July 1, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, during his lifetime, John Newton’s story was renowned as one of the most sensational, sinful, spiritual, and historically-important sagas of the 18th century. And we’re telling this story because on this day in 1725, John Newton—the author of "Amazing Grace"—was born.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show.
And of course our favorite subjects are music and history,
and when they combine like they do in this story,
that's just a twofer. It's often been said that grace,
like water, always flows downward to the lowest place. Nobody
(00:31):
embodies this principle better than John Newton, author of the
best loved hymn of all time. During his lifetime, Newton's
story was renowned as one of the most sensational, sinful, spiritual,
and historically important sagas of the eighteenth century. And we're
telling this story because on this day in seventeen twenty.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Five, John Newton was born.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Here to tell the stories the a team of John
Newton biographers Brian Edwards, Jonathan Aitkeen, and Tony Baker.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Newton was born in seventeen twenty five in Wopping, about
a mile downriver from the Tower of London, right by
the Thames. Wapping was at that time a little kind
of hamlet, although it was a very busy waterfront. A
thousand ships a day were coming in and out of
London at that point. Newton, as a little boy, could
(01:26):
walk down to execution dock and see mutineers and pirates
hanging in chains until three tides had washed over them.
His father was a sea captain. We don't know much
about his father. Newton held him in both fear, awe
and respect. His mother was a very godly woman, Elizabeth.
(01:47):
She took John Newton as a little boy, up to
the age of nearly seven, to the dissenting chapel of
Dr Jennings.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
And it was quite famous. It was full, and all
kinds of interesting preachers came there, including Isaac Watts. John
Newton as a little boy, was more educated at his
mother's knee, simply because John Newton's senior, Captain John Newton,
was away on these very long sea voyages, and so
(02:19):
he was very much an absent father.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
She had taught him to read, and she was beginning
to teach in Latin. She taught him Bible stories, Bible verses,
and the hymns of Isaac Watts, which had just recently
been published, one of the first hymn writers. His mother
sadly died of consumption or tuberculosis as we know it,
just before Newton's seventh birthday.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
When John Newton got the news of his mother's death.
He was obviously very upset, and he was more upset
when his father came home and didn't seem to spend
any time mourning his dead wife. Captain John Newton married
almost immediately, just within weeks of coming home again.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
And John really was a typical product of an unwanted
steps on. I suppose really he only had I think
two years formal education that at a not very satisfactory
boarding school.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
At the age of eleven, he was a sailor on
one of his father's ships, and shortly afterwards, when he
was a teenager, he was a sailor in his own right,
no longer on his fatherships, but plowing the Mediterranean trade
and the European trade.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
But there was one extraordinary experience that John Newton had
as about an eleven or twelve year old boy on
this first voyage with his father, which might be caused
supernatural experience, and it's the kind of dream which you Jr. R.
Whole Keen might have scripted.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
He was just offshore from Venice and a figure appeared
and gave him a ring and told him to look
after it. He was told that if he looked after
this ring, all would be well with his life, but
he must care for it. That figure disappeared, and another
one came and mocked the value of that ring, telling
(04:18):
him that it was a waste of time and he
need not bother about it at all, and eventually inveigled
the ring away from Newton, so that Newton threw it
into the sea, And at that moment in his dream,
he saw that the whole of Venice seemed to be
engulfed in flames. Then the first person appeared in his
dream came back to him and showed him the ring
(04:39):
that he had rescued from the water. And Newton put
out his hand and said, let me have that ring,
and the figure said, no, you cannot be trusted with it,
but at such a time as you need it, it
and all that it represents will be available for you.
He thought very little more of that dream until quite
later in life, when he came to realize that it
was really a power able of his life. He went
(05:02):
on with his voyaging, and then came back from one
of his voyages as a merchant sailor. He decided he'd
go down to the family in whose home his mother, Elizabeth,
had died and the eldest daughter was called Mary. She
was fourteen years old. And the moment John set eyes
on Mary, he fell, in his own words, madly in
(05:24):
love with her.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
And he mooned around in a love sick sort of
way the town of Chatham, and this mooning around got
him into disaster. Newton was press ganged in Chatham, and
that word perhaps takes some explanation. It was the law
of the land that the Royal Navy could impress, which
meant compulsory recruit under pressure any able bodied man, and
(05:51):
John Newton was grabbed and impressed into service as a seaman.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
He now becomes a sailor on board a man of war.
HMS Harriage was a fourth rate man of war, but
it had three hundred men on board. Because his father
was a well known merchant captain, and because he himself
was not exactly a landlobber, he had good nautical experience.
(06:22):
He was immediately promoted to a midship when which was
the bottom rung of the officer class.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
If you like, he progressively threw off this Christian background.
His profanity was such, they say, his language, that even
hardened sailors could keep their distance.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
But he had been reading a book called The Characteristics
of Men, Manners and so on. Now it was a
book that led his mind well away from any faith
in God, and it helped him on his downhill spiral
morally and philosophically, because it now gave him the reasons
(07:03):
why he was not a Christian. Morality was for John
Newton to make up from now on.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
And you've been listening to some of the foremost experts
on the life of John Newton. As we always do,
we try to bring you the best historians on any
given subject.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
When we come.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Back the author, the writer of Amazing Grace, John Newton's
story continues here on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Here are our American Stories.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith,
and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that
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Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
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Com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
(07:53):
a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
our American Stories and the story of John Newton, who
(08:14):
was born on this day in seventeen twenty five.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Let's return to more of John Newton's story.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Things got worse for him on the man of war
at the very time when he thought they were going
to get better. He was put on shore as a
young midshipman in charge of a party of sailors to
bring in stores for the ship. It was mainly fresh
water that they required, and he saw his opportunity of
deserting his ship and walking to Plymouth to reach his father.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
And he was captured by soldiers who were on the
lookout for deserters. He was put into chains, was brought
back to the carriage, and he was publicly flogged.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Thirty nine lashes across his bare back for deserting his ship.
Now that was a very serious punishment, for a very
serious charge. He could have actually been put to death,
and many died under the lash.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
He lay on his bank saw from the flogging. Furious
with himself, very angry with his captain. He thought of suicide.
