But where, then, is the fulfilment of the promise? You have the record and the evidence of it in your New Testament. There, in the history of the Apostles and disciples of our Lord, and in their Epistles, you behold a body of men whose souls are filled with peace, and with the sense of the goodwill of God, and who are living the life described and enjoined by our Lord in the Gospels--the life of the Sermon on the Mount, and of His parting discourses to His disciples recorded by St. John. They are living in the midst of that world of passion and violence and tyrannical domination of which I have spoken, and yet they speak to us in tones of the most profound peace, and joy, and hope, and even exultation. The reason is that, through faith in our Lord, in His sacrifice, and in the promise of His spirit, they have found peace with God--the peace of which the angels spoke; they live in the blessed assurance of His goodwill, and they look forward with infinite rejoicing to His return, to establish, as He promised, a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. That spiritual Kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost has subsisted continuously from that time to this. It is here in the midst of us. There are souls whom we are privileged to know, who are visibly living in that kingdom of Divine peace and goodwill, and who, when they leave us here, pass, as we and they are assured, into fuller realization of that kingdom, looking forward to its complete establishment and revelation at the Day of the general Resurrection. That is the kingdom Of the Lord’s elect, of the Saviour’s followers, of the saints--perfect or imperfect, but still saints, of all ages, the Church of Christ and the Kingdom of God. It is a kingdom within which every Christian soul is admitted by baptism to his place and his privilege, and it rests only with him to claim its blessings by his faith and his life. In a word: the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles are the record of the fulfilment of the angels’ promise of peace and love and Divine goodwill, for all who would submit to the King and Saviour whose advent they proclaimed, and who would receive His blessings in the way in which He offered them. To all whom would “repent and believe and be baptised in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins,” the promises of the angelic song were fulfilled, and they have been fulfilled similarly to this hour.