It Came upon the Midnight Clear
207

Text: Edmund H. Sears (1810–1876)
Music: Richard S. Willis (1819–1900)
Tune name: CAROL

When the angels appeared to the shepherds to announce the birth of the infant Jesus, their message was significant to the entire human race. From that birth began a series of changes and miracles, foretold by prophets, that would teach and redeem the people of the world. This hymn sings of the angels’ message and its implications.

Edmund H. Sears, a Unitarian minister who wrote this popular carol in 1849, was naturally concerned with the social changes that would, or should, result from the Savior’s birth and ministry. His hymn text is concerned with the angels’ message not just as a one- time event but as an announcement that continues today to float “o’er all the weary world,” heralding a new age of peace and happiness.

The author’s social concerns are even more evident when we read two verses not included in our hymnal:

Yet 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:
O 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:
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!

The clergyman who was editor of the volume that first printed this hymn remarked, “I always feel that, however poor my Christmas sermon may be, the reading and singing of this hymn are enough to make up for all deficiencies” (quoted in Charles S. Nutter and Wilbur F. Tillett, The Hymns and Hymn Writers of the Church [New York: Methodist Book Concern, 1911], 63). The poem, written in 1849, originally bore the title “Peace on Earth.”

The tune that today seems so inseparable from these words was not originally written for them. Composed in 1850, it served as the melody for two other Christmas carols, “See Israel’s Gentle Shepherds Stand” and “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night,” before it was linked so successfully with “It Came upon a Midnight Clear.”