AMAZING

AMAZING By Rodney Houston


He was born July 24, 1725 and died December 21, 1807. His father was an English ship master. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was almost 7 years old. He spent the next two years at a boarding school. He was at sea by age 11 and then forced into the British naval service at age 18. He became a midshipman aboard HMS Harwich. At one point, he attempted to desert and was punished in front of the crew of 350. Stripped to the waist, tied to the grating, he received a flogging of twelve lashes, and was reduced to the rank of a common seaman. Following that disgrace and humiliation, he contemplated suicide. He was then transferred to the ship the Pegasus. By chance he found a book that sowed the seeds of the gospel, "Thomas à Kempis' Imitation of Christ". In a storm at sea he later prayed to God to save him.. He became an English tax collector in 1755. The last 43 years of his life he pastored and preached the gospel in Olney and London. At 82, he said "My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things, that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour." William Cowper, the poet, moved to Olney and worshiped in the church where he pastored and collaborated with him in 1779 to write a hymnal. The music book was known as "Olney Hymns." This work was to have a great influence on English hymnology. The volume included well-known hymns "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken", "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds!", "Come, My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare", "Approach, My Soul, the Mercy-seat." and a small hymn titled "Faith's Review and Expectation". which came to be known later by its opening phrase. This little known preacher may have been lost in history had it not been for the The hymn "Faith's Review and Expectation" which would later take on a new name based on the first two words of the of the song:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me,
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

He was John Newton who was so convicted of slave trading as a new believer that he turned around his slave ship mid voyage and returned his prisoners to their African home and in the process turned his life around and gave us the most well known hymn in history.