MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF THE COMING OF THE LORD!

Julia Ward Howe was a remarkable woman.  She was a crusader for social justice, an outspoken abolitionist, an early advocate for women’s right to vote, and a crusader for world peace.  She was a direct descendent of Roger Williams, who is often called the first Baptist in America, the founder of Providence Plantation in 1636, the first American settlement that was founded on the principle of the separation of church and state.  She came from a extraordinary family.

        President Abraham Lincoln was inspired by the writings of “Miss Julia” and invited her to the White House in November of 1861.  That evening she was invited to a public review of the troops.  As the soldiers marched by they were singing a popular battle song of the day.  The inspiring tune was a campfire spiritual called “Canaan’s Happy Shore,” that came out of the camp meetings, the revivalistic movement of the day.  But at the beginning of the Civil War, soldiers changed the words and it became known as “John Brown’s Body”  

Old John Brown’s body lies a’moldering in the grave,

While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;

But tho’ he lost his life while struggling for the slave,

His soul is marching on.

        The soldiers added many other verses when the war started including one about hanging old Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree!

        Standing beside “Miss Julia” at the troop review was a Washington clergyman by the name of James Freeman Clark.  He turned to her and suggested that she write new words for the fighting men’s song. 

       

        She went back to the Old Willard Hotel in DC.  The youth who went to Washington last week walked right past it, it’s on Pennsylvania Avenue just two blocks from the White House. 

        She said that she slept soundly that night but awoke before sunrise with the words beginning to “Twine themselves in my mind.”  She said to herself, “I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep and forget them.”  So she sprang out of the bed and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen and “scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.”  Before the morning sun reached the paper the words were all there, as if written by another hand. 

        Those stirring words have become one of our nation’s most beloved hymns.  Dr. Martin Luther King, loved this song and quoted it frequently in his speeches including the speech at the end of the Selma to Montgomery march and in his final sermon the night before his assassination he proclaimed, “Mine Eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

        Sir Winston Churchill loved the Battle Hymn of the Republic so much it was played at his funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral.  And on September 14, 2001, at memorial services for the victims of 09/11, it was played both at the National Cathedral in Washington and at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. 

        The beautiful and compelling words that Miss Julia penned early that November morning were not for half a nation to march to, but for a united nation, a whole people to stand up and sing. 

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

        This Sunday morning (July 1) as part of our service on Religious Liberty, our choir will sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”