a rich man.  The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt.  There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony.  They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck.  It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice.  It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society.  It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich.  But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor.  A Christian may consistently say, “I respect that man’s rank, although he takes bribes.”  But a Christian cannot say, as all modern men are saying at lunch and breakfast, “a man of that rank would not take bribes.”  For it is a part of Christian dogma that any man in any rank may take bribes.  It is a part of Christian dogma; it also happens by a curious coincidence that it is a part of obvious human history.  When people say that a man “in that position” would be incorruptible, there is no need to bring Christianity into the discussion.  Was Lord Bacon a bootblack?  Was the Duke of Marlborough a crossing sweeper?  In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment.

Much vague and sentimental journalism has been poured out to the effect that Christianity is akin to democracy, and most of it is scarcely strong or clear enough to refute the fact that the two things have often quarrelled.  The real ground upon which Christianity and democracy are one is very much deeper.  The one specially and peculiarly un-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle—­ the idea that the man should rule who feels that he can rule.  Whatever else is Christian, this is heathen.  If our faith comments on government at all, its comment must be this—­that the man should rule who does not think that he can rule.  Carlyle’s hero may say, “I will be king”; but the Christian saint must say “Nolo episcopari.”  If the great paradox of Christianity means anything, it means this—­ that we must take the crown in our hands, and go hunting in dry places and dark corners of the earth until we find the one man who feels himself unfit to wear it.  Carlyle was quite wrong; we have not got to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule.  Rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he can’t.