December 8 

It Came upon the Midnight Clear 

TEXT: Edmond H. Sears

b. April 6, 1810, Sandisfield, Massachusetts

d. January 14, 1876, Weston, Massachusetts

Born and raised on a farm, Edmond Sears excelled in school and loved poetry. He wrote, “when at work, some poem was always singing through my brain.”²³ At Union College, Schenectady, New York, he won prizes in poetry. He graduated from Harvard Divinity School and pastored three Unitarian churches. Sears was known by Unitarians as a conservative. In his 1875 book, Sermons and Songs of the Christian Life, he wrote, “Although I was educated in the Unitarian denomination, I believe and preach the Divinity of Christ.”²⁴ In 1849, at the request of a minister friend, Sears wrote the poem “It Came upon the Midnight Clear” for a Sunday school Christmas celebration. The original includes a third stanza missing from hymnals and reflects the great pain of the Civil War and Sears’s staunch position against slavery: “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, heard not the love-song which they bring:

O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing!”

TUNE: Richard S. Willis

b. February 10, 1819, Boston, Massachusetts

d. May 7, 1900, Detroit, Michigan

Various tunes are used for this text, but CAROL is familiar to Americans. Willis was a graduate of Yale University and did further music studies in Germany where he became friends with Felix Mendelssohn. This tune was printed with Sears’s poem in the Methodist hymnal of 1878.

As you sing this hymn … notice the carol never mentions the birth of Christ, but only the angels’ announcement. Some speculate that despite his claims, Sears didn’t believe in the deity of Christ. However, he calls Him “heaven’s King.” Certainly, the focus concerns the words “Peace on earth, goodwill to men.” Soldiers in WWI and WWII loved this carol for its relevant language of “crushing loads,” “sad and lowly plains,” and “babel sounds.” In our world, these things still are present today. Why? Was the angels’ declaration simply a nice Christmas card slogan that would never come to pass?

Unfortunately, Sears did not have an accurate translation of Luke 2:14, which reads, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” Consider for a moment: With whom is God pleased? Hebrews 11:6 says that “without faith it is impossible to please God” (NIV). In our world there will never be universal, lasting peace. We should seek it and pray for it but understand that true and complete peace only comes to those who by faith accept the reason for His birth.

Poetic license may have fostered the extrabiblical descriptions Sears used, such as the angels appearing at midnight or their hovering wings and harps of gold. But the carol reminds us that many in our world are still in great pain and under crushing loads of sorrow. Pray as you sing that salvation from the Prince of Peace may bring inner peace to hearts that are open to make Him their King.