Father of Mercies – Frederick Faber and Alice Flowerdew

“Father of Mercies” -- if ever a hymn could be called a hybrid, this one certainly would. Think of it kind of like a cross-breed animal…like a Zebra and a Donkey – a Zeedonk (see the picture). Its history is a cut and paste affair, with portions of the hymn being written by two different poets, from two different churches, with some words from the original poems changed to the words we know today. And, the poets were even born in different centuries, so it might be hard to fathom what forces worked to bring this song’s verses together. Perhaps it helped that both poets were English and that their poems were both 19th Century compositions, despite the poets’ birthdates. More importantly, this song-poem’s message reminds the worshipper that God is universal, that His goodness calls out to all people, across time and other dividing lines. Alice Flowerdew spent some time abroad in Jamaica, as the wife of a British government official, until she returned to England in the early 19th Century following the death of her husband. She was 44 years old in 1803 when she wrote the words of the six-stanza poem “Fountain of Mercies, God of Love”, the first word of which was later changed to ‘Father’ for the song; the resulting text for verses two and three of the song “Father of Mercies” came from the first and fifth stanzas of her original poem. She was the caretaker of a ladies boarding school and a member of a Baptist church when she composed the words. Could the other ladies at the school or people at the church be for whom she was writing when she penned the words ‘all creatures’, ‘our hearts’, and ‘our Father’s hand’ in the two verses attributed to her? It would be no surprise, if following the death of her husband, that a group of women and-or fellow believers had become especially important to her. On the other hand, Frederick William Faber’s verse indicates he felt God’s presence very personally, since he chose the phrases ‘my love’ and my way’ to express his devotion to Him. Faber’s experiences by 1849, when he was 35 years old, suggest his personal devotion to God. Though he began his adult vocation in the Anglican clergy in Elton, he had switched to Catholicism by 1845, along the way enduring dissenters in the church where he ministered and intensely contemplating the roots of his faith. Faber never married, and he and some of his friends formed a pseudo-monastery. Though he moved to Birmingham, England following his conversion to the Catholic Church, he moved yet again to London soon thereafter. He was kinda like a ‘rolling stone’, but throughout he maintained his love of music, upon which he leaned to develop meaningful Catholic hymns in the publication “Jesus and Mary” in 1849. This collection contained “Mother of Mercies”, which was eventually changed to ‘Father..’, an echo of what had happened to Flowerdew’s “Fountain of Mercies…”. One wonders what Flowerdew and Faber might have said had they known of their poems’ union years later. It shouldn’t surprise us, though, that God’s purposes can create something valuable out of seemingly disparate elements. The church itself is a hybrid-- not everyone’s an ear, or an eye, after all. I think the next time I sing this song, I’ll look around and wonder what other hybrids God just might be crafting for His use. Information on the hymn was available at: http://homeschoolblogger.com/hymnstudies/534423/ Information on the composers was obtained through the websites: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/index.htm#lk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_William_Faber http://www.ely.anglican.org/about/good_and_great/faber.html