Samuel Longfellow

Samuel Longfellow (1819 - 1892), a Unitarian pastor, hymnwriter, and hymnal editor was born today in Portland, Maine, and lived most of his life in New England.  He is probably best known for two Unitarian hymnals he edited with his close friend Samuel Johnson: A Book of Hymns for Public and Private Devotion (1844) and Hymns of the Spirit (1864). Both of these collections include several texts by Longfellow and Johnson, as well as poets whose verse had not previously been sung (such as John Greenleaf Whittier) or had not previously appeared in an American collection (such as Nearer, my God, to thee) Most of the material was edited to make it conform to Unitarian belief.

Longfellow and Johnson met as students at Harvard Divinity School and remained friends for the rest of their lives, carrying on a long and affectionate correspondence. When Johnson died in 1882. Longfellow spent the next year writing a memoir of his friend. A biographer of Longfellow's would later describe his friendship with Johnson as the most significant relationship of his life. The exact nature of the relationship remains unclear, but it's possible that Longfellow was thinking about it in a rather sad poem called "Love" (1851), which concludes:

 

To love, nor ask return,

To accept our solitude,

Not now for others' love to yearn

But only for their good;

To joy if they are crowned,

Though thorns our head entwine,

And in the thought of blessing them

All thought of self resign.

 

Is this the lament of a man who has decided that his feelings will never be returned in the way he wants? We will probably never know for sure.

 

Today's hymn was written toward the end of Longfellow's life, just a few years before the photograph above (from 1890), and on the occasion of the dedication of the new Cambridge Hospital, in the Massachusetts town where he was then living, and working on a three-volume biography of his brother, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

O Lord of life, our saving Health,
Who mak’st thy suffering ones our care;
Our gifts are still our truest wealth,
To serve thee our sincerest prayer.

As on the river’s rising tide
Flow strength and coolness from the sea,
So through the ways our hands provide,
May quickening life flow in from thee;

To heal the wound, to still the pain,
And strength to failing pulses bring,
Till stumbling feet shall leap again,
And silent lips with gladness sing.

Bless thou the gifts our hands have brought!
Bless thou the work our hearts have planned,
Ours is the hope, the will, the thought;
The rest, O God, is in thy hand.
 
Samuel Longfellow, 1886; alt.
Tune: ELY (L.M.)
Thomas Turton, 1844

The final stanza here has often been taken out of this hymn and used separately in many hymnals as an offertory response, but that actually changes its meaning. In that usage, the text is consecrating the offerings of the people for the work of the church.  However, the complete hymn has a different theme and meaning: that we can be healers through the gifts of God, flowing though us. This idea feels quite modern, even though the language is archaic.



Nine Years Ago: Samuel Longfellow

Eight Years Ago: Samuel Longfellow

Six Years Ago: Samuel Longfellow

Four Years Ago: Samuel Longfellow

Clasping Hands With Distant Ages (Day Two)

Now the joyful Christmas morning,
Breaking o’er the world below,
Tells again the wondrous story
Of the Christ Child long ago.
Hark! we hear again the chorus
Echoing thro’ the starry sky,
And we join the heav’nly anthem,
Glory be to God on high!

Out of every clime and people,
Under every holy name,
Is the everlasting Gospel
Good and glad for aye the same;
So we, in our happy Christmas,
Breathe the universal creed,
Clasping hands with distant ages
All in unity indeed.

Sing aloud, then, hearts and voices!
Shout, O new world, free and strong!
Hail of Light the deathless triumph,
Join the old world’s birthday song —
Glory be to God the Highest!
Peace on earth, good will to all!
’Twas the morning stars that pealed it —
Let the whole world heed the call.

Mary Noel Meigs, 1883; alt.
Tune: HARWELL (8.7.8.7.D.)
Lowell Mason, 1840

The appropriately-named Mary Noel Meigs published this hymn in Sacred Songs for Public Worship (1883), a Unitarian collection edited by Minot Judson Savage. I don't know her entire output, but the handful of her hymns that are listed at the Cyber Hymnal and Hymnary.org are all Christmas-themed.



Seven Years Ago: Good King Wenceslas

Two Years Ago: Saint Stephen

One Year Ago: While shepherds, watching flocks by night

With Fruit From Life's Glad Tree

In Advent we sing of the coming reign of God -- of justice and mercy and healing -- just as often as we sing about the imminent birth of a baby.

