I removed my post because I thought someone might think it was offensive...Anyway, I believe the first 3 verses that we sing are attributed to John Newton (and other verses that he wrote have been omitted) from modern day hymnals...
http://www.anointedlinks.com/amazing_grace.html
The fourth was written in the 1800s maybe...Anyone know??
From wikipedia:
Extra verses
In her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe quoted three stanzas as seemingly from one hymn, two of them corrupt versions of Amazing Grace stanzas, and one reading:
When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining like the sun,
We've no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun. [3]
Despite its relatively poor mesh with the rest of the hymn (the change from "I" to "we," change of subject, no reference for "there"), a form of this stanza became common as part of Amazing Grace in hymnals in the early twentieth century, due in large part to the influential hymnodist and publisher Edwin Othello Excell. While the stanza is often credited to John P. Rees (1828-1900),[4] it antedates his birth. It was in print by 1790, added to an old and widely-varied hymn most usually beginning "Jerusalem, my happy home" [5], and was still appearing as part of this hymn in books published around the time of Stowe's book,[6].
Linear Mode
