And do you think He came, the true and perfect King, only to go away again and leave this world as it was before, without a law, a ruler, a heavenly kingdom? God forbid! Jesus is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. What He was then, when He rode in triumph into Jerusalem, that is He now to us this day—a king, meek and lowly, and having salvation; the head and founder of a kingdom which can never be moved, a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. To that kingdom this land of England now belongs. Into it we, as Englishmen, have been christened. And the unchristened, though they know not of it, belong to it as well. What God’s will, what Christ’s mercies may be to them, we know not. That He has mercy for them, if their ignorance is not their own fault, we doubt not; perhaps, even if their ignorance be their own fault, we need not doubt that He has mercy for them, considering the mercy which He has shown to us, who deserved no more than they. But His will to us we do know; and His will is this—our holiness. For He came not only to assert His own power, to redeem his own world, but to set His people, the children of men, an example, that they should follow in His steps. Herein, too, He is the perfect king. He leads His subjects, He sets a perfect example to His subjects, and more, He inspires them with the power of following that example, as, if you will think, a perfect ruler ought to be able to do. Josiah set the Jews an example, but he could not make them follow it. They turned to God at the bidding of their good king, with their lips, in their outward conduct; but their hearts were still far from Him. Jeremiah complains bitterly of this in the beginning of his prophecies. He complains that Josiah’s reformation was after all empty, hollow, hypocritical, a change on the surface only, while the wicked root was left. They had healed, he said, the hurt of the daughter of his people slightly, crying, “Peace, peace, when there was no peace.” But Jesus, the perfect King, is King of men’s spirits as well as of their bodies. He can turn the heart, He can renew the soul. None so ignorant, none so sinful, none so crushed down with evil habits, but the Lord will and can forgive him, raise him up, enlighten him, strengthen him, if he will but claim his share in his King’s mercy, his citizenship in the heavenly kingdom, and so put himself in tune again with himself, and with heaven, and earth, and all therein.