Reverting now from these generalisations to the problem of the religious from which they arose, it will have become evident that the essential work of anyone who is conversant with the existing practice and literature of the law and whose natural abilities are forensic, will lie in the direction of reconstructing the theory and practice of the law in harmony with modern conceptions, of making that theory and practice clear and plain to ordinary men, of reforming the abuses of the profession by working for the separation of bar and judiciary, for the amalgamation of the solicitors and the barristers, and the like needed reforms.  These are matters that will probably only be properly set right by a quickening of conscience among lawyers themselves.  Of no class of men is the help and service so necessary to the practical establishment of God’s kingdom, as of men learned and experienced in the law.  And there is no reason why for the present an advocate should not continue to plead in the courts, provided he does his utmost only to handle cases in which he believes he can serve the right.  Few righteous cases are ill-served by a frank disposition on the part of lawyer and client to put everything before the court.  Thereby of course there arises a difficult case of conscience.  What if a lawyer, believing his client to be in the right, discovers him to be in the wrong?  He cannot throw up the case unless he has been scandalously deceived, because so he would betray the confidence his client has put in him to “see him through.”  He has a right to “give himself away,” but not to “give away” his client in this fashion.  If he has a chance of a private consultation I think he ought to do his best to make his client admit the truth of the case and give in, but failing this he has no right to be virtuous on behalf of another.  No man may play God to another; he may remonstrate, but that is the limit of his right.  He must respect a confidence, even if it is purely implicit and involuntary.  I admit that here the barrister is in a cleft stick, and that he must see the business through according to the confidence his client has put in him—­and afterwards be as sorry as he may be if an injustice ensues.  And also I would suggest a lawyer may with a fairly good conscience defend a guilty man as if he were innocent, to save him from unjustly heavy penalties. . . .

This comparatively full discussion of the barrister’s problem has been embarked upon because it does bring in, in a very typical fashion, just those uncertainties and imperfections that abound in real life.  Religious conviction gives us a general direction, but it stands aside from many of these entangled struggles in the jungle of conscience.  Practice is often easier than a rule.  In practice a lawyer will know far more accurately than a hypothetical case can indicate, how far he is bound to see his client through, and how far he may play the keeper of his client’s conscience.  And nearly every day there happens instances where the most subtle casuistry will fail and the finger of conscience point unhesitatingly.  One may have worried long in the preparation and preliminaries of the issue, one may bring the case at last into the final court of conscience in an apparently hopeless tangle.  Then suddenly comes decision.