Note 5 — PART I.

Soame Jenyns strangely imagined that a portion of the happiness of Seraphim and of just men made perfect would be derived from an exquisite perception of the ludicrous; while Addison mentions that a learned monk laid it down as a doctrine that laughter was the effect of original sin, and that Adam could not laugh before the fall. Some of the early Christians felt so strongly the incompatibility of strong human emotions with the divine nature that they expunged the words "Jesus wept."