He thought of killing his captain, and the ship sailed.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Eventually, the ship arrived at Madeira, where, by quite a
remarkable occurrence, he was able to be exchanged for some
sailors on board a merchant ship.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Back in the eighteenth century, the Royal Navy gold not
only press gang young men, it could exchange or swap
young sailors for better sailors who they came across anywhere,
it provided they were subjects of the English crown. But
he had to go and serve on a merchant ship
(09:51):
which was called the Pegasus, and the pegasus was what
was sometimes called a Guinea Man, which just meant a
ship which went off to the co of African Guinea
to trade. He managed to get himself released from his
duties as a merchant seaman and to start working as
(10:13):
an apprentice to a white man who traded on the
shores of Africa.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
The white slave traders operated from the coast, and it
was the black chiefs that brought people from the inland
and sold them to the white slave traders on the coast.
But that wasn't working fast enough, and so fairly soon
the white slave traders were moving inland to do their
own dirty work for themselves.
Speaker 5 (10:40):
So I think in these ways he thought he could
make progress. But when the man with whom he was
working was away, his wife who was quite high up
in the tribal hierarchy.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
She took a great dislike to John Newton, and she
actually treated him as white slave. She put him in chains,
she starved him, she all treated him.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
He was kept out, so I was treated more like
a dog than any kind of human being. And sometimes
he was so hungry at nights that he had to
go and try and find some roots to eat, which
of course didn't do him much good. And sometimes even
some of the local slaves bought him some of their
own limited supplies out of compassion.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Another slave trader, who for some reason took a liking
to the strange young man who was being treated like
a white slave, bought his release from Amos Klow. John
Newton then moved with his new boss, who treated him
much more as a partner, to another part of the
(11:50):
African coast.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
Really, he decided that he would simply stay in Africa,
and eventually he went down the coast to somewhere called Kitan.
It was from there that a fellow trader tried to
signal passing vessels. If you lit a fire and the
passing vessel saw the smoke rising, then they take that
(12:12):
as an invitation to come in and trade, and this
fellow trader saw a vessel, so he lit a fire
and the timing was extraordinary.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Newton's colleague went on board the ship to do trade
and pick up items that they needed, and almost the
first question the ship's captain asked was do you happen
to know of a man called Newton on the coast hereabouts?
Apparently the ship's captain had met up with John Newton's
father before he left England, and John Newton's father had said,
(12:46):
if you ever find my son on the coast of Africa,
I want you to bring him back.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
Now, this sounded like a sort of seafarer's version of
looking for a needle in a haystack.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
The colleague of Newton said, well, is it happens, I
know exactly where the man you're looking for is. Newton
was reluctant to go on board. He was now just
about to make for the first time some money for himself.
He hadn't got made a penny so far, and he
thought he could make some money. And there were only
two things that enticed him back home. One was the
story that the ship's captain told him that he had
(13:21):
information that Newton had inherited quite a small fortune, and
if he were to come back he could enjoy it,
which was a whole load of rubbish. It was completely untrue.
But the other thing attracted him was the thought of Mary,
because on his own account, not a day had gone
by without him thinking of Mary. So he took passage
(13:41):
on the Greyhound, and he upset the captain, and by
the same token, pleased the crew by making up songs
about the ship and the captain without actually mentioning the
captain by name. And the captain was really fed up
with him, and which he had never taken him on board.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
And yet he did come in the course of the
journey Thomas A. Kempis's imitation of Christ. And at some
point he started reading, and he just started asking the question,
supposing all this is true. Well, then came the great storm,
(14:19):
and Newton was asleep but was called up on deck,
and it obviously was a very big storm. Indeed, now again,
as on so many other instances, his life was quite
extraordinarily preserved because just as he was going up on deck,
I think the captain sent him back to get a
knife or gain something like that. And the fellow who
(14:40):
was following him up on deck, was immediately swept overboard.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
As the ship broken and wallowing in the Atlantic, struggled
to keep itself afloat. The whole crew, including Newton, thought
that this must be the end, and on one occasion Newton,
in his rather calm fiddan way, said, oh, this will
be a good thing to talk about over a jug
(15:04):
when we get back home, and one of the crew
members said, no, it's too late now, and that got
Newton thinking and lashed to the tiller or the pumps,
because they had to take turns at both. Newton began
running over in his mind many of the verses of Scripture,
and doubtless some of the hymns of Isaac Watts that
he had learned from his mother as a little boy.
(15:27):
He found himself condemned by the verses he knew, and
it was at that time that, in his own words,
God reached down and plucked him out of the depths.
And he put a very wavering faith in God, acknowledging
that his life had been a complete mess, and he
(15:48):
had ruined all that God had given him, and spoiled
the treasure that his mother had taught him. And he
made a commitment of faith.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
And at some point he said to the captain something like,
if the Lord doesn't have mercy on us, we're all lost.
And I think the captain noticed that because to hear
this particular profane infidel talking about the Lord was quite
a surprise. But eventually they just kept afloat and they
(16:18):
went into Locke Swilley on the west coast of Ireland.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
On the first things he went did was to go
to church and to pray and give thanks for the
fact that he had been saved as a result of
his prayer.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
So he goes back to Mary and chathamin Kent, but
still she gives him a little hope, but no certainty,
and he'd got no money at all, because he got
nothing for his time in Africa. He walked from chatamin
Kent the two hundred and fifty miles to Liverpool. He
calls it his long lonely walk, because that's where he
(16:55):
would be able to pick up another ship. This is
a slave ship, he's first mate, and it was on
this ship that he, in his own words, backslid as
bad as before. He would allow the life on board
ship and the life in the evenings to drag him down,
and it really was a bad journey for him, but
(17:16):
he was determined to go on with Christ. Although the
life on board a slave ship was probably the worst
of all the merchant ships, and only the Rough and
Ruby ever ended up on board ship anyway.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
And you're listening to the story of John Newton, who
of course wrote the most popular him in history. When
we come back more of the remarkable story of a
song and the man who wrote it, here on our
American story, and we continue here with our American stories
(18:11):
and the remarkable story of John Newton, who of course
wrote amazing grace. But the story of his life and
what led up to it, well, that's what's interesting. Let's
return to this remarkable story with some of the best
Newton biographers on the planet.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
After Brownlow. He took three journeys as a slave ship captain,
so he was actually in charge of the ship and
the gathering of the slaves on what was known as
the Triangular trade out from England with items for barter
to the West coast of Africa, picking up slaves, taking
them from there either to the West Indies or to
(18:49):
North America, and then picking up cotton, rum, brandy, things
that the home market wanted, and then coming back across
the Atlantic. That was the three legs of the triangular trade.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
In the seventeen fifties, when Newton was a slave ship captain,
the general view of England, including Christian England, was that
the slave trade was a respectable economic form of activity.
