This Victorian tune and Irish carol was written for children to help them understand the catechism, published in “Hymns for Little Children.” It has been the processional carol that commences the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College Chapel in Cambridge every year since 1918, always started off a capella (without accompaniment) by a single boy soprano, and the boy never knows that he will be the one chosen to sing it until just minutes before the BBC broadcast begins when millions around the world listen in. The first stanza resembles a Sunday school lesson told to young children, but yet declares the fullness of Jesus’s deity and eternal nature. In the second stanza, we see the humility of Christ who, God in human flesh, was born in a stable, His throne at the time a livestock trough. Though the writer cautions Christian children to be good as He, we ought to be thankful that Christ came because none of us can be as good as He and are not, and it is His righteousness, not ours, and our trust in that, that gains us entrance into Heaven. The last two stanzas point the eyes of all of us children to look to Christ in hope and expectation that this world is not the goal, but the world to come is. We are reminded of Jesus’s words in John wherein He tells the disciples that He is going to prepare a place for them, and we are reminded here of the greatness of that final day. The hymn takes us from Christ’s coming from heaven in lowliness and poverty to meditating on the coming of His return, sitting at the right hand of God, and as King as the universe.
Once in royal David’s city stood a lowly cattle shed, Where a mother laid her baby in a manger for His bed; Mary was that mother mild, Jesus Christ her little child.
He came down to earth from heaven who is God and Lord of all, And His shelter was a stable, and His cradle was a stall: With the poor, and mean, and lowly, lived on earth our Savior holy.
And through all His wondrous childhood He would honor and obey, Love and watch the lowly maiden in whose gentle arms He lay: Christian children all must be mild, obedient, good as He.
For He is our childhood pattern, day by day like us He grew. He was little, weak and helpless; tears and smiles, like us, He knew. And He feeleth for our sadness, and He shareth in our gladness.
And our eyes at last shall see him, through His own redeeming love; For that child so dear and gentle is our Lord in heav’n above, And He leads His children on to the place where He is gone.
Not in that poor lowly stable, with the oxen standing by, We shall see Him, but in heaven, set at God’s right hand on high; When like stars His children crowned all in white shall wait around.
