“LET THOSE REFUSE TO SING”

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 13 September 1930, Page 9

“LET THOSE REFUSE TO SING”

Clerical Humour

T> OWL AND HILL, one of England’s great preachers of an earlier century, was preaching in his church one Sunday, when a heavy shower of rain came down. From his- position in the pulpit he could sec that several persons were coming into the porch of the church to get out of the rain. He remarked in his shrewd manner: “I have often heard of people, using religion as a cloak, but never before have 1 known them to make use of it as an umbrella!”

Different views' are held regarding the admissibility of humour in the pulpit, says a writer in the Melbourne “Age.” It all 1 depends upon the man who attempts to be humorous or witty. For some preachers who attempt anything like a joke in the pulpit would, only make them look ludicrous in the eyes of the congregation. However, t times have changed, and possibly many who would have strongly condemned it years ago would now think it perfectly

pro,per. I have heard; ministers object, to the use or introduction of anything' in the way of humour, on the ground that the Saviour could not bo thought of as over having countornanccd it. Well, this is not quite thiol truth. Even Jesus must have had a been sence of humour at times, far example, in that striking condemnation found in 'Mathew I'l., verses 16 and 19. A little boy held no doubtful view of the Almighty and the faculty of humour. After a visit to the Zoo he said to his dad. i“Miisn’t Clod have laughed when’he made a monkey! ” I think he was right.

Humorous stories of nervous curates are legion. Here is o.ne: A couple had 1 just been married, and the parson (wishing to give a lead to th-ei very nervous bridegroom, saidl to his, “Don’t you hnow it kistomary to cuss the bride 1 ? ’ ’ Another young couple who had been very active; in church life were beinggiven! a social, at which it was expected that the bridegroom, would make a speech in response to the congratulations. When his turn came he was too full of emotion. The chairman of the social said, “To enable our friend to compose himself we will sing a hymn. .Let 11s turn to No. 968.” This hvmn

eommen'eed with ’‘‘■Weeping will not save, me! ’ ’ Which recalls 'the case of a somewhat stubborn choir ini a certain ehureh. It reached the ears of the minister that when the time came for 'the choir’s item they intended to just remain dumb. He forstalTed them wheat the time came by announcing, “We shall now sing Hymn. No. 054, eommen'eing with the second verse.” The second verse started with, “.Let those l refuse to sing who never know our God.”

Some ministers are not averse to telling jokes against themselves 1 . Here are two,, which can be vouched for as being absolutely true. (I relate them just as the minister concerned 'told it to me.)

“I had often heard that ‘parsons’ were neither male nor female, but that they constituted a distinct sex of their own —the sexes being divided into (a) males, ,(b) females; and (c) parsons. I have always attributed this to mere cynicism; but I little expected to have the opinion ruthlessly confirmed by my own child! It came about in this way. My little girl (aged eight) was sucking a lemon in my study. She said. ‘Will von have a suck, farver? ’ I refused politely. I could have managed an orange, but a lemon, no! To distract her 1 bade her look at the photographs on the wall of my study. She espied ane in which I stood, in the day when there was down on my face, and I was proud of it, with a butterfly collar on. Then the tremendous fact struck her. ‘‘Why,’ she said, looking from the photograph to me, ‘you was a man then, farver! ’

“The other one. The young people of the Junior Endeavour Society of the church ovhere I preach occasionally have a quaintly beautiful custom, of placing a small' bouquet or posy of flowers on the pulpit, with a text tied to the, flowers with a piece of whitesalk ribbon. I don’t know -who chooses the texts, but evidently the children themselves—and at random—for last Sunday when I. picked up my buttonhole posy, I read this (written, in a child’s hand): ‘Lift not up your horn on high; speak not with a stiff neck!’ (Psalm 76, sth verse.) I am thinking seriously of dc.elinging future invitations to preach from that pulpit!”