May the Grace of Christ Our Savior

Author: John Newton

Newton, John, who was born in London, July 24, 1725, and died there Dec. 21, 1807, occupied an unique position among the founders of the Evangelical School, due as much to the romance of his young life and the striking history of his conversion, as to his force of character. His mother, a pious Dissenter, stored his childish mind with Scripture, but died when he was seven years old. At the age of eleven, after two years' schooling, during which he learned the rudiments of Latin, he went to sea with his father. His life at sea teems with wonderful escapes, vivid dreams, and sailor recklessness. He grew into an abandoned and godless sailor. The religious fits of his boyhood changed into settled infidelity, through the study of Shaftesbury and… Go to person page >

May the grace of Christ our [the] Saviour; And the Father's, &c. J. Newton. [Close of Service.] This paraphrase of 2 Cor. xiii. 14, appeared in the Olney Hymns, 1779, Bk. iii., No. 101, in 1 stanza of 8 lines. As a short hymn for the close of Divine Service it has become very popular, and is in use in all English-speaking countries, and sometimes as "May the grace of Christ the Saviour." It has also been translated into several languages. The Latin translation "Gratia nostri Salvatoris," is in Bingham's Hymnologia Christiana Latina, 1871.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)