On Thanksgiving night, my wife and I watched the movie I Heard the Bells (2022), based on the true story of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It focused on “Christmas Bells,” the Christmas carol he composed on Christmas Day 1863, the month after his son Charley had been severely injured in the Civil War.*1
On Christmas Day 2018, I posted “Can You Hear the Christmas Bells?” on my main blogsite (see here) and then referred to that same carol again at the end of my 12/23/20 blog post. Longfellow’s poem, which became a widely sung Christmas carol, begins with the words, “I heard the bells on Christmas Day.”
For reasons I don’t understand, though, Longfellow’s powerful words don’t seem to be known or sung in some Christian circles. That carol is not in The New Century Hymnal (1995) or the new (2020) Voices Together hymnal of the Mennonite Church USA.
Since Longfellow wrote the poem during the Civil War, two of the seven verses explicitly relate to that tragic conflict. But the Baptist Hymnal (among many other hymn books) omits those two and includes only five of the original verses.
When Longfellow’s son Charley left to enroll as a Union soldier (in March 1863), it was against his father’s strong disapproval. That was about three months before Charley’s 19th birthday. Still grieving his mother’s accidental death in 1861, he was seriously questioning his Christian faith.
In the movie, Charley says to his famous father, “I will not believe in a God who is sleeping, or maybe dead.”
At that time, Henry Longfellow was grieving even more than Charley, and that grief was intensified when Charley was shot through the shoulder, with the bullet traveling through his back and clipping his spine.*2
During this time of intense agony, Longfellow started writing the poem “Christmas Bells.” “In despair,” he wrote, “I bowed my head. There is no peace on earth, I said.” And then, thinking about the words of doubt Charley had uttered, he began to wonder if, indeed, God was sleeping or even dead.
But then Longfellow’s faith overcame his doubts. In the powerful last stanza, he concluded his splendid Christmas carol on a note of triumph:
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, goodwill to men.
Few of us currently have as much grief as Longfellow was experiencing on that Christmas Day in 1863. But even if things are going well for us personally, many of us grieve over the situation in parts of the world such as Gaza and the West Bank, Ukraine, Sudan/South Sudan, Afghanistan, Haiti, and everywhere there is warfare, rampant hunger, and persistent poverty.*3
Here in the U.S., many people of goodwill are deeply concerned about the welfare of the immigrants currently in the country, the likelihood of an increasing number of citizens siding into poverty with diminished help from the government as well as loss of medical insurance, and other social problems.
In such a time as this, we need the faith and hope that Longfellow expressed: “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail.” That did happen in Longfellow’s day to an important extent. The Civil War did end, enslaved people gained freedom, and there was greater liberty and justice for all.
May the celebration of Christmas this year, with or without bells, lead us all to deeper faith and hope—and action for the welfare of all—in the year ahead.
_____
*1 The film is available for streaming (for a few dollars) on Amazon Prime. It is also available without further charge for those who subscribe to Pure Flix, a streaming service that I learned about just last month. It is a conservative Christian site that claims to be “the streaming leader in faith & family entertainment” (see here).
*2 The battle in which Charlie was injured was near the New Hope Church in Virginia. In that battle, Union troops fought soldiers led by General Robert E. Lee. I mentioned that battle and Charlie’s serious injury in a May 2012 blog post.
*3 Here is a link to the website of the World Food Programme with information about the “10 Countries Suffering the Most From Hunger.”
Note: Some online sources give the date for Charley’s wartime injury and his father’s writing of “Christmas Bells” being in 1864 rather than 1863. However, I am going by what seems to be the general consensus, according to AI, and one of the best sources/articles (with several images ) about this subject is the one found here. I recommend it to those who want to read more about the historical events.
The View from This Seat (supplementary blog) 
Charles Kiker in Texas sent the following comments to me by email:
“Thanks Leroy. I knew the basics of the poem/carol, but didn’t know about Charley’s injury or even his name. Nor his faith issues. A. McLeish in “JB” has Mr. Nickels (the name for Satan in JB) saying, “If God is God he is not good. If God is good he is not God. Take the even; take the odd.” The struggle between an all powerful and all loving deity. I wonder how or if Charley came to terms with that. But there’s a wideness in God’s mercy for Charley, and all the Charleys of this world, including this one.
Thanks for your comments, Charles.
Regarding the “struggle between an all powerful and all loving deity,” at this point I am planning to make a regular blog post on January 9 or 10 that deals partly with that thorny problem.
I have been unable to find out anything about Charley’s faith after he was wounded. In general, though, I did find this (among other things):
Charley was honorably discharged on February 15, 1864 “on account of physical disability”. Late in 1864, he sailed to Europe and entered a new phase of his life, that of a world traveler. He spent his remaining years visiting far-flung corners of the globe, including India, Japan, South America and the South Pacific.
He passed away in the family home in 1893 after a lengthy illness.
David Nelson in the Northland of Kansas City sent these brief comments:
“Thanks for a story worth pondering over and over. In troubled times and in good times the wonder of the Christmas story brings hope and love in our lives.”
