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.
Now, this is one of the two or three vital defences of working democracy.

The mere machinery of voting is not democracy, though at present it is not easy to effect any simpler democratic method.

But even the machinery of voting is profoundly Christian in this practical sense--that it is an attempt to get at the opinion of those who would be too modest to offer it.