Amazing Grace
John Newton · 1779 · tune NEW BRITAIN
Key of G · public domain
Words
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind but now I see
And grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed
I have already come
'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far
And grace will lead me home
Bright shining as the sun
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we'd first begun
The story
John Newton spent his twenties in the Atlantic slave trade, and by his own account was good at it. A storm off Donegal in 1748 nearly sank his ship and started something in him that took decades to finish; he stayed in the trade for years afterwards, which he never tried to hide. He wrote this for a prayer meeting in Olney on New Year's Day 1773, to be read rather than sung. The tune everyone knows, NEW BRITAIN, was not attached to it until 1835 in America. Newton spent his last years campaigning against the trade he had worked in, and lived just long enough to see Britain abolish it in 1807. The word wretch in the first line is not poetic humility. He meant himself, and he meant it precisely.
Chords in G
In the app you can move this to any key and it works out the capo for you.
Themes
Grace · Assurance · Testimony