gdom come.'

III. We pray for the coming of a kingdom which is inward and spiritual.

I do not mean to weary you with any proofs that this is so. The whole
language of Christ, the whole tenor of Scripture, the common sense of
the case, the testimony of our own souls as to what we want most,
confirm this. But it is enough to note the admitted fact; to enforce the
thought that thus the kingdom assumes a purely individual character, and
that thus its power over individuals is the pledge of its power over
masses, and is its way of exercising universal sway. 'We have all of us
one human heart, and therefore what the kingdom can do and has done for
me or for any oilier man, it can do for all.

Let me remind you of two or three consequences that flow from this
thought.

1. Lessons for politicians, for all men, as to the true way to cure the
evils of the world: Not by external arrangements; not by better laws;
not by education; not by progress in arts; not by trade, etc.

You must go deeper than these 'pills to cure an earthquake'--it is the
soul, the individual will that is diseased; and the one cure for the
world's evil is that it should be right with God; and that loyal, hearty
obedience by Christ should be in it.

2. Lessons for Christian men as to hasty externalising of the kingdom:

_Theocracies_, State Churches, and the like.

3. We pray for a kingdom that will be external. If spirit, then body; if
individuals, then communities.

It is to be all-comprehensive governing:--institutions, arts, sciences.
All spheres of human life are capable of sanctification and will receive
it. A prophet had a vision of a day when the very bells of the horses
should bear the same inscription of 'holiness to the Lord' as was
engraved on the High Priest's mitre, and when every pot and pan in the
kitchens of Jerusalem should be sacred as the vessels of the Temple.

The fault of Christians in losing sight of this--how all the aspects are
reconciled--and how this must be the completion--the point to which all
tends; how clearly maimed the gospel would be if such were not the goal.

So much, then, the prayer assumes:--the certainty that the world is
wrong; the certainty that the kingdom is the only thing to set it right;
the certainty that it can set it all right; the certainty that it will.

4. We pray for a kingdom to come which cannot be fully realised on this
side the grave. Large as are the capabilities of this scene, they are