And that sounds extraordinary, but it is historically true.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Seventeen fifties and sixties, almost nobody, not even the Quakers
at that stage, had really got to grips with the
issue of slavery. It wasn't until you get right up
into the seventeen seventies, eighties and nineties that the groundswell
of recognition of what is happening. And part of the
(19:40):
reason for this is you have to realize that people
in the home market England would be receiving all this
cotton and brandy and sugar, but had no idea really
how it came. There wasn't the media. Nobody was going
out there taking films for slaves and the way they
were treated and the cruelty and bestiality of it all,
(20:02):
and so people didn't know as they began to know,
so they stirred. He married Mary in seventeen fifty and
she was quite frail in health and often had to
stay with her parents.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
And then, of course, eventually he met this very significant
figure in his life, Captain Alexander Clooney, who was captured
of a vessel but not of a slaver, and they
recognized one another as Christians, and Clooney really instructed Newton
in the basics of the faith, and that was a
key turning point for Newton.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
But at the time what disturbed Newton And even when
he writes his authentic narrative, he says, I was increasingly
perturbed by a course of life that was involved with
shackles and chains and leg irons, and he said I
(20:56):
felt more like a jailer and a turnkey, and he
didn't like what he was doing. His conscience was stirring.
The owner of his ship's mister Maynesty, was actually in
the process of building him a brand new ship to
send him out again on a fourth voyage, when he
suddenly took a seizure.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
So by mutual agreement, John Newton's career as a seafarer
and slaveship captain was terminated. He managed to get appointed
to a job which was called surveyor of the tides
in Liverpool, and this was effectively what we would call
a chief customs officer.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
His job was he had a boat with a half
dozen horsemen, and every incoming ship to the docks at
Liverpool he was to be rowed out and search them
for contraband his experience meant he had a pretty good
idea where things would be hidden on any ship. But
this gave him a great amount of time to sit
in as little hut as he was given with a
(21:56):
fire and a lamp and study and read. And that's
where he caninued to do a lot of his studying
and reading, and actually where he first began to prepare
his first sermons. Also, while he was in Liverpool, he
invited George Whitfield, the great evangelist, to come and preach
(22:19):
in the.
Speaker 5 (22:19):
City, and clearly the two men hit it off, and
he was enormously impressed because Whitfield was the most outstanding
preacher of the eighteenth century, and I think particularly because
of his own experience and his awareness of the hand
of God and the grace of God in his own life,
Newton found himself drawn to Whitfield's theology, which was robustly evangelistic,
(22:45):
but also believed that God is sovereign and that we
depend entirely on His grace in salvation in Christ. So
Whitfield became very much a dominant influence in his life.
And obviously Newton began to think whether he might be
called to some full time ministry himself, and he did
(23:06):
preach his first sermon in these years in the Presbyterian
Church in Leeds.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
His first sermon was an absolute disaster. During the afternoon,
when he was having tea with his hosts, they said,
would you like to go and prepare for the evening?
I no, he was perfectly confident he'd done all this preparation,
thank you, And he got into the pulpit and he
began and within minutes he'd covered his material and or
(23:34):
anything else fled out of his mind and he came
down from the pulpit in great sense of shame. And
he says that for some time afterwards he believed that
everybody in the town was talking about him. That was
his entry into preaching.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
As Newton started thinking more towards being a pastor teacher
in the Church of God, he started pushing the doors,
but the doors didn't open, because although he would have
thought that Newton, with his gifts, would be and his
spiritual experience would be just a wonderful gift for the
Church of England ministry. Because he was tainted with Methodism,
(24:12):
which many churchy leaders in the Church of England thought
was simply fanaticism, he found that the door was closed.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
And after John Newton had had these several rejections, he
was heard preaching a sermon by the Earl of Dartmouth.
You should be ordained, he said to John Newton. John
Newton said, well, I've been trying to get ordained, but
the Church of England kept turning me downe The Earl
of Dartmouth then had a quiet word with the Bishop
(24:44):
of Lincoln, who was a bishop who had refused to ordain.
John Newton changed his mind and said he would ordain him.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
A number of things to be said about him. There
He was a very warm and loving pastor, which is
particularly interesting when you consider that this this man had
been used to haranguing an unruly crewe. He brought with
him that gift of verse which he had so badly
used when he was at sea, making godless and rivaled
(25:16):
songs about the captain, which entertained the crew. But now
he began to turn this into verse for his people.
As he walked down the streets of Arney, he listened
to the women at their lace bobbins, and in order
to keep them in time with their work, they would
have little ditties that they would chant, and he thought, well,
(25:38):
they can learn these, so if I can teach them hymns,
they can remember the theology that I'm trying to teach them.
So he would sometimes spend two or three days in
his week not just preparing the sermon, but preparing the
song that was going to go with the sermon, and
then he would teach it to them before after the sermon,
and that would really punch home the points that he
(26:00):
had made. He started a Sunday school long before Robert
Rakes started a Sunday school in the West Country, and
kids from the Baptists were coming as well. In fact,
that caused a bit of a problem because he devised
the idea of giving little prizes for children who could
remember verses and new answers to questions, and unfortunately the
(26:24):
Baptist kids were running off with all the prizes, and
that caused a bit of tension because they knew their
Bible so well, and that he says he had to
sit them down and give them a little talk on
how to get on well together.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
And you're listening to the story of John Newton from
slave ship captain to wannabe minister and to the author
and writer of the greatest and most well known hymn
of all time, Amazing Grace. And I know some of
you were wondering what does this have to do with America.
And if you've ever read any books by Steven Turner,
the best being Amazing Grace, the story of America's most
(26:58):
beloved song, the relationship between American singers, churches and hymnals,
and well, this story they're intertwined. When we return, this
remarkable story continues John Newton's story, who was born in
this day in history in seventeen twenty five, here on
our American stories, and we returned to our American stories
(27:39):
and the story of John Newton from slave captain to
wanna be minister and beyond and ultimately to the writer
of the greatest hymn of all time, Amazing Grace.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
He was enfoble, so that instead of going around in
clerical dress of the period. He would wear his old
naval captain's coat, obviously believing he shouldn't throw something away
while there was still somewhere in it. So he was
easy and approachable. Newton was encouraged to write up, as
(28:15):
we would say today, his testimony, and so he produced
what's called the authentic narrative.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
After the publication of an authentic narrative, people came from
all over to see this man with such an extraordinary
story to tell. Even an admiral came to see this
man who was once beaten at the grating for deserting
his ship, his Majesty's ship.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
People would take a coach for fifty miles or one
hundred miles coming here John Newton preach, or ride great distances.
