Lord [God] and Father, great and holy

Author: Frederick W. Farrar

Farrar, Frederic William, D.D., son of the Rev. Charles Penhorn Farrar, sometime a missionary in India, and late Rector of Sidcup, Kent. He was born at Bombay, Aug. 7th, 1831; and educated at King William's College, Isle of Man, and at King's College, London. In 1850 he obtained a classical exhibition, and in 1852 a scholarship at the University of London, whence, after taking the degree of B.A., he passed to Trinity College, Cambridge. There, in 1852, he took (with other prizes) the Chancellor's Prize in English verse, and graduated in first-class classical honours in 1854. In the same year he entered Holy Orders, and was subsequently for some time an assistant master at Harrow School. In 1871 he was appointed to the head mastership of Mar… Go to person page >

God and Father, great and holy. F. W. Farrar. [God is Love.] Written in 1856, and included in the Savoy Hymnary (Chapel Royal), about 1869, in 3 stanzas of 8 lines, from whence it has passed into various collections, including the Westminster Abbey Hymn Book, 1883, and others. In the American Unitarian Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, it begins, “Lord and Father, great and holy."

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)