Hymn #502: Dear God, Embracing Humankind | First Congregational Church

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), a Quaker poet and newspaper editor, published his polemical seventeen-stanza poem “The Brewing of Soma,” in the April 1872 issue of Atlantic Monthly. The English editor W. Garrett Horder adapted the later stanzas to form this prayer-hymn and included it in his Worship Song (1884).

John Greenleaf Whittier was born in Massachusetts to a farming family. By working as a shoemaker and teacher, he finally earned enough money to pursue studies briefly at Haverhill Academy. Whittier was inspired by the poetry of Scottish nationalist Robert Burns and began writing his own verse at the age of fourteen.

Frederick Charles Maker’s (1844-1927) tune REST (sometimes called ELTON) is his best-known hymn tune. It appeared with this text in the Congregational Church Hymnal (1887), published in London, and was previously included in a small collection of eighteen tunes by Maker with the hymn “There Is an Hour of Peaceful Rest.”

Frederick C. Maker was a British church organist in Nonconformist churches. Maker spent his life in Bristol, England, the city of his birth. He was active in the Bristol Church Choir Association, a group of church choirs that united for special musical services throughout the year.