History Book: John Newton’s storm

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, March 17th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book, where we travel back to this week in the year 17-48.

A violent storm rages in the Atlantic Ocean, and John Newton, just 23 years old, believes he’s about to die.

EICHER: Before this moment, Newton was no saint.

He’d made up songs to entertain his crewmates, but not the kind you’d find in the hymnal.

Newton’s known as a profane man, contemptuous of authority.

REICHARD: And Newton has no idea that someday people all around the world will sing his songs about the grace of God. Here’s WORLD correspondent Caleb Welde.

SOUND: [CREAKING/SEA STORM]

CALEB WELDE: John Newton’s cabin is filling with water. It’s March 21st, 1748. Newton is aboard the British merchant vessel Greyhound. He and another man rush up to the deck when the Captain calls to Newton to bring a knife with him. Newton turns around while the other man continues up to the deck. The man is immediately swept overboard.

At three a.m. Newton is assigned to a pump. Each time the ship descends into the sea, he believes it won’t come back up. The ship’s captain tells Newton about once an hour that he believes Newton is the sole cause of the storm. And that if they threw him overboard, maybe the rest of them would be saved.

Newton pumps nine hours to exhaustion. He’s allowed to return to his bed for an hour. Then he’s assigned to work the helm of the ship.

Tied to the helm Newton reflects on his life.

The night before the storm hit, he’d found a book. Thomas à Kempis “Imitation of Christ.” He wonders:, “What if those things are true?” but pushes the thought aside thinking there’s no way God could forgive him.

His mother had been very godly but died when Newton was seven. She’d read him Bible stories and she loved the hymns of Issac Watts. His father remarried within weeks. He’s a stern and well-known merchant ship captain.

At eleven, Newton’s father put him to work on one of his ships. But then he was forcefully conscripted or “press-ganged” onto a Royal Navy vessel. Here, he found a book that fit well with his crewmates. “The Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times.” The book gave him permission to choose his own moral code.

EDWARDS: Now it was a book that led his mind well away from any faith in God.

Brian Edwards is a Newton Biographer.

EDWARDS: And it helped him on his downhill spiral, morally and philosophically, because it now gave him the reasons why he was not a Christian.

Newton tries to desert his warship but is caught almost immediately. He’s returned to the ship and flogged.

AITKEN: He thought of suicide. He thought of killing his captain, and the ship sailed.

Jonathan Aitken is author of “From Disgrace to Amazing Grace.”

Newton’s captain was fed up by this point, so he traded Newton onto a merchant ship. From here, Newton was taken to the coast of Africa where a human slave trade thrived. Here, Newton himself was put in chains and treated like a slave for a while.

But then a different white slaver bought him and he treated Newton much better. Things were looking up and Newton had no plans to return to England. It was shocking when he got word the captain of a passing ship was asking about him!?

Newton’s father had paid a captain to search for Newton and he’d actually found him.

EDWARDS: There were only two things that enticed him back home. One was the story that Newton had inherited quite a small fortune, and if he were to come back, he could enjoy it. But the other thing attracted him was the thought of Mary.

Newton had met Mary when he was fourteen and, in his own words, immediately fell in love. He was excited about the fortune because it’d give him enough money to marry Mary. He says he thought about her every day. Newton boarded the Greyhound…where he now finds himself tied to the helm of his rescue ship.

EDWARDS: 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 had ruined all that God had given him and spoiled the treasure that his mother had taught him.

In Newton’s words, “I began to think of Jesus, whom I had so often derided. I recollected the particulars of his life and of his death—a death for sins not His own, but, as I remembered, for the sake of those who in their distress should put their trust in Him.”

Two weeks later and almost out of food, the ship is able to limp into a port off the Irish coast. Newton goes to the nearest church to thank God for saving him. Then, he looks up Mary. She gives him a little hope but no certainty.

And as far as the small fortune he’d been told about…totally fabricated. He spends the next six years working his way up to captain moving slaves and “other cargo” across the Atlantic.

AITKEN: The general view of England, including Christian England, was that the slave trade was a respectable economic form of activity.

He visits Mary in between voyages and the two do get married in 1750.

EDWARDS: There wasn't the media. Nobody was going out there taking films of slaves and the way they were treated and the cruelty and bestiality of it all. And so people didn't know.

But Newton… does know. He’s reading Christian books aboard these slave ships, and the Bible.

EDWARDS: He didn't like what he was doing. His conscience was stirring.

Then, God says, “Enough.” Newton has a seizure preparing for his next voyage.

AITKEN: And that was gave John Newton a great fright, and also gave the owner of the ship a great fright, because you couldn't have a captain who was liable to suddenly collapse through a seizure.

Newton and the owner of the ship agreed, his career is over. Newton is twenty-nine.

He lives another five decades. Newton becomes a pastor for four of those five decades. He writes almost three-hundred hymns. He’s friends with William Wilberforce and plays an instrumental part in ending the slave trade revealing its horrors. Newton’s letters reveal a particular compassion for people. He never got over God’s grace to him.

AMAZING GRACE: Twas grace that taught my heart to fear. And grace, my fears relieved.

EDWARDS: He continually comes back to the word grace, which for John Newton, meant God's undeserved mercy in forgiving him through the merits of Jesus Christ and because of nothing he himself had done.

Audio of the John Newton biographers comes from the Vision Video documentary John Newton. For WORLD, I’m Caleb Welde.

AMAZING GRACE: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…

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