
not only do these three virtues not save a man from priggishness--
they sometimes even plunge him in irreclaimable depths of
superiority. I suppose that when Christianity was first making
itself felt in the world, the one quality needful was a deep-
seated and enthusiastic earnestness. There is nothing that makes
life so enjoyable as being in earnest. It is not the light,
laughter-loving, jocose people who have the best time in the world.
They have a chequered career. They skip at times upon the hills of
merriment, but they also descend gloomily at other times into the
valleys of dreariness. But the man who is in earnest is generally
neither merry nor dreary. He has not time to be either. The early
Christians, engaged in leavening the world, had no time for levity
or listlessness.
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