Monday, January 21, 2008

A Mysterious Verse of Amazing Grace

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.


This verse of "Amazing Grace" is not in John Newton's original; it became a widely popular addition in the nineteenth century, through Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (Chapter XXXVIII). A mystery about it is that nobody actually knows for sure who wrote the lines, although John P. Rees is the most common attribution.