John Johns (1801-1847) was either a Presbyterian (as he was minister to that church in Crediton for sixteen years) or a Unitarian; sources differ.  In 1836 he was appointed Minister to the Poor in Liverpool. While tending to the needs of his people he contracted a fever and died, afterward being long remembered for his life of service. Today's hymn, written during his Liverpool years, clearly rose from his experience there. It first appeared in the Unitarian book A Collection of Hymns for Public and Private Worship (1837) by Dr. John R. Beard, along with thirty-four other texts by Johns.

Come, commonwealth of God!
Sweet reign of light and love!
Shed peace and hope and joy abroad,
And wisdom, from above.

Over our spirits first
Extend thy healing reign;
Then come and quench our urgent thirst
That ne'er shall pain again.

Soon may we all be blest
With fruit from life’s glad tree;
And in its shade like kindred rest,
All of one family.

John Johns, 1837; alt.
Tune: POTSDAM (S.M.)
Johann Sebastian Bach, 1742;
adapt. John Goss (?), 1854

The tune POTSDAM, which in the twentieth century seems to have appeared primarily in Lutheran hymnals, is attributed to J. S. Bach because the melody is derived from the second E Major fugue (BWV 878) from his The Well-Tempered Clavier (though it may be difficult to excavate).  It first appeared as a four-part hymn tune in The Church Psalter and Hymn Book (1854) along with other tunes taken from Bach. The book's preface claims that it was musical editor John Goss who "rigidly revised and, whenever necessary, corrected and rearranged" the older melodies, though I have not seen Goss credited anywhere else for this tune.

More Hymns for the Second Sunday of Advent:

Eight (Liturgical) Years Ago: Hark! the glad sound

Seven (Liturgical) Years Ago: Hail to you, God's Anointed

Six (Liturgical) Years Ago: Watcher, tell us of the night

Four (Liturgical) Years Ago: O come, O come, Emmanuel

The Feast of All Souls

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Author of life, where’er they be,
Safe in thine own eternity,
Our loved are living unto thee:
Alleluia!

All souls are thine, and here or there
They rest within thy sheltering care;
One providence alike they share:
Alleluia!

Thy Word is true, thy ways are just;
Above the requiem, "Dust to dust,"
Shall rise our psalm of grateful trust:
Alleluia!

O happy they in God who rest,
No more by fear and doubt oppressed,
Living or dying, they are blest:
Alleluia!

Frederick Lucian Hosmer, 1888; alt.
Tune: VICTORY (8.8.8. with Alleluia)
Giovanni da Palestrina, 1591
adapt. William H. Monk, 1861



Five Years Ago: The Feast of All Souls

John White Chadwick

Today is the birthday of the poet, critic, and Unitarian minister John White Chadwick (1840-1904).  He graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1864 (and wrote a hymn for the occasion) without having gone to college and was ordained later that year at the Second Unitarian Church of Brooklyn, where he served as pastor for the next forty years. Samuel Longfellow, a former minister of that congregation, participated in the ordination service and urged Chadwick to proclaim "the gospel of the immediateness of the Spirit" in his work there

Chadwick was eager to address the social and scientific advances of his day, and in his preaching, poetry, and other writing he often combined these "outside" concepts with his religious thought. He wrote of his desire "to reconceive the Bible, to reconceive the life and character of Jesus, to reconceive the universe and man and God, not with my own poor strength, but with the help of all the deepest, highest, noblest philosophical and critical and scientific thinking of the time." His sermon to the National Unitarian Conference in 1876 was titled The Essential Piety of Modern Science, and his book The Faith of Reason (1880) encapsulates much of his thought on these themes.

Several of his hymns also include these ideas, even this one for today,  written for an anniversary occasion, where he sets "truth" against the "bounds of sect and bonds of creed."

O God, whose perfect goodness crowns
With peace and joy each sacred day,
Our hearts are glad for all the years
Your love has kept us in your way.

For common tasks of help and cheer,
For quiet hours of thought and prayer,
For moments when we seemed to feel
The breath of a diviner air;

For truth that evermore makes free
From bounds of sect and bonds of creed;
For light that shines that we may see
Our own in every neighbor's need;

For this and more than words can say,
We praise and bless your holy name.
Come life or death, enough to know
That you are evermore the same.

