John Newton wrote arguably one of the most famous hymns in modern history that told the story of his life. 1 Chronicles 17:16 was the verse that inspired him to write Faith's Review And Expectation. The verse reads, "And David the king came and sat before the LORD, and said, Who am I, O LORD God, and what is mine house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?" The verse of the song that reflects the 1 Chronicles passage reads this way - "Thro' many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; 'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home."

Newton composed a song originally known as Faith's Review and Expectation, which we know today as Amazing Grace—how sweet the sound, that sav'd a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see!" To be sure, the song is Amazing Grace, perhaps the most beloved song of all times. The original title was Faith's Review.

But who is the self-proclaimed "wretch" who wrote the song? John Newton was born in London, England on July 24, 1725, the son of a commander of a merchant ship which sailed the Mediterranean. In July 1732, thirteen days before his seventh birthday, death overcame his saintly mother who had since his third birthday been his teacher and mentor. He took the death of his mother hard and with much grief. He found no consolation from his father. Newton wrote of him, "I am persuaded that he loved me, but he seemed not willing that I should know it. I was with him in a state of fear and bondage. His sternness broke my spirit." John became quite bitter at God over his circumstance because he began as one author puts it, "a decline into rebellion and degradation that lasted until his twenty-fourth year." At eleven years of age he went to sea with his father and made six voyages with him before the elder Newton retired. In 1744, John was pressed into service on a man-of-war, the H.M.S. Harwich. The conditions on board were inhospitable and intolerable to him, so he deserted but was soon recaptured and publicly flogged and demoted from midshipman to seaman. Newton was exchanged into service on a slave trader that departed for Sierra Leone. He then became the servant of a slave trader and was brutally abused. Early in 1748 he was rescued by a sea captain who had known John's father. The slaves would often smuggle him food, and for him. He bore witness to the horrors and misery of the slave trade for the Africans in bondage. That experience represented a profound reflection of man's innate inhumanity and cruelty. It drove him to examine his own sinfulness. Amidst much soul-searching, he cried out to God, reflecting upon the teachings of his pious mother. It was several year later, however, he professed to be a true believer.

‘The crook in the lot’, says Boston, ‘is the great engine of providence for making men appear in their true colors’. C.S. Lewis referred to sufferings as ‘blockades on the road to hell’. The same sun that melts the ice also hardens the clay. Andrew Fuller declares, ‘Afflictions refine some, they consume others’. The test of a person’s Christianity is what happens in the storm, when the house is battered in the winds of affliction. The Apostle Paul told Timothy he must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Adversity refined John Newton, and made him into a humble saint. He knew he was a great sinner, and he needed a great savior. For John Newton, in 1764, he became a radical minister and an even greater songwriter. And God gets the glory in using the weak instruments like him. He was instrumental in encouraging his friend William Wilberforce, a parliamentarian who led the charge for the abolition of slavery. He is best remembered for his hymn Amazing Grace.

"I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be. Yet I can truly say, I am not what I once was."
—John Newton

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I've been reading a paperback copy of The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd by John Piper. It gives an account of the lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper and David Brainerd. The one character that I was drawn to was that of the famous Christian hymn writer William Cowper (pronounced Cooper.)

William Cowper was born in 1731 and died in 1800. That makes him a contemporary of John Wesley and George Whitefield, the leaders of the Evangelical Revival in England. He embraced Whitefield’s Calvinistic theology rather than Wesley’s Arminianism. But it was a warm, evangelical brand of Calvinism, shaped (in Cowper’s case) largely by one of the healthiest men in the eighteenth century, the “old African blasphemer,” John Newton. Cowper said he could remember how, as a child, he would see the people at four o’clock in the morning coming to hear Whitefield preach in the open air. “Moorfields [was] as full of the lanterns of the worshipers before daylight as the Haymarket was full of flambeaux on opera nights.”

From the standpoint of adventure or politics or public engagement, his life was utterly uneventful—the kind of life no child would ever choose to read about. But those of us who are older have come to see that the events of the soul are probably the most important events in life. And the battles in this man’s soul were of epic proportions.

From the standpoint of adventure or politics or public engagement, his life was utterly uneventful—the kind of life no child would ever choose to read about. But those of us who are older have come to see that the events of the soul are probably the most important events in life. And the battles in this man’s soul were of epic proportions.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), p. 85.

Cowper rarely found his work fulfilling, and it was more his father's ideal of what he should do than his own:

From 1749 he was apprenticed to a solicitor with a view to practicing law. At least this was his father’s view. He never really applied himself and had no heart for the public life of a lawyer or a politician. For ten years he did not take his legal career seriously but lived a life of leisure with token involvement in his supposed career.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), p. 86.

In 1752, he was struck by a paralyzing depression, which he recollected in his memoirs:

[I was struck] with such a dejection of spirits, as none but they who have felt the same, can have the least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror, and rising up in despair. I presently lost all relish for those studies, to which before I had been closely attached; the classics had no longer any charms for me; I had need of something more salutary than amusement, but I had no one to direct me where to find it.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), pp. 86-87.

John Piper writes, "In 1752 he sank into his first paralyzing depression—the first of four major battles with mental breakdown so severe as to set him to staring out of windows for weeks at a time. Struggle with despair came to be the theme of his life. He was twenty-one years old and not yet a believer" (p. 86.)

So in December 1763 he was committed to St. Albans Insane Asylum, where the fifty-eight-year-old Dr. Nathaniel Cotton tended the patients. Cotton was somewhat of a poet, but most of all, by God’s wonderful design, an evangelical believer and a lover of God and the Gospel. He loved Cowper and held out hope to him repeatedly in spite of his insistence that he was damned and beyond hope. Six months into his stay, Cowper found a Bible lying (not by accident) on a bench.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), p. 92.

Though, fearing damnation, Cowper came to believe that he was not utterly forsaken of God. He felt compelled to turn to the Bible for answers. The first that seered his conscience was Romans 3:25: “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God” (KJV). Of this magnanimous discovery, he wrote:

Immediately I received the strength to believe it, and the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the atonement He had made, my pardon sealed in His blood, and all the fullness and completeness of His justification. In a moment I believed, and received the gospel... Whatever my friend Madan had said to me, long before, revived in all its clearness, with demonstration of the spirit and with power. Unless the Almighty arm had been under me, I think I should have died with gratitude and joy. My eyes filled with tears, and my voice choked with transport; I could only look up to heaven in silent fear, overwhelmed with love and wonder.
—Piper, John. The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2001), pp. 93-94.

He had come to love Dr. Cotton so much that he stayed on another twelve months after his conversion. Though one might wish the story were one of emotional triumph after his conversion, he continued to struggle with depression. One of Cowper's most renowned hymns, 'There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,' contained these heartening words: "The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, and there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away," wrote Cowper.

"Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be until I die."
—William Cowper

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Judge not the lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
—William Cowper, God Moves In A Mysterious Way