And there were two people in this category who became
very famous and very influential. One was the aunt of
William Wilberforce. William wilfor was that stage a schoolboy. But
(29:02):
this aunt brought William Wilberforce as a schoolboy to hear
John Newton preach. So that was to be a most
influential and important encounter. And secondly, there was someone else
called Cooper.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
William Cooper was a national poet, brilliant poet, a very
sad character who suffered from very deep depression, and for
eighteen months he lived with John and Mary. But William
Cooper was brilliant at verse, of course, and together they
wrote a number of hymns.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
And him singing was comparatively new because certainly until then,
mostly in the Church of England they just sung psalms,
so this was quite a new development.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
Cooper wrote some great hymns, as one called God moves
in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. But Newton
was probably the greater hymn writer of the two, and
perhaps his greatest him theologically was Glorious Things of the
Ears Spoken, But his most famous him was Amazing Grace,
(30:09):
and that was him, which is will always be associated
with John Newton's name.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
He wrote Amazing Grace as a New Year hymn. He
based it on a passage in Chronicles where the King
is reviewing God's goodness to him, and that's what Newton
wanted to do in Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
that saves a wretch like me? And he continually comes
back to the word grace, which for John Newton, of
(30:36):
course meant God's undeserved mercy in forgiving him through the
merits of Jesus Christ, and because of nothing he himself
had done. And then he rounds it off in what
is his final verse, the earth will soon dissolve like snow,
the sun will cease to shine, But God, who loved
me here below will be forever mine. Unfortunately, that verse,
(31:00):
somehow in the nineteenth century got lost, and the new
verse that everybody knows when we've been there ten thousand
years got put in. But that has nothing to do
with John Newton.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Wrote him, as far as we know, rather quickly in
an afternoon. He didn't write the tune. The famous Amazing
Grace music came much later and separately, and Amazing Grace
it never really took off in England. You know, if
people said, what are popular hymns? What are great hymns?
(31:34):
Which hymns were reprinted, Amazing Grace was never one of
them in England. What changed the game for Amazing Grace
was the United States. That Newton's hymn was reprinted in
America took off in the South of America, and that's
(31:57):
where the tune comes from. It's an old Plantation too,
so the music and the words of Amazing Grace were
married together. But then it became gradually a kind of
America's spiritual national anthem. It was then sung by all
sorts of recording artists, and by the sort of nineteen
(32:19):
sixties this had become the most performed and most recorded song.
I learned him in the history of music.
Speaker 5 (32:32):
And it's extraordinary the way it's gripped people. It seems
that a lot of people sing it without actually realizing
what they're singing. You sing it because it's good to sing,
even though you don't necessarily understand or perhaps agree with
the words.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Obviously, his influence was spreading quite widely, and he was
invited to consider the pulpit at Saint Mary Walmouth in London,
which was in the City of London, right in the
Bank King Quarter, and he filled.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
The church very quickly, just as he had filled only
parish church. And again it was so crowded that some
of the regulars started to complain that their pews were
being occupied by all these newcomers. And then there was
there to build a gallery again in s Mary Walmouth,
(33:24):
and of course it was very much more influential congregation,
people from the city and from politics.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Many of his congregation would be bankers. How were they
earning their living, many of them through the revenue of
the slave trade. So it is to his credit. By
the seventeen eighties and nineties he is preaching against the
slave trade, calling it blood money, and telling his congregation
that they can have nothing to do with it. In
seventeen eighty eight he wrote his famous document Thoughts on
(33:55):
the African Slave Trade, very very important document because he
gave his reasons why the slave trade was so iniquitous
in every way, very carefully, very wisely, very prudently written document,
and this was distributed widely, printed widely and distributed and
had a great influence.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
He was hugely influential politically, particularly because he was William
Wilberforce's mentor, and William Wilberforce came to see him one
evening under conditions of strict secrecy. It was considered unfashionable,
(34:39):
if not risky, and wrong for an important young member
of Parliament to be seen consorting with a gospel preacher.
They were sort of gospel preachers was sort of thought
to be a bit dangerous, a bit wild, and the
upper classes look down on them. But Wilberforce, as a boy,
(35:04):
had met Newton heard him preach, and so when Wilberforce
was having a spiritual encounter with God, he wanted to
try to contact Newton. So he sent around a note
which reads a bitless that sort of James Bond sending
a letter to m and saying, you know, we must
(35:25):
keep this quiet. We'll meet completely privately. Let's keep it confidential.
And Wilberforce came to Newton's house and Wilberforce walked twice
around the square to make sure the coast was clear
and nobody was watching. So nervous was he when he
came in too s Newton. He told Newton about his
(35:46):
Christian conversion and his zeal and Wilberforce had it in
mind to become a clergyman to join the church. Newton
gave Wilberforce very very wise advice. He said, in effect,
don't join the church, stay where you are and serve
(36:06):
God through Parliament.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Now, after that first meeting, two years later, William Wilberforce
wrote in his diary a very famous expression. It was
on a Sunday in eighteen seventeen eighty seven, and he wrote,
God Almighty has lain before me two great objects, the
abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of manners
(36:29):
meant morals, morality, the reformation of morality, and that. Wilberforce
gave his life to those two great causes, and Newton
supported him all the way through. And as a result
of that he was asked to give evidence to the
Privy Council. He was in fact the only slave ship
captain who ever gave evidence to the Privy Council. He
also spoke to a parliamentary a committee. There became quite
(36:52):
a lobby in England, driven very largely by a lot
of the women who would not allow their families to
eat sugar because it came from the spoils of the
slave trade.
Speaker 5 (37:06):
Newton finally died in the year when the slave trade
was abolished, as Wilberforce himself finally died in the that
slavery in British territories was abolished.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
And Newton's last words are perhaps the greatest testimony to
the testimony, because when Newton was dying, a visitor came
to see him and asked how he was and if
he remembered this, that and the other. And Newton, who
(37:40):
was very old, blind knew he was near death, said
in a faltering voice, Sir, I remember only two things.
That I am a great sinner, that Christ is a
great savior.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
And you've been listening to the story of John Newton,
and in the end, the story of the greatest hymn
ever written. And great work, as always to Gregg Hangler,
John Newton's story born on this day in seventeen twenty five.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Here on our American Stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show.
