Scripture Verse

Introduction

Anecdote

Perhaps one of the most in­ter­est­ing oc­ca­sions on which this hymn was used was that on which King George, the sa­ble, of the South Sea Is­lands, but of blessed me­mo­ry, gave a new con­sti­tu­tion to his peo­ple, ex­chang­ing a hea­then for a Chri­stian form of gov­ern­ment.

Under the spread­ing branch­es of the ban­yan trees sat some thou­sand na­tives from Ton­ga, Fi­ji, and Sa­moa, on Whit­sun­day, 1862, as­sem­bled for Di­vine wor­ship.

Foremost amongst them all sat King George him­self. Around him were seat­ed old chiefs and war­ri­ors who had shared with him the dan­gers and for­tunes of ma­ny a bat­tle—men whose eyes were dim, and whose pow­er­ful frames were bowed down with the weight of years.

But old and young alike re­joiced together in the joys of that day, their faces most of them ra­di­ant with Chris­tian joy, love, and hope.

It would be im­pos­si­ble to des­cribe the deep feel­ing ma­ni­fest­ed when the so­lemn ser­vice be­gan, by the en­tire au­di­ence sing­ing Dr. Watts’ hymn…

Who so much as they could real­ize the full mean­ing of the po­et’s words? For they had been res­cued from the dark­ness of hea­then­ism and can­ni­bal­ism and they were that day met for the first time under a Chris­tian con­st­itu­tion, und­er a Chris­tian king, and with Christ Him­self reigning in the hearts of most of those pre­sent.

That was in­deed Christ’s king­dom set up in the earth.

Stevenson, pp. 351–52