Advent, Day 20: New Jerusalem

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

—Revelation 21:2

LOOK: Epiphany of the Other by Richard Kenton Webb

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(Related posts: https://artandtheology.org/2017/10/10/grief-and-loss-will-be-undone-artful-devotion/; https://artandtheology.org/2021/12/13/advent-day-16/)

LISTEN: “How Long, Dear Savior” (NORTHFIELD) | Words by Isaac Watts, 1707 | Music by Jeremiah Ingalls, 1805 | Performed by the Boston Camerata, dir. Anne Azéma, 2020

How long, dear Savior, O how long
Shall this bright hour delay?
Fly swifter round, ye wheels of time,
And bring the promised day.

From the third heav’n where God resides,
That holy, happy place,
The new Jerusalem comes down
Adorned with shining grace.

An American Christmas is one of the Boston Camerata’s most popular programs. “It features a generous selection of carols, New England anthems, Southern folk hymns, and religious ballads for the season from the early years of the American republic, and from a wide range of early tune books and manuscripts”—including the shape-note hymn “How Long, Dear Savior” from The Christian Harmony (Exeter, New Hampshire, 1805), an arrangement of a stanza from Isaac Watts’s  “Lo! what a glorious sight appears” to the fuguing tune NORTHFIELD. The Boston Camerata adds a stanza from the same Watts hymn.

The Grace Doherty Library at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, which owns a first edition of The Christian Harmony, provides biographical information about its compiler, Jeremiah Ingalls, to whom several of the tunes inside are attributed:

A native of Massachusetts who moved to Vermont around 1800, Jeremiah Ingalls (1764-1828) at various times worked as a farmer, cooper, and tavern keeper, in addition to serving as a choirmaster in the Congregational church, teaching singing school and composing music. Ingalls’ Christian Harmony contains many lively melodies, patterned after the secular songs and dances of the day. Such tunes were quite popular among the camp-meeting revival folk. In his hymn “Innocent Sounds,” Ingalls argues for the appropriateness of adopting these melodies for religious use.

The above performance of “How Long, Dear Savior” by the Boston Camerata was filmed at Boston’s historic Old North Church during the 2020 pandemic. To hear the song in a non-concert context, see this video taken at a Sacred Harp singing convention in Texas in 2011:

The “third heaven” refers to the dwelling place of God outside the universe. Beginning in the intertestamental period (ca. 420 BCE–ca. 30 CE), it was a common Jewish belief that God stacked the heavens in layers—as many as seven, but most typically three, sometimes delineated as: Earth’s atmosphere (the first heaven; i.e., the realm of the birds and clouds), interplanetary or interstellar space (the second heaven; i.e., the realm of the sun and stars), and God’s own abode, over and above what we can conceive (the third heaven). The term “third heaven” appears in Jewish apocalyptic and rabbinic texts such as the Testament of Levi 2, the Apocalypse of Moses 37:5, 2 Enoch 8:1, and 3 Baruch 4:7. The apostle Paul also uses it in 2 Corinthians 12:2–4 to describe one of his visionary experiences.