Wit and Humor of the Bible Part 6

REPARTEE.

"And no one was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions."--_Matthew._

The present chapter brings us to the subject of Repartee. Of this form of wit, Professor Matthews says, "Nothing is more admirable, nothing more quickly enlists our sympathies, than this perfect command and quick, instantaneous concentration of the faculties, when a man is taken at a disadvantage and has to repel an insinuation or an insult at a moment's warning. That felicity of instantaneous a.n.a.lysis which we call readiness, has saved thousands of men from mortification or contempt. The dextrous leap of thought by which the mind escapes from a seemingly hopeless dilemma is worth more than all the logic and learning of the world." "The impromptu reply," says Moliere, "is precisely the touchstone of wit."

The pages of the Bible are sometimes enlivened by sharp repartees. The men of old time, the men of the Hebrew nation, understood the power of the quick and flashing answer, as well as more modern generations. Johnson and Foote and Sheridan might have found it by no means easy to hold their own in Judea. It is very likely that their powers would have been put to the severest test.

I.

Turning to the pages of the old Testament, we find many striking examples.

Ben-hadad sends word to the king of Israel, threatening to destroy his army. The king of Israel replies, "Tell him, Let not him that girdeth on his harness, boast himself as he that putteth it off."

Amaziah desired war with Jehoash. He sends to him saying, "Come, let us look one another in the face." Jehoash simply responds to the presumptuous challenge, "The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife. And there pa.s.sed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon and trod down the thistle."

Job retorts upon Zophar, after a wearisome recital of dreary commonplaces intended for comfort, "No doubt but ye are _the_ people, and wisdom will die with you. But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you; yea, who knoweth not such things as these?" To the speech introduced by these words, Eliphaz sharply replies, "Art thou the first man that was born? or wast thou made before the hills? Hast thou heard the secret of G.o.d, and dost thou restrain wisdom to thyself? What knowest thou that we know not? What understandest thou which is not in us? With us are both the gray-headed and very aged men, much elder than thy father." Upon this latter sentiment Elihu expresses himself when he finds opportunity to put in a word; "Great men are not always wise, neither do the aged understand judgment."

Indeed the Book of Job abounds in sharp speeches and replies as cutting as the speeches they answer. The sufferer obstinately refuses to accept their theory of his affliction or to adopt the remedies his friends propose. "Ye are forgers of lies," he exclaims, "ye are physicians of no value. O that ye would altogether hold your peace, and it should be your wisdom." In response to this appeal, Eliphaz becoming piqued proceeds to administer consolation with the lash: "Shall a wise man utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind? Should he reason with unprofitable talk or with speeches wherewith he can do no good?" "I have heard many such things," cries the wretched Job, "miserable comforters are ye all. If your soul were in my soul's stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you; but I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should a.s.suage your grief."

There were some word-battles between Sanballat and Nehemiah while the latter was trying to build the walls of Jerusalem, and the former was doing his best to hinder the enterprise. "Come," says Sanballat, "let us meet together in one of the villages in the plain of Ono,"--let us be friendly, let us have a pleasant visit together,--"but he thought to do me mischief." The crafty Sanballat did not take the builder of Jerusalem napping. Nehemiah replies, "I am doing a great work so that I can not come down; why should the work cease whilst I leave it to come down to you?"

Are your wishes of such mighty importance, O Sanballat that I should leave the Lord's work? Must the building cease that I may gratify your whim? Go to, Sanballat, go to; I can not come down. My work is great and n.o.ble; thou art a trifler and hypocrite! In precisely this vein was Spurgeon's reply to the pious bore who sent up word, "Tell him a servant of the Lord wishes to see him." It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and Spurgeon replied, "Tell him I am busy with his Master!"

