lives. Alas! he who was so eloquent in tearing others to rags
when he himself essays their task himself--angels well might
weep.

No department of life is secure against this sophistry.

You listen till you are dazed with admiration at one of those
masterpieces of forensic pleading that have flung a deathless
glory around the names of Russell and Whiteside; but the critic,
with a superior toss of his head, assures you that this can be
found in Magna Charta and the Statute book. Here is the
tantalising half truth.

To be sure the principles and groundwork of reasoning are there;
but the office of the advocate was to draw them from the dust and
darkness, to gather these scattered articles, statutes and
precedents into his capacious brain, and from them evolve a
framework of argument to fit his purpose. He moulds them into an
impregnable bulwark of law and reasoning to shelter his client.
So naturally does he bend them to his case that every listener is
impressed with the conviction that surely the framers of these
statutes and principles must have a case like this before their
minds when they committed them to parchment.

Yet in the judgment of the critic the variety of talents brought
to this complex task count for nothing.

Here we see what a distinction must be made between the office of
theologian and preacher, and what a confusion of thought is saved
by keeping this line of demarcation in view.