If we should find in Dickens or Thackeray such pictures as Jesus has given of the Scribes and Pharisees, they would strike us at once as the very quintessence of humor. "They go arrayed in long clothing, they love the uppermost rooms at feasts and the chief seats in the synagogues." They are always posturing to attract attention. "They love greetings in the market-places, to be called of men Rabbi, Rabbi." In their way, they are as much given to "deportment" as Mr. Turveydrop, when he says, "I suppose I must now go and show myself about town; it will be expected of me." When they pray, they do it standing in the synagogues or at the corners of the streets that all may see how pious they are; when they perform their deeds of righteousness, a trumpet is sounded before them, to make solemn proclamation; as who should say, "Will the public please take notice; I am about to drop a mite into this poor widow's hand." When they fast they put on "a sad countenance and disfigure their faces" with fictitious woe and weeping, "that they may appear unto men to fast." "See how I lay the dust with my tears," says Launce. Everything they did was done for effect; nothing came from the heart. Their religion was the veriest sham. They had well-nigh reached the measure of South's ideal hypocrite, "who never opens his mouth in earnest, but when he eats or breathes." Well might Jesus say, "The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat; _all things, therefore, whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do, but do ye not according to their works; for they say and do not_." Does not this remind us of Pecksniff, "who was a most exemplary man, fuller of virtuous precepts than a copy-book; but some people likened him to a direction-post which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there." III. Not only did the sense of humor in Jesus enable him to unmask pretentious hypocrites, but also to expose the absurdities that the multitudes commonly practiced in the name of religion. There are those, for example, who in prayer use "vain repetitions," thinking that they shall be heard for their "much speaking." They estimate the efficacy of prayer by its quantity and not by its quality. They think that if they only keep at it long enough, if they only use multitudes of words, they will surely attract attention on high. There are others who think that religion consists in the "washing of pots and cups and such like things" and they "lay aside the commandment of God." One of their representatives in modern literature is Dolly Winthrop, who tells Silas Marner about the letters "I.H.S." pricked upon the Christmas cakes: "I can't read 'em myself, and there's nobody, not Mr. Macey himself, rightly knows what they mean; but they've a good meaning, for they're the same as is on the pulpit-cloth at Church; an' if there's any good, we've need of it in this world."