Sanballat will have at him again: "It is reported among the heathen, and Gashmu said it, that thou and the Jews think to rebel; for which cause thou buildest the wall that thou mayest be their king, according to these words. And thou hast appointed prophets to preach of thee at Jerusalem, saying, There is a king in Judah; and now shall it be reported to the king according to these words. Come now, therefore, and let us take counsel together." To this tissue of falsehoods manufactured by the mendacious Gashmu, Nehemiah flashes back with indignation, "There are no such things as thou sayest, but thou feignest it out of thine own heart." Nehemiah comes very near giving what Touchstone would call the "lie direct," and he gives it without the qualifying "If."

Robert Collyer has the following comment upon Gashmu, who was quoted by Sanballat as authority for the charge that Nehemiah was going to set up for a king: "This only, this one thing is left: A good man was doing a good work with all his might, and bad men tried to hinder him. They tried to hurt his person. Gashmu was above that. He was none of your common rowdies. Sanballat and Tobiah might do that, but not Gashmu; yet Gashmu will sit there and nurse his dislike, and be glad to hear the petty stories that float like thistledown through the neighborhood against the innocent man; words are twisted and turned to meanings Nehemiah never thought of, and Gashmu hopes they are true; he wishes they were true; the wish is father to the thought, and he believes them. * * * So Gashmu has permitted his prejudices to grow into a lie. Gashmu is to live thousands of years for one purely false a.s.sertion, and to be the representative man of unprincipled gossips and narrow bigots as long as the world stands."

Another ill.u.s.tration. When the woman, in time of famine, appealed to the King of Israel as he pa.s.sed by, "Help, my lord, O King," he turned upon her with the somewhat grim rejoinder, "If the Lord do not help thee, whence shall I help thee?" Her case was hopeless, if the Lord could do nothing.

Although the resemblance is not very strong, this incident suggests a story of Michael Angelo. It calls to mind the way in which he took revenge upon Biagio di Cesena. This courtier ventured to criticise his Last Judgment. With a swift stroke he turned the Minos of the fresco into a likeness of his critic. Biagio complained to the Pope. "Where has he placed you?" inquired the Pontiff. "In h.e.l.l," said Biagio. "I am sorry,"

replied the Pope; "If it had been in Purgatory, something might have been done, but in h.e.l.l I have no jurisdiction."

II.

Examples of prompt and keen retort are not confined to the Old Testament.

When we turn to the New Testament, we find additional ill.u.s.trations.

When Paul was making his defence before the Council, he said, "Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before G.o.d until this day."

This declaration of innocence offended the High Priest Ananias, and he commanded those who stood by, to smite the speaker on the mouth. This raised the indignation of Paul, and with the swiftness of an arrow he transfixed the Priest, "G.o.d shall smite thee, thou whited wall; for sittest thou to judge me after the law and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the law?" This was understood as a bolt of invective by those who heard it, for they asked in alarm, "Revilest thou G.o.d's High Priest?"

The answer of Paul was a still more subtle sarcasm: "_I wist not, brethren, that he was the High Priest_." There was nothing in the conduct of the man to betoken the dignity of his office. G.o.d's High Priest must surely be fair and impartial. G.o.d's High Priest would never counsel violence. The mistake, Paul would imply, was perfectly natural and excusable.

There is a story of John Randolph not unlike this. Indeed, the sarcasm is the same in spirit and purpose. Paul admitted that "one must not revile G.o.d's High Priest," but _he did not perceive that the High Priest was present_. The coa.r.s.e, loud, ill-tempered person who commanded to smite him on the mouth could not be High Priest! The following was the occasion of Randolph's sarcasm: During the winter of 1834 a member of the House, to whom he was much attached, died. His place was taken by a young man, vain and ambitious, who began his career by making a bitter attack on Mr.

Randolph. No reply was made by the latter. Several days pa.s.sed, when a question came up in which he was deeply interested, and he delivered a very earnest and impressive speech. As he closed, he said, "I should not, Mr. Speaker, have returned to press this matter with so much earnestness, had not my views possessed the sanction and concurrence of my late departed friend, _whose seat, I lament, is now unhappily vacant_."

