THE THEOLOGY OF LAUGHTER.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1108, 22 April 1911, Page 10

THE THEOLOGY OF LAUGHTER.

A BISHOP'S CURIOUS SPECULATION. "Havo we," asks tho Bishop of Tas-' mania (Dr. J. E. Mercer) in the "Hibbert Journal," "any ground for attributing to tho Divine nature a mode of experienco analogous to that which wo know as a sense of humour?" I{o admits it is a perilous question, but ho builds up an ingenious argument in favour of an affirmative answer. It is immensely difficult, he says, to intellectualiso our conviction that God can feel emotioa of any kind. Witness the first Article of the Church of England's Thirty-nine, which lays down as a fundamental truth that God is not only without body and parts, but also without passions. And yet the Church Catechism teaches children to believe that God is love, and is to be regarded as a Father. The Bishop rules out two factors which help largely in human laughter. These aro tho physiological aspect of laughter, and that of the unexpectedness which, as all physiologists agree, forms an important element in an analysis of tho causes and nature of human laughter—the snddennoss, it might almost bo said tho disillusionment, He quotes tho writer of the Second Psalm: "Ho that sitteth in tho heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall havo them in derision," and while Tuling out tho element of malice, he suggests that tho laugh of triumph in tho victory of Omnipotence is theologically justifiable. The Bishop refers to the early development of tho faculty of laughter and the sonso of the ludicrous in tho child, and quotes with approval Bergson's theory that laughter 'exercises an important function in tho adaptation of lifo to environment. Laughter at the incongruous is one of tho spurs that tend to increase the qualities which further tho evolutionary process, and so plays a practical part in making man master of his environment. The Bishop refers to Schopenhauer's putting of paradoxes into ludicrous syllogisms, and has no very serious difficulty in ascribing such a form of mental activity to the Divine Reason, and in finding hero tho ultimate ground, not only for Bovgson's theory, but also for thoso imperfect correspondences and readjustments which appear in human intercourse without man's conscious agency of intervention. It is a Divino analogy for humour rather than for wit that the Bishop argues for. When the humour is of tho noblest quality tho laugh of the body disappears; the subtleties of tho intellect are subordinated to tho finer emotions; thero is tho laugh of the soul. A certain group of the perplexities of life may be relieved, not by the catastrophes of tragedy, hut by the play of noble humour. If the Hebrew psalmist could attribute to God the Inugh of conscious superiority, why should wo hesitate to see in Him some analogue of tho laugh of tender, loving insight?