It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Edmund Sears, 1847

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The Word of the Week, weary, might well describe even the best of us, in certain moods, when the work we believe God has given us to do on earth seems to have grown larger or more urgent despite our best efforts, or when we have given our all, and though our souls are at peace, the body is simply worn out and ready to lay down its weary burden. I think that the author of our Hymn of the Week, Edmund Sears, knew both conditions. He wrote the haunting and earnest Christmas hymn, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” in 1849, and some suggest that the Mexican War, which ended the year before that and which Sears had opposed with all his might, not to mention the bitter strife that was brewing in his own land, had weighed heavily upon his spirits.

Today’s hymn was first sung in 1849 by the Sunday School choir of the Unitarian church in Quincy, Massachusetts, where both John Adams and John Quincy Adams worshiped; but, alas, Old Man Eloquent would not have heard the carol, as he had died in 1848, one year before. We don’t know what melody the children sang it to, but in 1850 “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” was paired with a melody by the hymnodist Richard Storrs Willis — the one that is simply named “Carol,” most commonly sung in the United States. In Great Britain, though, you’re more likely to hear the melody “Noel,” written for this text by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and yes, that’s the Sullivan who composed those wonderful comic operettas with his friend the librettist W. S. Gilbert.

In 1862, Sears fell very ill and was close to death, but he felt he had work to do that would require ten or fifteen years, so he prayed for those years and, so to speak, God made the shadow on the sundial retreat. The years were granted. Here I will set the final words of the editor of Christ in the Life (1877), a book of Sears’ sermons and poems, published the year after his death in 1876:

His prayer had been answered, and he would not again ask for longer life. So his work was finished ; and very weak, and suffering much in body, but with intellectual powers undimmed, and with trustful spirit, he lay waiting for the summons to a higher life. A few hours before his death, when his physical agony was sore, and his faculties of speech and hearing were failing, he was asked by one of those around him, if he wanted any thing. With great effort, he spoke one word, “Rest.” Soon he passed from that chamber of awful suffering, to find the rest which even they who most loved him here were powerless to give. On the stone above the spot where his worn-out mortal body lies sleeping, are graven the words of the Master to whose cause he gave loving service, — “He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.”

Why don’t people talk like that anymore?

A bit on that war with Mexico: I’ve seen a fascinating clip from the old Mike Douglas Show, in which Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers are singing “The Gypsy Rover,” and who’s on the set that day but the Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban — and Ricardo comes over to talk with Mike and the lads about the Saint Patrick Brigade, or, in Spanish, El Batallon de San Patrizio. What happened was this: some newly-emigrated Irishmen fighting on the American side saw that they had a lot more in common, culturally and religiously, with the Mexicans than with the Americans, so they switched sides. You can tell from Mike’s reaction and from the tone of the conversation that there was a hearty love of your native land, all around, and gratitude for the other lands, too. For Ricardo Montalban also loved the United States.

“But get to the hymn!” you cry out. I am — because this hymn asks us to hear the song of the angels now, in the war-torn world as it is, in our own days. The incarnation of the Son of God, his teaching, his death, and his resurrection from the dead, is the cardinal event in human history, the hinge of time. We wish we could say, with the prophet who most beautifully foretold the coming of the Messiah, that the peaceable kingdom has arrived, and we have all beaten our swords into plowshares — rather than turning everything we can get our hands on into a sword. I will say, though, that even with sinful mankind, hard of heart and slow to hear, we are not simply what we used to be before the advent of Christ. The seed has not been idle. But for an earnest soul like Edmund Sears, the turning of the world toward the infant in the manger, and the opening of the human heart to the song of the angels, seems so slow, so fitful — and that is why he wrote his song. So then, when all the world is filled with angry noise, take some time, go to the manger, go in silence and prayer, and remember, the promise is here, the reality is here.

Above is the tune originally written for this hymn, the one which is best known on the American side of the pond. And the one below is beloved in England and elsewhere. It’s hard to fault either of these beautiful tunes.

It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold;
“Peace on the earth, good will to men
From heaven’s all-gracious King”:
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o’er its Babel-sounds
The blessed angels sing.

But with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
Oh hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing!

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;
Oh, rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing!

For lo! the days are hastening on
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When Peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.

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Wishing you all a blessed Advent!