Sunday, January First, 2023, is the 250th anniversary of the hymn, perhaps the most famous in Christendom, written by John Newton, a captain of slave ships who was converted to Christianity and later joined William Wilberforce in working to abolish the slave trade.
Newton wrote “Amazing Grace” for his Anglican congregation, St. Peter and Paul Church in Olney, Buckinghamshire, England, to sing on New Year’s day, 1773. The formerly sinful seafaring blasphemer pinned the immortal words:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost but now I’m found,
Was blind, but now I see.
“I can see no reason why the Lord singled me out for mercy . . . unless it was to show, by one astonishing instance, that with Him ‘nothing is impossible’,” Newton wrote in his autobiography.
‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed
“Amazing Grace” has been sung many millions of times, and has been recorded on more than 7,000 albums, according to Newton biographer Jonathan Aitken. It has been sung by presidents, folk singers, rock stars, and countless congregations around the world. Translated into more than 50 languages, including Inuit, it was played on the bagpipes by NASA Astronaut Kjell Lindgren at the International Space Station.
“Amazing Grace” was the title of a 2006 film about the life of William Wilberforce, in which Albert Finney played John Newton. Eric Metaxas published a companion biography of Wilberforce.
In the 1970s, folk Singer Judy Collins, who said the song has the “power to transform and heal,” recorded a soulful rendition of “Amazing Grace” that spent 67 weeks on pop charts in the United States and the United Kingdom. The hymn was a favorite at the Billy Graham. Graham choirmaster Cliff Barrows said, “we will sing this song until Jesus comes and it may be one of our theme songs in heaven around the throne.”
Newton was born July 24, 1725, the only child of John Newton, Sr., a merchant seafaring captain, and his wife Elizabeth, a nonconformist who taught her son to read the Bible, hoping he would one day serve the church. She died of tuberculosis when John was just six years old, and his father sent him to boarding school. At age 11, Newton went on his first of six sea voyages with his father.
During his years at sea, Newton lost the faith of his early childhood, leading what he described as a wicked life. “My sinful propensities gathered strength by habit…I sinned with a high hand, and I made it my study to tempt and seduce others,” Newton wrote in his autobiography, “The Authentic Narrative.”
At 18, he was press-ganged into the Royal Navy, which he hated. He deserted but was caught and returned to the ship, where he was flogged mercilessly. He eventually hooked up with a slave trader named Amos Clow, who owned a plantation on an island off of west Africa. Clow and his African mistress treated Newton cruelly, keeping him half-starved and often in chains.
When his father learned where he was, he arranged for Newton’s passage home on an old ship called the Greyhound. Caught in a brutal storm off the coast of Ireland, the Greyhound was breaking apart and about to capsize; Newton began praying for God’s mercy, and he survived. The date was March 10, 1748, an anniversary he marked for the rest of his life.
Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home
Despite his revived Christian faith, Newton continued sailing slave ships, finally retiring in 1754. He began studying for the ministry and was ordained into the Church of England at age 39.
The Lord has promised good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.
While serving his parish in Olney, Newton met William Wilberforce and encouraged him to pursue his passion of ending the slave trade. In 1787 Newton published “Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade” (1787), in which he described in detail the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. He admitted that this was “a confession” that “comes to late” and that “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 tract was given to every member of Parliament. It took twenty years, but Wilberforce, Newton, and the other Christian activists finally succeeded in outlawing the slave trade within the British Empire on May 1, 1807. Seven months later, on December 21, 1807, Newton died.
He never forgot his sinful wretchedness, nor God’s amazing grace and forgiveness of his sins. His epitaph, which he wrote, reads in part:
JOHN NEWTON, CLERK,
Once an Infidel and Libertine,
A servant of slaves in Africa,
Was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour
JESUS CHRIST,
Preserved, restored, pardoned,
And appointed to preach the Faith he had long laboured to destroy.
