instance had the shamelessness of such a traditionless and
undisciplined class as the early factory organisers. It has never

had the dull incoherent wickedness of the sort of men who exploit
drunkenness and the turf. It offends within limits. Barristers can

be, and are, disbarred. But it is now a profession extraordinarily
out of date; its code of honour derives from a time of cruder and

lower conceptions of human relationship. It apprehends the State as
a mere "ring" kept about private disputations; it has not begun to

move towards the modern conception of the collectiveenterprise as
the determining criterion of human conduct. It sees its business as

a mere play upon the rules of a game between man and man, or between
men and men. They haggle, they dispute, they inflict and suffer

wrongs, they evade dues, and are liable or entitled to penalties and
compensations. The primary business of the law is held to be

decision in these wrangles, and as wrangling is subject to artistic
elaboration, the business of the barrister is the business of a

professional wrangler; he is a bravo in wig and gown who fights the
duels of ordinary men because they are incapable, very largely on

account of the complexities of legal procedure, of fighting for
themselves. His business is never to explore any fundamental right

in the matter. His business is to say all that can be said for his
client, and to conceal or minimise whatever can be said against his

client. The successful promoted advocate, who in Britain and the
United States of America is the judge, and whose habits and

interests all incline him to disregard the realities of the case in
favour of the points in the forensic game, then adjudicates upon the

contest. . . .
Now this condition of things is clearly incompatible with the modern

conception of the world as becoming a divine kingdom. When the
world is openly and confessedly the kingdom of God, the law court

will exist only to adjust the differing views of men as to the
manner of their service to God; the only right of action one man

will have against another will be that he has been prevented or
hampered or distressed by the other in serving God. The idea of the

law court will have changed entirely from a place of dispute,
exaction and vengeance, to a place of adjustment. The individual or

some state organisation will plead ON BEHALF OF THE COMMON GOOD
either against some state official or state regulation, or against

the actions or inaction of another individual. This is the only
sort of legal proceedings compatible with the broad beliefs of the

new faith. . . . Every religion that becomes ascendant, in so far
as it is not otherworldly, must necessarily set its stamp upon the

methods and administration of the law. That this was not the case
with Christianity is one of the many contributory aspects that lead

one to the conviction that it was not Christianity that took
possession of the Roman empire, but an imperialadventurer who took

possession of an all too complaisant Christianity.
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 apparentlyhopelesstangle. Then suddenly comes decision.

The procedure of that silent, lit, and empty court in which a man
states his case to God, is very simple and perfect. The excuses and

the special pleading shrivel and vanish. In a little while the case
lies bare and plain.

8. THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE
The question of oaths of allegiance, acts of acquiescence in

existing governments, and the like, is one that arises at once with
the acceptance of God as the supreme and real King of the Earth. At

the worst Caesar is a usurper, a satrap claiming to be sovereign; at
the best he is provisional. Modern casuistry makes no great trouble

for the believing public official. The chief business of any
believer is to do the work for which he is best fitted, and since

all state affairs are to become the affairs of God's kingdom it is
of primary importance that they should come into the hands of God's

servants. It is scarcely less necessary to a believing man with
administrative gifts that he should be in the public administration,

than that he should breathe and eat. And whatever oath or the like
to usurper church or usurper king has been set up to bar access to

service, is an oath imposed under duress. If it cannot be avoided
it must be taken rather than that a man should become unserviceable.

All such oaths are unfair and foolish things. They exclude no
scoundrels; they are appeals to superstition. Whenever an

opportunity occurs for the abolition of an oath, the servant of God
will seize it, but where the oath is unavoidable he will take it.

The service of God is not to achieve a delicateconsistency of
statement; it is to do as much as one can of God's work.

9. THE PRIEST AND THE CREED
It may be doubted if this line of reasoningregarding the official

and his oath can be extended to excuse the priest or pledged
minister of religion who finds that faith in the true God has ousted

his formal beliefs.
This has been a frequent and subtle moral problem in the

intellectual life of the last hundred years. It has been
increasingly difficult for any class of reading, talking, and

discussing people such as are the bulk of the priesthoods of the
Christian churches to escape hearing and reading the accumulated

criticism of the Trinitarian theology and of the popularly accepted
story of man's fall and salvation. Some have no doubt defeated this

universal and insidious critical attack entirely, and honestly
established themselves in a right-down acceptance of the articles

and disciplines to which they have subscribed and of the creeds they
profess and repeat. Some have recanted and abandoned their

positions in the priesthood. But a great number have neither
resisted the bacillus of criticism nor left the churches to which

they are attached. They have adopted compromises, they have
qualified their creeds with modifying footnotes of essential

repudiation; they have decided that plain statements are metaphors