What is the story behind “Amazing Grace”?
Tractor Staff asked 3 weeks ago
“Amazing Grace” is one of the best-known hymns in the world. Who wrote it, what Bible passage is it based on, and how did it come to be sung the way we know it today?
Tractor Staff answered 3 weeks ago
“Amazing Grace” was written by John Newton (1725–1807). As a young man Newton was a sailor in the slave trade. In March 1748 a violent storm nearly sank his ship, and he later looked back on that day as the beginning of his conversion. He left the sea around 1754, was ordained in the Church of England in 1764, and became the minister at Olney.
He wrote the hymn for his New Year’s Day sermon on January 1, 1773. His text was 1 Chronicles 17:16-17, where David asks, “Who am I, O LORD God, and what is mine house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?” Newton saw his own life in that question. The hymn was published in Olney Hymns in 1779 under the title “Faith’s Review and Expectation.”
Newton never heard it sung to the melody we know. That tune, “New Britain,” was first paired with his words in 1835, in William Walker’s Southern Harmony. The last verse usually sung today, about ten thousand years, was not written by Newton; later hymnal editors added it.
In 1788 Newton wrote publicly against the slave trade he had once served. The hymn is number 108 in the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal.
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