John White Chadwick, 1889; alt.
Tune: WOOLMER'S (L.M.) 
Frederick Arthur Gore Ouseley, 1861




Eight Years Ago: Emily Swan Perkins

Seven Years Ago: Emily Swan Perkins

Seven Years Ago: John White Chadwick

Three Years Ago: Claudia Frances Hernaman

Frederick Lucian Hosmer

The dean of Unitarian hymnwriters, Frederick Lucian Hosmer, was born on this day in 1840. Many details of his life and career have been shared here in previous years (see links below).

This year I discovered a nice article in the November, 1920 issue of The Pacific Unitarian, a church magazine published in San Francisco, marking Hosmer's eightieth birthday. A celebration of the occasion on the exact date was planned by the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley (CA), where Hosmer had been named pastor emeritus in 1915, upon his (second) retirement. However, it was not certain that he would be present, as he had left California three years earlier "to visit his friends in the East." He had been staying in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester for much of that time, but when he learned of the planned celebration he cut his extended trip short and returned to Berkeley, to the evident delight of his former parishioners.  According to the article: "He was as glad to meet his old friends as they were to have him back, and his informal hand-grasping reception had nothing perfunctory about it." Various speeches of acclamation were also delivered that night.

The article also recounts a celebration held in Boston three days earlier at a board meeting of the American Unitarian Association. Unfortunately, Hosmer was not in attendance as he would have already been on his way to California, but it's not unlikely that the Board thought that he would be there as he had been staying nearby for many months.  A portrait of Hosmer was given to the Association by a committee of his friends, and Association President Samuel Atkins Eliot II spoke warmly of Hosmer and his accomplishments, and recalled his many hymn texts.

They bear witness to the unceasing revelation of truth and to the reality and perpetual influence of the life of God [...] They are prophetic utterances of the cheerful and confident faith that we associate with the animating and radiant personality of our friend.

The article also included the following hymn by Hosmer, which he had written to mark the 75th anniversary of the American Unitarian Association twenty years earlier.

From old to new, with broadening sweep,
The stream of life moves on;
And still its changing currents keep
A changeless undertone.

In prophet word and martyr faith,
Visions of saint and seer, 
The poet's song, the Spirit's breath --
That undertone we bear.

A sense we have of things unseen, 
Transcending things of time;
We catch, earth's broken chords between,
The everlasting chime!

And light breaks through the rifted haze
In shining vistas broad;
We stand amid th'eternal ways,
Held by the hand of God.

Frederick Lucian Hosmer, 1900; alt.
Tune: GERONTIUS (C.M.)
John Bacchus Dykes, 1868

It seems to me that there must be more references to Hosmer in The Pacific Unitarian, since he lived in California for most of the last thirty years of his life. He is one of the hymnwriters that most intrigues me, so I will have to investigate further.



Eight Years Ago: Frederick Lucian Hosmer

Seven Years Ago: Frederick Lucian Hosmer

Six Years Ago: Frederick Lucian Hosmer

Two Years Ago: Frederick Lucian Hosmer

One Year Ago: Frederick Lucian Hosmer

Elizabeth Gaskell

The celebrated English novelist Elizabeth Gaskell is not generally known as a hymnwriter, but there are a few to her credit.  She was born today in London in 1810. Her father had been a Unitarian minister, but resigned that occupation some years before Elizabeth's birth.

She married another Unitarian minister, William Gaskell, in 1832. She helped him in his work, teaching reading and writing as well as Scripture to Sunday School students at his church in Manchester. She also published a few short stories during the early years of her marriage. The Gaskells had four daughters. and it was following the death of an infant son in 1845 that William suggested that Elizabeth write a novel to distract from her grief. That novel, Mary Barton, was published anonymously in 1848.

Gaskell came to be primarily known for her novels, which often dealt with issues of social concern. Charles Dickens took an interest in her work, and published some of her later writing in his magazine Household Words. While supportive of her career, he was often frustrated by her refusal to agree to his editorial suggestions. Gaskell's reputation has survived to our own day, and you can probably find her books at your local bookstore. Some have also been adapted for film and television.

There are a number of ministers' wives who wrote hymns, such as Cecil Frances Alexander, Julia Anne Elliott, and Jane Lundie Bonar, so it is not surprising that Gaskell also tried her hand at it.  This wedding hymn was published in a number of nineteenth-century hymnals but is hardly known today. One unusual thing about it is that it makes no reference to gender, as most wedding hymns written before the last ten years or so usually do.

