The sadness that lies behind laughter. This verse reads like one of the melancholy reflections of the pessimist preacher in Ecclesiastes. Yet there is a profound truth in it, as all thoughtful minds must recognize. Physically, intense laughter produces acute pangs. Laughter "holds his sides" with pain. Shelley sang truly—
"Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught."
A long laugh naturally fills the eyes with tears and dies away in a sigh of weariness. Further, a season of undue elation is usually followed by one of depression. The mind rebounds from glee to gloom by natural reaction. But there is a deeper experience than all this. Without taking a dark view of life, we must acknowledge the existence of a very common background of sorrow behind many of the sunniest scenes of life. We may trance the causes of this experience both to the facts and nature of sorrow, and to the quality and limitation of laughter.
I. THE FACTS AND NATURE OF SORROW.
1. Sorrow is common. Man is born to trouble. There may not be a skeleton in the cupboard of every house, but there are few homes in which there is no chamber of sad memories. We mistake the common nature of mankind if we suppose that the merry soul has not its griefs. The roaring clown may be acting with a broken heart. Wit that spreads a ripple of laughter in all directions may even be inspired by a very bitterness of soul.
2. Sorrow is enduring. We cannot divide our lives mechanically into days of pain and days of pleasure. The great sorrow that once visits us never utterly forsakes us. It makes a home in the soul. It may be toned and softened by time, and driven from the front windows to dark back chambers. Still, there it lurks, and sometimes it makes its presence sorely felt even when we would fain forget it. The very contrast of present delight may rouse its restless pains. Even when it is not thought of it lingers as a sad undertone in our songs of gladness.
II. THE QUALITY AND LIMITATIONS OF LAUGHTER.
1. Laughter is superficial. Even while it is rippling over the surface of life, grief may lie beneath in sullen darkness, unmoved by the feeble gaiety. This does not condemn laughter as an evil thing, for while "the laughter of fools" is contemptible, and that of scorners sinful, the mirth of the innocent is harmless and even healthful. Caesar rightly suspected the sour visage of Cinna. The monkish notion that Christ never laughed finds no countenance in the Bible. But while sinless laughter is good and wholesome, it is never able to reach the deepest troubles. Some foolish fears and fancies may best be laughed away, but not the great soul agonies.
2. Laughter is temporary. Inordinate laughter is not good; too much laughter is a sign of frivolity; and no man can laugh eternally. If a man drown care in laughter, this can be but for a season, and afterwards the dreary trouble will rise again in pitiless persistence.
The remedy for trouble must be found in the peace of God. When that is in the soul, a man is happier than if he were only hiding an unhealed sore behind the hollow mask of laughter. When Christ has cured the soul's greatest trouble, there is a possibility of the laughter of a new joy, with no tears to follow.