Both of the hymns on this broadside were published by Josiah Goddard in his New and Beautiful Collection of Select Hymns and Spiritual Songs (246-47, 394-95). The text of “Conversion Hymn” is a version of a hymn later credited to Samson Occum, beginning “Awak’d by Sinai’s awful sound.” It is interesting to note that good hymn texts were often changed in ways that seem minor to the listener, but usually had to do with doctrinal differences. When a hymn was taken into another sect’s hymnbook, adjustments had to be made. In Goddard’s case it was the Baptist’s heavier emphasis on the Bible.
While “Awak’d by Sinai’s awful sound” does not appear in Samson Occum’s published works, it was credited to him in John Rippon’s Selection of Hymns from the Best Authors and in many collections after that time (Ellinwood). Occum (1723-92) was a Mohican Indian born near New London, Connecticut. At the age of sixteen, he was deeply influenced by the preaching of the Reverend James Davenport, an evangelist of the Great Awakening. He received a rudimentary education in English and theology from Eleazer Wheelock at his Indian charity school in Lebanon, Connecticut. Inspired by Wheelock, he devoted the rest of his life to spreading the gospel among Native Americans. His evangelizing received a great deal of attention, and despite his lack of formal training, he was ordained by the Presbytery of Long Island in 1759 (“Samson Occom Papers”; Wilson 60-61). He published A Choice Collection of Hymns, which was reprinted in several editions over the following twenty years.
The music to which the original text was set is “Ganges.”
Two versions of “Harvest of the World” were printed, each with a different tune, in Samuel Holyoke’s Christian Harmonist and Jeremiah Ingalls’s Christian Harmony. In the Ingalls version the second line is the same as the broadside text: “The fields are all white, the harvest is near, the reapers all with their sharp sickles appear.” In Holyoke’s version, the reapers are angels. In both there are several small word differences from the broadside text.
