"Who is He?"

 

“Who is He?” is another of my favorite hymns we sang in the churches on Tiree when I was a child. This reprint is from December 31, 2012.

Benjamin Russell Hanby is an American composer who also wrote “Up on the Housetop” and “Jolly Old St. Nicholas.” Still, I think of “Who is He” in connection with Scotland because that is where I first heard it.

“Who is He?”

The last of my favorite Scottish Christmas carols isn’t a Christmas carol at all. It starts out like one, but it is also a Good Friday and Easter hymn. In fact, we sang it year round.

Benjamin Russell Hanby wrote both the words and the music (tune, Lowliness) to “Who is He?” In the verses below, I’ve printed the chorus each time for easier reading.

Who is He, in yonder stall,

At whose feet the shepherds fall?

‘Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!

‘Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!

At His feet we humbly fall;

Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

 

Who is He, in yonder cot,*

Bending to His toilsome lot?

‘Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!

‘Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!

At His feet we humbly fall;

Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

 

Who is He, in deep distress,

Fasting in the wilderness?

‘Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!

‘Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!

At His feet we humbly fall;

Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

 

Who is He that stands and weeps

At the grave where Lazarus sleeps?

‘Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!

‘Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!

At His feet we humbly fall;

Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

 

Lo! at midnight, who is He

Prays in dark Gethsemane?

‘Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!

‘Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!

At His feet we humbly fall;

Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

 

Who is He, in Calvary’s throes,

Asks for blessings on His foes?

‘Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!

‘Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!

At His feet we humbly fall;

Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

 

Who is He that from the grave

Comes to heal and help and save?

‘Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!

‘Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!

At His feet we humbly fall;

Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

 

Who is He that on yon throne

Rules the world of light alone?

‘Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!

‘Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!

At His feet we humbly fall;

Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.**

The three children you see standing in front of the largest church on Tiree were sad when they had to leave the Isle, but they were also excited about returning to Edinburgh at the beginning of a new year.

In the same way, I’m sad to be leaving this series on Scottish Christmas carols, but I’m excited about writing new posts for 2013. Come along and see how I do.

Have a Christ-filled year.

__________

* “Cot” can mean either a narrow bed, such as one where a child might sleep, or a small house, such as one where a carpenter might live and work.

** As printed in The Church Hymnary, Revised Edition (Oxford University Press, 1927). This source identifies the tune as “Lowliness.” In other sources, the same tune is called “Who Is He.”

"Child in the Manger"

 

This week’s post is reprinted from December 24, 2012. Obviously, the photo was not taken during my childhood but is from a trip back to Tiree with my brothers in 2017. Daddy did preach at this church, however.

“Child in the Manger”

Another carol I learned in Scotland is “Child in the Manger,” written in Gaelic by Mary Macdonald and translated into English by Lachlan Macbean. It is sung to a Gaelic melody now called Bunessan.

This carol needs no introduction and no explanation. Here it is.

 

Child in the manger,

Infant of Mary;

Outcast and stranger,

Lord of all!

Child who inherits

All our trangressions,

All our demerits

On Him fall.

 

Once the most holy

Child of salvation

Gently and lowly

Lived below;

Now, as our glorious

Mightly Redeemer,

See Him victorious

O’er each foe.

 

Prophets foretold Him,

Infant of wonder;

Angels behold Him

On His throne;

Worthy our Savior

Of all their praises;

Happy forever

Are His own.*

 Have a blessed Christmas.

__________

* As printed in The Church Hymnary, Revised Edition (Oxford University Press, 1927).

"In the Bleak Midwinter"

 

During the rest of December, I will be reprinting posts from 2012. They talk about three Christmas carols that I learned when living in Scotland as a child. This first one is from December 17, 2012.

“In the Bleak Midwinter”

The year my family lived in Scotland, we spent our Christmas holiday on the Isle of Tiree, where my father earned a small stipend by preaching at the churches scattered around the island. Tiree was sparsely populated and the congregations were small, but the people were warm and friendly.

The picture shows the house we rented for our brief stay.

Before we even left for Tiree, I discovered several new Christmas carols. Three of them became favorites, and I’m going to spend the next few weeks talking about them.

Two carols are very strong theologically, so I’ll save them for the next two Mondays. I’ll start with the weakest of the three.

“In the Bleak Midwinter” has plenty of faults. First, the winter that Christina Rossetti wrote about resembles the ones she knew in England, not the kind they have in Bethlehem. Second, nobody knows what month Jesus was born in, but chances are it wasn’t during the winter. Still, something in the song spoke to me.

Maybe it was because it is so singable, or it could have been the melody (Cranham, by Gustav Holst). Then again, it could have been that, as a ten-year-old who had grown up in church, I was surprised to find a popular Christmas carol I didn’t know.

