“Thy kingdom come.” The prayer, you will notice, regards the “kingdom” as something still to be realised. As yet it is in the future. In other places in the New Testament it is talked of as actually existent. Both views are true—the kingdom is both _present_ and _future_. You remember that when the Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom of God should come, he observed, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, for lo, the kingdom of God _is in your midst_.” The Pharisees were treating as future what was already present. The kingdom of God was already in their midst. But it was not surprising that the Pharisees failed to discover the presence of the kingdom. It was a very tiny affair at the time. Its subjects were only a handful of Galilean peasants. Our Lord Himself, speaking of the tiny, unnoticed beginning of the kingdom, said it was like unto leaven which a woman took and _hid_ in three measures of meal! The kingdom is not hidden to-day. The leaven has been working through the centuries. The presence of the _kingdom_ is the most noticeable fact in the world’s life to-day. We talk about the great empires of the world! We talk about the British Empire embracing one-fifth part of the habitable globe: and the great Russian Empire claiming a sixth part of the world; and the German Empire and the French Empire, and the rest of them. But there is one Empire greater, vaster than any other—the Empire of King Jesus. It is _in our midst_, the mightiest kingdom, the most potent force on earth. And yet, while the kingdom of God is thus _present_ and potent, it is still _future_. Its full realisation has yet to come. So long as there is in this world one man who has not yielded his heart to Christ, so long as there is a single department of life which is not brought into subjection to the law of Christ, so long will the kingdom be _unrealised_, so long shall we need to pray this prayer, “Thy kingdom come.” All the misery of this world is due to the fact that there are multitudes of men still in rebellion, that there are whole departments of human activity which are not regulated by the spirit of Christ. The kingdom is still imperfect, incomplete. Its full establishment lies in the future somewhere. Until that full establishment takes place, until God is King everywhere and over everybody and everything, the world’s golden age will never come.