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2 Comments

  1. Basil Foster
    10 September 2018 @ 12:00 pm

    Thank you for what you are doing!
    My wife only recently pointed me to your website and I have found it very beneficial.
    I am always astounded at our Lord’s providential mercies and generosity. Like many, Amazing Grace, is my favorite hymn and it is providential that the first blog article that you post after I came to your site is about it.
    I am curious as to whether you have any notion of when that 7th stanza began to appear. I have seen sources that state that it actually was “borrowed” from another hymn, possibly unknown today.
    I also recently became aware that part of the reason for the early popularity of Amazing Grace in America may have been because of its inclusion in the text of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Of course, that was written in the mid-nineteenth century and was popular amongst the Abolishionists, most of whom were God-fearing people and probably knew of it.
    By the way, I was born and grew up in Ontario, but born again and am growing up into Christ in Texas!
    Keep up the good work!

    • rcottrill
      10 September 2018 @ 2:07 pm

      Thanks for your kind and encouraging note–and thank your wife for me, for suggesting you take a look at my site. 🙂

      As to Amazing Grace, it’s a truly great and well-known song, but there continue to be mysteries connected with it. And yes, Tom does sing this hymn in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I’d forgotten that, though I’ve read the book several times. But I looked it up, and there it is in chapter 38. Not only that, but Tom sings the verse that’s been added, and was not part of Newton’s original: “When we’ve been there ten thousand years…” The novel was published in 1852, and that may be the first pairing we have of the stanza with Newton’s song.

      In 1779 John Newton published Olney Hymns which contains the hymn. Then, in 1790, Richard and Andrew Broaddus published a book called A Collection of Sacred Ballads. It’s there the earliest known appearance of the stanza in question came in sight. (I don’t know what the song was.) The first appearance of Amazing Grace in a hymn book, which also used the stanza in question, comes in 1910, in Coronation Hymns, edited by Edwin Excell (who also gave us words and music for the gospel song Since I Have Been Redeemed.

      Well, there you are, the origin of the tune is also uncertain, but I’ll leave it there for now. God bless you and your wife.