Astounding Grace

Six o’clock in the morning—I  knew it from the clock on the wall, and from the  neighbor’s car, which had just pulled out to ferry the children to school, an event that, without fail, occurred at six o’clock in the morning.

By which time I would have positioned myself on the stepper for a thirty-minute cardiovascular exertion. To accompany which I would play some music, for the nonce the songs that I had downloaded into my IPhone.  Such as?  Such as Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in F minor, Cat Stevens’ “Morning Has Broken,” The Brothers Four’s “The Green Leaves of Summer,” O Sacrum Convivium, Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini—indeed, a truly eclectic selection.

But, to my pleasant surprise, after Wynton Marsalis and Kathleen Battle’s performance of Alessandro Scarlatti’s “Mio tesoro per te moro,” Katherine Jenkins intoned the rather earnest hymn, “Amazing Grace.”  I had expected the Bach concerto, but then I realized that the downloaded pieces had, without my intervention, arranged themselves alphabetically.

At any rate, in an instant, Jenkins put me on a spiritual frequency, and set me to thinking about the unusual adventure that “Amazing Grace” had gone on, from a simple, rather coarsely written verse (used to reinforce a sermon given in a small village in England on the New Year’s Day of 1773), to its employment in religious services in the United States in the 19th century—becoming a badge of a Christian movement and an unofficial symbol of the U.S. itself as it progressed westward, and—with the coming of radio and recording—a commodity marketed to secular audiences, in the process turning into an anthem for the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Vietnam war activists, and slipping into the repertoire of the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969.

In what does its appeal consist?  In effect, John Newton, who wrote the hymn, put his life story—in particular his religious conversion—into just five four-line stanzas (Harriet Beecher Stowe added a sixth stanza taken from African American oral tradition).

Newton had lived a rakish life.  After being forced into working with the Royal Navy, he joined the Atlantic slave trade.  A savage storm that wrecked his ship made him call to God for mercy. But after that it would take several twists and turns of fate before he would turn to God in earnest.  When he finally left the sea, he got himself ordained in the Church of England and became a curate of a poor village, Olney, in Buckinghamshire, and there he collaborated with the poet William Cowper in writing hymns.  One of them was entitled, “1 Chronicles 17:16-17, Faith’s Review and Expectation.”  Its first line was: “Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound).”  It is said that Newton’s sermon carrying this hymn was the last that Cowper heard—because the poet became crazy after that.

Its unpromising beginnings nonetheless, the hymn—not among Newton’s best—managed to survive, and eventually reached the United States.  In 1835, William Walker, an American Baptist song leader, joined its words to the music of an old song, “New Britain,” which was how “Amazing Grace,” as we know it, has come down to us.

The first verse—“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, / That saved a wretch like me. / I once was lost but now am found, / Was blind, but now I see”—suggests the parable of the Prodigal Son in the Gospel of Luke (“For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found”).

Jesus demonstrated the astounding nature of grace, not just in his parables, but also and more especially in his actuations—for instance, in the case of a woman caught in adultery, whom the scribes and Pharisees brought and made to stand in the middle. They asked Jesus if they should stone her as Moses commanded, but felt rebuffed and turned tail when Jesus said, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” When they were alone, Jesus asked the woman, “Has no one condemned you?”  When she replied, “No one, sir,” Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on do not sin anymore.”

Perhaps, the second and third verses of the song sum up what the woman felt when she heard Jesus’ words:

T’was Grace that taught my heart to fear.

And Grace, my fears relieved.

How precious did that Grace appear

The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares

I have already come;

‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far

and Grace will lead me home.