“Thy kingdom come.” It is a prayer to-day; but the time will come when the prayer shall be changed into praise, and we shall be able to say, “Thy kingdom has come!” It has been coming for eighteen hundred years, and it is not here yet; but doubt not, despair not, faint not, it SHALL come. Men have called the visions such men as Plato and Sir Thomas More have given us of the “Ideal State,” “Utopias,” “Nowheres,” to mark their idea of those visions as fantastic, impractical, impossible. But let no one dare to call the kingdom of God a Utopia. Let no one dare to say of the new earth which Christ foretold that it is a vain, an impossible dream. To say that is to deny the faith, and to be guilty of the great Apostasy. Do you say that the establishment of a kingdom of justice and peace and joy is impossible? I will tell you nay. God is pledged to it, and He shall not fail nor be discouraged. The time is coming when our evil hearts shall be made pure and clean; the time is coming when our life day by day shall be sweet and holy and happy; the time is coming when lying, deceit, and greed and strife, and distrust and shame shall be banished from the earth; the time is coming when asylums and penitentiaries and gaols shall no longer openly proclaim our shame; the time is coming when the drunkard and the profligate and the criminal and the harlot shall be no more, but the people shall be all righteous—a branch of God’s planting, that He may be glorified! The time is coming when trade and politics and pleasure shall be carried on to the glory of God. The time is coming when literature and art shall be cleansed of all impure taint, and shall speak of God as the Bible speaks of Him to-day. The time is coming when China and India and the Dark Continent and the isles of the sea shall place their crowns on the head of Christ. The time is coming when every idol shall be broken and every superstition destroyed, and the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. The time is coming when righteousness, peace, and joy shall everywhere prevail, and sin and wrong shall be words whose meaning men no longer understand. _Sursum corda._ Lift up your hearts! That glorious time is coming! That glorious day is about to break. “The world is grey with morning light.” Thy Kingdom come! It _must_ come; it _will_ come. Its coming does not depend upon you or me, but upon the risen and exalted Christ. “The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hands.” Break, triumphant day of God, Break at last, our hearts to cheer; Throbbing souls and holy songs Wait to hail thy dawning here. Empires, temples, sceptres, thrones, May they all for God be won; And, in every human heart, Father, let Thy kingdom come. V The Third Petition