December 17, 2005

Have faith in God –
His ark of hope appears;
Have faith in God –
In every flood of fears;
Have faith in God –
To wipe away all tears.
Have faith, dear friend, in God.

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Edmund Hamilton Sears, 1810-1876

    Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
 "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." Luke 2:13-14.

    This carol is one of the finest ever written by an American. After graduation from Harvard School of Divinity, Edmund Sears spent most of his life in small pastorates in the East.
    Sears is said to have written these words at the request of his friend, W. P. Lunt, a minister in Quincy, Massachusetts; the hymn was first sung at the 1849 Sunday School Christmas celebration.
    In the second stanza Sears stressed the social aspects of the angels' message -- the hope of Christians spreading peace and good will to others who are burdened and painfully toiling. The hymn was written in 1849, a time preceding the Civil War when there was much tension over many different issues in America, including slavery, the industrial revolution, and the California gold rush. The final verse looks forward optimistically to a time when all people will enjoy the peace of which the angels sang.

It 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, good will to men,
From Heaven’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 unfurled,
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 over its Babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.

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!

For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophet-bards foretold,
When with the ever circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.

Have Faith in God by H.M.S. Richards, Used by Permission