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It is probably the most famous hymn in history: Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

Though some today wonder if the word wretch is hyperbole, John Newton, the song's author, clearly did not.

Born in 1725, Newton was nurtured by a Christian mother who taught him the Bible at an early age, but she died of tuberculosis when Newton was 7. After that he was raised in his father's image. At age 11, Newton went on his first of six sea-voyages with his father, a merchant navy captain.

He lost his first job in a merchant's office due to "unsettled behavior and impatience of restraint"—a pattern that would persist for years. He spent his later teen years at sea before he was press-ganged aboard the H.M.S. Harwich in 1744.

Newton rebelled against the discipline of the Royal Navy and deserted. He was caught, put in irons and flogged. He eventually convinced his superiors to discharge him to a slaver's ship.

Arrogant and insubordinate, Newton lived with moral abandon: "I sinned with a high hand," he later wrote, "and I made it my study to tempt and seduce others."

He worked for a slave-trader named Clow, who owned a plantation of lemon trees on an island off of west Africa. But he was treated cruelly by Clow and Clow's African mistress. Newton's clothes turned to rags, and he was forced to beg for food.

In 1747, he was transferred to the Greyhound, a Liverpool ship. On its homeward journey, the ship was caught in a terrible storm. Newton had been reading Thomas à Kempis's popular The Imitation of Christ, and was struck by a line about the "uncertain continuance of life." He recalled the passage in Proverbs, "Because I have called and ye have refused … I also will laugh at your calamity."

He surrendered to God during the storm, though he admitted later, "I cannot consider myself to have been a believer, in the full sense of the word."

Newton then served as a mate and eventually as captain of a number of slave ships, hoping as a Christian to restrain the worst excesses of the slave trade, "promoting the life of God in the soul" of both his crew and his African cargo.

A new calling
After leaving the sea for an office job in 1755, Newton held Bible studies in his Liverpool home. Influenced by the Wesleys and George Whitefield, he became increasingly disgusted with the slave trade and his role in it. He quit, was ordained by the Anglican church, and in 1764 took a parish in Olney.

Three years later, poet William Cowper moved to Olney. Cowper became a lay helper in Newton's church, even though he battled deep depression.

In 1769, Newton began a Thursday evening prayer service. For almost every week's service, he wrote a hymn to be sung to a familiar tune. Newton challenged Cowper also to write hymns, which he did until falling seriously ill in 1773.

Newton later combined 280 of his own hymns with 68 of Cowper's in the popular Olney Hymns. Included are "Amazing Grace!" "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken," "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds," "O for a Closer Walk with God," and "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood."

In 1787 Newton wrote Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade to help William Wilberforce's campaign to end the slave trade—"a business at which my heart now shudders," he wrote. That chapter in his life always lingered in the back of his mind.

Years later, when it was suggested that the increasingly feeble Newton retire, he replied, "I cannot stop. What? Shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak?"

Reprinted by permission from 131 Christians You Should Know, produced by CHRISTIAN HISTORY magazine. To subscribe, call 1-800-873-6986.

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