Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

Written less than a year after his spiritual renewal at Aldersgate in 1738, these lines reflect Charles Wesley’s joy in his new relationship with God. Wesley wrote more than 6,500 hymns, but this hymn, sung around the world at Christmastime, may be the best of all. Wesley intended for all who sang this song to understand more fully the redemptive and reconciling mission of Christ. He adds line to line, truth to truth, doctrine to doctrine to impress upon the singer that Christ came to redeem all humankind. The dominant theme of the hymn is found in the fourth line of the first stanza: “God and sinner reconciled.”

The tune that has become inseparable from this text has a fascinating story. In 1840 Felix Mendelssohn wrote a festive choral work for men’s voices and brass instruments to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the invention of printing. Fifteen years later, English musician William H. Cummings was struck by the fact that the melody from the second chorus of Mendelssohn’s work was perfect for Wesley’s text. He made the adaptation and it has been a perennial favorite since that time. Unfortunately, Mendelssohn never knew of the use of his melody for this Christmas hymn because he died in 1847.