I am reading Jenny Uglow’s A Gambling Man – a history of the first ten years of the reign of Charles II. It is a fun book but curiously depressing. Everyone seems out to climb the hierarchy and the world is a cynical, weary place. This passage from John Buchan interested me.

We can make a catalogue of the moral qualities of the greatest leaders, but we cannot exhaust them.

First, of course, there will be fortitude, the power of endurance when hope has gone. The power of taking upon oneself a desperate responsibility and doing all. There must be self-forgetfulness – a willingness to let worldly interests and even honour perish if only the task is accomplished. There must be patience, supreme patience under misunderstandings and setbacks and the muddles and interferences of others. These must be resiliance in defeat; a manly optimism which looks at the facts in all their bleakness and yet dares to hope. There must be a sense of the eternal continuity of a great cause, so that failure will not seem like the end and a man sees himself as only a part in a prededicated purpose.

And another quality will not, I think, be lacking in the greatest leaders – I mean human Sympathy.

We don’t make men like John Buchan any more. His novels were wonderful – I love them all – but his integrity was also wonderful.

Today’s reading from Matthew 19:16-22 is appropriate. It starts:

There was a man who came to Jesus and asked: “Master, what good deed must I do to posess eternal life…”