My Prayer Book_LASANCE - the Catholic Kingdom!

in conscience accept; being a testimony to the serious
and wise character of our lives. For obviously life is
no jest to a man who believes in its purpost and its eternal
duration; w b reads its value in the Mood of C ist,
as our Catholic faith teaches us to do. Indeed th re is
none of us but can wish sincerely that we merited a little
better the title to mmbemess in the sense of Catholic
serieusness and determination.
But what we are charged with is not, of course, this
right sincerity and purposefulness, but an excess of
seriousness, a depressing solemnity and heaviness -
in a word, a lack of humor. Moreover, the charge is
distinctively p~it against us, not as mtn, but as Catholic&
We are said to be gloomy by a necessity flowing from
our worship, from our belief. It wodd further seem that
not Protestants only, but even Catholics themselves
occasionally entertain this notion of the harshness and
narrowness and cheerless rigorism of our faith. It map
not be easy to show such as these that in truth our religion
is in reality i'nstinct with the subtlest, deepest,
richest humor possible to men. Indeed so essential is
great humor to Catholic faith that the pradkai presence
or absence of this humor is not a bad test of a man's
vigor or weakness in faith.
Humor is the just appreciation of the incongruous
things of life. That is a part definition, at least; for
humor is an elusive quality, existing in the concrete,
dealing with the concrete, surrounding living things and
entering into them, as the oxygen of the air enters into
wd vivifies our blccd. Men feel its presence aind recognize
it and honor it and delight in it; but can no mare
analyeo it than one can analyze life, which departs at
the touch of the dissecting instrumerit. One takes up
w r y IV," or "Alicein Wonaledand," or "The Frogs,"
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