It Came Upon the Midnight Clear Hymn Study
This It Came Upon the Midnight Clear Hymn Study includes everything you need to study the hymn in one easy download.
Hymn study is a simple way to pass the heritage of hymns on to our children. Use this unit study to help your family learn more about the hymn “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.”
It Came Upon the Midnight Clear Hymn History
One snowy December day in 1849, Rev. Edmund Sears sat down and wrote the beautiful five-stanza poem that we know today as “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.”
The heartfelt words of the poem came from a heart burdened with both personal and national problems.
When he wrote the poem, Rev. Sears had recently suffered a nervous breakdown. His health issues had forced him to leave his pastorate of seven years and return to a small church in Wayland, Massachusetts, where he had pastored before.
In addition to his health problems, Rev. Sears was concerned by the political issues that faced the United States at that time. The Mexican-American War had recently ended, and now the country was becoming divided over the issue of slavery, which would eventually lead to the Civil War.
The words of the third stanza (not included in modern hymnals) paint a dark picture of a world filled with “sin and strife” and “man, at war with man”:
“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;
Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing.”
In contrast, the first stanza says that the angels are singing a message of hope (Luke 2:14), “that glorious song of old”:
“Peace on the earth, good will to men,
From Heav’n’s all-gracious King.”
Finally, the fifth stanza looks forward to the peace that every Christian can look forward to:
“When Christ shall come and all shall own
The Prince of Peace, their King,
And saints shall meet Him in the air,
And with the angels sing.”
Shortly after Rev. Sears penned his now-famous words, a newspaper editor came across the poem. He liked it so well that he published it in his magazine,The Christian Register, on December 29, 1849.
In 1850, a New York organist named Richard Storrs Willis composed the tune “Carol” to which “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” is sung today. Willis, who had studied music with Felix Mendelssohn in Germany, wrote the tune especially for the organ.
Today the hope-filled message and beautiful melody of “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” continue to inspire people around the world to “hush the noise . . . and hear the angels sing.”
You may also like: Silent Night Hymn Study
It Came Upon the Midnight Clear Hymn Lyrics
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 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 unfurled,
And still their heav’nly music floats
O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hov’ring wing,
And ever o’er its Babel sounds
The blessed 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;
Oh, 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.
Oh, rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!
For lo! the days are hast’ning on,
By prophet seen of old,
When with the ever-circling years
Shall come the time foretold
When Christ shall come and all shall own
The Prince of Peace, their King,
And saints shall meet Him in the air,
And with the angels sing.
Hymn Copywork, Notebooking Pages, and More
Copywork pages, notebooking pages, and other printables are now available in one easy download! The It Came upon the Midnight Clear Hymn Study includes everything you need to study the hymn:
- hymn history
- lyrics
- sheet music
- links to listen to the hymn
- review questions to gauge comprehension
- vocabulary words taken from the hymn
- copywork and notebooking pages
- related Scripture to memorize