And of course our favorite subjects are music and history,
and when they combine like they do in this story,
that's just a twofer. It's often been said that grace,
like water, always flows downward to the lowest place. Nobody
(00:31):
embodies this principle better than John Newton, author of the
best loved hymn of all time. During his lifetime, Newton's
story was renowned as one of the most sensational, sinful, spiritual,
and historically important sagas of the eighteenth century. And we're
telling this story because on this day in seventeen twenty.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Five, John Newton was born.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Here to tell the stories the a team of John
Newton biographers Brian Edwards, Jonathan Aitkeen, and Tony Baker.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Newton was born in seventeen twenty five in Wopping, about
a mile downriver from the Tower of London, right by
the Thames. Wapping was at that time a little kind
of hamlet, although it was a very busy waterfront. A
thousand ships a day were coming in and out of
London at that point. Newton, as a little boy, could
(01:26):
walk down to execution dock and see mutineers and pirates
hanging in chains until three tides had washed over them.
His father was a sea captain. We don't know much
about his father. Newton held him in both fear, awe
and respect. His mother was a very godly woman, Elizabeth.
(01:47):
She took John Newton as a little boy, up to
the age of nearly seven, to the dissenting chapel of
Dr Jennings.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
And it was quite famous. It was full, and all
kinds of interesting preachers came there, including Isaac Watts. John
Newton as a little boy, was more educated at his
mother's knee, simply because John Newton's senior, Captain John Newton,
was away on these very long sea voyages, and so
(02:19):
he was very much an absent father.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
She had taught him to read, and she was beginning
to teach in Latin. She taught him Bible stories, Bible verses,
and the hymns of Isaac Watts, which had just recently
been published, one of the first hymn writers. His mother
sadly died of consumption or tuberculosis as we know it,
just before Newton's seventh birthday.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
When John Newton got the news of his mother's death.
He was obviously very upset, and he was more upset
when his father came home and didn't seem to spend
any time mourning his dead wife. Captain John Newton married
almost immediately, just within weeks of coming home again.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
And John really was a typical product of an unwanted
steps on. I suppose really he only had I think
two years formal education that at a not very satisfactory
boarding school.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
At the age of eleven, he was a sailor on
one of his father's ships, and shortly afterwards, when he
was a teenager, he was a sailor in his own right,
no longer on his fatherships, but plowing the Mediterranean trade
and the European trade.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
But there was one extraordinary experience that John Newton had
as about an eleven or twelve year old boy on
this first voyage with his father, which might be caused
supernatural experience, and it's the kind of dream which you Jr. R.
Whole Keen might have scripted.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
He was just offshore from Venice and a figure appeared
and gave him a ring and told him to look
after it. He was told that if he looked after
this ring, all would be well with his life, but
he must care for it. That figure disappeared, and another
one came and mocked the value of that ring, telling
(04:18):
him that it was a waste of time and he
need not bother about it at all, and eventually inveigled
the ring away from Newton, so that Newton threw it
into the sea, And at that moment in his dream,
he saw that the whole of Venice seemed to be
engulfed in flames. Then the first person appeared in his
dream came back to him and showed him the ring
(04:39):
that he had rescued from the water. And Newton put
out his hand and said, let me have that ring,
and the figure said, no, you cannot be trusted with it,
but at such a time as you need it, it
and all that it represents will be available for you.
He thought very little more of that dream until quite
later in life, when he came to realize that it
was really a power able of his life. He went
(05:02):
on with his voyaging, and then came back from one
of his voyages as a merchant sailor. He decided he'd
go down to the family in whose home his mother, Elizabeth,
had died and the eldest daughter was called Mary. She
was fourteen years old. And the moment John set eyes
on Mary, he fell, in his own words, madly in
(05:24):
love with her.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
And he mooned around in a love sick sort of
way the town of Chatham, and this mooning around got
him into disaster. Newton was press ganged in Chatham, and
that word perhaps takes some explanation. It was the law
of the land that the Royal Navy could impress, which
meant compulsory recruit under pressure any able bodied man, and
(05:51):
John Newton was grabbed and impressed into service as a seaman.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
He now becomes a sailor on board a man of war.
HMS Harriage was a fourth rate man of war, but
it had three hundred men on board. Because his father
was a well known merchant captain, and because he himself
was not exactly a landlobber, he had good nautical experience.
(06:22):
He was immediately promoted to a midship when which was
the bottom rung of the officer class.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
If you like, he progressively threw off this Christian background.
His profanity was such, they say, his language, that even
hardened sailors could keep their distance.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
But he had been reading a book called The Characteristics
of Men, Manners and so on. Now it was a
book that led his mind well away from any faith
in God, and it helped him on his downhill spiral
morally and philosophically, because it now gave him the reasons
(07:03):
why he was not a Christian. Morality was for John
Newton to make up from now on.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
And you've been listening to some of the foremost experts
on the life of John Newton. As we always do,
we try to bring you the best historians on any
given subject.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
When we come.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Back the author, the writer of Amazing Grace, John Newton's
story continues here on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Here are our American Stories.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith,
and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that
need to be told. But we can't do it without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love our stories in America
like we do, please go to our American Stories dot
Com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
(07:53):
a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
our American Stories and the story of John Newton, who
(08:14):
was born on this day in seventeen twenty five.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Let's return to more of John Newton's story.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Things got worse for him on the man of war
at the very time when he thought they were going
to get better. He was put on shore as a
young midshipman in charge of a party of sailors to
bring in stores for the ship. It was mainly fresh
water that they required, and he saw his opportunity of
deserting his ship and walking to Plymouth to reach his father.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
And he was captured by soldiers who were on the
lookout for deserters. He was put into chains, was brought
back to the carriage, and he was publicly flogged.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Thirty nine lashes across his bare back for deserting his ship.
Now that was a very serious punishment, for a very
serious charge. He could have actually been put to death,
and many died under the lash.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
He lay on his bank saw from the flogging. Furious
with himself, very angry with his captain. He thought of suicide.
