I’ll never forget the worn, deep blue hymnals that stood symmetrically in our traditional Baptist church pew racks when I was a boy. Before I reached puberty I had spent hundreds of hours eyeing and using that sacred relic. When I was five years old, the hymnal served as an ideal table for drawing stick figures during our evangelistic preacher’s poetic sermons, keeping me occupied so the grown-ups could absorb the undisturbed conviction and instruction of God’s Word. By eight, I could read well enough to follow along.

Our Sunday services, while fiercely nonliturgical, still followed an equally predictable rhythm. So by the time I entered my teen years, I could recall an impressive range of lyrics from memory, enabling me to sing all four verses of the most popular hymns without glancing down at a single page. None was more familiar than “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.”

Like I did with most hymns, I sang along without giving the person behind these lyrics much thought. I recall noticing the name John Newton next to the title atop the page, followed by the dates 1725–1807 indicating his birth and death. But I assumed him a stoic hymn writer from two centuries past with little influence beyond our Sunday morning routine. It never occurred to me that the man who penned such famous words had been one of the more influential figures in the history of Christian faith and human rights. Nor did I have any idea how an archaic church hymn I sang from memory would connect to another, seemingly unrelated adolescent experience.

In 1977, I stumbled upon an episode of a television show I hadn’t planned to watch. At fourteen years old, I was probably hoping to tune in The Six Million Dollar Man or some other action favorite. Instead, I found myself entranced by what would become one of the most popular series in television history. Roots, based upon the book by Alex Haley, depicted the story of Kunta Kinte, a young African taken from his home and forced into slavery. I had learned about such things from school textbooks. I even knew that British and American ships loaded their hulls with men, women, and children to carry them across the ocean and sell them into servitude. But I had no conception of just how awful the experience was for its victims. Roots opened my eyes and angered my spirit.

I watched the formerly happy, playful Kinte caged like an animal. I remember scenes from the hull where he and others were packed side by side in unspeakable conditions, lying in their own filth day after horrific day. I will never forget one crew member trying to assuage the guilt feelings of his captain.... a man who had never before carried human

“cargo”....by saying it was better for heathen Africans to live in a “Christian” nation, even if they must be dragged off as slaves for the privilege. My stomach tightened and turned as I wondered who could possibly use such a flimsy argument to justify obvious evil. Many years later I would discover that John Newton, the same man who had penned one of my memorized hymns, ranked among those using such justification. In fact, John Newton had made his living as the captain of a British slave ship.

How could a man who participated in the capture and sale of fellow human beings....a man who transported men, women, and children in such awful conditions that many died en route....end up two centuries later listed in my blue hymnal as a celebrated Christian writer? Shouldn’t his sins against humanity have disqualified him from such recognition? What is the story behind such a remarkable dichotomy? Much of this book is dedicated to that story, and the God of amazing grace it reveals.

But we’ll also explore another story, one that may not have occurred without Newton’s direct influence: the story of a man named William Wilberforce.

Wilberforce, born thirty-four years after Newton, was the politician who led a twenty-year battle in Parliament to outlaw the British slave trade. Now the subject of a powerful feature film, Wilberforce’s story ranks among the most fascinating examples of God’s intervention in the lives of ordinary, flawed people to accomplish His great work of human redemption. And, as we will discover, part of that great work includes a touching relationship between two eighteenth-century men....one a former slave-ship captain and the other, an influential British politician.

Redemption. What a beautiful word! The lost regained. The ruined restored. The sick healed. The broken repaired. The enslaved set free. It is a concept at the heart of Christian religion. God did not passively wait for us to get our act together after the Fall. Refusing to leave sinful, hurting humanity to wallow in its misery, He took the initiative, providing a means of redemption for His lost children and restoration for a damaged world.

Eighteenth-century Britain, the world into which Newton and Wilberforce were born, desperately needed the Almighty’s intervention. A spiritual apathy and intellectually eviscerated religion had overtaken the church, leading many to abandon belief in God’s direct involvement in human affairs. Sure, they still believed He had created the world and established certain guidelines. But only the “uneducated rabble” seemed to take such unsophisticated notions as personal sin, repentance, and salvation seriously. As a result, the church’s influence as a preserving salt diminished....leaving the poor and enslaved to suffer at the hands of uncaring, wicked men.

Into such a world an emerging movement now called “evangelicalism” was born. It began in the early 1730s on the campus of Lincoln College in Oxford when four young men began meeting together weekly to read the Greek New Testament and discuss the beliefs and practices of the early church. The movement....led by John and Charles Wesley.... attracted the attention and loyalty of believers hoping to recover a religion that could inspire more than social pretense and Sunday yawns. The Wesleys, George Whitefield, and others gave birth to what has been called “The Great Awakening”....a revival of sincere belief and spiritual passion in England and America that prompted men and women from all walks of life to take the tenets of Christianity seriously, and as a result, to revolutionize their world.

