O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light;
the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
For Christ is born of Mary; and, gathered all above,
while mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wond’ring love.
O morning stars, together proclaim the holy birth,
and praises sing to God the King, and peace to men on earth.
How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is giv’n!
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heav’n.
No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,
where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.
O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in; be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels, the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!
The mid-nineteenth-century Christmas hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” celebrates the concreteness of the incarnation in the stillness of a particular night, even as its second half privileges Christ’s coming to dwell in our hearts as the more lasting peace to men on earth.
Philips Brooks wrote this hymn inspired by his visit to the historical site of Bethlehem in 1866, and we hear in Brooks’ hymn his memory of the stillness of those streets and the silence of the starry sky without, perhaps, the noise and interfering light pollution from back home in Boston where he was the rector at Trinity Church. Brooks can just imagine Christ’s birth happening here.
After the second verse has introduced Baby Jesus, however, the hymn turns from observing the angels, who are, of course, observing the child and addresses them. In this moment, the reflective reverie is broken by a series of commands. The watching angels, spoken to as “O morning stars,” are told to “proclaim Christ’s birth” and “sing praise to God” as well as to sing “peace to men on earth.” The end of verse two is Brooks’ poetic rendering of Luke 2.14, where the heavenly host is described as “praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.’” But these commands mark a significant transition in the hymn; the descriptive hymn about the event of Christ’s birth and its announcement of “peace to men” is transformed into the soteriological exploration of the phrase “peace to men.” This marvelous little Christmas hymn does more than state that the angels spoke of peace to men. Verse three draws us into explicating what such a peace could possibly mean.
What does it mean for the angels to sing “peace on earth” in “O Little Town of Bethlehem”? It can’t mean that angels just keep recounting the nice sleepy, starry night that the hymn opened with. Such nocturnal stillness is too temporary; it is no lasting peace. Rather, the command to “sing peace on earth” at the end of verse two seems to be directly tied to verse three’s extended description of effectual calling. The logic of the hymn’s verse structure reveals the description of effectual calling in verse three as the “peace on earth” declared in verse two.
The silence of the night that opened the hymn is now eclipsed by the silent but compelling work of the Holy Spirit “in his applying to us the redemption purchased by Christ by working faith” in the hearer as the Westminster Shorter Catechism would describe it: “How silently, how silently / The Wonderous gift is given,” the hymn continues, “So God imparts to human hearts / the blessing of his heaven.” If we think it is worth noting how silent the sleepy town is, the hymn rebukes us, “That’s nothing compared to the silence of the Holy Spirit working in us the miracle of salvation!” What is “peace on earth”? “Meek souls receiv[ing] Him” as “the dear Christ enters in.” The hymn’s third verse reveals “peace on earth” as a restored relationship with God through his Son.
My new favorite way to read this poem, therefore, is to imagine the angels’ voices as the voices of verse three. They have been commanded in verse two to sing “peace to men on earth.” They obey. And when they sing “peace to men” in Brooks’ hymn, verse three is what we, men, hear. In the bridge between verse two and verse three, peace is made possible on earth by means of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as he “cast[s] out our sin” and “enter[s] in.” Notice that verse three is the only verse that doesn’t transition audiences: verse one is addressed, in reverie, to Bethlehem itself. Half way through verse two, the angels receive their command to sing, but we don’t shift out of the angelic-heralding-singing-contemplation until the direct address to Christ in verse four.
Now if we must imagine Brooks as fastidious in his literal rendering of the angel’s song so that angels only sing the actual phrase “peace on earth” without any soteriological elaboration, then verse three must needs be our epiphany—our recognition of what the angel’s song of peace means for us.
Happily, verse three can be both the angel’s song and our realization at the same time. In fact, I love a verse three that becomes the swelling chorus of men and angels together unpacking the glorious reality of “peace to men.” From the revelation of verse three, verse four then closes the hymn as a prayer to Christ, asking that very salvation introduced as a possibility in verse three be applied to us: “Come, dwell in me, Christ!”
By such prayers peace indeed comes to earth.
Betsy Howard, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Literature