p. 331 | The Test of Ridicule by Christian at Work

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 7, 1878

The Test of Ridicule.

By Christian at Work

"How will it stand when it is laughed at?" is the test question of all truth. Wit is "an engine, wildly striking, sometimes itself, sometimes the 'engineer'"—if we believe George Herbert. But the province of wit is to detect the weak spots and puncture them. Satire will destroy more quickly and thoroughly than angry invectives. And, in a word, if it will not bear to be laughed at, the thing is a failure.

Of course anything new must run this gauntlet. The power of the caricature in politics is so conceded that from Gilbray and Cruikshank down to Leech and Nast there is no more dreadful thing than ridicule in a picture. The penalty to greatness is that it must meet this enemy lurking in all corners. He pops out in the pungent paragraph. He darts a shaft through a dreadful parody or a viciously evasive song. Puns are filled with fretful quills, like the porcupine. The funny man of the paper—paid to do his remorseless column, no less and no more—must also have his gibe. And to-day is the day, beyond any previous era, when badinage, ridicule, satire, show their best power.

The ancients had a fable that Momus, the god of jest, was once in heaven among the Olympian deities. But of all unpleasant neighbors he was the worst. Minerva built a house, and the sage Momus sneered at her because she hadn't put it on wheels, so as to escape bad smells and noises. Venus, confident in her perfection, dared him to criticise her. With his finger by the side of his nose, he winked slyly on the other divinities, and said that the queen of beauty made a great clatter with her sandals. If he had no better chance he always disparaged what he saw; and in consequence the gods, by way of illustration and advice, thrust him out of their select circle.

That we grow thoroughly tired of the laughter that is mad and the mirth which is profitless is a good proof of the superiority of truth to all ridicule. That we grow disgusted and sated and sick at heart with the flagrant sham and cheat which draws the arrows of the caricaturist and the satirist is a new proof of the value of ridicule as a weapon. Elijah at Carmel used it grandly.

There are many abuses and wrongs which are dignified by a serious opposition. These deserve to be hunted by the hounds of ridicule, up hill and down dale. They are unworthy of anything except the bitter jest which strips their pretensions to the bone. Under such treatment they can make no reply. They will suffer untold agonies—for it is more wretched to be ridiculous than to be wicked—and they will gnash with their teeth and melt away. We advocate a cheerful, hopeful ridicule of the little obstacles to our Christian progress. The truth will not suffer, but the error will wither and die amid its worshipers.—Christian at Work.