I Heard The Bells

This last Saturday evening our Small group met at the AMC theater at Quail Springs Mall in OKC to watch the movie “I heard the bells.” I was actually surprised at how good the movie was. I am so used to the Gospel and God’s truth being twisted and treated with disdain in these Last Days, but in this movie that was not the case. The main character in the move is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. My English teacher in High School here in Yukon, Ok, Mr. Briley, loved Longfellow and I suppose I inherited some of that from him. The setting for the movie is at the beginning of the American Civil War.

I won’t spoil the movie for you if you haven’t seen it. I thought it was really good and it blessed me as a Christian so I do recommend it to you. There is some of Longfellow’s poetry in the movie, but it is done very well. When they show how his wife died by accidentally setting her dress on fire I was immediately taken back in time to Mr. Briley’s class where he told us how Longfellow became severely injured trying to save his wife in a fire in 1861 and he grew his beard to cover up some of the scars on his neck. However, the biggest toll that fire took on him was the sorrow and despair he was suffering from her tragic death.

Longfellow was an Abolitionist and some of his poetry was being used by Abolitionists in their cause. However, he did not want war. But, the Civil war broke out the same year as that fire which took his wife from him. In the movie we see the damage done to him. He quits writing. He is depressed. His son actually says things like, “God is dead!” Longfellow never goes there though.

His son is not old enough to join the army, but forges’ his father’s signature in order to join. Longfellow asks a friend, Senator Sumner, to ask the General in charge of the Brigade his son is part of to place him where he won’t get killed. Longfellow’s son is promoted to Lieutenant and given duty far from the front.

However, two years into the war, Longfellow’s son gets tired of not being in the fight and asks to be allowed to participate. He is then allowed to patrol near a church in Virginia named New Hope Church. It is full of holes and the steeple is missing. As he is riding around the church he is ambushed and shot. He wakes up in the church on a pew next to the church bell which had fallen down when the steeple had been hit by cannon fire.

The Army sends messengers to Longfellow telling him his son has been injured and is enroute to Washington, for care. He travels to Washington to find him and when he does, he takes him back home to Cambridge with him to care for him. When they are back in Massachusetts, his son tells him how he got shot, but as they talk about despair and misery and doubt, he tells Longfellow of waking up next to the bell which has snow covering it. As the snow melts he sees the name of the church on the side, “New Hope,” and realizes that our hope is not in this world, but is in God alone. He then asks his father if he as been writing. He says, “No.” His son tells him that he must write for so many people need to be inspired by his insight and hope he has within him. It is after this conversation that Longfellow struggles to start writing again. It is early in the morning on Christmas Day, he hears the church bells ringing, and ringing and then he wrote the following:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head
There is no peace on earth I said
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

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, good will to men.

The movie ends with this poem being sung as a song in Longfellow’s church. I really enjoyed that. At this Chirstmas time whether you are in sorrow or in joy you can know that God is not dead, nor doth he sleep. He knows all things and is the source of the only remedy we have for the bleakness of this life in this flesh. Seek Him this year instead of the outward manifestations of the season. He will give life real meaning and your heart real peace, the peace that passes all understanding.

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