May 28, 1775
Dear Sir,
You must not expect a long letter this morning; we are just going to Court, in hopes of seeing the King, for He has promised to meet us. We can say He is mindful of his promise; and yet it is not strange that though we are all in the same place, and the King in the midst of us, it is but here and there one (even of those who love Him) can see Him at once! However, in our turns, we are all favoured with a glimpse of Him, and have had cause to say, How great is His goodness! How great is His beauty! We have the advantage of the Queen of Sheba, a more glorious object to behold, and not so far to go for the sight of it. If a transient glance exceed all that the world can afford for a long continuance, what must it be to dwell with Him! If a day in His courts be better than a thousand, what will eternity be in His presence!
I hope the more you see, the more you love; the more you drink, the more you thirst; the more you do for Him, the more you are ashamed you can do so little; and that the nearer you approach to your journey's end, the more your pace is quickened. Surely, the power of spiritual attraction should increase as the distance lessens. O that heavenly load-stone ! May it so draw us, that we may not creep, but run.
In common travelling, the strongest become weary if the journey be very long; but in the spiritual journey we are encouraged with the hope of going on from strength to strength; instaurabit iter vires (the journey will renew one's strength), as Johnson expresses it. No road but the road to Heaven can thus communicate refreshment to those who walk in it, and make them more fresh and lively when they are just finishing their courses than when they first set out.
I am, &c.
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He was a strong support of the Evangelicals in the Church of England, and was a friend of the dissenting clergy as well as of the ministry of his own church.
He was the author of many hymns, including "Amazing Grace".
John Henry Newton was an English Anglican clergyman and former slave-ship captain. He was the author of many hymns, including "Amazing Grace".
Sailing back to England in 1748 aboard the merchant ship, he experienced a spiritual conversion in the Greyhound, which was hauling a load of beeswax and dyer's wood. The ship encountered a severe storm off the coast of Donegal and almost sank. Newton awoke in the middle of the night and finally called out to God as the ship filled with water. It was this experience which he later marked as the beginnings of his conversion to evangelical Christianity. As the ship sailed home, Newton began to read the Bible and other religious literature. By the time he reached Britain, he had accepted the doctrines of Evangelical Christianity.
He became well-known as an evangelical lay minister, and applied for the Anglican priesthood in 1757, although it was more than seven years before he was eventually accepted and ordained into the Church of England.
Newton joined English abolitionist William Wilberforce, leader of the Parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade, and lived to see the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807.