Or maybe it was because the Sunday School I often attended used the last verse as its offertory. And that is the best verse of the carol from a theological standpoint.

Here are all the words. Enjoy the first three stanzas, but focus on the fourth.

 

In the bleak midwinter,

Frosty winds made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter,

Long ago.

 

Our God, heaven cannot hold Him,

Nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away

When He comes to reign:

In the bleak midwinter

A stable place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty,

Jesus Christ.

 

Angels and archangels

May have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim

Thronged the air—

But His mother only,

In her maiden bliss,

Worshiped the Beloved

With a kiss.

 

What can I give Him,

Poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd,

I would bring a lamb;

If I were a wise man,

I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him—

Give my heart.*

And your heart is enough.

__________

* As printed in The Church Hymnary, Revised Edition (Oxford University Press, 1927).

A Christmas Card Tradition

 

Roland and I created, addressed, and sent our Christmas cards this past weekend. Actually, I did most of the creating, but Roland had significant input. In fact, our Christmas card tradition sprung from one of his ideas.

On a trip to Greece and Turkey in 2006, we spent some time at the Ephesus Museum in a small town outside of Ephesus. While there, Roland took a photo of a busted up statue of Ceasar Augustus. We were sending out commercial Christmas cards at the time and continued to do so through 2009. By 2010, however, I had started making notecards from some of my photos, and we decided to create our own Christmas cards instead of buying them. Then Roland had the idea of using his photo of Ceasar Augustus with “Ceasar’s Greetings” on the front and Luke 2:1-7 on the inside. That’s the scripture that tells us it was a decree from Ceasar Augustus that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. Here is the front of that card:

From 2011–2014, most of our Christmas cards used nativity scenes found at various places in the Midwest, although 2015 was a Bernardino Luini painting from the Louvre that I took during a brief stop in Paris that year, and 2017 was a stained-glass window from a church in Normandy, which I took during that same trip.

After that, we decided we would try to use religious photos from the trips we had taken during the year. We were mostly successful. We even had a photo from our 2020 trip, which we squeezed in just before the pandemic shut everything down. We were traveling again by the end of 2021, but that trip to Africa produced no appropriate photos, so we had to dig into my photo archives for a photo taken in Florence, Italy in 2018. Last year we were back on track, and this year we had three photos to choose from—one from Melbourne and two from Ireland. We ended up using the one at the top of this post.

Let’s hope that next year yields some equally good choices.

__________

The photo at the head of this blog is a painting on exhibit at Kilkenny Castle in Kilkenny, Republic of Ireland, and I photographed it while we were there in May. The card next to the painting identified it as “Madonna and Child—Artist: after Carlo Dolci (1616-86).”

"I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day"

Is “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” a hymn or a carol? I searched the Internet for the distinction and ended up even more confused. For example:

Hymns are traditional poems which have been taken from the Book of Psalms. They have been around for 100s of years and are sung by congregations while worshipping God in public. Carols, on the other hand, are festive songs. They are generally religious. [Quoted from http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/religion-miscellaneous/difference-between-carol-and-hymns/]

 Quick tip: One is sacred, the other secular. . . . Hymns are songs in praise of God and thus have a suitably portentous note about them. . . . Carols embody [secularism]. [Quoted from The Economic Times, December 23, 2012.]

Neither of these definitions works for me. Although all hymns are scriptural, not all of them come from the Book of Psalms. And although there are secular Christmas carols, many have a strong sacred component. I also found sites stating that hymns are solemn while carols are joyful, but that isn’t universally true, either.

So my best guess is that “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” is a carol rather than a hymn. The setting relates to current events rather than to Biblical ones, although it does have a strong Christian message in its final stanza. It doesn’t really matter what I call it, though. What matters are the words and what they convey.

As an aside, Longfellow titled it “Christmas Bells.” John Baptiste Calkin used the first line as the title when he set the poem to music in 1872. Calkin also used only five of the seven stanzas, dropping the two that referred to the Civil War.

The Internet is in conflict about when Longfellow wrote this poem, although most sites date it as either 1863 or 1864. The Civil war was raging, and Longfellow was grieving for his second wife, Fanny. Their older son, Charles, had enlisted in the Union army against his father’s wishes and was twice wounded, although he survived. The country itself was going through a very dark period in its history. So Longfellow had reason to despair.

And yet the final stanza of Longfellow’s poem says in ringing tones, “God is not dead; nor doth he sleep! The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail.” That’s a message of hope rather than despair.

Here is Longfellow’s poem as he wrote it.

Christmas Bells

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old familiar carols play,

     And wild and sweet

     The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

     Had rolled along

     The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till, ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,

     A voice, a chime,

     A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

     And with the sound

     The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,

     And made forlorn

     The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;

“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

     “For hate is strong,

     And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!