It’s a shame the hymn is not in those two major hymnals you mention. There’s a great deal I’d like to say, but I will forego it and try to be brief. It’s been my affirmation that it is humanly impossible to live without hope, even if it’s nothing more than hanging alive to complete a commitment to something or someone. Despair is a different thing, and I’ve come to despair of Christianity, the United States, and in humanity as a whole. I’m convinced we need a very different understanding of God than orthodox Christianity offers. The quote above from JB is quite correct. I’m with Kushner in “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” and with process theology that a doctrine of divine omnipotence with a loving God is entirely untenable. But to get to the point. If it comforts people to believe that the trajectory of history means that “The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, goodwill to men,” that’s fine; more power to them. But as you’ve heard me say in another context, we simply don’t have evidence that it’s true. I read with interest David Brooks’s long column on his faith journey (and would recommend it), and watch for the line containing this clause: “our eternal human tendency to screw things up.”
Thanks so much for your thought-provoking comments, Anton. There is also much I would like to say in response, but I’ll also try to be brief. As I mentioned to Charles K. above, the first blog post I am planning for next month is directly related to your perception that the “doctrine of divine omnipotence with a loving God is entirely untenable.”
Concerning “the point”: I don’t think people ought to believe whatever makes them feel better/comfortable. We all ought to seek to believe and live by what we think is true. And, yes, we “don’t have evidence” that Longfellow’s words of faith are true. But neither is there evidence that those words are false. That is the existential choice that we each have to make, based on rational thought, experience–and faith.
I read David Brooks’s long column about faith the day he posted it in the New York Times–and I have on my list of possible blog posts in the next couple of months to write about faith with reference to his faith journey (as well as my own).
I disagree regarding evidence. We have thousands of years of evidence so far that Longellow’s words are wrong. And current events are offering more.
Anton, I am not surprised that you disagree regarding evidence, and you may not be surprised that I think there is evidence of things getting both worse and better. Just thinking of the years since 1863, there has been two horrendous world wars, the latter ending in the Pacific with the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities. But there has been no use of nuclear weapons in warfare since 1945. Although there are localized wars now, mainly in Ukraine and Gaza, it seems to me that there has been noteworthy progress toward world peace since the end of WWII and the formation of the United Nations in 1945.
In reference to the words “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail,” I think that is considerable evidence of progress in that vein. Concerning Blacks, while there are still problems that need to be overcome, especially since the 1960s the status of People of Color has become so much better than it was in the 1860s or even as it was until after WWII. And think of the advances in gender equality, in the elimination of child labor, in provisions for the elderly (Social Security and Medicare), and the growing recognition of the rights of LGBTQ people in this century. There are, indeed, many lingering problems. Much still needs to be done, and a lot more time is going to be needed. But I think there is evidence that little by little the wrong is failing and the right is prevailing.
NCTom
Thanks for the reminder of this beautiful hymn. The recent rendition of the hymn by the contemporary Christian group Casting Crowns is most touching. My theology informs me God is omnipotent, good, and also grieves. He grieves how his creation can take a freely-given gift like freedom and use it for self-destruction.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Tom. Thanks also for introducing the Casting Crowns rendition. I don’t remember hearing (or hearing about) that group before, but I listened to them sing on YouTube–and it was a different melody that I am familiar with. Here is a link for whomever might like to listen the words sung as they appear on the screen: Bing Videos
Diana Butler Bass also linked to a video of “award-winning singer-songwriter Solveig Leithaug” singing the carol, and it is the melody I have heard the most. Here is a link: Advent Calendar: December 24 – by Diana Butler Bass
But as an old-timer, I like the way the carol was sung by Andy Willians years ago: Bing Videos
I never watched much of the Sopranos, but one episode I watched had a memorable exchange between a Jewish shopkeeper and Tony. The shopkeeper talks about how Jews survived Roman oppression, to which Tony replies something like “We haven’t gone anywhere!” The Civil War did free the slaves, but it also left us the legacy of the KKK and Jim Crow. We just had an election between what I call The Orange Antichrist and Genocide Joe, who debated so poorly he was replaced by Genocide Clone. And now The Orange Antichrist is returning for a second term in a few weeks.
So here is my version of the trinity, to address this issue. God the Father is the omnipotent force of nature, beyond good and evil, perhaps once speaking from the whirlwind to Job. God the Son is other people, sometimes great, sometimes terrible, often confused. Yet they are who we have to work with. Jesus is our exemplar. God the Holy Ghost is the still small voice Elijah heard, and so many others, whispering to us about peace on earth and goodwill towards men. Something the prosperity gospel forgets is that Jesus told us “Pick up your cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24 and others)
We are like the Knights of the Roundtable, in search of The Holy Grail. Perhaps we are on an impossible mission. With Don Quixote we dream the impossible dream. Yet how could we give it up? God is not dead, nor doth He sleep!
I’m immediately reminded of MLK’s famous “moral arc” line: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And I especially appreciate your closing words, Leroy, because they suggest that justice is not something we just wait for: Your hope is not in necessity, but that we will take “action for the welfare of all” in the coming year. Sometimes I wonder if God almost never works alone, but only through those who partner with God.