Both John Newton and William Wilberforce embraced a particularly evangelical Christianity. Each experienced a radical conversion....one from the profane life of a slave-ship captain, the other from the skeptical arrogance of a wealthy sophisticate. Each believed in personal sin and repentance. And each considered God’s intervention in his life to include purposes beyond personal salvation. It included the call to play some part in extending God’s amazing grace to others in need of redemption.

As with earlier titles in our Finding God series, this book derives inspiration from specific scenes of a great story. Previously, we discovered the theology of writers like J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis bubbling up through their wonderful fantasy literature. In this edition, we explore how the real-life drama and writings of two great men provide insights for our own spiritual journeys. Just as the happenings of Middle-earth and Narnia reveal something of their creators, scenes from the lives of Newton and Wilberforce tell us something about the Author of history, and how His providential pen scripted scenes more intriguing than the most spectacular fiction.

We hope this book will not replace the experience of reading the actual writings or full biographies of Newton and Wilberforce. We simply wish to enhance appreciation and application of the truths that defined their influence. Each chapter opens by re-creating a scene that touches some aspect of God’s intervention in and beyond their lives. While this exercise required some imaginative speculation, every chapter is inspired and informed by actual events from the lives and influence of John Newton and/or William Wilberforce.

It has been nearly three decades since I sat in my small Baptist church and held that old blue hymnal. My new liturgy includes a modern projection system and simple choruses too easily remembered. But one old hymn has survived the ever-changing litany of church worship music. We continue singing it as a deeply embedded part of the evangelical ethos....a movement that invaded apathetic churches when they needed to move beyond personal comfort and reputation to rescue the victims of an unjust world. That song continues to remind us that God does indeed intervene in human affairs, redeeming the lost and rescuing the outcast. It is a song that, like the lives of Newton and Wilberforce, points us toward a God of Amazing Grace.

O Lord, truly I am Your servant;
I am Your servant, the son of
Your maidservant; You have
loosed my bonds.
Psalm 116:16

MATERNAL GRACE

Little John Newton, six years old, hoisted himself up in his chair, leaned across the table, and stared out the parlor window at the sunlight dancing on the surface of the Thames. Away flew his thoughts, beyond the river and the estuary, over the wide world, to the dim and distant figure of his father, a stern-faced man in a merchant-captain’s coat, cresting the blue Mediterranean swells at the wheel of his ship. “What are God’s works of providence?” John turned at the sound of his mother’s voice, gentle but insistent at his side. A dog-eared copy of The Westminster Shorter Catechism lay open in her lap.

“What are God’s works of providence?” she repeated, glancing up at him.

The boy brushed the hair from his eyes. Then he blinked, rubbed his nose, and grinned. She gave him an encouraging nod.

“God’s works of providence,” he ventured, brightening beneath her smile, “are His most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing of all His creatures, and all their actions.”

“Good!” she beamed. “And what special act of providence did God exercise towards man in the estate wherein he was created?”

John bit his lip and frowned. “I’m sorry, Mother,” he said, his father’s grim and serious face flashing before his mind’s eye. “I guess I haven’t learned that one yet.”

“No matter,” she said, hooking a finger under his chin and lifting his face up to her own. “You shall learn it tomorrow!

But can you remember the song we sang together yesterday?”

“Oh, yes!” he said, clapping his hands. “Let’s sing it again!”

She lifted him into her lap, and the fresh, clean smell of her white linen apron and blue taffeta skirts filled his nostrils.

He snuggled close to her and they began:

Let children hear the mighty deeds which God performed of old; Which in our younger years we saw, and which our fathers told.

“Another!” he shouted when they had finished. “Can we sing another?”

“Why not?” she said, taking another book from the table.... The Hymns and Psalms of the Reverend Isaac Watts. “Can you read this?” she asked, holding it up in front of him.

“O God,” he said, squinting at the page, “our Help in ages past, our Hope for years to come, Our Shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal Home.”

From somewhere on the street below came the laughter and shouts of neighborhood children. They were loud and exuberant at their play, but John never heard their calls. He was too full of the scent of his mother, too enraptured with the words of the song as it rose and fell on the gentle waves of her voice. He was in his own personal heaven.

“If the foundations are destroyed,” says David in the eleventh Psalm, “what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3). It’s a question well worth pondering.

But suppose the foundations are not destroyed. Suppose that, on the contrary, they are laid deep in the hidden bedrock of the unchanging grace of God. Suppose that they are so well established and so painstakingly constructed that they stand unshaken despite the ravages of time and tide and chance. What then?