He thought of killing his captain, and the ship sailed.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Eventually, the ship arrived at Madeira, where, by quite a
remarkable occurrence, he was able to be exchanged for some
sailors on board a merchant ship.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Back in the eighteenth century, the Royal Navy gold not
only press gang young men, it could exchange or swap
young sailors for better sailors who they came across anywhere,
it provided they were subjects of the English crown. But
he had to go and serve on a merchant ship
(09:51):
which was called the Pegasus, and the pegasus was what
was sometimes called a Guinea Man, which just meant a
ship which went off to the co of African Guinea
to trade. He managed to get himself released from his
duties as a merchant seaman and to start working as
(10:13):
an apprentice to a white man who traded on the
shores of Africa.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
The white slave traders operated from the coast, and it
was the black chiefs that brought people from the inland
and sold them to the white slave traders on the coast.
But that wasn't working fast enough, and so fairly soon
the white slave traders were moving inland to do their
own dirty work for themselves.
Speaker 5 (10:40):
So I think in these ways he thought he could
make progress. But when the man with whom he was
working was away, his wife who was quite high up
in the tribal hierarchy.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
She took a great dislike to John Newton, and she
actually treated him as white slave. She put him in chains,
she starved him, she all treated him.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
He was kept out, so I was treated more like
a dog than any kind of human being. And sometimes
he was so hungry at nights that he had to
go and try and find some roots to eat, which
of course didn't do him much good. And sometimes even
some of the local slaves bought him some of their
own limited supplies out of compassion.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Another slave trader, who for some reason took a liking
to the strange young man who was being treated like
a white slave, bought his release from Amos Klow. John
Newton then moved with his new boss, who treated him
much more as a partner, to another part of the
(11:50):
African coast.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
Really, he decided that he would simply stay in Africa,
and eventually he went down the coast to somewhere called Kitan.
It was from there that a fellow trader tried to
signal passing vessels. If you lit a fire and the
passing vessel saw the smoke rising, then they take that
(12:12):
as an invitation to come in and trade, and this
fellow trader saw a vessel, so he lit a fire
and the timing was extraordinary.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Newton's colleague went on board the ship to do trade
and pick up items that they needed, and almost the
first question the ship's captain asked was do you happen
to know of a man called Newton on the coast hereabouts?
Apparently the ship's captain had met up with John Newton's
father before he left England, and John Newton's father had said,
(12:46):
if you ever find my son on the coast of Africa,
I want you to bring him back.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
Now, this sounded like a sort of seafarer's version of
looking for a needle in a haystack.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
The colleague of Newton said, well, is it happens, I
know exactly where the man you're looking for is. Newton
was reluctant to go on board. He was now just
about to make for the first time some money for himself.
He hadn't got made a penny so far, and he
thought he could make some money. And there were only
two things that enticed him back home. One was the
story that the ship's captain told him that he had
(13:21):
information that Newton had inherited quite a small fortune, and
if he were to come back he could enjoy it,
which was a whole load of rubbish. It was completely untrue.
But the other thing attracted him was the thought of Mary,
because on his own account, not a day had gone
by without him thinking of Mary. So he took passage
(13:41):
on the Greyhound, and he upset the captain, and by
the same token, pleased the crew by making up songs
about the ship and the captain without actually mentioning the
captain by name. And the captain was really fed up
with him, and which he had never taken him on board.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
And yet he did come in the course of the
journey Thomas A. Kempis's imitation of Christ. And at some
point he started reading, and he just started asking the question,
supposing all this is true. Well, then came the great storm,
(14:19):
and Newton was asleep but was called up on deck,
and it obviously was a very big storm. Indeed, now again,
as on so many other instances, his life was quite
extraordinarily preserved because just as he was going up on deck,
I think the captain sent him back to get a
knife or gain something like that. And the fellow who
(14:40):
was following him up on deck, was immediately swept overboard.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
As the ship broken and wallowing in the Atlantic, struggled
to keep itself afloat. The whole crew, including Newton, thought
that this must be the end, and on one occasion Newton,
in his rather calm fiddan way, said, oh, this will
be a good thing to talk about over a jug
(15:04):
when we get back home, and one of the crew
members said, no, it's too late now, and that got
Newton thinking and lashed to the tiller or the pumps,
because they had to take turns at both. Newton began
running over in his mind many of the verses of Scripture,
and doubtless some of the hymns of Isaac Watts that
he had learned from his mother as a little boy.
(15:27):
He found himself condemned by the verses he knew, and
it was at that time that, in his own words,
God reached down and plucked him out of the depths.
And he put a very wavering faith in God, acknowledging
that his life had been a complete mess, and he
(15:48):
had ruined all that God had given him, and spoiled
the treasure that his mother had taught him. And he
made a commitment of faith.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
And at some point he said to the captain something like,
if the Lord doesn't have mercy on us, we're all lost.
And I think the captain noticed that because to hear
this particular profane infidel talking about the Lord was quite
a surprise. But eventually they just kept afloat and they
(16:18):
went into Locke Swilley on the west coast of Ireland.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
On the first things he went did was to go
to church and to pray and give thanks for the
fact that he had been saved as a result of
his prayer.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
So he goes back to Mary and chathamin Kent, but
still she gives him a little hope, but no certainty,
and he'd got no money at all, because he got
nothing for his time in Africa. He walked from chatamin
Kent the two hundred and fifty miles to Liverpool. He
calls it his long lonely walk, because that's where he
(16:55):
would be able to pick up another ship. This is
a slave ship, he's first mate, and it was on
this ship that he, in his own words, backslid as
bad as before. He would allow the life on board
ship and the life in the evenings to drag him down,
and it really was a bad journey for him, but
(17:16):
he was determined to go on with Christ. Although the
life on board a slave ship was probably the worst
of all the merchant ships, and only the Rough and
Ruby ever ended up on board ship anyway.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
And you're listening to the story of John Newton, who
of course wrote the most popular him in history. When
we come back more of the remarkable story of a
song and the man who wrote it, here on our
American story, and we continue here with our American stories
(18:11):
and the remarkable story of John Newton, who of course
wrote amazing grace. But the story of his life and
what led up to it, well, that's what's interesting. Let's
return to this remarkable story with some of the best
Newton biographers on the planet.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
After Brownlow. He took three journeys as a slave ship captain,
so he was actually in charge of the ship and
the gathering of the slaves on what was known as
the Triangular trade out from England with items for barter
to the West coast of Africa, picking up slaves, taking
them from there either to the West Indies or to
(18:49):
North America, and then picking up cotton, rum, brandy, things
that the home market wanted, and then coming back across
the Atlantic. That was the three legs of the triangular trade.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
In the seventeen fifties, when Newton was a slave ship captain,
the general view of England, including Christian England, was that
the slave trade was a respectable economic form of activity.
