Edmund Hamilton Sears
1810 - 1876
Unitarian
Biography
Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810–1876) was an American Unitarian minister, theologian, hymn writer, and religious author. Raised in Sandisfield, Massachusetts, he entered Union College in 1831 and graduated in 1834. After briefly studying law and teaching, he prepared for ministry at the Theological School in Cambridge, completing his studies in 1837. The American Unitarian Association then supported missionary work by Sears in the Toledo, Ohio, region, and he was ordained at Wayland, Massachusetts, in 1839.
Sears served the Unitarian congregation in Lancaster, Massachusetts, from 1840 to 1847. Illness and depression made the demands of that larger parish difficult, and he returned to Wayland, where he resumed ministry from 1848 to 1865; he later served in Weston. His writing extended beyond hymnody to theology, biblical interpretation, sermons, and social questions. His books included Regeneration (1853), Athanasia, or Foregleams of Immortality (1858), and The Fourth Gospel: The Heart of Christ (1872). From 1859 to 1871 he was also an associate editor of the Monthly Religious Magazine.
Sears wrote several dozen hymns and poems. Among his Christmas texts, “Calm on the Listening Ear of Night” and “It Came upon the Midnight Clear” became especially durable. He stood on the conservative, Christ-centered side of nineteenth-century American Unitarianism, while his preaching and writing also addressed moral questions including war and slavery. That combination of biblical reflection, lyrical imagination, and ethical concern gives his work a distinctive place in American liberal Protestant hymnody.
Sears served the Unitarian congregation in Lancaster, Massachusetts, from 1840 to 1847. Illness and depression made the demands of that larger parish difficult, and he returned to Wayland, where he resumed ministry from 1848 to 1865; he later served in Weston. His writing extended beyond hymnody to theology, biblical interpretation, sermons, and social questions. His books included Regeneration (1853), Athanasia, or Foregleams of Immortality (1858), and The Fourth Gospel: The Heart of Christ (1872). From 1859 to 1871 he was also an associate editor of the Monthly Religious Magazine.
Sears wrote several dozen hymns and poems. Among his Christmas texts, “Calm on the Listening Ear of Night” and “It Came upon the Midnight Clear” became especially durable. He stood on the conservative, Christ-centered side of nineteenth-century American Unitarianism, while his preaching and writing also addressed moral questions including war and slavery. That combination of biblical reflection, lyrical imagination, and ethical concern gives his work a distinctive place in American liberal Protestant hymnody.
Hymns by Edmund Hamilton Sears
It Came upon the Midnight Clear
Role: Lyricist