Jesting on religious subjects, has generally arisen from scepticism, deficiency in taste, or disbelief in the injurious consequences of the practice. Some consider that levity is likely to bring any subject it touches into contempt, or is only fitly used in connection with light subjects; while others regard it as merely a source of harmless pleasure, and can even laugh at a joke against themselves. In like manner some consider it inconsistent with the profession of religion to attend balls, races, or theatres, or even to wear gay-coloured clothes. Congreve has been blamed even for calling a coachman a "Jehu." On the other hand, at the beginning of this century, "a man of quality" could scarcely get through a sentence without some profane expletive. Sir Walter Scott makes a highwayman lament that, although he could "swear as round an oath as any man," he could never do it "like a gentleman." Lord Melbourne was so accustomed to garnish his conversation in this way that Sydney Smith once said to him, "We will take it for granted that everybody is damned, and now proceed with the subject." In former times, and even sometimes in our own day, the most eminent Christians have occasionally indulged in jest. At the time of the Reformation, a martyr comforted a fellow-sufferer, Philpot, by telling him he was a "pot filled with the most precious liquor;" and Latimer called bad passions "Turks," and bade his hearers play at "Christian Cards." "Now turn up your trump--hearts are trumps." Robert Hall, a most pious Christian, was constantly transgressing in this direction, and I have heard Mr. Moody raise a roar of laughter while preaching. Now it is quite impossible to say that in any of the above cases there was a want of faith, although we are equally unable to agree with those who maintain that profane jests are most common when it is the strongest. What they show is a want of control of feeling, or a deficiency in taste, so that people do not regard such things as either injurious or important. A sceptic at the present day is generally less profane than a religious man was in the last century. Such is the result of civilization, although unbelief in itself inclines to profanity, and faith to reverence. It is self-evident that peculiar feelings and convictions will prevent our regarding things as ludicrous, at which we should otherwise be highly amused. Religious veneration, or the want of it, often causes that to appear sacred to one person which seems absurd to another. Many Jewish stories seem strange to Gentile comprehensions. Elias Levi states that he had been told by many old and pious rabbis that at the costly entertainment at which the Messiah should be welcomed among the Jews, an enormous bird should be killed and roasted, of which the Talmud says that it once threw an egg out of its nest which crushed three hundred lofty cedars, and when broken, swept away sixty villages.