Dear Lord and Father of Mankind

DESCRIPTION: "Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways; reclothe us in our rightful mind, in purer lives thy service find, in deeper reverence, praise." The speaker requests quietness and calm
AUTHOR: Words: John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
EARLIEST DATE: 1872 (source: hymnary.org)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad campsong
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 163, "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" (notes only)
Zander/Klusmann-CampSongsNThings, p. 108, "Dear Lord and Father" (1 text, 1 tune)
Zander/Klusmann-CampSongsPopularEdition, p. 54, "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" (1 text, 1 tune)
SongsOfManyNations, "Dear Lord and Father" (1 text, 1 tune) (CC edition, p. 65) (12th edition, p. 94)
NOTES [179 words]: Extremely popular both as a poem and as a hymn (hymnary.org lists 463 hymnals that have it!), though I would not bet much on it having ever been passed from person to person outside a church. It is a subset of Whittier's poem "The Brewing of Soma." The last lines,
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!
are an allusion to 1 Kings 19:11ff. The prophet Elijah has fled to Mount Horeb, and is concerned because he has had to flee Israel, and by implication God isn't doing anything. God tells Elijah to leave his cave, and a wind, an earthquake, and a fire pass by, but God is not in any of them. Then comes the "still small voice." Or whatever it was; the Hebrew phrase is difficult, with a rare word in it. The New Revised Standard Version of 19:12 has "a sound of sheer silence"; the Jewish Tanakh has "a soft murmuring sound"; the Revised English Bible has "a faint murmuring sound"; the Greek LXX had something like "the sound of a light breeze," which might be the best rendering. Not that Whittier is likely to have known that. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.3
File: ACSF163D

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