atedly as principalities and powers, indicating numbers and
organization, dignity, and power.[21] All of this is included in what
has been placed under Christ's authority.[22]

Is Christ Reigning Now?

But there is still another question that has been impatiently pushing
underneath for some time. And it also is an intensely practical one.
Does this mean that Christ is actually ruling now over this domain of
His? How about the affairs on the earth? Are all things here subject to
Him? Is this the way He would have things go? And some of us think the
evil spirits seem pretty free in their movements. This present order of
things that we are living in the thick of, is this the reign of the
crowned Christ? And some of us feel the stress of things so much that we
can scarce keep patient for a thoughtful poised answer to our questions.

There are those, and good earnest folk they are, too, who tell us that
Christ has come, and is constantly coming, more and more, into our
common life. The higher ideals that are crowding for expression, the
more spiritual conceptions of man and his brotherly relations, the
constant striving toward better civilization, the bettering of the
condition of the poor and less fortunate, the increased recognition of
men's rights in the complex industrial world, the increasing effort to
correct evils by legislation, the great moral reforms that are sweeping
aside the awful liquor curse, and loosening women's bonds, and
safeguarding young womanhood and children, the newer aggressiveness in
the missionary propaganda and in much of the activity of the Church,
even the attempt to humanize and civilize the warfare that in itself is
stupidly savage and utterly inhuman,--is not all this a coming of Christ
and of the Christ-spirit into our common life? many ask.

And there is only one answer to such questions, a strong emphatic "yes."
It surely is the Christ-spirit that moves in all of this. This is a
coming of Christ; and a blessed coming, too. There was nothing of this
sort before the Christ-spirit began to sweeten the world's life. And
there is none of it to-day except in those parts of the world where the
Christ-spirit influences life.

But--there's a "but"--it proves a blessed but; this is only a crumb or
two falling from a loaded table. And he who judges Christ by these
crumbs only, wholesome and toothsome as they are, will have a very
skimpy conception of Christ.

All of this sort of thing that ha