'Ah, that beats me!' replied Dennis. 'I would hang somebody, but I don't know who it ought to be!'
Precisely! To _cut_ the knot with a sword is so easy--and so ineffective; to _untie_ it is so difficult--and so rich in consequence. The politics that consist of sentencing to summary execution statesmen from whom we differ are within the intellectual reach of most of us; and in that particular brand of politics, therefore, most of us occasionally indulge. But the politics that consist in really grappling with the knotty problems, with a view to discovering some means of ameliorating human misery, provide us with a much more formidable task. Who has intellect sufficiently clear, and fingers sufficiently deft, to essay the untying of the Gordian knot? The empire of the world awaits the coming of that patient and persistent man.
Or look at another example. I often feel that very little of the oratory expended on Protestant platforms really touches the mark. It gets nowhere. The real question at issue is most pitifully begged. It may, of course, be diplomatic to keep people well informed concerning the social evils that thrive in Roman Catholic countries. It may, perhaps, be permissible to emphasize the abuses that exist within the pale of the Roman Catholic Church. But a devout and intelligent Roman Catholic, listening to such an utterance, would, after making a reasonable allowance for rhetorical exaggeration admit the truth of all that had been said, and go home to weep, and, perhaps, to pray over it. Many of those who have passed over from Protestant communions to the Roman Catholic Church have travelled very widely and observed very closely. They are not ignorant. Newman sobbed over the seamy side of Romanism before he made the plunge. 'I have never disguised,' he wrote, 'that there are actual circumstances in the Church of Rome which pain me much; we do not look toward Rome as believing that its communion is infallible.' Then, with his eyes wide open to all the facts on which our orators dilate so luridly, he took the fatal step. And again he wrote, 'There is a divine life among us, clearly manifested, in spite of all our disorders, which is as great a note of the Church as any can be.'