Whether a man preaches his gospel grotesquely or gravely is merely
like the question of whether he preaches it in prose or verse.
The question of whether Swift was funny in his irony is quite another sort
of question to the question of whether Swift was serious in his pessimism.
Surely even Mr. McCabe would not maintain that the more funny
"Gulliver" is in its method the less it can be sincere in its object.
The truth is, as I have said, that in this sense the two qualities
of fun and seriousness have nothing whatever to do with each other,
they are no more comparable than black and triangular.
Mr. Bernard Shaw is funny and sincere. Mr. George Robey is
funny and not sincere. Mr. McCabe is sincere and not funny.
The average Cabinet Minister is not sincere and not funny.
In short, Mr. McCabe is under the influence of a primary fallacy
which I have found very common m men of the clerical type.
Numbers of clergymen have from time to time reproached me for
making jokes about religion; and they have almost always invoked
the authority of that very sensible commandment which says,
"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain."
Of course, I pointed out that I was not in any conceivable sense
taking the name in vain.
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