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A Time to Laugh

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 30, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 47.

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A Time to Laugh

By George B. Starr

The Health-Giving Blessing of Proper Laughter
Times Not to Laugh
By GEORGE B. STARR
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; . . . a time to weep, and a time to laugh; . . . a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.” — Solomon. Eccl. 3:1, 2, 4, and 7.
God, who made the innocent child and the matured man with powers to laugh, and connected with laughter health-giving enjoyment, and made laughter the avenue through which expression was to be given to pleasure, happiness, gladness, and appreciation; certainly designed that all members of the human family should laugh. The power to laugh is one of the features that distinguishes man from the brute creation. Jesus Christ Himself was anointed “with the oil of gladness” above His fellows (Heb. 1:9); and that by God the Father.

LAUGHTER IS HEALTHFUL

Laughter at the proper time, and about proper things — clean, pure, sweet, innocent, and truly funny things — is a most healthful exercise, and is one of the symptoms of a healthy condition of mind and heart and body. Moroseness, continued sadness, imagining that happiness and laughter are sinful, are symptoms of a diseased condition. “A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.” Prov. 15:13. “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” Prov. 17:22. A heavy, broken, sorrowful spirit hinders the formation of the red blood corpuscles.
Mealtime is a good time to laugh. Laughing then aids digestion.
Laugh with the children in the early morning and at bedtime. It will help to keep sickness out of the home, and so make “the outgoings of the evenings and mornings to rejoice as do our bird neighbors.”

TIMES NOT TO LAUGH

As there is “a time to laugh,” so there are times when laughter is altogether inappropriate and untimely.
It is not fitting to laugh in the presence of death, or a great calamity, or a great misfortune. Only fools laugh at such times. Funeral occasions are not times to laugh. And last, but not least, the church service is no time to laugh. Nor is it appropriate or permissible for a minister of the gospel to introduce into his discourses that which will create merriment or laughter.
The good common sense of propriety on the part of the best of the world's folk of all lands is shocked at any attempt, on the part of one representing the sacred calling of the ministry, to introduce into a discourse that which will create levity in any degree; and such an attempt is not offset by an effort to play upon the emotions and cause weeping during the same service. It is a commingling of the sacred and the common, forbidden by the word of God, and should be frowned down by any audience. “What is the object of the ministry? Is it to mix the comical with the religious? . . . If Christ is formed within, if the truth with its sanctifying power is brought into the inner sanctuary of the soul, you will not have jolly men, neither will you have sour, cross, crabbed men, to teach the precious lessons of Christ to perishing souls.” “A jovial minister in the pulpit, or one who is stretching beyond his measure to win praise, is a spectacle that crucifies the Son of God afresh, and puts Him to open shame.” — “Special Counsel to Ministers,” pages 2 and 5.