God's Grace for a Graceless
Gob
John Newton
Struggling against the strong waves and floating debris, John Newton fought his way up to the Greyhound's deck. There he helped put the pumps into action and joined the crew in frantically bailing water and stopping leaks.
By nine A.M. the leaks were crammed with bedding and clothes, held in place by the planks which had been nailed over them. The sea was running high, the leaky ship rocking crazily. The crew had to lash themselves to the deck to keep from being swept overboard.
John Newton's body was aching with exhaustion. Almost without thinking he muttered, "Lord, have mercy on us." Instantly his numbed brain jolted awake. He had not prayed since childhood. Would God — if He existed at all, and John Newton doubted that He did — have mercy on such a blasphemer?
Although seamen on British trading ships were not known for their piety, the ship's captain had only a few days before begged Newton to cease his blood-curdling blasphemies. Newton's epithets were not the common swearings of a hearty sailor. His curses expressed his revulsion against the very idea of God.
After his surprising utterance, the ship's star blasphemer left the pumps to relieve the captain at the
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helm. Every time the ship lurched into a dark trough of boiling water, Newton feared they could not possibly escape death. But the angry Atlantic finally leveled off, and he went below to collapse in his bunk.
When he took up steering duties again, Newton noticed that most of the ship's sails had blown away., The wind was blowing through bare spars, making navigation almost impossible.
Seven days passed, and no land was in sight. Food supplies shrank to a handful of salted codfish. One man died. The worried captain called his crew together. Eyeing Newton, he said, "You men know I picked this fellow up on the African coast to take him home to his father. I grant you he knows how to navigate, because he once skippered his own slave ship. But since he's been my assistant we've had nothing but trouble, trouble, trouble."
"Aye, Cap'n, you speak the truth," a scar-faced deck hand cried.
"He says he's a freethinker. I know his father never taught him this way. His blasphemies are enough to make the sea cough up her dead. Like Jonah in the Bible, I think he's a curse to us."
John Newton flexed his strapping muscles and stepped back as the crew glared at him accusingly. They wouldn't throw him overboard. Or would they? He glared back at the captain.
"We'll wait," the old trader finally said. "But John Newton, you'd better join us in prayer if you value your hide."
Newton strode silently back to his post. A verse of Scripture he'd heard as a child came to his mind. "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to
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your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them who ask him?" (Luke 11:13).
"God, if You're true," he prayed between clenched teeth, "You'll make good your word. Cleanse my vile heart."
Four weeks later, in the month of April 1748, the Greyhound limped into an Irish harbor. Newton went to church and there professed salvation.
The blasphemous freethinker became a powerful evangelical preacher. His testimony found expression in sacred poetry. The poem that best expresses his redemption is a beloved hymn still sung by Christians today.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