How skillfully, in the story of the young man who had been healed of his blindness, does the subject of the cure parry the thrusts of the synagogue authorities! "Give G.o.d the praise," they exhort, "we know that this man is a sinner!" "Whether he be a sinner or no," says the young man, "I can not tell; one thing I know that whereas I was blind, now I see." Thus repulsed, they begin again. "What did he to thee? How opened he thine eyes?" He replies, "I have told you already, and ye did not hear; wherefore would ye hear it again? Will ye also be his disciples?" Stung to the quick, they revile him, "Thou art his disciple, but we are Moses'

disciples. We know that G.o.d spake unto Moses, but as for this fellow we know not from whence he is!" Thoroughly aroused, the young man sends home to them a final thrust: "Why herein is a marvelous thing that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes? Now we know that G.o.d heareth not sinners; but if any man be a worshipper of G.o.d and doeth his will, him he heareth. Since the world began, was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one born blind. If this man were not of G.o.d, he could do nothing!" Abuse and excision alone remain to the rulers of the synagogue. "Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us?"

And they cast him out. Excommunication is the sole answer of priest-craft and bigotry to reason.

III.

To many readers it may seem impious to say that under the head of Repartee we must cla.s.sify many of those words of Jesus with which he cuts through the sophistry of opponents and disentangles himself from the webs that are woven about him. Let it be remembered, however, that we are dealing with his utterances simply as literature; with their religious significance, we are not now concerned. We are discussing the sayings of Jesus as we would the sayings of Johnson or Goldsmith.

One of the most striking instances is found in the controversy over exorcism. When the scribes who came down from Jerusalem charged, "He hath Beelzebub and by the prince of the devils casts he out devils," he quickly reduced the accusation to an absurdity: "How can Satan cast out Satan? If he rise up against himself and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end." He goes further--"If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out?"

There was one occasion, however, when Jesus himself seems to have been vanquished by a swift rejoinder. When the Syro-Phenician woman came to him in behalf of her daughter, in order to test her faith he said,--"Let the children first be filled, for it is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it unto the dogs." "Yes, Lord," she answered, "yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs." These words came from a bright intellect as well as from a trusting heart. Jesus appreciated the keenness of the reply no less than the confidence it expressed. "_For this saying_ go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter." "For once,"

says Macbeth, "Jesus was refuted and that by his own figure; and he wished to be refuted."

How we enjoy such a dilemma as the one in which he placed the chief priests and the scribes and the elders! They asked him, "By what authority doest thou these things? And who gave thee authority to do these things?"

"I will also ask of you one question," says Jesus, "and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things--the baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? answer me." "And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say from heaven, he will say, Why then did ye not believe him? But if we shall say of men,--they feared the people; for all men counted John that he was a prophet, indeed. And they answered and said unto Jesus, We can not tell." "And Jesus answered and said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things."

Another time "came to Jesus Scribes and Pharisees which were of Jerusalem, saying, Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the Elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread?" How quick and effective the reply: "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of G.o.d by your tradition?" Nothing could be said in response. The question was absolutely closed. The disciples violate your tradition? Very good; but what does your tradition violate? Can we not see his opponents, falling back beaten, knitting their brows, taking counsel together, planning some overwhelming defeat for this impudent young heretic? What Thersites said of Ajax would well apply to them: "He bites his lips with a politic regard, as who should say, There were wit in this head an' 'twould out; and so there is, but it lies as coldly in him as fire in a flint, which will not show without knocking."

When the woman poured the spikenard on the head of Jesus, Judas, the virtuous Judas, forsooth! made objection. "Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence _and given to the poor_?" Why not, indeed,--for Judas is custodian of the poor fund. "Judas," returns his Master,--and there was pathos as well as rebuke in the words,--"Judas, the poor ye have with you always, and whenever ye will, ye may do them good." This was the first time Judas had ever manifested any solicitude for the poor. "But me, ye have not always." Judas was silenced; but he began to brood revenge.

Soon he stole out and went to the chief priests. He had not secured the price of the spikenard, but he would indemnify himself by selling his Master!

