Sabbath Work - to hear the angels sing

Pain and suffering often smack you in the face, joy and happiness sneak up on you from the side.

This year Christmas Eve at home with friends was truly marvelous. Among the carols we sang was "It came upon the midnight clear". We didn't sing the third verse, it wasn't in the hymnal. It's missing from a lot of hymnals.

It wasn't until I stumbled upon "The Gospel in Hymns" by Albert Edward Bailey at Books 'n Friends in Sparta and read his commentary on James Russell Lowell's "The Present Crisis" and then, by inertia, continued to read the section on Edwin Hamilton Spears, that I awoke to the poetic prophecy of that Christmas Carol.

Actually, I didn't stumble, I soaked in a warm bath, a blessed sacrament in itself. I often take two, three, four books or more with me. Wintertime is especially conducive to this sacrament where one gets to rest beside the road and listen for inspiration.

Sears was a Unitarian Christian who believed in the divinity of Jesus, a stumbling block for rational humanists. That is, until they realize that "Peace is Divine".

It is almost silly to deny social Darwinism, it plays out daily in the Middle East and the streets of Galax Virginia. The clamor of "Real Politik" and the Neocons resounds not only in the bombs and IEDs but also in the alienation of the "stranger". To turn social Darwinism on its head, now there's the trick.

But Sears tells it better than I so here is the hymn in full.

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.