Edmund Sears

"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 Hamilton Sears (April 6, 1810 – January 14, 1876) was a Unitarian parish minister and author who wrote a number of theological works influencing 19th century liberal Protestants. Sears is known today primarily as the man who penned the words to "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" in 1849.

Quotes

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

• Calm on the listening ear of night
  Come Heaven’s melodious strains,
  Where wild Judea stretches far
  Her silver-mantled plains.
  • Christmas Song, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

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

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