O Little Town of Bethlehem
208

Text: Phillips Brooks (1835–1893)
Music: Lewis H. Redner (1831–1908)
Tune name: ST. LOUIS

This carol takes us back more than two thousand years— to the “little town of Bethlehem,” where a miraculous gift has just been given to the world. A casual observer would at first sense nothing out of the ordinary. But as Christians, we look back on that night in awe and expectation.

The hymn’s author, Phillips Brooks, was a Harvard- trained minister whose dynamic and Christ- centered sermons brought him great popularity. He traveled widely during his lifetime, and he based his Christmas hymn and its picture of Bethlehem on memories of an 1865 visit to the Holy Land. During these travels he arranged to spend Christmas in Bethlehem. On Christmas Eve, he visited the field where according to tradition the shepherds heard the angelic proclamation. He then attended services in the Church of the Nativity. Afterwards he wrote a letter to the children of his Sunday School in Philadelphia, to whom he was exceptionally devoted, telling them of “standing in the old church in Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God.”

These vivid memories remained with Phillips Brooks. In 1868 he wrote this hymn text that embodies his lifelong devotion to the divine sonship of Jesus Christ. Lewis H. Redner, the superintendent of Reverend Brooks’s Sunday School and also the church organist, set the text to music. An editor later named the tune ST. LOUIS, deriving this name from the composer’s first name.

Our hymnal prints the first three verses of the carol. Originally it had two more, though Phillips Brooks himself later withdrew the fourth. Many hymnals include the fifth verse today, printing it as verse four. These are the original verses four and five:

Where children, pure and happy,
Pray to the Blessed Child;
Where misery cries out to thee,
Son of the Mother mild;
Where charity stands watching,
And faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks,
And Christmas comes once more.

O holy Child of Bethlehem!
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in,
Be born in us to- day.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel.