Background

Edmund Hamilton was born on April 6, 1810 in Sandisfield, Berkshire County, Massachussets, United States, a descendant of Richard Sears who came to Plymouth about 1630, and the son of Joseph and Lucy (Smith) Sears. His father, a landholder and farmer, without education himself, had a marked fondness for books and an instinctive liking for poetry. "My earliest recollections, " says the son, "are associated with his reading or rather chanting of poetry. He was a great admirer of Pope's Iliad and would read it by the hour". Hard work and long hours on the farm together with the scarcity of money made education for Edmund a casual and limited affair.

When he was ten he made his first venture in poetry and was only twelve when he wrote and delivered a full-sized discourse "to a full assembly of alder-bushes. " At this early age he produced sermons "and lyrics without number. "

Education

When Edmund Hamilton Sears was sixteen opportunity came for him to enter Westfield Academy, which he attended for about nine months. In 1831 he entered Union College, Schenectady, New York, and by the exercise of rigid economy was able to complete the course, graduating in 1834. While at Brattleboro, Vermont he studied theology under the direction of the Reverend Addison Brown and later entered the Harvard Divinity School, graduating therefrom in 1837.

Career

His marked literary ability won him an editorial position on the Union College paper, the Parthenon, and a prize for poetry he had written. After graduating Sears read law but soon accepted an opportunity to teach in the academy at Brattleboro, Vermont. In 1837 he received an appointment as missionary of the American Unitarian Association and served for the most part at Toledo, Ohio.

On his return East he was invited to become minister of the Unitarian Church in Wayland, Massachussets, where he was ordained on February 20, 1839. Called to the Unitarian Church in Lancaster, he was installed there December 23, 1840. He was frail in body and seven years later was obliged to relinquish his pastorate, and retire to a small farm in the town of Wayland.

Having recovered much of his strength, he yielded to the importunities of his friends in the Wayland Church and again (1848) became their minister, serving in that capacity for seventeen years. In 1866 the church at Weston, Massachussets, invited him to its pulpit and he accepted. A fall from a tree in 1874 shattered his strength beyond recovery, and he died at his home in Weston some two years later.

From 1859 to 1871 he served as one of the editors of the Monthly Religious Magazine. His writings were marked by a rare mysticism and devotional spirit particularly satisfying to many at that time. His Regeneration (1853) and Athanasia; or Foregleams of Immortality (1858) were widely read.

His interest in family history and genealogy led him to publish in 1857 Pictures of the Olden Time as Shown in the Fortunes of a Family of Pilgrims, dealing with his ancestors, and Genealogies and Biographical Sketches of the Ancestry and Descendants of Richard Sears (1857).

He died in 1876.

Achievements

• Edmund Hamilton Sears edited "The Monthly Religious Magazine" for twelve years, his most notable book was The Fourth Gospel, the Heart of Christ. Though his sermons and other prose writings are now quite forgotten, his hymns remain a living force in Christian worship. Two of them at least, "Calm on the listening ear of night" and "It came upon a midnight clear, " are among the best known and most beloved in Protestant hymnals.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Foregleams and Foreshadows of Immortality

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Fourth Gospel, the Heart of Christ

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

Views

Quotations: Sears declared "when the human and the Divine law were in conflict it was the duty of all to obey the latter. "

Personality

Edmund Hamilton Sears was abnormally shy and timid and all his life shrank from possibility of criticism.

His exceeding frailty of voice, and his instinctive bashfulness made him prefer the quieter and more secluded places.

Connections

On November 7, 1839 Edmund Hamilton married Ellen Bacon of Barnstable, Massachussets, by whom he had three sons and a daughter.

Father:

Joseph Sears

Mother:

Lucy (Smith) Sears

Spouse:

Ellen Bacon

coworker:

R Ellis

References

• Heralds of a Liberal Faith: With an Introduction (V.3 ) (1910)