Dear Lord and Father of Mankind

Lyrics

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
forgive our foolish ways;
re-clothe us in our rightful mind;
in purer lives thy service find,
in deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard
beside the Syrian sea
the gracious calling of the Lord,
let us, like them, without a word
rise up and follow thee.

Drop thy still dews of quietness,
till all our strivings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess
the beauty of thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
thy coolness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,
O still small voice of calm.

History

"Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" was not written as a hymn. Its words are taken from the latter part of "The Brewing of Soma", a poem by the American Quaker poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier (born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, on 17 December 1807; died at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, on 7 September 1892). The poem was published in The Atlantic Monthly in April 1872.

The poem describes the priests of ancient India brewing and drinking soma, a ritual drink, and compares this with Christian worship that relies on music and ritual to reach the divine; against it the poem sets the quiet, sober and unadorned approach of the Quakers, who wait for God's "still, small voice". The hymn's words are taken from this longer poem. The hymn was made from the poem by Garrett Horder, who included it in his Congregational Hymns in 1884.

Two tunes are commonly used. REPTON is by Hubert Parry (1848-1918), written in 1888 for an aria in his oratorio Judith; in 1924 George Gilbert Stocks, director of music at Repton School, set it to Whittier's words. It requires the last line of each stanza to be repeated and is the usual tune in many countries. REST, by Frederick Charles Maker, fits the metre without repetition and is the prevalent tune in the United States. The composer Charles Ives made a setting of two stanzas, "Serenity", published in 114 Songs in 1919.

In a 2005 BBC Songs of Praise poll of the UK's favourite hymns, it came second.

Performance

The video is titled "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind - St Martin's Voices, Worship video with lyrics"; its description names St Martin's Voices of St Martin-in-the-Fields as the artist. It runs about 3 minutes and was published to the church channel on 6 March 2023.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · hymnary.org · St Martin's Voices recording and Words book