Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear,
On thee we cast each earthborn care;
We smile at pain while thou art near.”
Especially that last verse of unshaken faith:
“On thee we fling our burdening woe,
O Love divine, forever dear;
Content to suffer while we know,
Living and dying, thou art near.”
What might not Oliver Wendell Holmes have done for Christian hymnody, had he had Charles Wesley’s evangelical experience and piety?
Another Unitarian deserving recognition was Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810-1876), who is not remembered because of his successful pastoral career of forty years, nor by his theological treatises and religious writings, but by his two Christmas hymns, perhaps the best written in America (not forgetting Bishop Brooks’ “O Little town of Bethlehem”)—“Calm on the listening ear of night” and “It came upon the midnight clear.” The first was written soon after his graduation from Harvard College in 1834, and the other in 1849 after he had been in the pastorate over a decade. Of course, he was a firm believer in the deity of Christ, else he could not have written these hymns.