It Came Upon a Midnight Clear
A great carol written in 1849 by Rev. Edmund Sears of Massachusetts, which looks back at the first Christmas, explains how Christmas is relevant today, and looks forward to re-singing the angels' song in the new heavens and new earth.
Welcome back to Friday Classic Hymns, where we take some of our favourite old hymns, look at their history, look at their lyrics, and then sing the song together. Since it's close to Christmas, I've been doing some Christmas hymns. A few weeks ago I did "O Little Town of Bethlehem," "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" last week, and of course last year I also did "Joy to the World" and "O Come All Ye Faithful." These are all such great classic hymns of the faith dealing with Christ's birth.
Today I want to do one that I don't really sing very often. The other ones I do every year, but this is one that we never really picked up when we started to do carols, and it's a pity I think, because it's a beautiful song. Maybe we'll start doing it going forward. It's the beautiful song "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," which tells the story of the angels singing their song that night.
Do you know the song, or do you love the song? Does it mean something to you? Please do share that in the comments below. If you aren't subscribed to my channel, I want to ask you to please click that little subscribe button and the little bell next to it, and you will get all the notifications when the new videos come in. It really helps this channel to grow, so I appreciate you doing that.
Let me tell you where the song comes from.
The Story Behind "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear"
The author is Reverend Edmund Sears, who was born in 1810 in Massachusetts. Sears became a minister in his twenties and spent most of his life ministering in Unitarian churches around Massachusetts.
It's strange how this keeps coming up in the last few classic hymns I did. "Nearer, My God, to Thee" a few weeks back was also written by a Unitarian lady, and then I did "O Little Town of Bethlehem" a few weeks back, and that minister was particularly outspoken against the Unitarians of his day. Here we have another Unitarian minister, although they said about Sears that he was not really Unitarian—he preached the divinity of Christ; he just happened to be in that denomination. You could say he was a Unitarian more in name than in belief.
He seemed to have had a particular love for Christmas, because his first song was a Christmas song (it's not really as well known as this one, although it's also beautiful). This one came out a little bit later, in 1849, and it instantly became popular. It became one of those songs that every hymnal would publish because it was almost the definitive song on this topic—the angel song.
One of the features of this hymn is that it talks about peace and goodwill to mankind, which is one of the focus points of the angel's message. When he wrote this song, America was in a time of great unrest. There was great tension between the two different sides that were about to go to war—the Civil War—and so perhaps he wrote this song trying to address this tension. I know in America these days there's also great tension between the two main political sides, and so perhaps this song should stand again as one of the real Christmas songs to remind us what it's all about.
Different sources seem to have different ideas about what happened to Sears, because one says that he retired early because of ill health and spent most of his years writing and publishing his works rather than pastoring, but other sources seem to say that he pastored all the way till the end of his life. Perhaps he did both—perhaps he was a pastor and also wrote quite a lot.
He died in 1876, and not many of his hymns are still known or sung, but this is the one—this is the one that everybody still loves, because he seemed to capture something special here.
Let's take a look at the words that he wrote.
What Do the Lyrics of "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" Mean?
Verse 1
It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old,
He sets the scene of a clear night sky and a song coming on the breeze.
From angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold:
That sort of picture of angels with their harps—I think a lot of people don't use that imagery anymore, but they were singing that day, so maybe they did have harps. Who knows?
"Peace on the earth, good will to men, from heaven's all-gracious King."
That's the message they brought. Jesus would be the bringer of peace and goodwill to all of mankind. Of course, God has goodwill towards His children. He wants them to come home and be saved, to find salvation through the Saviour.
The world in solemn stillness lay, to hear the angels sing.
You get this picture of the world very quiet and solemn as they hear the angels' fanfare praising Jesus as He came. I like this contrast between not only the song of praise but the song of goodwill and peace from God. It's a gospel message, not just a time of worship. The two have to go together.
Verse 2
Still through the cloven skies they come with peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats o'er all the weary world;
It's now 2,000-odd years later, but still the angel song is floating all over the world and capturing the hearts of many. We see it, we read it in the Bible year after year after year, and so it remains. It still settles in over the world every year.
Above its sad and lowly plains, they bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its Babel sounds the blessed angels sing.
That imagery from Genesis of the Tower of Babel, representing the sin of the world, the pride of the world, and the godless jabbering of the world. The sad and lonely plains—the angels look down on all of this and release the song of praise which brings people back to God. That's a lovely thought, isn't it?
Verse 3
Verse three changes the approach a little bit, because Sears wrote:
And ye, beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow,
Everybody who is struggling in this world, who's in a bad way—he has this message:
Look now! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing!
He's saying, "Are you in a bad way? Pause for a moment and listen to the song of the angels," because the song of the angels is going to give you hope and give you peace and remind you of the good news, which is going to get you through.
I love this, because I think Christmas time is a time of pain for many people. It's a time of loneliness, a time of grief and struggle as they miss things that they used to have that aren't there anymore. In such times, we need to pause and think about what the angels were saying—that a Saviour had come, and that through Him great joy could be found and peace could be found. Even though we are struggling, we go to Him and we listen to what the angel said, so that we can find our way through life's heavy times.
Verse 4
For lo! the days are hastening on, by prophet seen of old,
When with the ever-circling years shall come the time foretold
He starts talking about the end, when:
When peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendours fling,
And the whole world send back the song which now the angels sing.
This is so cool! I love how he then looks forward. The first verse looked back to the first Christmas, verses two and three were about how Christmas applies now, and then verse four is about how one day the new heavens and the new earth are going to be made. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, is going to be there, and then we're going to get to sing the song of the angels back to the angels. Isn't that a beautiful thought?
When I did the "Joy to the World" video (which I'd love for you to go and watch), there was a similar thing. The writer of that song didn't think of it as a Christmas song—in fact, we do, but he was writing about the second coming. "Joy to the world, the Lord has come, let earth receive her King" was about Christ coming back. Whenever we sing that song at a carol service or whatever, I tell the story and say we tonight can use the song to look back at His first coming and then also to look forward to His second coming.
Here is another song where we can do the same. We end it by looking forward and saying there will come a day when the Prince of Peace will be settled in the new heavens and earth with all of us, and we will be singing a similar song to those angels—"Glory to God in the highest"—for the angels to hear.
Isn't this a beautiful song? I wonder if I missed anything in those words. Did you see something that I didn't? I'd love for you to share that in the comments, or if you were particularly touched by some verse or some line today, share that. We'd love to read it and to celebrate with you.
Conclusion
This is the last Friday Classic Hymn of the year. I'm taking a break for a few weeks and I'll start up again in the middle of January. Thank you all for your support.
Once again, a big thank you to those who donate towards my online ministry—my daily devotions, my Friday Classic Hymns, my Encounters, and all the rest. Your support is what keeps us going and my family going, and so thank you very much. If you'd like to donate on PayPal or Patreon, you're most welcome to. I'd be so appreciative, but my content will always be free for those who aren't able to support. I really love doing it, and so I never want to charge. Please just enjoy this content and share it around.
I hope this song is going to remind you of those three things: the past—we look back to the first Christmas; how Christmas is relevant now; and how we're going to sing the angel song back in the new heavens and new earth.
References
Kenneth W. Osbeck. 101 Hymn Stories. 1985. Kregal Publications: Grand Rapids