     The Wrong shall fail,

     The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men!”

May you experience that peace and good will this Christmas.

__________

The picture at the head of this post is from a painting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that was done by his younger son, Ernest Longfellow, in 1886. It is in the public domain because of its age.

"Who Is He?"

The last of my favorite Scottish Christmas carols isn't a Christmas carol at all. It starts out like one, but it is also a Good Friday and Easter hymn. In fact, we sang it year round.

Benjamin Russell Hanby wrote both the words and the music (tune, Lowliness) to "Who Is He?" In the verses below, I've printed the chorus each time for easier reading.

Who is He, in yonder stall,
At whose feet the shepherds fall?
'Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!
'Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!
At His feet we humbly fall;
Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

Who is He, in yonder cot,*
Bending to His toilsome lot?
'Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!
'Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!
At His feet we humbly fall;
Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

Who is He, in deep distress,
Fasting in the wilderness?
'Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!
'Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!
At His feet we humbly fall;
Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

Who is He that stands and weeps
At the grave where Lazarus sleeps?
'Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!
'Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!
At His feet we humbly fall;
Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

Lo! at midnight, who is He
Prays in dark Gethsemane?
'Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!
'Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!
At His feet we humbly fall;
Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

Who is He, in Calvary's throes,
Asks for blessings on His foes?
'Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!
'Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!
At His feet we humbly fall;
Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

Who is He that from the grave
Comes to heal and help and save?
'Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!
'Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!
At His feet we humbly fall;
Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

Who is He that on yon throne
Rules the world of light alone?
'Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!
'Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!
At His feet we humbly fall;
Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.**
 

The three children you see standing in front of the largest church on Tiree were sad when they had to leave the Isle, but they were also excited about returning to Edinburgh at the beginning of a new year.

In the same way, I'm sad to be leaving this series on Scottish Christmas carols, but I'm excited about writing new posts for 2013. Come along and see how I do.

Have a Christ-filled year.

__________
* "Cot" can mean either a narrow bed, such as one where a child might sleep, or a small house, such as one where a carpenter might live and work.

** As printed in The Church Hymnary, Revised Edition (Oxford University Press, 1927). This source identifies the tune as "Lowliness." In other sources, the same tune is called "Who Is He."

"Child in the Manger"

Another carol I learned in Scotland is "Child in the Manger," written in Gaelic by Mary Macdonald and translated into English by Lachlan Macbean. It is sung to a Gaelic melody now called Bunessan.

This carol needs no introduction and no explanation. Here it is.

Child in the manger,
Infant of Mary;
Outcast and stranger,
Lord of all!
Child who inherits
All our trangressions,
All our demerits
On Him fall. 

Once the most holy
Child of salvation
Gently and lowly
Lived below;
Now, as our glorious
Mightly Redeemer,
See Him victorious
O'er each foe. 

Prophets foretold Him,
Infant of wonder;
Angels behold Him
On His throne;
Worthy our Savior
Of all their praises;
Happy forever
Are His own.*
 

 Have a blessed Christmas.

__________
* As printed in The Church Hymnary, Revised Edition (Oxford University Press, 1927).

"In the Bleak Midwinter"

The year my family lived in Scotland, we spent our Christmas holiday on the Isle of Tiree, where my father earned a small stipend by preaching at the churches scattered around the island. Tiree was sparsely populated and the congregations were small, but the people were warm and friendly.

The picture shows the house we rented for our brief stay.

Before we even left for Tiree, I discovered several new Christmas carols. Three became favorites, and I'm going to spend the next few weeks talking about them.

Two carols are very strong theologically, so I'll save them for the two Mondays surrounding Christmas. I'll start with the weakest of the three.

"In the Bleak Midwinter" has plenty of faults. First, the winter that Christina Rossetti wrote about resembles the ones she knew in England, not the kind they have in Bethlehem. Second, nobody knows what month Jesus was born in, but chances are it wasn't during the winter. Still, something in the song spoke to me.

Maybe it was because it is so singable, or it could have been the melody (Cranham, by Gustav Holst). Then again, it could have been that, as a ten-year-old who had grown up in church, I was surprised to find a popular Christmas carol I didn't know.

Or maybe it was because the Sunday School I often attended used the last verse as its offertory. And that is the best verse of the carol from a theological standpoint.

Here are the words. Enjoy the first three stanzas, but focus on the fourth.

In the bleak midwinter,
Frosty winds made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago. 

Our God, heaven cannot hold Him,
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak midwinter
A stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ. 

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air--
But His mother only,
In her maiden bliss,
Worshiped the Beloved
With a kiss. 

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd,
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man,
I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him--
Give my heart.*
 

 And your heart is enough.

__________
* As printed in The Church Hymnary, Revised Edition (Oxford University Press, 1927).