Amazing Grace

The writer of this particular hymn lived an extraordinary life. An Englishman he went to sea as a young lad with his father, and ultimately, he found himself involved as a member of the crew of a slave ship. By his own account the slaves were packed into the hull of the ship like cord wood, lying flat on their backs like books on a shelf. Chained hand and feet with not an inch between them. Unable to move throughout their ocean journey. Absolute stench. The most unsanitary of conditions. As many as 250 slaves on any given journey. As many as a quarter of them dying, and becoming food for sharks. Human beings treating other human beings in the most heinous, despicable manner; seemingly without any thought or care.       

     

And apparently John Newton wasn’t the most compliant, nor best of crew members, and at one point he received as good as he gave. For we read that he was left in Africa under the care of another slave trader, and his African wife where for a season he became little more than a slave himself. He was therefore exposed to both sides of the matter.

Over time, and as John Wesley might have described it, John Newton’s heart was “strangely warmed,” he quit the slave trade, and was appointed a priest in the Anglican Church. And along with Wilbur Wilberforce, a member of parliament, John Newton was instrumental in the abolishment of the slave trade in the British Empire.

I regret to say that many of my own family members owned slaves. This somewhat indistinct photograph depicts my great Grandfather and his family. On the right of the picture stands a black man; apparently one of the freed slaves of my great great Grandfather who, after the Civil War, my family’s former slave stayed on the land as a sharecropper.

Of course, figuratively and I might say even literally, we were all once slaves; slaves to sin. But we’re no longer bound to some foreign land on some slave ship. The chains have fallen away, and we have been freed from the curse of sin and death, and are bound for a different port of call which we call “heaven.” 

Amazing. Amazing Grace.


By William McDonald, PhD. (Mc)Donald's Daily Diary. Vol. 20. Copyright pending

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