Written by Andrew Reed (1787-1862; see SDAH267), this hymn appears in the Wycliffe Chapel Supplement, 1872, and contains his 21 hymns plus 20 by his wife. It was written in 1817 and has eight lines in each stanza, the latter half of each being omitted in SDAH.

     It is interesting to compare the structure of this hymn, which uses three metaphors for the Holy Spirit, with the previous hymn by the same author (SDAH 267), which uses three similes (five in the original with “dew” and “wind” added).

     MERCY has a cosmopolitan flavor, for it was composed in 1854 as a piano piece, “Last Hope,” by Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Gottschalk was born in America to a French mother and English father with a German name. The tuned is named MERCY because it was first associated with Charles Wesley’s “Depth of Mercy,” SDAH 521.

     Gottschalk was born December 19, 1829, in New Orleans. He was a child prodigy, going to Paris to study at age 13. Chopin predicted that he would become the “king of pianist” and a world-recognized composer.  He wrote a large volume of popular piano pieces, a symphony, a cantata, two operas, and an overture. He died of yellow fever on December 18, 1869, while on a trip to Brazil, where he went to perform at a festival of his own music.

     Edwin pond Parker was born January 13, 1836, at Castine, Maine.  He was educated at Bowdoin College and Bangor Theological Seminary, and became a congregational minister, serving at Hartford, Connecticut, for more than 50 years. He wrote some 200 hymns after the age of 56 and was the editor of several books of hymns. Parker died at Hartford, on May 28, 1925. He arranged MERCY as a hymn tune.