History On Amazing Grace :: essays research papers

     "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound..." So begins one of the most beloved hymns of all times, a staple in the hymnals of many denominations. The author of the words was John Newton, the self-proclaimed wretch who oncewas lost but then was found, saved by amazing grace. Newton was born in London July 24, 1725, the son of a commander of a merchant ship which sailed the Mediterranean. In 1744 John was impressed into service on a man-of-war, the H. M. S.Harwich. Finding conditions on board intolerable, he deserted but was soon recaptured and publicly flogged and demoted from midshipman to common seaman. Finally at his own request he was exchanged into service on a slave ship, which tookhim to the coast of Sierra Leone. He then became the servant of a slave trader and was brutally abused. Early in 1748 he was bring through by a sea captain who had known Johns father. John Newton ultimately became captain of his own ship, onewhich plied the slave trade. A lthough he had had some earliest religious instruction from his mother, who had died when he was a child, he had long since given up any religious convictions. However, on a homeward voyage, while he was attemptingto steer the ship through a violent storm, he experienced what he was to refer to later as his "great deliverance." He recorded in his journal that when all seemed lost and the ship would surely sink, he exclaimed, "Lord, have mercy upon us." Laterin his cabin he reflected on what he had say and began to believe that God had addressed him through the storm and that grace had begun to work for him. For the rest of his life he observed the anniversary of May 10, 1748 as the mean solar day of hisconversion, a day of humiliation in which he subjected his will to a higher power. "Thro many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come tis grace has brot me unspoiled thus far, and grace will lead me home." He continued in the slave trade for atime af ter his conversion however, he cut to it that the slaves under his care were treated humanely. In 1750 he married Mary Catlett, with whom he had been in love for many years. By 1755, after a austere illness, he had given up seafaringforever. He decided to become a minister and applied to the Archbishop of York for ordination.