Oh little house in Manchester / How still we see thee lie

Earlier today, as I was drafting the entry entitled,

“An Englishman is beheaded in his front yard. The world is silent,”

that line about how the world is silent in the aftermath of Patrick McGee’s murder kept bringing to my mind the beautiful Christmas carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” (play melody), written in the 1860s by Phillips Brooks and Lewis H. Redner, about how the world was blessedly asleep and silent at the time of Christ’s birth. The hideously ironic thought came to me that the world’s reaction to Patrick McGee’s beheading outside his little house in Manchester is like the world’s reaction to Christ’s birth—the world sleeps in undisturbed silence. When Jesus was born, the world needed to be silent and asleep in order to receive him. But in our post-Christian, liberal world, we need to be silent and asleep in order not to react to the Muslim jihadists and sharia proponents whom we have permitted through our gates, because, if we’re not unconscious and silent, if we notice what has happened and talk about it, we will have to react to it, we will have to do something about it. Which would mean the end of the liberal belief that all humanity is just like us and that evil, enemies, and the unassimilable don’t exist. And this is true even if, as I pointed out in the previous entry, the murderer in this case turns out not to be a Muslim, because the motivation for the silence surrounding this extraordinary crime is still the need to suppress the truth about Islam.

It’s a further example of how liberalism is the perversion of Christianity. In the Christian world, humanity silently, in a state of unperturbed peace, receives the Christ, like the shepherds abiding by their flock at night. In the liberal world, liberal humanity silently, in a state of unperturbed peace, allows its members to be slaughtered like sheep. In the true, spiritual sleep of “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem,” we welcome into the world the God-man and his promise of eternal life. In our false, liberal sleep, we welcome into our society the unrelenting enemies whose unswerving aim is to kill us and subjugate us in this life, and to deliver us in the next life to the eternal tortures promised to those who reject Allah.

Here are excerpts of the song with the lyrics about silence and sleep:

O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by…

For Christ is born of Mary
And gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love…

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.

Here the is entire song:

O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight

For Christ is born of Mary
And gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love
O morning stars together
Proclaim the holy birth
And praises sing to God the King
And Peace to men on earth

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born to us today
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us
Our Lord Emmanuel

- end of initial entry -

Gintas writes:

This reminds me of Paul’s words in his letter to the Ephesians:

Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.

Thus is the world: dead asleep.

John L. writes:

A funny synchronicity: Having gotten depressed the last couple of days about the fate of the world and the West after spending a little too much time brooding over all the bad things that are happening, I put on some Christmas music today to cheer myself up. While listening to “O Little Town of Bethlehem” I was just flooded with joy and hope and good cheer again. The line “The hopes and fears of all the years” reminded me that every other age has had terrible fears and difficulties and moments when hope seemed lost. But that “everlasting light” has shone through the dark streets and the dark centuries ever since and brought hope and joy and renewal to all the sons and daughters of the Holy Child.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 18, 2008 06:06 PM | Send