HYMN INFORMATION: Dear Lord and Father of Mankind is a hymn with words adapted from the closing stanzas of an 1872 poem, "The Brewing of Soma," by American Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Soma was a sacred ritual drink in pre-Christian Vedic religion, possibly with hallucinogenic properties. The poem describes Vedic priests brewing and drinking soma in an attempt to experience divinity, and compares this to some Christians' use of "music, incense, vigils drear, and trance, to bring the skies more near, or lift men up to heaven!" But Whittier declares these efforts to be mere intoxication, and ends by describing the true method for contact with the divine, as practised by Quakers: sober lives dedicated to doing God's will, seeking silence and selflessness in order to hear the "still, small voice", described in I Kings 19:11-13 as the authentic voice of God, rather than earthquake, wind or fire. The hymn adaptation is by English pastor W. Garrett Horder, from 1884, and is sung to a tune by English organist Frederick Charles Maker.