We join to pray, with wishes kind,
A blessing, God, from thee,
On those who now the bands have twined
Which ne'er may broken be.

We know that scenes not always bright
Must unto them be given;
But over all give thou the light
Of love, and truth, and heav'n.

Still hand in hand, their journey through,
Joint pilgrims may they go;
Mingling their joys as helpers true,
And sharing every woe.

May each in each still feed the flame
Of pure and holy love;
In faith and trust and heart the same,
The same their home above.

Elizabeth Gaskell, 19th cent.
Tune: HOWARD (C.M.)
Elizabeth Cuthbert, 1814


P.S. - In previous years, we have observed the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels on this date.

Eight Years Ago: Around the throne of God a band

Seven Years Ago: Stars of the morning, so gloriously bright

Six Years Ago: They are evermore around us

Four Years Ago: O Captain of God's host

Two Years Ago: High on a hill of dazzling light

One Year Ago: Praise to God who reigns above

Catherine Winkworth.

Catherine Winkworth, born today in 1829 in London, remains one of the most prolific and most well-known translators of German hymns into English. Though contemporary hymnal editors (Lutheran and others) are always looking for modern translations, Winkworth's are still prominently included.

We have covered much of her biographical information in previous years, and included many of her translations at other times of the year (click on the tag below), but a few items caught my attention this year in reading about her again.

Catherine and her sister Susanna were mostly educated at home, but they also studied with the Reverend William Gaskell, the Unitarian minister of the Cross Street Chapel in Manchester. Gaskell and his wife, Elizabeth, the popular novelist (whose books are still read and adapted for television today) were family friends of the Winkworths.  Catherine was also acquainted with other literary women of her day, including Charlotte Bronte and Harriet Martineau.

Catherine's first book of translated German hymn texts, the first volume of Lyra Germanica, was published in August of 1855. Within weeks of its appearance, Catherine began receiving requests from hymnbook editors for permission to include her translations in the collections they were preparing. The book had fortuitously arrived during a period of great change in congregational singing; the long resistance to hymns in the worship of the Church of England was coming to a close and there was great demand for new hymns. Six of Winkworth's translations appeared in the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1860), which probably spread them even faster and farther, and before long she was included in the hymnals of many denominations in the English-speaking world.  Closer to our own time, she is mostly known in Lutheran hymnals, though some of her hymns still cross denominational lines.

Today's hymn is from the second volume of Lyra Germanica (1858).

All depends on our possessing
God’s abundant grace and blessing,
Though all earthly wealth depart.
They who trust with faith unshaken
In their God are not forsaken
And will keep a dauntless heart.

God, who to this day has fed me
And to many joys has led me
Is and ever shall be mine.
God who did so gently school me,
God who still doth guide and rule me,
Will remain my Help divine.

When with sorrow I am stricken,
Hope anew my heart will quicken,
All my longing shall be stilled.
To God's lovingkindness tender
Soul and body I surrender;
For on God alone I build.

Well God knows what best to grant me;
All the longing hopes that haunt me,
Joy and sorrow have their day.
I shall doubt God's wisdom never—
As God wills, so be it ever—
Freely I commit my way.

As on earth my days are lengthened,
God my weary soul has strengthened;
All my trust in God I place.
Earthly wealth is not abiding,
Like a stream away is gliding;
Safe I anchor in God's grace.

Anonymous, from Nurnburg Gesang-Buch, 1676;

tr. Catherine Winkworth, 1858; alt.
Tune: ALLES IST AN GOTTES SEGEN (8.8.7.8.8.7.)
Johann Löhner, 1691; adapt. Johann B. König, 1737

Catherine died of heart trouble in France in 1878. She had traveled to Europe to help care for her invalid nephew Frank Shaen.  After her death, her sister Susanna (who was a noted translator of German prose) began to write a memorial volume drawn from family correspondence, but she died in 1884 before completing the work. Years later, their niece Margaret Shaen took up the project and finished it, and it was finally published in 1908, Memorials of Two Sisters: Susanna and Catherine Winkworth.



Eight Years Ago: Catherine Winkworth

Seven Years Ago: Catherine Winkworth

One Year Ago: Catherine Winkworth

One Encircling Providence

In many churches, today marks a re-gathering of the community, returning from summer to a new program year for the church, even perhaps a rededication to the mission.  Seems like a good occasion for a "re-run," a hymn about our communities of faith and what we find in them.

