Recently we considered the best-known hymn story: It Is Well with My Soul. This time we consider what is probably the best-known hymn: Amazing Grace. And it also has a wonderful story attached to it, one that has nothing to do with bagpipes!
John Newton (1725-1807) was used by God in extraordinary ways. From a blasphemous slave ship captain to a preacher of the gospel, his story is one of the most captivating adventures one could read. It is also a most relevant saga for us today in the midst of so much attention to racial reconciliation and slavery. Newton played a strategic role in the abolition of the slave trade. Today as I write this study, it is July 26, the anniversary of the 1833 act of the British Parliament to bring that monstrous practice to an end.
Newton’s mother was a godly woman who laid a gospel foundation in his heart in his childhood. But after she died of tuberculosis two weeks before his seventh birthday, he was left in the care of his profane father, who sent him to a boarding school and then left him under the care of his second wife. At age eleven, young John was taken to sea on his father’s ship, where he learned the foul language and immorality of the godless seamen aboard ship, along with the typical excesses of drunkenness and gambling.
After his father retired in 1742, Newton wound up signing on as a crew member aboard the Harwich, a merchant ship. Soon after he was forced onto a naval ship where his rebellious spirit repeatedly led to harsh discipline. At one point he tried to desert and, in front of the entire crew of 350, was stripped to the waist and received a flogging of eight dozen lashes! Later he transferred to the Pegasus, a slave ship bound for West Africa.
He didn’t get along with the crew and in 1745 they left him in West Africa with a slave trader, who gave him to his African mistress/wife. She abused him as much as she did her other slaves. He nearly died of disease and starvation under her brutal mistreatment. In 1748 he was rescued by a sea captain as a favor to Newton’s father. It was during the voyage back to England that the ship encountered a violent storm off the coast of Ireland. The Holy Spirit brought to his mind what his mother had taught him of the saving work of Christ. He was affected by reading Thomas á Kempis’ classic, “The Imitation of Christ.” He considered himself to have been minimally converted at that time, but it was years later that he grew to understand the full implications of the gospel for his life.
Over the next few years he returned to sea for three voyages as captain of slave ships. During the transit from the African coast to America, slaves were chained and stacked like lumber below decks. It was expected that as many as one-quarter would die before reaching the US. It was not until after leaving the sea for a job on shore in 1755 as tide surveyor in Liverpool that he really began to grow in his conversion and in his understanding of the evils of the slave trade.
His study of the Bible was gradually transforming everything about him, along with studies in classic literature like Phillip Doddridge’s “The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul.” By this time he had married his childhood sweetheart, Mary Catlett (“Polly”) whom he had cherished through letters during his years at sea. His studies included theology and biblical languages and led him to believe that God was calling him to be a minister in the Church of England. He applied for ordination in 1757 but it was not until seven years later that he was finally approved. He was assigned as curate to the country parish church in Olney. His ministry there was powerful and included speaking and writing against slavery. So many were coming to Jesus as Savior under his preaching that the Olney church had to build a gallery to accommodate the numbers!
It was there that he joined with William Cowper (“There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood”) to jointly compose hymns to be sung at the Thursday evening study and prayer service. “Amazing Grace” is the best known of the hymns they published in the 1779 Olney Hymnal. That was the year he became rector of the influential St. Mary Woolnoth Church in London. It was there that he published his convictions about the barbaric practices of the institution of slavery in his “Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade.” He joined forces with William Wilberforce, who led the campaign to abolish the slave trade, and they sent copies of his book to every member of Parliament. In it he apologized for a confession, which … comes too late …. It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.
Newton’s wife Mary Catlett died in 1790, after which he published Letters to a Wife (1793), in which he expressed his grief. Plagued by ill health and failing eyesight, Newton died on December 21, 1807 in London at the age of 82. Near the end of his life he was reported as saying, “Although my memory’s fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.” He was buried beside his wife in St. Mary Woolnoth in London. Both were reinterred at the Church of St Peter and Paul in Olney in 1893. His grave is marked by a stone which bears the epitaph he himself had requested.
The hymn, Amazing Grace, is a virtual autobiography of Newton’s spiritual life. While it never mentions the cross or the name of Christ, it is impossible to understand the words without reference to those gospel truths that Newton preached throughout his ministry. How else can we understand what he meant when he said he was a wretch that was once lost, but had now been found; of grace that taught his heart to fear (to see his sin) and that same grace that relieved his fears (receiving forgiveness and assurance of salvation); and the eternal life of joy and peace that would be his in glory after the end of his mortal life. What glorious truths from a man who had been raised from slavery to freedom.
How sad that so many sing it today with no understanding whatsoever of the meaning of the words, much less the beauty of the Savior who was Newton’s “shield and portion” “as long as life endures.” What is grace? The simplest catechism definition is “God’s unmerited favor.” As Newton’s life illustrates, grace is God taking hold of the heart of a sinful rebel who deserves His eternal wrath, and instead paying for the guilt of his sin by sending His own Son to the cross as a substitute, and then transforming the heart of that rebellious traitor, giving him/her a heart of repentance and faith, and adopting that one as His child and promising eternal life, only because of what Christ Jesus has done.
- Amazing grace! How sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see. - ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed. - Through many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home. - The Lord has promised good to me,
His Word my hope secures;
He will my Shield and Portion be,
As long as life endures. - Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace. - The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who called me here below,
Will be forever mine.
The final stanza in modern hymnals was not written by Newton. It first appeared in a 1790 collection of African- American songs that had been passed down orally for nearly 50 years.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.
We don’t know what music would have been used for the hymn in Olney. Common Meter texts were interchangeable with many C.M. tunes that everyone knew. The tune we commonly use today, NEW BRITAIN, was first joined to the text in 1845 in William Walker’s shape note hymnal Southern Harmony. It probably originated in Primitive Baptist singing in the Appalachian regions of the US.
Here’s a marvelous performance of the hymn with choir orchestra, organ, and bagpipes.
Here’s a 14-minute video survey of Newton’s life: