Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our feverish ways!
Reclothe 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.

O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with thee
The silence of eternity,
Interpreted by love.

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 thru the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak thru the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still small voice of calm!

John Greenleaf Whittier

The stanzas that make up John Greenleaf Whittier’s hymn are taken from his longer poem “The Brewing of Soma,” beginning with the twelfth stanza. In the earlier stanzas, Whittier writes about an intoxicating drink called soma that was brewed by a Hindu sect in India. Soma was drunk by worshipers in order “to bring the skies more near, or lift men up to heaven.” Then after his description of pagan worship, Whittier writes, “In sensual transports wild as vain, we brew in many a Christian fane the heathen Soma still.”

To Whittier, the ritualism and emotionalism that can accompany Christian worship were similar to drinking the Hindu soma—vain attempts to get closer to God. Instead, he called Christians back to simplicity and purity in worship.

Copied from The One Year Book of Hymns by Robert Brown and Mark Norton. Tyndale House: NY, 2017.

Note: This hymn is in the public domain, but the comments are under copyright by Tyndale House.

Photo taken in Milton, FL, 2021

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