There is another phase of this general subject that is reserved for separate treatment in the following chapter. We pause here to say that the people of Bible times have been removed from the people of to-day by a chasm too wide and deep. We have been accustomed to look upon them as belonging to another race--almost to another world. It is difficult to believe that they were "men of like passions with ourselves." It seems almost like sacrilege to intimate that they had their follies and weaknesses; that they did things absurd and laughable, and sometimes went farther and did things that were mean and wicked. There was a vast deal of human nature in those sublime characters. Gail Hamilton sums them up as follows: "Adam had dominion over the earth, but he attempted to shield himself from the divine displeasure by laying the blame upon his wife, which no gentleman would ever do. Noah was a 'just man and perfect in his generation,' if you do not mind an occasional fit of drunkenness. Abraham was a fine old sheik, a truly heroic figure, brave, generous, courteous, hospitable, magnanimous; no wonder the haughty Jews loved to remember and repeat that they were Abraham's children. But Abraham had his weaknesses and fell before his temptations; and Isaac followed in his footsteps. Of Jacob perhaps the least said the better, though he maintained his position as head of his family with unrelenting vigor, calling no man master, either son or king. There may have been other men whose life was 'without fear and without reproach'; but their history is unknown to us; their portrait is hardly more than a name." IV. THE SENSE OF HUMOR IN JESUS. "When a child, with child-like apprehensions that dived not beneath the surface of the matter, I read those parables--not guessing the involved wisdom--I had more yearnings toward that simple architect that built his house upon the sand, than I entertained for his more cautious neighbor; I grudged at the harsh censure pronounced upon the quiet soul that kept his talent; and prizing their simplicity beyond the more provident, and to my apprehension, somewhat _unfeminine_ wariness of their competitors, I felt a kindness that amounted almost to a _tendre_ for those thoughtless virgins. I have never made an acquaintance since that lasted, or a friendship that answered, with any that had not some tincture of the absurd in their characters."--_Charles Lamb._ THE SENSE OF HUMOR IN JESUS. "Amid the sorrow, disappointment, agony, and anguish of the world,--our dark thoughts and tempestuous passions, the gloomy exaggerations of self will, the enfeebling illusions of melancholy,--wit and humor, light and lightning, shed their soft radiance and dart their electric flash."--_Whipple._