![]() His ministry included the London poor, the merchant class, and the wealthy and influential. In 1779 Newton left Olney to become rector of St. Rector John Newton - Abolition of Slavery We know it today as "Amazing Grace." Several other Olney hymns by Newton continue in use today, including "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds," and "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken." The most famous of all the Olney Hymns, "Faith's Review and Expectation," grew out of David's exclamation in 1 Chronicles 17:16-17. In 1779, two hundred and eighty of these were collected and combined with sixty-eight hymns by Newton's friend and parishioner, William Cowper, and published as the Olney Hymns. ![]() World's Most Famous Hymn - Amazing Graceįor the Sunday evening services, Newton often composed a hymn that developed the lessons and Scripture for the evening. There was also a Tuesday evening prayer meeting which was always well attended. There were regular Sunday morning and afternoon services and meetings for children and young people. He spent his mornings in Bible study and his afternoons visiting his parishioners. John and his beloved wife Mary (At the end of his life, John would write that their love "equaled all that the writers of romance have imagined") moved to the little market town of Olney. His mother's prayers for her son were answered, and in 1764, at the age of thirty-nine, John Newton began forty-three years of preaching the Gospel of Christ. Newton left slave trading and took the job of tide surveyor at Liverpool, but he began to think he had been called to the ministry. Philip Doddridge's The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul provided much spiritual comfort, and a fellow-Christian captain he met off the coast of Africa guided Newton further in his Christian faith. He began a disciplined Bible study, prayer, and Christian reading schedule and tried to be a Christian example to the sailors under his command. Though Newton continued in his profession of sailing and slave trading for a time, his life was transformed. New Directions - John Newton's Conversion Newton never ceased to stand in awe of God's work in his life. That day at the helm, March 21, 1748, was a day Newton remembered ever after: "On that day the Lord sent from on high and delivered me out of deep waters." Many years later, as an old man, Newton wrote in his diary of March 21, 1805: "Not well able to write but I endeavor to observe the return of this day with humiliation, prayer, and praise." Only God's amazing grace could and would take a rude, profane, slave-trading sailor and transform him into a child of God. Luke 11:13 seemed to assure him that God might still hear him: "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him." Deliverance - Salvation of John Newton He found a New Testament and began to read. Yet, Newton's thoughts began to turn to Christ. Certainly, he was beyond hope and beyond saving, even if the Scriptures were true. John Newton had rejected his mother's teachings and had led other sailors into unbelief. ![]() Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer." ye have set at naught all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also laughed at your calamity I will mock when your fear cometh: when your fear cometh as desolation and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind when distress and anguish come upon you. He remembered Proverbs 1:24-31, and in the midst of that storm, those verses seemed to confirm Newton in his despair: Some of those early childhood teachings came to mind now. His mother had prayed he would become a minister and had early taught him the Scriptures and Isaac Watts' Divine Songs for Children. John Newton was known as "The Great Blasphemer." He sank so low at one point that he was even a servant to slaves in Africa for a brief period. Sailors were not noted for the refinement of their manners, but Newton had a reputation for profanity, coarseness, and debauchery, which even shocked many sailors. Since the age of eleven, he had lived a life at sea. ![]() His life seemed as ruined and wrecked as the battered ship he was trying to steer through the storm. With the storm raging fiercely, Newton had time to think. From one o'clock until midnight, he was at the helm. On the eleventh day of the storm, sailor John Newton was too exhausted to pump, so he was tied to the helm and tried to hold the ship to its course. ![]() The sailors had little hope of survival, but they mechanically worked the pumps, trying to keep the vessel afloat. Its canvas sails were ripped, and the wood on one side of the ship had been torn away and splintered. The Greyhound thrashed about in the north Atlantic storm for over a week. ![]()
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