With what relish do we read the trenchant replies of Jesus to the Scribes and Pharisees and Herodians who had leagued to "entangle him in his talk."

Easily as Samson broke the green withes, did he break the verbal fetters they forged. "In the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage!" "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto G.o.d the things that are G.o.d's." What can be more admirable viewed simply as repartee,--as ill.u.s.trations of the "dexterous leap of thought by which the mind escapes from a seemingly hopeless dilemma?" If one were to read such fragments of Gospel history for the first time, without the idea that he must attach a solemn and awful meaning to every word, how would he delight in these intellectual contests and hail the genius of the victor!

After the besiegers, in the preceding incident, had exhausted their fruitless ingenuity, Jesus turns upon them with the question, "What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is he?" "The Son of David," they feebly mutter.

"How then doth David call him Lord? If David call him Lord, how is he his son?" That ended the controversy. The combined forces of theology and politics retired in confusion, evidently looking, as d.i.c.kens said of the portraits of the Dedlock family, "as if they did not know what to make of it." They had lost the battle. One can imagine the evangelist who afterwards wrote the account, almost chuckling with inward satisfaction, as he recalled the scene and recorded the result: "And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day ask him any more questions."

VII. Wit and Logic.

"Who would say that truth ought to stand disarmed against falsehood, or that the enemies of the faith shall be at liberty to frighten the faithful with hard words or jeer at them with lively sallies of wit, while the Christians ought never to write except with a coldness of style enough to set the reader asleep?"--_Augustine._

WIT AND LOGIC.

"I was not gone far before I heard the sound of trumpets and alarms, which seemed to proclaim the march of an Enemy; and as I afterwards found was in reality what I apprehended it. There appeared at a great distance a very shining light, and in the midst of it a person of most beautiful aspect; her name was _Truth_. On her right hand, there marched a male deity, who bore several quivers on his shoulders, and grasped several arrows in his hand. His name was Wit."--_Addison._

In her essay on Heine, George Eliot writes: "Every one who has had the opportunity of making the comparison, will remember that the effect produced on him by some witticisms is closely akin to the effect produced on him by subtle reasoning which lays open a fallacy or absurdity; and there are persons whose delight in such reasoning always manifests itself in laughter. This affinity of wit with ratiocination is the more obvious in proportion as the species of wit is higher and deals less with words and with superficialities than with the essential qualities of things.

Some of Dr. Johnson's most admirable witticisms consist in the suggestion of an a.n.a.logy which immediately exposes the absurdity of an action or proposition; and it is only their ingenuity, condensation and instantaneousness which lift them from reasoning into wit." The opinion of George Eliot has been shared by others. Pitt declared that "all wit is true reasoning," and Rogers says that "wit is truth." A French writer has observed that "reason needs to be armed with the terrible epigram." And even solemn John Milton writes of Plato's dialogues, "There is scarce one of them, especially wherein some notable sophister lies sweating and turmoiling under the inevitable and merciless dilemmas of Socrates, but he that reads, were it Saturn himself, would be robbed of more than a smile."

There are in literature abundant examples of the condensed logic of wit,--the logic that exposes a fallacy, answers an objection and demolishes an argument, without resorting to major and minor premise and formal conclusion. One or two of these may pave the way to the main purpose of this chapter. "Where was your Protestant Church before Luther?"

asked a Catholic of Wilkes. "Did you wash your face this morning?" said Wilkes. "I did, sir." "Where was your face before you washed it?" The logic of wit as employed by Dr. Johnson, is referred to by George Eliot.

On one occasion it was debated whether a clergyman who had five years before been guilty of some grave sin should be reinstated. Johnson inquired whether the man had repented. It was admitted that he had.

"Then," said Johnson, "if he has repented, is he not good enough to go to heaven?" "Certainly." "Why, sir, then there is no objection. A man who is good enough to go to heaven is good enough to be a clergyman." Johnson denounced Lord Bolingbroke in the following immortal a.n.a.logy: "Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality, a coward because he had not resolution enough to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death."