This majestic hymn is a paraphrase of the latter part of Psalm 72. It was written by Isaac Watts (1674-1748; see biographies) and appears in his Psalms of David, 1719, entitled: “Psalm 72: Part 2. Christ’s Kingdom among the Gentiles.” There are eight stanzas, those omitted bring 2,3, and 7. One minor change in the last line of the hymn is the word loud for Watts’s word long, where the author was giving full weight to the repetition of the word Amen in Psalm 72:19.

The tune was composed by John Hatton (c. 1710-1793) who, like Watts, was a dissenter from the Established Church. It was first set to Addison’s Psalm 19 (see SDAH 96).  Note the almost complete ascending octave with which the melody begins. It is named DUKE STREET after the street in St. Helens, Lancashire, where Hattin lived. The same tune, in four-part harmony, is used for SDAH 82, “Before Jehovah’s Awful Throne.” The unison setting here is by Melvin West (1930- ; see biographies).

-from Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White