Amazing Grace

John Newton, an obscure minister in the Church of England, wrote this simple, unsophisticated hymn for the working people of Olney, a small village in the county of Buckinghamshire where he served. Though Newton wrote it when he was in his early fifties, the hymn reflects the fascinating story of his life. His mother died when he was six, he went to sea with his sailor father when he was eleven, and he was in the British Royal Navy on a man-of-war when he was seventeen.

Abandoning his early religious training, he became an aggressive atheist and delighted in shocking people with his profanity. First a sailor on a slave ship, he later became a ship’s captain engaged in transporting slaves from Africa to ports where they could be sold for the best prices. Throughout his early turbulent life, the memory of his mother and his love for Mary Catlett, later his wife, served as strong and continuing influences. On a stormy night on a water logged ship in 1748, as he faced imminent death, Newton had an extraordinary and genuine spiritual experience.  Six years later he abandoned the sea and became the tide surveyor in Liverpool. He was responsible for checking all ships that entered the harbor for contraband goods.

While John and Mary Newton were living in Liverpool, John developed a deeper interest in spiritual matters and felt the Lord’s call to the ministry. Because of his lack of university training the bishops of the Church of England were unwilling to ordain him. Only the intervention of an influential patron secured for him his ordination and appointment to the parish church at Olney when he was forty years of age. Seventeen years later he went to London as minister of St. Mary Woolnoth Church, which was located in the heart of London’s banking district. He remained there for 27 years.

Never did he lose his bluff sailor ways, but his genial manner and straightforward preaching won him many friends and endeared him to the people to whom he ministered. Newton preached almost to the end of his eighty-two years. When he was no longer able to read and was advised by his friends to give up preaching, he replied, “What, shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can still speak!”