1 THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST IN ALL REALMS 'All things have been created through Him and unto Him, and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together: and He is the Head of the body, the Church, that in all things He might have the pre-eminence.'-Col. i. 16, 17, 18. IN one of the grandest works of the world's literature, Socrates is described by Plato as gradually building up for his disciples the conception of a perfect kingdom, hardly to be realised, he fears, on earth, but of which he thinks perhaps there is a pattern laid up somewhere in the heavens, in which kings are to be philosophers and philosophers kings. In that magnificent vision he pictures for his disciples a state in which wisdom and temperance and justice are to reign supreme, and in which each citizen is to devote himself chiefly to the perfecting of his own moral character. He will not, then,' breaks in one disciple very shrewdly, he will not, then, of course, engage in A Politics?' 'No, Glaucon,' replies Socrates, 'certainly not-unless some Divine event befall!' 'Unless some Divine event befall!' My friends, it is because we believe that that Divine event, for which the great Greek teacher wistfully and vaguely seemed to hope, has come to pass, that you and I are gathered together in this building to-night; it is, at any rate, because I believe that that Divine event has befallen, that I shall not hesitate to ask you, in this place of worship and of prayer, in this series of Lecture-Sermons which we are now commencing, not only to engage in Politics, to think earnestly about Politics, but also about Art and Poetry and Science, and Philosophy and Law and Ethics, and Sociology and all other realms of human thought and activity: it is because I believe that that Divine event has befallen that I have, I think, a right also to ask you that you should recognise that the Christian conquest of all these realms is necessary to the completion of that ideal society for which we daily pray when we say 'Thy kingdom come on earth!' and over which, we believe, the Imperial Christ must one day reign supreme. In 'that Divine event' you and I have already publicly in this church to-day expressed our belief, when we took the words of the universal Christian Creed upon our lips: I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God . . . by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was made. man.' What exactly do we mean by these words? Do we mean what St. Paul meant when, writing to the Colossian Church, he used the words which I read as my text? Let me remind you of the whole passage. It is, with the parallel argument in the letter to the Ephesian Church, one of the most important passages doctrinally in the whole of the New Testament. I will read it from the revised version: 'He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation: for in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things have been created through Him and unto Him: and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together: and He is the head of the body, the Church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence. For it was the good pleasure (of the Father) that in Him should all the Fulness dwell: and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through |