|
AMAZING GRACE 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 has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home. The Lord has promised good to me, His Word my hop secures, He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures. And when this flesh and heart shall fail, and mortal life shall cease, I shall possess within the veil a life of joy and peace. 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 first begun. Somewhere in Olney, England there stands a tombstone with the following inscription: “John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and Libertine, a servant of slavers in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the Faith he had long labored to destroy.” This was written by Newton himself, one of the great evangelists of the eighteenth century.
His godly mother died when he was seven, and long after his father remarried, saw John leave school and join his father’s ship. He was then eleven years old. After several years of rebellion and debauchery, he became captain of a slave ship out of the West African coast, a cruel and vicious way of life, to say the least.
On March 10, 1748, while returning to England during a particularly stormy voyage, he began to read Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis a Dutch monk from the fifteenth century. The Holy Spirit used the stormy sea and this book to begin the work of Newton’s conversion.
After his conversion, he did continue his work as a slave trader, trying to improve the conditions for slaves and even holding worship services on board his vessel. Eventually, though, the Holy Spirit convicted him to end this lifestyle and he served as a clerk for nine years after which he felt and responded to a call into ministry, assisted by both Whitefield and the Wesleys. He did stay with the Anglican Church, however and was ordained and began his little pastorate in Olney, near Cambridge, where he stayed for fifteen years.
He held his services in his church, and in addition held services in any large building he could get, an unheard of practice in that day.
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR PART TWO OF THIS AMAZING SINNER SAVED BY GRACE!
|
