The Christian doctrine does not make the facts, but only the Christian doctrine can explain them.  It seems to me that if I believed that life as I see it in the world, and as I feel it in myself, is life as God meant it to be, I should either go mad or be a wise man, not a fool, if I were to look up at the unpitying stars that could sing for joy over such a creation, and say, There is no God.  It is a refuge from such possible horrors, not an aggravation of them, which this prayer teaches us when it teaches us to pray for a kingdom yet to come, from which men have departed, and in departing have worked for themselves all this woe and ruin.

II.  The kingdom for the coming of which we pray is established already.

Christ has established it.  His name is King of kings and Lord of lords.  He is Prince of all the kings of the earth.  He is crowned with glory and honour.  By Him, that is to say, it becomes possible for men to serve God with the energies of their will, and by Him it becomes possible for men to take the pardon which God gives in Him.  He founds the kingdom, and He exercises the dominion.  On an eternal relation and on an historical fact that dominion of His is grounded,—­on an eternal relation inasmuch as He, the everlasting Word of God, has from the beginning been the Lord and King of the world; on an historical fact inasmuch as that eternal Word has been manifested on earth, and tasted death for every man.  Christ founds the kingdom, for He by His Incarnation and Sacrifice sets forth the weightiest motives for service; He opens the path to return; He brings God’s forgiveness to men, and so shall rule over them for ever—­a King and Priest upon His throne:  the Prince of all the kings of the earth, both because He has from everlasting been the anointed King, and because in time He has been, and will for ever be, the faithful and true witness, and the first begotten from the dead.  The foundation is thus laid, the dominion established, the kingdom is come; but we are to pray for its perfecting as the one hope of the world.

Then let us remember that we are thus guarded from the error that is always rife, of looking for some new thing as the one deliverance for earth.  It is sad to mark how undying that tendency is.  Age after age, men have had the heartache of seeing hopes blasted, and fair schemes for the regeneration of the world knocked to pieces about the ears of their projectors, and yet they hope on.  Every period, as every man, has its times of credulity, its firm conviction that it has found the one thing needful, and the shout of Eureka goes ever up.  Alas, alas! time after time the old experience is repeated, and the gratulations die down into gloomy silence.  Yet men hope on.  What a strange testimony at once of the futility of all the past attempts, and of the indestructible conviction that men have of the certainty that the world will be better and brighter some day, that undying expectation is!  It is sorrowful and yet ennobling to think of the persistency of the expectation, and the disappointment of it.