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Themes: "Grace, Salvation - evidences Young Isaac Watts was tired of the dreary psalms sung every Sunday in church. "Well, if you don't like them," said his father, "give us something better." Isaac did, and the golden age of hymn-writing began. After Watts came Philip Doddridge, then Charles Wesley, the prince of hymn-writers. This story is about two hymn-writers of that era, John Newton and William Cowper (pronounced "Cooper"). John Newton wrote the most famous hymn, "Amazing Grace". Mary Magdalene was possessed by demons before the Lord saved her. John Newton was not. Yet if you knew both of them, but did not know which one was demon-possessed, you would probably have thought it was Newton. His mother died when he was seven. After that he had a hard life. He was sent to boarding school, where he was poorly behaved and often beaten. When he was eleven, his father, a sea captain, took him to sea. When he was nineteen, he was forced into the Royal Navy. He deserted, and when he was caught he was severely beaten. The next four years were terrible years. He signed on as a sailor on a slave boat. The boat would pick up slaves in Africa and carry them to the slave markets, where they would be sold. It was a wicked, ungodly business. Newton was the right man for it, because he was wicked and ungodly. Now, sailors are usually wicked and ungodly. But he was so wicked and so ungodly that he made the other sailors afraid. One storm at sea was so bad that the captain of the ship, who remembered the story of Jonah, wanted to throw Newton overboard so God would stop the storm! On March 9, 1748, Newton finished reading a book called The Imitation of Christ. For some reason, the book made him decide he did not want to be saved. But the next night a great storm arose, and the crew of the Greyhound, his ship, were sure it was going to sink. That night, God saved John Newton, at the age of twenty-three. William Cowper was a lawyer. In a different way, he too was like Mary Magdalene. He was mentally ill, and tried to kill himself. He was sent away to an asylum. There he met Nathaniel Cotton, a doctor who preached the gospel to him. One day, while reading Romans 3:25, Cowper saw that Christ died for him. Although he suffered from depression for the rest of his life, he left the asylum. Some time later he moved to the town of Olney, where he met Newton. The two began to write hymns. Each week, one would write a new hymn. At the end, they had written 348 hymns, which were published in the Olney Hymnbook. Many of the hymns they wrote are found in our hymnbooks today. After they were saved, they became like Mary Magdalene after she was saved. Early on Sunday mornings, they came together to remember their risen Lord and Savior. Cowper described it this way: "On Sabbath mornings in winter I rose before day, and by the light of a lantern trudged, often through snow and rain, to a prayer meeting at the Great House." William Cowper, whose life was lived under a cloud of mental illness, went on to become the most popular poet of his day. John Newton, who had transported slaves, became a bitter opponent of slavery. He worked with a man named William Wilberforce to put a stop to it. In 1807, the year he died, the slave trade was abolished. That is the power of salvation in a risen Lord. Salvation is not just for heaven. The person who gets salvation gets new life; his old wicked life is put away. Newton's tombstone reads, in part, "He preached the faith he long labored to destroy."
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Simon Wallace