O Light, from age to age the same,
Forever living Word,
Here have we felt thy kindling flame,
Thy voice within have heard.
Here holy thought and hymn and prayer
Have winged the Spirit’s powers,
And made these walls divinely fair,
Thy temple, God, and ours.

What visions rise above the years,
What tender memories throng
To fill the eye with happy tears,
The heart with grateful song!
Then vanish mists of time and sense,
They come, the loved of yore,
And one encircling Providence
Holds all forevermore.

O not in vain their toil who wrought
To build faith’s freer shrine;
Nor theirs whose steadfast love and thought
Have watched the fire divine.
Burn, holy Fire, and shine more wide!
While systems rise and fall,
Faith, hope, and charity abide,
The heart and soul of all.

Frederick Lucian Hosmer, 1890; alt.
Tune: ST. MATTHEW (C.M.D.)
William Croft, 1708

You can read more about this hymn and its author from October 16, 2008. 

Today is also the fifteenth anniversary of the largest terrorist attack on the United States, known simply by the date: September 11.  Many hymn texts have been written in response, and several have been gathered by the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, which you can request through the Hymns in Time of Crisis page of their website (scroll down to Violence: Acts of Terrorism, Overcoming Despair).  More readily available online are three hymn texts on the topic (linked here) written by Presbyterian pastor Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, whose ministry in providing comforting hymns for difficult times we have covered before.

Seven Years Ago: Harry Thacker Burleigh

William Channing Gannett

William Channing Gannett was born today in Boston in 1840.  His father, Ezra Stiles Gannett, was one of the founders of the American Unitarian Association, which formalized the earlier separate Unitarian churches into a denominational structure,  His mother, Anna Tilden Gannett (who died when William was two years old), was a student of Ralph Waldo Emerson and a friend of Harriet Martineau.

He graduated from Harvard in 1860 and taught school for a year in Rhode Island, but did not believe that he was particularly good at it.  He was no more convinced that he could succeed in business or in the ministry, but he began studying at Harvard Divinity School.  He left before finishing to work with freed slaves on the Sea Islands of South Carolina, later describing this work as the most significant of his life. He returned to Boston a few years later because his father was in poor health, and eventually completed his studies at the Divinity School.  After graduation, he served churches in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and eventually Rochester, New York (his longest tenure: 1889-1908).  He was involved in the social causes of his time: including first abolition and later women's suffrage; Susan B. Anthony was on of his parishioners in Rochester.  Gannett and Anthony worked for years to have women admitted to the University of Rochester, and raised funds toward that campaign, which eventually succeeded.

Gannett wrote many hymns (some of which we have already seen here), and collaborated with Frederick Lucian Hosmer on two influential Unitarian collections: Unity Hymns and Chorals (1880) and The Thought of God in Hymns and Poems (1885).  Both collections were revised and updated by the pair in later years.

He clearly believed in an indwelling God that was accessible to every person; the basis for this hymn as well as some of his others.

O God within, so close to me
That every thought is plain,
Be Rock, be Friend, and Comfort still,
And in your heaven reign!

That heaven is mine -- my very soul!
Your words are sweet and strong;
They fill my inward silences
With music and with song.

They send me challenges to right
And loud rebuke my ill;
They ring my bells of victory,
They breathe my "peace, be still!'"

They ever seem to say "My child,
Why seek me so all day?
Now journey inward to yourself,
And listen on your way."

William Channing Gannett, 20th cent.; alt.
Tune: EXETER  (C.M.)
Lowell Mason, 1823

Gannett the 'poet-preacher,' as a colleague described him, died in Rochester in December 1923, having continued his connection to that congregation as pastor emeritus since his 1908 retirement.

Six Years Ago: William Channing Gannett

Five Years Ago: William Channing Gannett

Of Love, and Truth, and Heaven

While today is generally recognized as a celebration of love and romance, it also marks the day when Saint Valentine (one of them, at least) was beheaded.  I suppose that there may have been some ancient hymns for the day, but none of them are in use any longer, so we will settle for a wedding hymn instead.

I have not presented many hymns for weddings (only one that I recall) as most of them are "wife and husband" hymns and the definition of marriage is broader in our day.  Contemporary hymnwriters have responded to this change and are now writing texts that reflect our current needs.  There are a few older hymns, however, that might work in a modern setting. 

