From Slave Ship to Hymnal

In 1748, John Newton was a man no one wanted to be near. A sailor on slave trading ships since his teens, he had become so vulgar and blasphemous that even hardened sailors recoiled from him. At his lowest point, he was enslaved himself on the coast of Sierra Leone, starving, dressed in rags, eating scraps from his captor's table like an animal. His own father had given up on him. Fellow traders called him beyond saving.

Then, on March 10, 1748, a violent storm nearly sank the ship carrying him home. As waves crashed over the deck and men were swept into the Atlantic, Newton cried out to the Almighty for the first time in years. The ship survived. Newton was changed.

The transformation was not instant — he continued in the slave trade for several more years before the full weight of his sin broke through. But the man who had lived among metaphorical tombs, shackled by cruelty and self-destruction, eventually became a pastor in the small English village of Olney, where he wrote hymns that would outlive him by centuries.

When Jesus freed the Gerasene demoniac, He did not invite the man to follow Him down the road. He sent him home. "Return and tell how much God has done for you." Newton did exactly that — and his testimony, Amazing Grace, has been telling it ever since.