“THERE'S A WIDENESS IN GOD'S MERCY.”
Frederick William Faber, author of this favorite hymn-poem, had a peculiar genius for putting golden thoughts into common words, and making them sing. Probably no other sample of his work shows better than this his art of combining literary cleverness with the most reverent piety. Cant was a quality Faber never could put into his religious verse.
He was born in Yorkshire, Eng., June 28, 1814, and received his education at Oxford. Settled as Rector of Elton, in Huntingdonshire, in 1843, he came into sympathy with the “Oxford Movement,” and followed Newman into the Romish Church. He continued his ministry as founder and priest for the London branch of the Catholic congregation of St. Philip Neri for fourteen years, dying Sept. 26, 1863, at the age of forty-nine.
His godly hymns betray no credal shibboleth or doctrinal bias, but are songs for the whole earthly church of God.
There's a wideness in God's mercy
Like the wideness of the sea;
There's a kindness in His justice
Which is more than liberty.
There is welcome for the sinner
And more graces for the good;
There is mercy with the Saviour,
There is healing in His blood.
There's no place where earthly sorrows
Are more felt than up in heaven;
There's no place where earthly failings
Have such kindly judgment given.
There is plentiful redemption
In the blood that has been shed,
There is joy for all the members
In the sorrows of the Head.
For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man's mind,
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more simple
We should take Him at His word,
And our lives would be all sunshine
In the sweetness of the Lord.
No tone of comfort has breathed itself more surely and tenderly into grieved hearts than these tuneful and singularly expressive sentences of Frederick Faber.