There’s a wideness in God’s mercy

The words of this hymn are by Frederick William Faber (1814-1863), born in Yorkshire. After grammar school in the north he spent five years at Harrow and then went up to Oxford, first to Balliol College and then to University College, of which he later became a Fellow. As an undergraduate he wrote poetry and spent much time in the Lake District where he met and was encouraged by Wordsworth.  Faber’s family were of Huguenot descent, and their religious views were Calvinist, but soon after his arrival at Oxford the publication of the Tracts for the Times began and Faber was greatly influenced by them and especially by John Henry Newman.  He soon converted to Anglicanism and was ordained to the priesthood in the C of E in 1839.  In 1843 Faber became Rector of Elton in Northamptonshire.  In 1845 Newman resigned his Oxford position and was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1846 and ordained to the priesthood the next year.  Faber soon followed Newman.  Along with several other laymen, Faber first established an order, the Brothers of the Will of God, in Birmingham and later joined the Oratorians of St Philip Neri in London, near Charing Cross. Having been ordained to the Roman priesthood in 1847, Faber became Provost of the Oratorians, who three years later moved to Brompton, in spite of the objection of some residents there who feared that a Roman Catholic building would ruin the area.  He remained Superior of the House until his death.

Faber wrote prolifically, publishing a dozen books on religious subjects and four books of poetry.  Although he wrote none if the official Tracts for the Times, he published his own series of 12 Tracts on the Church and their Offices.  He wrote nearly 100 hymns, many of them Marian.  Among his best-known hymns are “Faith of our fathers” and “There’s a wideness.”  This hymn first appeared as eight quatrains, beginning, “Souls of men, why will ye scatter?”, in Oratory Hymns, where the fourth quatrain was the first of the present hymn; he later expanded it to thirteen quatrains, entitled “Come to Jesus.”   Modern hymnals shorten the hymn using different combinations of Faber’s quatrains and commonly beginning with the fourth stanza.  The Revised English Hymnal, which we use, has Faber’s stanzas 4-5, 8-9, 10-7, and 13.

The tune “Corvedale” was composed by Maurice Bevan (1921-2006) for this hymn.  It requires the hymn to be sung in 8-line stanzas.  Bevan, primarily a singer, was a bass-baritone in the Deller Consort for more than 30 years; he also edited or arranged much of that group’s music.  He was simultaneously a Vicar Choral in St Paul’s Cathedral, London (as was Deller), for 40 years, as well as a musicologist and composer.  Bevan composed two other hymn tunes besides “Corvedale” (a name of the valley of the river Corve, which flows through Shropshire, where Bevan grew up).  This tune largely replaces Stainer’s “Cross of Jesus” as the setting for Faber’s hymn.