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Good Morning

In February 1862, a poem appeared in the American Atlantic Monthly. It was published anonymously, but quickly gained in popularity: a powerful text written to a popular tune.
The words were ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord’. Its writer, Julia Ward Howe, was a remarkable woman. In a long life, she was a tireless campaigner in many of the great causes of her time.

Her hymn was written in the middle of the American Civil War, and it carries the message of the campaign, which lay right at the heart of the conflict, the abolition of slavery; freedom, a subject close to her heart.
In her early years, she struggled with the 19th century expectations of the wife and mother in the home. In an amazing early poem written in her youth, she described her life with her children.

They watched me, as Astronomers,
whose business lies in heaven afar,
await, beside the slanting glass,
the re-appearance of a star.

But she is not even as reliable as a distant star: she likens herself to ‘a comet, dire and strange’:

Among the shining I have shone,
Among the blessing have been blessed;
Then wearying years have held me bound
Where darkness deadness gives, not rest.

The brightness of the home draws her, but she is aware of the immense night of suffering and injustice to be overcome and that if she is to travel into that darkness, according to the conventions of her time, she will be cut off from the warmth of respectable society.
God, whose glory is wisdom to the mighty and succour to the brave, we thank you for all those who live to make people free, and through whom your truth marches on, in our time.
Amen