We join to ask, with wishes kind,
A blessing, God, from thee,
On those who now the bands have twined
Which ne’er may broken be.

We know that scenes not always bright
Must unto them be given;
But over all give thou the light
Of love, and truth, and heaven.

Still hand in hand, their journey through,
Joint pilgrims may they go;
Mingling their joys as helpers true,
And sharing every woe.

May each in each still feed the flame
Of pure and holy love;
In faith and trust and heart the same,
The same their home above.

Elizabeth Gaskell (?), 1868; alt.
Tune: LOVE'S CONSECRATION (C.M.)
Abram B. Kolb, 1902

The authorship of this hymn seems to be in some doubt.  Hymnary.org credits it to the English novelist Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), but in some other sources it is credited to her husband, the Reverend William Gaskell (1805-1884) who was a Unitarian minister, and who wrote rather more hymn texts than his wife.  Apparently when it was first published in a hymnbook only the surname "Gaskell" appeared.

Composer Abram Bowman Kolb (1862-1925) was a Mennonite who worked for many years in various editorial capacities at the denomination's publishing house. He wrote both texts and tunes.  I have no reason to believe that this tune and text have ever appeared together before but they did seem like a good thematic match, at least.

Of course, today is also the First Sunday in Lent, and if you like that sort of thing there are links below to previous hymns for the day.


P.S. - the non-religious art above is from the fresco The Triumph of Love (1738) by Italian painter Antonio Balestra.



Seven (Liturgical) Years Ago: Thirsting for a living spring

Six (Liturgical) Years Ago: O Food to souls wayfaring

Four (Liturgical) Years Ago: Your forty days of trial

Three (Liturgical) Years Ago: I heard the voice of Jesus say

Earth Listened Far and Wide (Day Nine)

We celebrate the day
Of triumph and of rest,
When, shown of God and shaped in clay,
The Word was manifest.

The angels saw and sung,
Earth listened far and wide,
Believed and preached -- a faith, a tongue,
The Word was glorified.

God, give it gracious sweep,
And here its errand bless,
Whose mercy sent it o'er the deep
To glad a wilderness.

Shoot forth its starry light
To guide our pilgrim way,
A sign of hope through this world's night,
And brighter than its day.

Again thy witness-voice!
Again thy Spirit-dove!
That hearts may in its trust rejoice,
And soften with its love.

Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham, 1835; alt.
Tune: WINDERMERE (S.M.)
Arthur Somervell, 1906

Christmas is also known in some circles as the Feast of the Incarnation.  The well-known opening verses of the Gospel of John announce the coming of the Word made flesh, and this hymn is derived from that idea.

Unitarian minister and poet Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham wrote this text in 1835 for the ordination of William Parsons Lunt at the United First Parish Church in Quincy. MA.  Lunt has another musical Christmas connection, as it was at his request that Edmund Hamilton Sears wrote It came upon the midnight clear for Lunt's Sunday School in 1849.



Seven Years Ago: Elizabeth Rundle Charles

Six Years Ago: Lo! how a Rose e'er blooming

Five Years Ago: Elizabeth Rundle Charles

Three Years Ago: Elizabeth Rundle Charles

The Dayspring From On High (Day Four)

Calm on the listening ear of night
Come heaven's melodious strains,
Where wild Judea stretches far
Her silver-mantled plains.

Celestial choirs from courts above
Shed sacred glories there;
And angels, with their sparkling lyres,
Make music on the air.

The answering hills of Palestine
Send back the glad reply;
And greet, from all their holy heights,
The Dayspring from on high.

O'er the blue depths of Galilee
There comes a holier calm,
And Sharon waves, in solemn praise,
Her silent groves of palm.

"Glory to God!" the sounding skies
Loud with their anthems ring,
"Peace to the earth, good-will to all,
From heaven the news we bring!"

Light on thy hills, Jerusalem!
The Savior now is born!
And bright on Bethlehem's joyous plains
Breaks the first Christmas morn.

Edmund Hamilton Sears, 1834; alt.
Tune: ST. AGNES (C.M.)
John Bacchus Dykes, 1866

Though minister and poet Edmund Hamilton Sears was a Unitarian, he wrote at least two hymns for Christmas. His other one is far more well known, but this text was in more than 300 hymnals up until the middle of the twentieth century.

Sears was also the uncle of hymnwriter Eliza Scudder.



Six Years Ago: Peaceful the wondrous night