It Came Upon the Midnight Clear is a memorable Christmas song that goes back to early America. Not only is this song a Christian Standard, but its tune is played all throughout American Churches on Christmas.
It Came Upon the Midnight Clear – Written by A Man with Compassion
In 1849, a Unitarian minister from Wayland, Massachusetts, was writing a Christmas Eve message for his congregation. As Dr. Edmund Sears worked on his sermon; he was a troubled man. Though it would be another decade before a civil war tore the United States apart, the debate over slavery, compounded by the poverty he saw in his own community, had all but broken the man’s spirt. He desperately searched for words to inspire his congregation, but he was having a problem lifting even his own spirit above the depressing scenes that surrounded him.
Sears, then thirty-nine years old, had been educated at Union College in Schenectady, New York, and at Harvard Divinity School. Though the Unitarian church was known for not exposing the divinity of Christ, Sears preached the divine nature of Jesus in his weekly sermons. He believed that Jesus was the Son of God and had died on the cross for man’s sins. He also believed that every Christian should be involved in reaching out to the lost, helpless, and poor.
In his community Sears was a force of caring in a world that seemed to concern itself little with the traumas of the hungry or the sick. His burden for the helpless forced him to reach out each day to those Christ called “the least of these.” Yet he worked on writing an uplifting Christmas message, it was the poverty and the hopelessness of the people he touched in the slums that sickened his heart and blocked his progress. He must have wondered how he could write about the Light of the world when the world seemed so very dark.
As Sears struggled, he thumbed through his well-worn Bible. In the second chapter of Luke, the minister was touched by the eighth and ninth verses: And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.”
After considering the miraculous nature of that long-ago moment, Sears picked up his pen and jotted down a five-verse poem he called “It Came upon the Midnight Clear.” He then retrieved from his files another Christmas poem he had written a decade before: “Calm on the listening ear and night comes heaven’s melodious strains.” Beginning his message with his older Christmas poem, he quickly wrote a short sermon and decided to end his Christmas service with the inspired words of his newest poem.
Today Sear’s poem turned carol is considered joyful and uplifting. Yet when first delivered, its audience probably saw it as more a charge or challenge than the story of a miraculous birth in a faraway land.
While the minister wanted his congregation to celebrate Christmas, he also wanted them to reach out to the poor, to address the nation’s social ills, and to consider what they could do as individuals to best reflect the spirit of Christ in their daily lives. In other words, he wanted to see people look to heaven and understand how God needed them to serve man in his name. Nowhere was this message more obvious than in the poem’s second verse, one that has been discarded and all but forgotten.
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world hath 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!
Not only was the beauty and wonder of the Christmas story woven into a lyrical fabric that was rich and meaningful, but Sears also mnaged to point out that God, in the form of a child, was entering a world that sorely needed his help. He wanted his congregation and the world to hear those cries as he did.
Since Sears was a magazine and newspaper editor in addition to being a preacher, he had the means to bring his new poem to a wider audience than just his church. The Christian Register, one of the publications for which Sears penned features, printed “It Came upon the Midnight Clear” in its December 29, 1849, issue. Yet, as is so often the case with inspired workd, it would take a second man to breath lasting life into the poem and make it a Christmas classic.
Richard Storrs Willis was a Yale graduate who had been composing choral pieces since his youth. After graduating from college, the native Bostonian furthered his education in Germany in the 1840s by studying with Moritz Liepizi and Felix Mendelssohn. In 1848 he returned to the United States and became the music critic for the New York Tribune.
An avid reader, Willis probably found Sears’s poem in the Christian Register. Earlier the composer had written a tune he called simply, “Carol.” He discovered that this melody perfectly fit with the lyrics of the poem. Willis’s combination of music and words was first published in 1850 with the uninspired title, “Study Number 23.” A decade later, using a new, updated arrangement, Willis republished the song as “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night.” It is the second version that is still sung today.
Within a decade of its second printing, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” had been adopted for use in a wide range of denominational hymnbooks. As the tradition of caroling spread from New England and was adopted throughout the country, the song became a standard for roaming bands of Christmas choirs as well. Yet it wasn’t until the twentieth century that the carol would become one of the world’s most popular Christmas messages in song.
During World War 1, American troops sang “it Came upon the Midnight Clear” throughout France during the holiday season. Thus the song went to war and came home with a generation of men who made it a part of their holiday traditions. Twenty-five years later, U.S. troops took the song back to the front lines of World War 2, and entertainers such as Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore performed the haunting carol throughout the Pacific and Europe at U.S.O. shows. For homesick soldiers, no words. seemed to voice their own prayers of “peace on earth” as well as those penned by Edmund Sears a century before.
The lasting impact of the song is probably due in part to its last verse. In that stanza Sears begged the world to sing back to heaven the song of hope, peace, love, joy, and salvation. Although “it Came upon the Midnight Clear” has been sung millions of times since Sears first read his poem on a cold Christmas Eve in 1849, most Christians have not yet joined together to cure the world’s ills and bring peace to all men. The author’s charge, and indeed Jesus’ own call, remains largely unanswered.
It Came Upon the Midnight Clear – Versions
It Came Upon the Midnight Clear Chords
It Came Upon the Midnight Clear Lyrics
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, goodwill to men, from heav’n’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 unfurl
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.
O 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.
For lo the days are hastening on, by prophets seen of old
When with the ever-circling years shall come the time foretold
When the new heaven and earth shall own the prince of peace their King
And the whole world send back the song which now the angels sing.
For a Further History of “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” – Follow this Link…
It Came Upon the Midnight Clear – Wikipedia
