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Edmund Sears Quotes

Edmund Hamilton Sears was an American Unitarian parish minister and author who wrote a number of theological works influencing 19th-century liberal Protestants. Today, Sears is primarily known as the man who penned the words to "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" in 1849. It has been sung to two tunes, one by Richard Storrs Willis and another adapted by Arthur Sullivan from a traditional English air.

Sears originally wrote the song as a melancholy reflection on his times while a minister in Wayland, Massachusetts, US. However, "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" has since become a popular Christmas carol. Wikipedia  

✵ 6. April 1810 – 14. January 1876
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Edmund Sears: 4   quotes 0   likes

Famous Edmund Sears Quotes

“Calm on the listening ear of night
Come Heaven’s melodious strains,
Where wild Judea stretches far
Her silver-mantled plains.”

Edmund Sears

Christmas Song, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“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.”

Edmund Sears

The Angels' Song ("It Came Upon A Midnight Clear", 1849).

“Death is a stage in human progress, to be passed as we would pass from childhood to youth, or from youth to manhood, and with the same consciousness of an everlasting nature.”

Edmund Sears

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 177.

“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 man
From Heaven’s all gracious King."
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.”

Edmund Sears

The Angels' Song ("It Came Upon A Midnight Clear", 1849).

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