Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

The carol we know and sing is based on an earlier version written by Charles Wesley (1707-88), with some adaptation by others along the way, including George Whitefield (1714-70). The version below has variations on fourth and fifth verses, now hardly ever sung, but which are theologically rich. This remains one of my favourite carols.

Hark! The herald angels sing,

‘Glory to the newborn King;

Peace on earth, and mercy mild,

God and sinners reconciled!’

Joyful, all ye nations rise,

Join the triumph of the skies;

With the angelic host proclaim,

‘Christ is born in Bethlehem!’

Hark! the herald angels sing,

‘Glory to the newborn King!’

Christ, by highest Heaven adored;

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 with us in flesh to dwell,

Jesus our Emmanuel.

Hark! the herald angels sing,

‘Glory to the newborn King!’

Hail the heav’nly 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.

Hark! the herald angels sing,

’Glory to the newborn King!’

Come, Desire of nations, come,

Fix in us Thy humble home;

Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring 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.

Hark! the herald angels sing,

‘Glory to the newborn King!’

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,

Stamp Thine 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,

Formed in each believing heart.

Hark! the herald angels sing,

‘Glory to the newborn King!’

Let Earth and Heaven Combine

I blogged on this back in 2011, but it remains one of my favourite Christmas hymns. We used to sing it regularly in my first home church, but I haven’t sung in years. It’s by Charles Wesley. Verse 2 sounds a tad docetic (!), but the whole tenor of the hymn speaks of the mystery of what God was doing in becoming flesh, captured wonderfully in those lines in the first verse – ‘Our God contracted to a span/Incomprehensibly made man’. That always made me smile as each member of the congregation would invariably fit the words to the music in slightly different ways! Still, it’s a great line.

Let earth and Heaven combine,

Angels and men agree,

To praise in songs divine

The incarnate Deity,

Our God contracted to a span,

Incomprehensibly made Man.

He laid His glory by,

He wrapped Him in our clay;

Unmarked by human eye,

The latent Godhead lay;

Infant of days He here became,

And bore the mild Immanuel’s Name.

See in that Infant’s face

The depths of deity,

And labour while ye gaze

To sound the mystery

In vain; ye angels gaze no more,

But fall, and silently adore.

Unsearchable the love

That hath the Savior brought;

The grace is far above

Of men or angels’ thought:

Suffice for us that God, we know,

Our God, is manifest below.

He deigns in flesh t’appear,

Widest extremes to join;

To bring our vileness near,

And make us all divine:

And we the life of God shall know,

For God is manifest below.

Made perfect first in love,

And sanctified by grace,

We shall from earth remove,

And see His glorious face:

His love shall then be fully showed,

And man shall all be lost in God.

Charles Wesley (1707-1788)

Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus

Come, thou long-expected Jesus,

Born to set thy people free;

From our fears and sins release us,

Let us find our rest in thee.

Israel’s strength and consolation,

Hope of all the earth thou art;

Dear desire of every nation,

Joy of every longing heart.

Born thy people to deliver,

Born a child and yet a King,

Born to reign in us for ever,

Now thy gracious kingdom bring.

By thine own eternal Spirit

Rule in all our hearts alone;

By thine all-sufficient merit,

Raise us to thy glorious throne.

Charles Wesley wrote this hymn, which was first printed in his Hymns for the Nativity of our Lord (1744). It largely flows out of Haggai 2:7 – ‘“I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,” says the Lord Almighty’ – but its mere two stanzas are packed tight with rich theology.

A lovely rendition of the carol by Marcy Priest along with a great video produced by The Skit Guys can be seen here – beautifully visualising how the biblical story leads up to the birth of Jesus.

David Ceri Jones on the Evangelical Revival

David Ceri Jones, The Fire Divine: An Introduction to the Evangelical Revival (Nottingham: IVP, 2015), 184pp., ISBN 978-1-78359-290-6.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this overview of the eighteenth-century evangelical revival. I’ve been trying to read more Church history and Christian biography recently, so this was enormously helpful for putting in place a slightly bigger picture of the period covered. It focuses particularly on John Wesley, George Whitefield, and (though to a lesser degree) Jonathan Edwards, and the revivals in Britain and America associated with their ministries – all of which have left their legacy on evangelicalism today. 

The posture of the work suited me well; it’s courteous about its subject matter, but keeps enough distance in its account to allow me to make my own value judgments. I particularly appreciated its transparency around the evident ‘flaws’ of those whose work is described. It’s respectful, but far from hagiographical, and (I think) the better for it.

I had been wondering whether to buy and read Thomas S. Kidd’s recently-published Yale biography on George Whitefield. This book persuaded me it would be a good next step to do so.

All Ye That Pass By

For this year’s Good Friday...

All ye that pass by, to Jesus draw nigh:

To you is it nothing that Jesus should die?

Your ransom and peace, your surety He is:

Come, see if there ever was sorrow like His.

For what you have done His blood must atone:

The Father hath punished for you His dear Son.

The Lord, in the day of His anger, did lay

Your sins on the Lamb, and He bore them away.

He answered for all: O come at His call,

And low at His cross with astonishment fall!

