Dear Editor,
I appreciated Antony Rees’s article calling on us to reflect on the words of familiar carols. I cannot agree, however, with his advocacy of It came upon the midnight clear.
Its author, Edmund Sears, was an American Unitarian minister/theologian; his hymn has been described (by Unitarians) as ‘quintessentially Unitarian.’ Because, as anyone can see, it is a Christmas hymn that carefully avoids mentioning the Incarnation. Hail the incarnate Deity (Wesley) would have been anathema to Unitarian congregations! And the ‘age of gold’ reference in the hymn owes nothing to biblical imagery, let alone the Second Coming (which Sears appeared to identify as the coming of the Holy Spirit); it is more probably linked to his admiration for classical Greece and its cyclical view of history (the ‘ever-circling years’). Others have noted it stresses peace on earth, but not in the sense of God and sinners reconciled (Wesley again).
Sears himself spoke of Christ as in some sense an ‘incarnation of Divine Life’, and was thus deemed ‘conservative’ among Unitarians. He claimed to experience Jesus in daily life, but he denied original sin, rejected substitutionary atonement, and denied the resurrection in any identifiably biblical sense. He viewed the Holy Spirit as merely a ‘Divine influence,’ and was sympathetic to some of the teachings of Swedenborg. Hardly surprising, then, that his carol fails to reflect biblical orthodoxy!
The Jubilate version of this carol (also in Praise!) has tried to inject some Christian content into it, but the Incarnation is still hardly visible. I would suggest that we have many, many more seasonal hymns that are worthy of singing this Christmas.
Yours sincerely,
