Two Coronations by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 4, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 26.

Two Coronations

By Editor

THERE were crowned last week in the greatest city of the world George V and Queen Mary, the rulers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and its vast colonial possessions. It was probably the most ornate, magnificent, brilliant, and impressive ceremony, or series of ceremonies, that the world ever witnessed on such an occasion. London itself was one great glittering pageant from the arrival of the representatives of nations and their reception by the King and Queen in Buckingham Palace, to the coronation on June 22 in historic Westminster, in the plain old chairs of State over the old legendary “Stone of Scone,” and on to the final procession through London the 29th. Edward VII came to the throne an old man, in his sixtieth year. George V comes to the greatest throne in the world in the prime of life. He was born in 1865, and is just past forty-six. There are internal political struggles in the empire, but firm loyalty to the King. Without is peace. Every nation of earth, we presume, has its special extraordinary representative in London.

George V and Queen Mary present the best traditions of the English people. He is a clean, temperate man. There are a simplicity and domesticity in their home which are charming. In less troublous times there would be prospect of a long, happy, prosperous reign. But the whole world is in the ebb and flow of revolutionary movements, swelling ever on a higher tide. India is fermenting with revolution. Poverty grips millions in his hard, cold grasp. Portions of the empire are longing for independence. These things must be met, and George V must help to meet them. We wish him well. We pray and hope that in the

stress and struggle of the days and years to be, England may still stand for progress, for an open Bible, for freedom to worship God, that wherever the human shall greet the union jack, flung to the breeze, he may know, in the words of Curran, that “British law makes liberty commensurate with and inseparable from the British soil — which proclaims, even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom an Indian or an African sun may have burned upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation.”

There is another coronation that awaits the world, a coronation on a vaster scale, a more magnificent pageantry, more majestic and impressive ceremonials, in a greater and sublimer city, than this earth has ever known. It is the coronation of Him who was once born in this world as Jesus of Nazareth, who wrought at His trade, walked the hills and dales, mountains and valleys, of this world, who knew by the acme and nadir of experience earth’s struggles and trials, earth’s conflicts and victories, earth’s sorrows and tragedies, but who in them all conquered, and earned the right to be crowned by the worthy of the universe King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We may be there, reader, there by His invitation, and fitted for a place in His kingdom by His grace, and clothed with a robe of His own weaving. But if we have joyful part in crowning Him there, we must crown Him supreme in our hearts here. When He is our Lord here, He will there be our Lord, our Redeemer, our everlasting King. “Crown Him Lord of all.”