Isaiah rebukes those "who call evil good and good evil; who put darkness for light and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter,"--thus confusing moral distinctions. This is the same sort of sophistry that Addison exposes, in his gentle way, by proposing the following form of agreement: "We whose names are hereunto subscribed, do solemnly declare that we do in our consciences believe that two and two make four; and that we shall adjudge any man whatever to be our enemy who endeavors to persuade us to the contrary. We are likewise ready to maintain, with the hazard of all that is near and dear to us, that six is less than seven in all times and at all places; and that ten will not be more three years hence than it is at present. We do also firmly declare that it is our resolution as long as we live to call Black black and White white. _And we shall upon all occasions oppose such persons that upon any day of the year shall call Black white or White black, with the utmost of our lives and fortunes._" The rebuke, in both cases, is the same. IV. What do these illustrations show? "That the Bible is, on the whole, a humorous book? Far from it. That religion is a humorous subject? that we are to throw all the wit we can into the treatment of it? No. But they show that the sense of the ludicrous is put into man by his Maker; that it has its uses; that we are not to be ashamed of it;" that we are not to be horrified at the mention of it in connection with things we deem most sacred. They show that the literature of the Bible contains the same elements that in any other literature we call Wit and Humor. They show us, also, that wit and humor do not of necessity produce hearty laughter or boisterous mirth; not always do they manifest themselves in "gibes and gambols and flashes of merriment that set the table in a roar." Those, therefore, who may expect something in these chapters that will shake one's sides with jollity, or make him "laugh till his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up," will doubtless be disappointed. Wit and humor often lie too deep for laughter, as pathos often lies too deep for tears. No attempt is here made at exact definition of the two words that are prominent in the general title of this book. Perhaps after they have passed through their final analysis we shall not be any wiser than before we cast them into the alembic. Barrow says of Humor: "It is a thing so versatile and multiform that it seems no less hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof, than to make a portrait of Proteus or to define the figure of the fleeting air." We usually include under the general term all forms of pleasantry, grotesqueness, drollery, sarcasm, irony, ridicule. Our common acceptation shall serve us in these studies.