St James's Palace

St James’s Palace in London is the principal seat of the British monarchy; King Charles III holds ‘the Court of St James’. Yet the monarch has not lived there for centuries and it is, if one may use this word, almost scruffy. There is an unpleasing asymmetry about its frontage and one may walk around its main walls and knock on its front door, unlike the more secure Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. Although its Tudor origins account for its style and brown brickwork, it is not as grand as some of the other establishments with which our monarchs have been pleased to associate. Yet, as my opening lines suggested, this palace is technically more important than all the others.

The church in modern Britain is diminished, weak, divided, despised and ignored. She is the gathering of God’s redeemed people, however, the proclaimer of His word and the one earthly body which hell is not permitted to terminate. Its members, though now cruelly characterised as old ladies and irrational oddballs, shall one day judge angels and reign with Christ Himself. She is Christ's principal seat on earth. Remarkable, really.