T o L i V e I s c h r I s t
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21 IN T RODUC T ION In the spring of 1758, New England pastor and theologian Jonathan Ed- wards died from smallpox at the age of fifty-five. Three months later, and three thousand nautical miles away, a young man in England sunk to his knees in prayer. The young man was John Newton (1725–1807). Newton began an intense season of prayer, fasting, Bible reading, self-inquiry, and intense deliberation before the Lord concerning his burgeoning desire for pastoral ministry. The forty-two days of self-examination concluded on his thirty-third birthday, August 4, 1758. Newton wrote in his diary, “The day is now arrived when I propose to close all my deliberations on this subject with a solemn, unreserved, unconditional surrender of myself to the Lord.” 1 Ministry was an unlikely career path for the young man born with salt- water in his veins and with nearly two decades of sailing experience on his résumé. Newton’s sailing days began at age eleven when he accompanied his father on the sea, but ended at age twenty-nine when he suffered a surprise epileptic seizure. A year later, in 1754, he became a land-based surveyor of the tides (a senior customs official) in Liverpool, the busiest slave-ship har- bor in England, and, as a result, Europe’s richest port. 2 With the position came significant authority, desirable comforts, and a solid paycheck. Newton had everything. He was a young Christian, married to the woman of his dreams, shrewd in business, and settled in a secure job. But despite the securities, his heart remained restless for a very improbable calling. On his thirty-third birthday Newton was fully persuaded: the Lord 1 Aitken, 149. 2 William E. Phipps, Amazing Grace in John Newton: Slave-Ship Captain, Hymnwriter, and Abolitionist (Mer- cer, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001): “When a famous actor was booed on a Liverpool stage, he re- sponded, ‘I have not come here to be insulted by a set of wretches, every brick in whose infernal town is cemented with an African’s blood’” (28–29).
22 Introduction had called him to pastoral ministry, and to a significant pay cut. The tran- sition ahead was long and painful. Due to ecclesiastical hurdles, it would take six years and the help of the distinguished William Legge, the second earl of Dartmouth, to finally land Newton’s first pastorate in 1764. Newton’s fruitful forty-three years as a shepherd, first in the village of Olney (1764–1779), then in the city of London (1779–1806), would not hallow his name in church history. He’s mostly remembered for his hymn “Amazing Grace,” for his radical spiritual transformation from a near-death shipwreck, and for his work with William Wilberforce (1759–1833) to end the “inhuman traffick” of the British slave trade, a trade in which he once sought his per- sonal wealth and fortune. But spread out between Newton’s dramatic conver- sion as a young man and his abolitionist efforts as an old man span over four decades of pastoral letter writing—a remarkable legacy of its own. Providentially, Newton’s placement in history opened to him the full potential of letter writing in England. First, the Post Office had developed to the point where letter delivery was more affordable and reliable than ever. Second, British society was embracing a new, flexible, abbreviated, and infor- mal style of English, perfectly suited for the post. These two critical develop- ments propelled the eighteenth century into “the great age of the personal letter.”
3 And the best of these “personal letters” were written with the in- tent to be read aloud in households and shared with others (think blog, not e-mail). Trending in this direction, letter writing emerged as the popular social media of Newton’s day, and religious leaders like Newton turned to writing pastoral letters that sometimes rivaled sermons in both substance and usefulness. 4 Personal letters from Newton were prized and were often collected as family heirlooms. Not so with his sermons. Though respectable, they were too simple to endure the ages. And his most substantive book, a fairly detailed work titled A Review of Ecclesiastical History, didn’t sell well. So as other, superior church histories began appearing in print, and as pas- toring required more of his time, Newton abandoned the future volumes he envisioned in the series. Early in his ministry, Newton became aware that his greatest gift to the church would emerge out of the time he spent alone, next to a fire, with single pages of blank paper, his pen in hand, his black ink close, and a lit pipe in his mouth as he sat and wrote pastoral letters. 5 3 Hindmarsh, 244. 4 J. C. Ryle, The Christian Leaders of the Last Century (London, 1869), 291. 5 Newton communicated this discovery to William Jay. Newton said: “[James] Hervey, who was so blessed as a writer, was hardly able to mention a single instance of conversion by his preaching, and nothing could exceed the lifelessness of his audience; and I rather reckoned upon doing more good by some of Introduction 23 His most popular letters proved to be his most extemporaneous, his ut- terances of the heart. Newton’s skill in directing the attention of his readers to the glory of Jesus Christ made his letters admired. 6 And readers appreci- ated Newton’s clear, simple, and direct communication style. Shaped during his first sixteen years of ministry in Olney, Newton’s unpretentious style served the poor, ignorant, and illiterate adults who labored in confined quar- ters, lacked proper nourishment, and lived under widespread struggles like poverty, nervous disorders, alcoholism, and suicide. There Newton led popu- lar children’s meetings and entered the homes of his people to listen to and care for their various spiritual struggles. In Olney, Newton honed his skill to capture the attention of children and then applied that same skill to adults. 7 Newton first penned his autobiography in a series of letters to a friend in 1762. These letters were passed around, celebrated, and then expanded into a second series of letters for another reader the following year. Those letters be- came so popular they were collected and published under the title An Authentic Narrative (1764). The fourteen-letter autobiography propelled his status as a local celebrity, adding weight to his local preaching ministry. 8 Newton later found success writing periodic public letters for print under the pseudonym of Omicron and Vigil (1771–1774), which he later collected, edited, and published as a book. With the positive response of that collection, he recalled some of his private letters written to his friends so they could be copied, collected, re- dacted of private details, and then published as the book Cardiphonia (1780). 9 Today, Newton’s pastoral legacy is preserved in five hundred letters writ- ten and published in his lifetime (or soon thereafter), and another five hun- dred letters collected and published by others after his death. Through all of these letters Newton still speaks. Modern-day pastor Timothy Keller claims John Newton as “the best pastor I’ve ever seen in my life,” and cites Newton my other works than by my ‘Letters,’ which I wrote without study, or any public design; but the Lord said, ‘You shall be most useful by them’; and I learned to say, ‘Thy will be done! Use me as Thou pleases, only make me useful’” (Letters [Jay], 317). Newton wrote about his extemporaneous letters, “I seldom know how I shall begin, or when I shall end, when I take up my pen; but, as John Bunyan says, ‘still as I pull, it comes,’ and so I write” (Letters [More], 23). 6 Newton: “We should never be weary of writing and reading about Jesus. If his name sounds warm to your heart, you may call this a good letter, though I should not add a word more” (Letters [Clunie], 131). 7 Eclectic, 6–7. 8 Shortly after An Authentic Narrative was published, Newton wrote a friend (December 11, 1764): “I have reason to hope that the publication of my letters will give some additional weight to my ministry here. The people stare at me since reading them, and well they may. I am indeed a wonder to many—a wonder to myself. Especially I wonder that I wonder no more” (Letters [Clunie], 62). 9 Cardiphonia was the title (given by Cowper) to Newton’s most famous collection of letters. The title is a Greek compound that simply means “utterance of the heart.” At 158 letters total in length it was, Newton claimed, his most useful book (W, 1:97). Why? “I ascribe the blessing the Lord has given to Cardiphonia chiefly to this circumstance, that there was not a line written with the least thought that it would ever appear in public” (Letters [Campbell], 31). Yüklə 2,91 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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