And that sounds extraordinary, but it is historically true.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Seventeen fifties and sixties, almost nobody, not even the Quakers
at that stage, had really got to grips with the
issue of slavery. It wasn't until you get right up
into the seventeen seventies, eighties and nineties that the groundswell
of recognition of what is happening. And part of the
(19:40):
reason for this is you have to realize that people
in the home market England would be receiving all this
cotton and brandy and sugar, but had no idea really
how it came. There wasn't the media. Nobody was going
out there taking films for slaves and the way they
were treated and the cruelty and bestiality of it all,
(20:02):
and so people didn't know as they began to know,
so they stirred. He married Mary in seventeen fifty and
she was quite frail in health and often had to
stay with her parents.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
And then, of course, eventually he met this very significant
figure in his life, Captain Alexander Clooney, who was captured
of a vessel but not of a slaver, and they
recognized one another as Christians, and Clooney really instructed Newton
in the basics of the faith, and that was a
key turning point for Newton.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
But at the time what disturbed Newton And even when
he writes his authentic narrative, he says, I was increasingly
perturbed by a course of life that was involved with
shackles and chains and leg irons, and he said I
(20:56):
felt more like a jailer and a turnkey, and he
didn't like what he was doing. His conscience was stirring.
The owner of his ship's mister Maynesty, was actually in
the process of building him a brand new ship to
send him out again on a fourth voyage, when he
suddenly took a seizure.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
So by mutual agreement, John Newton's career as a seafarer
and slaveship captain was terminated. He managed to get appointed
to a job which was called surveyor of the tides
in Liverpool, and this was effectively what we would call
a chief customs officer.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
His job was he had a boat with a half
dozen horsemen, and every incoming ship to the docks at
Liverpool he was to be rowed out and search them
for contraband his experience meant he had a pretty good
idea where things would be hidden on any ship. But
this gave him a great amount of time to sit
in as little hut as he was given with a
(21:56):
fire and a lamp and study and read. And that's
where he caninued to do a lot of his studying
and reading, and actually where he first began to prepare
his first sermons. Also, while he was in Liverpool, he
invited George Whitfield, the great evangelist, to come and preach
(22:19):
in the.
Speaker 5 (22:19):
City, and clearly the two men hit it off, and
he was enormously impressed because Whitfield was the most outstanding
preacher of the eighteenth century, and I think particularly because
of his own experience and his awareness of the hand
of God and the grace of God in his own life,
Newton found himself drawn to Whitfield's theology, which was robustly evangelistic,
(22:45):
but also believed that God is sovereign and that we
depend entirely on His grace in salvation in Christ. So
Whitfield became very much a dominant influence in his life.
And obviously Newton began to think whether he might be
called to some full time ministry himself, and he did
(23:06):
preach his first sermon in these years in the Presbyterian
Church in Leeds.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
His first sermon was an absolute disaster. During the afternoon,
when he was having tea with his hosts, they said,
would you like to go and prepare for the evening?
I no, he was perfectly confident he'd done all this preparation,
thank you, And he got into the pulpit and he
began and within minutes he'd covered his material and or
(23:34):
anything else fled out of his mind and he came
down from the pulpit in great sense of shame. And
he says that for some time afterwards he believed that
everybody in the town was talking about him. That was
his entry into preaching.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
As Newton started thinking more towards being a pastor teacher
in the Church of God, he started pushing the doors,
but the doors didn't open, because although he would have
thought that Newton, with his gifts, would be and his
spiritual experience would be just a wonderful gift for the
Church of England ministry. Because he was tainted with Methodism,
(24:12):
which many churchy leaders in the Church of England thought
was simply fanaticism, he found that the door was closed.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
And after John Newton had had these several rejections, he
was heard preaching a sermon by the Earl of Dartmouth.
You should be ordained, he said to John Newton. John
Newton said, well, I've been trying to get ordained, but
the Church of England kept turning me downe The Earl
of Dartmouth then had a quiet word with the Bishop
(24:44):
of Lincoln, who was a bishop who had refused to ordain.
John Newton changed his mind and said he would ordain him.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
A number of things to be said about him. There
He was a very warm and loving pastor, which is
particularly interesting when you consider that this this man had
been used to haranguing an unruly crewe. He brought with
him that gift of verse which he had so badly
used when he was at sea, making godless and rivaled
(25:16):
songs about the captain, which entertained the crew. But now
he began to turn this into verse for his people.
As he walked down the streets of Arney, he listened
to the women at their lace bobbins, and in order
to keep them in time with their work, they would
have little ditties that they would chant, and he thought, well,
(25:38):
they can learn these, so if I can teach them hymns,
they can remember the theology that I'm trying to teach them.
So he would sometimes spend two or three days in
his week not just preparing the sermon, but preparing the
song that was going to go with the sermon, and
then he would teach it to them before after the sermon,
and that would really punch home the points that he
(26:00):
had made. He started a Sunday school long before Robert
Rakes started a Sunday school in the West Country, and
kids from the Baptists were coming as well. In fact,
that caused a bit of a problem because he devised
the idea of giving little prizes for children who could
remember verses and new answers to questions, and unfortunately the
(26:24):
Baptist kids were running off with all the prizes, and
that caused a bit of tension because they knew their
Bible so well, and that he says he had to
sit them down and give them a little talk on
how to get on well together.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
And you're listening to the story of John Newton from
slave ship captain to wannabe minister and to the author
and writer of the greatest and most well known hymn
of all time, Amazing Grace. And I know some of
you were wondering what does this have to do with America.
And if you've ever read any books by Steven Turner,
the best being Amazing Grace, the story of America's most
(26:58):
beloved song, the relationship between American singers, churches and hymnals,
and well, this story they're intertwined. When we return, this
remarkable story continues John Newton's story, who was born in
this day in history in seventeen twenty five, here on
our American stories, and we returned to our American stories
(27:39):
and the story of John Newton from slave captain to
wanna be minister and beyond and ultimately to the writer
of the greatest hymn of all time, Amazing Grace.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
He was enfoble, so that instead of going around in
clerical dress of the period. He would wear his old
naval captain's coat, obviously believing he shouldn't throw something away
while there was still somewhere in it. So he was
easy and approachable. Newton was encouraged to write up, as
(28:15):
we would say today, his testimony, and so he produced
what's called the authentic narrative.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
After the publication of an authentic narrative, people came from
all over to see this man with such an extraordinary
story to tell. Even an admiral came to see this
man who was once beaten at the grating for deserting
his ship, his Majesty's ship.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
People would take a coach for fifty miles or one
hundred miles coming here John Newton preach, or ride great distances.
