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
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