My friends, the Jewish rulers of old said so, and cried, ‘We have no king but Cæsar.’ And they remain an example to all time, of what happens to those who deny the kingdom of God. Christ came to tell them that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, and the kingdom of God was among them. But they would have none of it. And what said our Lord of them and their notion? ‘The prince of this world,’ said He, ‘cometh, and hath nothing in me. This is your hour and the power of darkness.’ Yes; the hour in which men had determined to manage the world in their way, and not in Christ’s, was also the hour of the power of darkness. That was what they had gained by having their own way; by saying—The kingdom is ours, and not God’s. They had fallen under the power of darkness, not of light. The very light within them was darkness. They utterly mistook their road on earth. At the very moment that they were trying to make peace with the Roman governor, by denying that Christ was their King, and demanding that He should be crucified,—at that very moment the things which belonged to their peace were hid from their eyes. Never men made so fatal a mistake, when they thought themselves most politic and prudent. They said among themselves—‘Unless we put down this man, the Romans will come and take away our place,’ _i.e._ our privileges, and power, and our nation. And what followed? That the Romans did come and take away their place and nation, with horrible massacre and ruin: and so they lost both the kingdom of this world, and the kingdom of God likewise. Never, I say, did men make a more fatal mistake in the things of this world than those Jews to whom the kingdom of God came, and they rejected it. And so shall we, my friends, if we forget that, whether we like it or not, the kingdom of God is within us, and we within it likewise. 1. The kingdom of God is within us. Every gracious motive, every noble, just, and merciful instinct within us, is a sign to us that the kingdom of God is come to us; that we are not as the brutes which perish; not as the heathen who are too often past feeling, being alienated from the life of God by reason of the ignorance which is in them: but, that we are God’s children, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven; and that God’s Spirit is teaching us the laws of that kingdom; so that in every child who is baptized, educated, and civilized, is fulfilled the promise, ‘I will write my laws upon their hearts, and I will be to them a Father.’ God’s Spirit is teaching our hearts as He taught the heart of that old Eastern king. It may be, it ought to be, that He is teaching us far deeper lessons than He ever taught that king.