Editorial March 17, 1917 Issue

Humor

William D. McCrackan

In one of Emerson's fables the squirrel is made to say to the mountain, "If I cannot carry forests on my back, neither can you crack a nut." This little mite of a creature is represented as maintaining its intelligent individuality in the face of the mountain's great bulk, and the juxtaposition of these two wholly dissimilar bodies furnishes an example of humor which justly brings a smile. The Christian who cannot take a joke is in need of spiritual help, for human experience is full of the most ridiculous pretensions on the part of evil which should be promptly laughed out of court. What, for instance, could be more preposterous than the attempts of error to substitute itself for truth, to prove itself to be something when it is really nothing; what more laughable than its apelike mimicry of the qualities of good? Every Christian Science practitioner knows the healing value of not taking sickness at its own valuaton. Evil asks nothing better than to be taken seriously, whereas it is invariably illogical, futile, and foolish, because outside the precincts of reality.

Genuine humor always has a touch of kindliness, which is another way of saying that it is akin to love and happiness, and so tends to destroy fear. It is noticeable that races which have this saving grace of humor, though they may not have reached a high state of intellectual development, do not disappear before so-called superior races, but find a place for themselves under the sun. Nations which can take their misfortunes humorously do not go down before those who hate, but rather follow a spiritual law of the "survival of the fittest."

The writings of the Discoverer of Christian Science are marked by an underlying kindliness which is not incompatible with humor and is closely allied with happiness. Indeed Mrs. Eddy, with the unerring touch of the true metaphysician, dared to coin a word which humanity sorely needed and the dictionary failed to supply,—the word "happify." On pages 57 and 58 of Science and Health we read, "To happify existence by constant intercourse with those adapted to elevate it, should be the motive of society. Unity of spirit gives new pinions to joy, or else joy's drooping wings trail in dust." One wonders that this precious word, "happify," has not long since found an abiding place in the language of true religion.

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