_What kind of kingdom is this?_ It is worth while noticing that the “kingdom” occupied a large place in the thought and speech of Christ. His gospel was a gospel of the kingdom. He announced that He had come to found a kingdom; He claimed the title “King” for Himself; and in what is known as the Sermon on the Mount, He gave us, shall I say, the laws and rules of the kingdom. Christ was not the first to picture an “Ideal State,” Plato had already done it in his “Republic.” But Plato’s picture would not satisfy you or me. It is an impossible, fantastic dream. Plato’s state, with its philosopher king and its destruction of the family, repels instead of attracting us. But the kingdom of God which Christ has pictured for us, that gleaming vision of a new earth in which love shall rule, fascinates and enthrals us, and the hope of its realisation becomes the mainspring of all human progress and attainment. Well what kind of a kingdom is it? Let me answer in the words of the great Apostle Paul, and say, “The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” There you have in one brief sentence the characteristics of the kingdom. The kingdom of God is _righteousness_, or, in other words, the kingdom of God is _justice_. There is cruel wrong in this world of ours, wrong that daily cries up to God for vengeance. Man wrongs man, brother oppresses brother. The dark places of the earth are full of cruelty, and places that are usually supposed to be “light,” like this favoured England of ours, are full of cruelty also. Oh, brethren, to see the wrong, the oppression, the wickedness of life, is a maddening sight! I can understand how men are sometimes driven by it into the blasphemy of despair! But the kingdom of God is justice—strict, level, even-handed justice. When _His_ kingdom comes, tyranny, oppression, wrong shall cease; men shall do right out of love for their righteous King. The kingdom of God is _peace_. Peace between men, peace between nations. All strife and mutual distrust shall be for ever buried, and the noise of war shall be heard no more, but men shall beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks. Hate and enmity shall die. “The wolf and the lamb shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain,” saith the Lord. The kingdom of God is _joy_. We are in the winter of our discontent just now. Life is full of tears and grief and pain. The tears and the grief and pain spring from the hate and the oppressions and the injustices of life. But when God is King there shall be justice and peace, and joy will follow as a natural consequence. Justice, peace, happiness those are the characteristics of the kingdom of God! Is not this a kingdom worth praying for?