{"id":52844,"date":"1998-06-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1998-06-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/despair-of-william-cowper\/"},"modified":"1998-06-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1998-06-01T00:00:00","slug":"despair-of-william-cowper","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/despair-of-william-cowper\/","title":{"rendered":"The Despair of William Cowper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t\t\t<strong>William Cowper (1731-1800) <\/strong>\n\t\t<\/p>\n\n<p><em>Despite recurring mental illness, he wrote hymns on God&#39;s providence. <\/em><\/p>\n\n<p>William Cowper&#39;s poetic achievements are remarkable in light of the fact that mental illness plagued him all his life.<\/p>\n\n<p>The son of the chaplain to King George II, William worked as a lawyer for several years. At age 32, he was nominated to a position that required a public examination. He grew fearful of that and tried to commit suicide three times&#8211;and nearly succeeded. During his stay of eighteen months in the asylum at St. Albans, however, Cowper was converted while reading Romans.<\/p>\n\n<p>After his release, Cowper resided in Huntingdon with the family of a Reverend Unwin. Upon Unwin&#39;s death, John Newton came to comfort the family, and he convinced Mrs. Unwin, her children, and Cowper to move to Olney where he lived.<\/p>\n\n<p>The period at Olney was a time of healing and spiritual growth for Cowper. Newton urged Cowper to serve Olney&#39;s poor, probably in an effort to take Cowper&#39;s mind off his depressions, poor health, paranoia, and fears of damnation. He also convinced Cowper to write hymns for the parish&#39;s prayer meetings. The result was <em>Olney Hymns<\/em> (1779), which contained 348 hymns&#8211;68 by Cowper, who suffered a relapse and was unable to finish his work.<\/p>\n\n<p>Three of his best-known works are &quot;There Is a Fountain,&quot; &quot;Safely through Another Week,&quot; and &quot;O for a Closer Walk with God.&quot; His famous hymn &quot;God Moves in a Mysterious Way&quot; was written about the time of another bout of mental illness, during which Cowper again attempted suicide. Despite this, John Newton said of him, &quot;I can hardly form an idea of a closer walk with God than he uniformly maintained.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>Cowper did not begin his literary career until age 50. His translations of Homer and poems such as &quot;John Gilpin&quot; placed him at the forefront of English poets, and it is the literary Cowper now listed in reference books.<\/p>\n\n<p>But perhaps Cowper&#39;s most meaningful works were the hymns written during fits of despair. It is said that on his deathbed he stated, &quot;I am not shut out of heaven after all.&quot;<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3762,3766,3962,4167,4168,4198,4637,5105],"tax_ctp_topics":[378,384,386,389],"class_list":["post-52844","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-depravity","tax_ctp_tags-despair","tax_ctp_tags-family-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-hope","tax_ctp_tags-hopelessness","tax_ctp_tags-hymns","tax_ctp_tags-pessimism","tax_ctp_tags-suicide"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Despair of William Cowper - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/despair-of-william-cowper\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Despair of William Cowper - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"William Cowper (1731-1800) Despite recurring mental illness, he wrote hymns on God&#039;s providence. 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