But lift up your eyes at Jesus’ cries:

Impassive, He suffers; immortal, He dies.

He dies to atone for sins not His own;

Your debt He hath paid, and your work He hath done.

Ye all may receive the peace He did leave,

Who made intercession, My Father, forgive.

For you and for me He prayed on the tree:

The prayer is accepted, the sinner is free.

That sinner am I, who on Jesus rely,

And come for the pardon God cannot deny.

My pardon I claim; for a sinner I am,

A sinner believing in Jesus’ name.

He purchased the grace which now I embrace:

O Father, Thou know’st He hath died in my place.

His death is my plea; my Advocate see,

And hear the blood speak that hath answered for me.

My ransom He was when He bled on the cross;

And losing His life He hath carried my cause.

Charles Wesley 1707-88

Let Earth and Heaven Combine

Here is one of my favourite Christmas hymns that I haven’t sung for a while. It’s by Charles Wesley. I will be forever grateful that I spent my formative Christian years in a church tradition where hymns like this were de rigueur – sung, believed, preached, and lived.

Looking at it again, the second verse now sounds a little docetic to my ears! I strongly suspect that can’t be the case with Wesley. Moreover, the whole tenor of the hymn speaks of the mystery of what God was doing in becoming flesh, captured wonderfully in those lines in the first verse – ‘Our God contracted to a span/Incomprehensibly made man’. That always made me smile as each member of the congregation would invariably fit the words to the music in slightly different ways. But, just to sing it, to think about matching the music, required thinking about the lines and then being taken up – even just for a moment – in wonder.

Let earth and Heaven combine,

Angels and men agree,

To praise in songs divine

The incarnate Deity,

Our God contracted to a span,

Incomprehensibly made Man.

He laid His glory by,

He wrapped Him in our clay;

Unmarked by human eye,

The latent Godhead lay;

Infant of days He here became,

And bore the mild Immanuel’s Name.

See in that Infant’s face

The depths of deity,

And labour while ye gaze

To sound the mystery

In vain; ye angels gaze no more,

But fall, and silently adore.

Unsearchable the love

That hath the Savior brought;

The grace is far above

Of men or angels’ thought:

Suffice for us that God, we know,

Our God, is manifest below.

He deigns in flesh t’appear,

Widest extremes to join;

To bring our vileness near,

And make us all divine:

And we the life of God shall know,

For God is manifest below.

Made perfect first in love,

And sanctified by grace,

We shall from earth remove,

And see His glorious face:

His love shall then be fully showed,

And man shall all be lost in God.

Charles Wesley (1707-1788)

Bruce Hindmarsh on Charles Wesley (1707-88)

Bruce Hindmarsh, ‘And Can It Be? Charles Wesley Gets his Turn’, Books & Culture (May/June 2009).

Bruce Hindmarsh looks at a number of books which appeared during and in the wake of the tercentenary of Charles Wesley’s birth, which have helped to increase his profile, and in his own right, vis-à-vis his brother John.

Some of the volumes flow out of ongoing work on manuscripts which have never been prepared for publication, which has involved deciphering and translating Charles’ idiosyncratic shorthand. Hindmarsh wonders whether the flurry of material that has followed the recent anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and the critical editions of his work that have appeared may now stimulate a similar wave of scholarship on Charles Wesley.

In the picture that emerges from recent biographies, Hindmarsh identifies four turning points in Charles Wesley’s life:

• 1729 – when Charles was at Oxford, during which time he renewed his dedication to ideals of devotion of a high Anglican sort.

• 1736-1739 – when he passed through a period of crisis, experienced a conversion, and found his voice as an evangelist and poet and hymn writer. (By the time of his death, he had produced some 9,000 hymns or poems, roughly 27,000 stanzas or 180,000 lines – three times the output of Wordsworth.)

• 1747-49 – when he met, courted, and married Sarah Gwynne and began a happy period as a husband, father, and well-to-do householder (in contrast with his brother, John, with his itinerant ministry and unsuccessful marriage).

• 1756 – when he settled down as a local Methodist minister in Bristol and later (1771) in London.

In the works he reviews, Hindmarsh draws particular attention to some which show how Charles reflected the period in which he lived, how his hymns and poetry ‘dialogued’ with Scripture and the world of his time, and explore his contribution to trinitarian theology via his hymns…

Beyond our utmost thought,
And reason’s proudest flight,
We comprehend him not,
Nor grasp the infinite,
But worship in the Mystic Three
One God to all eternity.

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

The carol we tend to know and sing is based on an earlier version written by Charles Wesley (1707-88), with some adaptation by others along the way, including George Whitfield (1714-70). The version below has variations on fourth and fifth verses, now hardly ever sung.

Hark! The herald angels sing,
‘Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!’
Joyful, all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With the angelic host proclaim,
‘Christ is born in Bethlehem!’
Hark! the herald angels sing,
‘Glory to the newborn King!’

Christ, by highest Heaven adored;
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 with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
‘Glory to the newborn King!’

Hail the heav’nly 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.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
‘Glory to the newborn King!’

Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring 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.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
‘Glory to the newborn King!’

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp Thine 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,
Formed in each believing heart.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
‘Glory to the newborn King!’