And there were two people in this category who became
very famous and very influential. One was the aunt of
William Wilberforce. William wilfor was that stage a schoolboy. But
(29:02):
this aunt brought William Wilberforce as a schoolboy to hear
John Newton preach. So that was to be a most
influential and important encounter. And secondly, there was someone else
called Cooper.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
William Cooper was a national poet, brilliant poet, a very
sad character who suffered from very deep depression, and for
eighteen months he lived with John and Mary. But William
Cooper was brilliant at verse, of course, and together they
wrote a number of hymns.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
And him singing was comparatively new because certainly until then,
mostly in the Church of England they just sung psalms,
so this was quite a new development.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
Cooper wrote some great hymns, as one called God moves
in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. But Newton
was probably the greater hymn writer of the two, and
perhaps his greatest him theologically was Glorious Things of the
Ears Spoken, But his most famous him was Amazing Grace,
(30:09):
and that was him, which is will always be associated
with John Newton's name.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
He wrote Amazing Grace as a New Year hymn. He
based it on a passage in Chronicles where the King
is reviewing God's goodness to him, and that's what Newton
wanted to do in Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
that saves a wretch like me? And he continually comes
back to the word grace, which for John Newton, of
(30:36):
course meant God's undeserved mercy in forgiving him through the
merits of Jesus Christ, and because of nothing he himself
had done. And then he rounds it off in what
is his final verse, the earth will soon dissolve like snow,
the sun will cease to shine, But God, who loved
me here below will be forever mine. Unfortunately, that verse,
(31:00):
somehow in the nineteenth century got lost, and the new
verse that everybody knows when we've been there ten thousand
years got put in. But that has nothing to do
with John Newton.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Wrote him, as far as we know, rather quickly in
an afternoon. He didn't write the tune. The famous Amazing
Grace music came much later and separately, and Amazing Grace
it never really took off in England. You know, if
people said, what are popular hymns? What are great hymns?
(31:34):
Which hymns were reprinted, Amazing Grace was never one of
them in England. What changed the game for Amazing Grace
was the United States. That Newton's hymn was reprinted in
America took off in the South of America, and that's
(31:57):
where the tune comes from. It's an old Plantation too,
so the music and the words of Amazing Grace were
married together. But then it became gradually a kind of
America's spiritual national anthem. It was then sung by all
sorts of recording artists, and by the sort of nineteen
(32:19):
sixties this had become the most performed and most recorded song.
I learned him in the history of music.
Speaker 5 (32:32):
And it's extraordinary the way it's gripped people. It seems
that a lot of people sing it without actually realizing
what they're singing. You sing it because it's good to sing,
even though you don't necessarily understand or perhaps agree with
the words.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Obviously, his influence was spreading quite widely, and he was
invited to consider the pulpit at Saint Mary Walmouth in London,
which was in the City of London, right in the
Bank King Quarter, and he filled.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
The church very quickly, just as he had filled only
parish church. And again it was so crowded that some
of the regulars started to complain that their pews were
being occupied by all these newcomers. And then there was
there to build a gallery again in s Mary Walmouth,
(33:24):
and of course it was very much more influential congregation,
people from the city and from politics.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Many of his congregation would be bankers. How were they
earning their living, many of them through the revenue of
the slave trade. So it is to his credit. By
the seventeen eighties and nineties he is preaching against the
slave trade, calling it blood money, and telling his congregation
that they can have nothing to do with it. In
seventeen eighty eight he wrote his famous document Thoughts on
(33:55):
the African Slave Trade, very very important document because he
gave his reasons why the slave trade was so iniquitous
in every way, very carefully, very wisely, very prudently written document,
and this was distributed widely, printed widely and distributed and
had a great influence.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
He was hugely influential politically, particularly because he was William
Wilberforce's mentor, and William Wilberforce came to see him one
evening under conditions of strict secrecy. It was considered unfashionable,
(34:39):
if not risky, and wrong for an important young member
of Parliament to be seen consorting with a gospel preacher.
They were sort of gospel preachers was sort of thought
to be a bit dangerous, a bit wild, and the
upper classes look down on them. But Wilberforce, as a boy,
(35:04):
had met Newton heard him preach, and so when Wilberforce
was having a spiritual encounter with God, he wanted to
try to contact Newton. So he sent around a note
which reads a bitless that sort of James Bond sending
a letter to m and saying, you know, we must
(35:25):
keep this quiet. We'll meet completely privately. Let's keep it confidential.
And Wilberforce came to Newton's house and Wilberforce walked twice
around the square to make sure the coast was clear
and nobody was watching. So nervous was he when he
came in too s Newton. He told Newton about his
(35:46):
Christian conversion and his zeal and Wilberforce had it in
mind to become a clergyman to join the church. Newton
gave Wilberforce very very wise advice. He said, in effect,
don't join the church, stay where you are and serve
(36:06):
God through Parliament.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Now, after that first meeting, two years later, William Wilberforce
wrote in his diary a very famous expression. It was
on a Sunday in eighteen seventeen eighty seven, and he wrote,
God Almighty has lain before me two great objects, the
abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of manners
(36:29):
meant morals, morality, the reformation of morality, and that. Wilberforce
gave his life to those two great causes, and Newton
supported him all the way through. And as a result
of that he was asked to give evidence to the
Privy Council. He was in fact the only slave ship
captain who ever gave evidence to the Privy Council. He
also spoke to a parliamentary a committee. There became quite
(36:52):
a lobby in England, driven very largely by a lot
of the women who would not allow their families to
eat sugar because it came from the spoils of the
slave trade.
Speaker 5 (37:06):
Newton finally died in the year when the slave trade
was abolished, as Wilberforce himself finally died in the that
slavery in British territories was abolished.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
And Newton's last words are perhaps the greatest testimony to
the testimony, because when Newton was dying, a visitor came
to see him and asked how he was and if
he remembered this, that and the other. And Newton, who
(37:40):
was very old, blind knew he was near death, said
in a faltering voice, Sir, I remember only two things.
That I am a great sinner, that Christ is a
great savior.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
And you've been listening to the story of John Newton,
and in the end, the story of the greatest hymn
ever written. And great work, as always to Gregg Hangler,
John Newton's story born on this day in seventeen twenty five.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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