Henry Alline

Henry Alline (sometimes spelled Allen) was born at Newport, Rhode Island, on June 14, 1748. He served for a time as a minister in Falmouth, Nova Scotia, and died at North Hill, Nova Scotia, on February 7, 1784.

Alline is reported to have founded a theological group known as the Allinites, who held that Adam and Eve possessed no physical bodies before the Fall and denied the bodily resurrection. While these views may appear in his prose works, they are absent from his Hymns and Spiritual Songs, published in five books. A third edition of this work was issued at Dover and Boston in 1797, followed by another printing at Stoningtonport, Connecticut, in 1802. Thirty-seven of his hymns were included in Smith and Jones's Hymns for the Use of Christians (1805). His best-known hymn, "Amazing sight, the Saviour stands," from the first edition of Hymns and Spiritual Songs (circa 1790), was preserved anonymously in Asahel Nettleton's Village Hymns and incorporated into Edwin F. Hatfield's Church Hymn Book (1872) and the Baptist Praise Book.