The best discoveries are sometimes made without intent, just from snuffling around in an area you like. I didn’t set out to look for the original lyrics to “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.” I knew from coffee hour conversation that Wesley had written about a “welkin” instead of “herald angels” originally, but beyond that I had no idea I was missing lovely words. In poking through The New Oxford Book of Carols in preparation for a concert this weekend, though, I found several unfamiliar lines with the notation “adapted.” Our dear friend the Cyber Hymnal provided the original. Here ’tis:
Hark, how all the welkin rings,
“Glory to the King of kings;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations, rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
Universal nature say,
“Christ the Lord is born to-day!”
Christ, by highest Heaven ador’d,
Christ, the everlasting Lord:
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of a Virgin’s womb!
Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see,
Hail the incarnate deity!
Pleased as man with men to appear,
Jesus! Our Immanuel here!
Hail, the heavenly Prince of Peace!
Hail, the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.
Mild He lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth;
Born to give them second birth.
Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conquering seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Now display thy saving power,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to thine.
Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface;
Stamp Thy image in its place.
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.
Let us Thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner Man:
O! to all thyself impart,
Form’d in each believing heart.
Look at the themes!
“Welkin” means “vault of heaven, upper air, sky.” It refers to the PLACE where the rejoicing occurs rather than the BEINGS who make the rejoicing. This is extremely important to the interpretation of the hymn. In Hebraic poetry, if you mention “sky and earth,” you mean also “everything in between”—in other words, “the whole of creation.” Wesley, no idiot scholar of the biblical languages, would have been aware of this. What the sky begins, the earth joins. “Universal nature” in the concluding thought means more than “that which is common to angelic and human beings.”
I suspect it means “all nature.” It rings with Watts’ line from “Joy to the World”: “He comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse found.” Christmas is Christ’s coming to redeem the world, not just us humans. We as the stewards of creation are only the beginning of the glorious redemption of all the ladybugs and dinosaurs and parakeets. Redeeming us is a sign of the coming redemption for all.
It’s obviously important to the poetic thrust to keep the male gender intact: Wesley’s case for the power of Christ to redeem all of nature rests on Christ’s being the Second Adam, the fulfillment of the promise to the First Adam. (1 Cor. 15:22, 45: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. … Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”) If you delete the last two stanzas (as is standard in most hymnals) and change the male references (for example, “Pleased as God with us to dwell”), you dissolve the power of the promise, the historical link between our first parents and their lost vocations with Christ and our restored vocations. Salvation is reduced, once again, to sort of a personal fling with Christ, rather than the restoration of universal harmony with a creation that is seriously out of whack.
Poor Wordsworth! Remember his “Great God! I'd rather be / a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; / So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, / Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; / Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; / Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.” He wanted to be connected to nature. So do most of the modern Pagans and Witches. Maybe they weren’t sung the full version of “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing” when they were young.
5 comments:
I'm impressed at how suffused, through and through, "Hark" is with Scripture. It's drenched in Holy Writ. It just drips with the Word. Go Wesley!
Compare this to "It came upon a midnight clear". I honestly think that this latter "hymn" should be taken out of hymnals. It has as much Scriptural content as "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". It has a nice tune and all, and I enjoy it as a Christmas carol the same way I enjoy "Sleigh Ride" or "We wish you a merry Christmas". But I can't _worship_ through it as I can through "Hark".
I really appreciate how you point out the strengths in the original. It is a much fuller, more cosmic vision of salvation, isn't it? Awe is the right response, I believe.
Thank you, Bryan and Lester, for your comments! I played a fuller version of "Hark" for a coffeehouse (of all things!) last weekend, and was pleased with the audience response. I could get away with playing more interesting stanzas in the coffeeshop than I could in the church service!--maybe because it's a concert venue?
I listened to an archived program on KFUO's Issues, Etc, - Dr. Arthur Just, from Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne discussed this hymn and all he Scriptural references- Old an New Testament, Prophets, Gospels, Epistles. "It sparkles with the Great Theme of the New Creation, Jesus as the New Adam---the Incarnation is a cosmic event that affects the whole creation...
Wesley had the gift to take a passage in scripture and capture it in a phrase and then string these together to form a narrative that makes us look at scripture in a way we may have never looked at it before....and that's the definition of a good hymn...."
He goes through it verse by verse--a very interesting program--listen-if you get a chance. http://www.kfuo.org/ie_archive_Dec04.htm
I carried a copy of this version on Christmas Eve. It made a wonderful meditation for those quiet moments in between services ( We were at church from 4PM until Midnight, with various family members participating in 3 different services)
Thank you, Nan! I hadn't heard other "cosmic" interpretations of this hymn, so I'm glad to have my suspicions corroborated!
Glad you survived Christmas Eve. I played two services at two different churches for a total of eight hours of organ playing that day, and the back and shoulders protested! But the services were beautiful--worth it once a year.
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