Several years ago I picked up a modern-day, newly published hymn book and found John Newton’s great old hymn, “Amazing Grace” in it. Immediately, I noticed that the phrase, “God saved a wretch like me,” had been changed to, “God saved and set me free.” Not long ago, I found the same thing in another similar type hymn book. Isaac Watt’s beautiful words had been changed also. The original words read, “Would He (Christ) devote His sacred head, for such a worm as I,” had been changed to “For such a one as I.”
It seems to me that this world’s religion is trying to remove all the “wretches and the worms” out of their doctrine and out of their hymn books. What a sign of the times. The time has come where men and women will not endure sound doctrine. (2 Timothy 4:3) They have done their best to remove the offense of the cross. They are removing all the wretches and the worms, so that the gospel is more appetizing and appealing to everyone in the world. But there is nothing more appetizing and appealing to a true child of God than the blessed truth that declares that Christ Jesus came into the world to save wretches and worms.