In that case, the righteous can hope to do all things (Philippians 4:13). In that case, we can expect the blind to see, the lame to walk, and the dead to live again. Best of all, we can look forward to the happy spectacle of prodigals coming home to the house built firm upon the Rock.

The story of the Reverend John Newton is the story of a beloved son, errant blasphemer, slave of slaves, and preacher of the everlasting gospel. It’s a story that ends well because it begins well....in spite of a bleak and disastrous “middle passage.”

We don’t want to miss that good beginning. It’s absolutely essential to everything that follows. Because for all its subsequent sordidness and sorrow, our narrative starts with a tender, touching scene: a child on his mother’s knee, singing hymns and reciting verses from the Bible. An unlikely point of departure, perhaps, for a foul-mouthed sailor and a dealer in human flesh.

Elizabeth Newton, by her son’s own account, was “a pious experienced Christian”1....a woman whose life was built around a solid vertical core. She was a genuine believer whose knowledge of God went deeper than mere doctrinal orthodoxy and whose experience of the Savior’s love was warm and immediate and inextricably interwoven with the details of everyday existence.

That in itself simply had to rub off on young John. No doubt it would have even if his mother had never said a word to him about it. There is, after all, a great deal of truth in the old maxim that faith is more effectively caught than taught. But Mrs. Newton wasn’t the kind to be content with such assurances.

No; she personally directed every aspect of her son’s education. She saw to it that the seeds of God’s righteousness, truth, and mercy were planted deep in the soil of his soul from the earliest moments of childhood.

And so, almost from the time her son could speak, Mrs. Newton began to teach him. She took his training firmly in hand with enthusiasm, devotion, and fervent prayer. The results were impressive. At three her boy was already learning to read. By four he had practically mastered the skill. At five he was memorizing Scripture, enduring the rigors of the Catechism, and filling his mind with the words and melodies of the hymns of Isaac Watts. By six he was ready to embark on the study of Latin. And all because of the industry and care of a loving mother whose heart’s desire was that her son might someday serve the Lord as a minister of the Word.

But then tragedy struck. Elizabeth died before John turned seven, the victim of her own weak constitution and the ravages of consumption (or tuberculosis), one of the deadliest and most feared maladies of the day. As a result, by the time John was twenty-one, his closest companions would have been hard pressed to detect even the slightest traces of his mother’s influence upon him. Among other things, anger at God over her death drove him to abandon the path she had taught him to tread. But that, as we shall see, wasn’t to be the end of the story.

Though in young manhood, Newton did his level best to “sin away” every last vestige of these early impressions, he never fully succeeded. “They returned again and again,” he tells us, “and it was very long before I could wholly shake them off; and when the Lord at length opened my eyes, I found a great benefit from the recollection of them.”2 In other words, Mrs. Newton’s chickens eventually came home to roost.

The well-worn and oft-quoted words of Proverbs 22:6 immediately come to mind: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” It is true, of course, that many godly parents have suffered greatly because of their wayward sons’ and daughters’ ill choices. As wise as this saying may be, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an unqualified promise or absolute guarantee. But neither should the life-giving principle it conveys be too easily dismissed. It does, after all, make a very real difference how a child is raised. Moses acknowledged this in his instructions to the people of Israel:

And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. Deuteronomy 6:6-7

It needs to be said that, allowing for anomalies and departures from the rule, this kind of investment generally yields a rich dividend, a dividend that can manifest itself in surprising ways. Consider the case of young Samuel, whose course in life was fixed when his mother Hannah “lent him to the Lord” (1 Samuel 1:28); or Timothy, whose “genuine faith . . . dwelt first in [his] grandmother Lois and [his] mother Eunice” (2 Timothy 1:5). We know that God can use anyone or anything to draw hearts to Himself and prepare a pathway for His people. And yet there is no substitute for the tender affections of a godly mother. Newton himself felt this keenly: “[My father] was a man of remarkable good sense, and great knowledge of the world; he took great care of my morals, but could not supply my mother’s part.”

“In the Torah,” observes Chaya Saskonin, a member of Brooklyn’s Lubavitch Jewish Community, “women are called akeret ha-bayit, the foundation of the home. That doesn’t mean washing dishes. It means educating our children in everything we think about life. That’s the nature of what a mother is.”

And so it is. It’s also the nature of the God who made mothers; the God who weaves each one of us together in the womb (Psalm 139:13) and shelters us under His wings like a brooding hen (Psalm 17:8; Matthew 23:37). This is the same God who, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, both gives and takes away: the God who granted John Newton an excellent parent for his early spiritual upbringing, only to remove her from his life at an unexpected hour. It seemed a cruel blow. But the upshot was that John, in the fullness of time, became “an unusual proof of His patience, providence, and grace.”

No wonder they call that grace “amazing.”