By Casey Korstanje
Every writer needs and editor.
And every writer thinks Luke 5:30 could easily be changed to read: “And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors, editors and sinners?’”
I made my living as a writer and mostly as an editor for the better part of 40 years.
And every Christmas, when I hear people call out their favourite hymns, I wince when people shout Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and slur over the exclamation mark running it together into one phrase. “Hark the herald angels sing.”
No brother it’s Hark! Hark! Listen! Do you hear that! The herald angels are singing.
Charles Wesley, the writer of that wonderful hymn, also suffered at the hands of an editor and he wasn’t too happy about it.
Wesley’s stated goal as a hymn writer was to teach the poor and the illiterate sound biblical doctrine. And truly Hark! The Herald Angels Sing wonderfully captures the essence of the Gospel.
Hark! the herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled:
Throughout the carol we learn of The Trinity, the reason for the Incarnation, of mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation and salvation.
But every writer needs an editor.
In 1739, a year after his conversion to Christ, Wesley was so inspired one wintry morning by the peal of church bells that he penned the poem Hymn for a Christmas Day, which was to eventually become Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. But not until his editor got a hold of it.
Wesley managed to deliver the incomprehensible opening line: “Hark! how all the welkin rings / Glory to the King of Kings.”
“Welkin?” It means sky or heaven, but even in 1739, it had largely fallen out of use. But writers are always tempted to show off their broad vocabulary.
I looked at Laurie, my loving wife, the other day and said, “I appreciate your pulchritude.” She offered me the side-eye until I explained that pulchritude means “grace and beauty.” Another word that is still in the dictionary but has long fallen out of use.
Wesley’s friend George Whitefield, one of the 18th century’s most famous preachers and evangelists, also wrote a few hymns. It was Whitefield who took Wesley’s poem, immediately red-pencilled “how all the welkin rings” and changed it to “the herald angels sing.” He kept the “Hark!” Whitefield also included the phrase “newborn King.”
It was originally paired with the tune: Christ the Lord is Risen Today.
But about a century or so later (and here’s the writer’s angel) a tenor and organist by the name of William Cummings thought he might try singing Hark! The Herald Angels Sing to the second part of Felix Mendelssohn’s cantata Festgesang, which Mendelssohn wrote to celebrate the invention of the printing press. Truly. It was an inspired choice and remains the tune we use today.
As to the editing of poetry and hymns, John Wesley, Charles’s brother, wrote in the preface of the 1780 collection of Hymns for the Use of People Called Methodists:
“Many gentlemen have done my brother and me (though without naming us) the honour to reprint many of our hymns. Now they are perfectly welcome to do so, provided they print them just as they are… that we may no longer be accountable either for the nonsense or the doggerel of other men.”
Yeah, men like tax collectors, editors and sinners.
But then that’s the point of the song, isn’t it?
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”
