I find it very moving to see how Newton never gave up on Cowper spiritually but encircled his friend’s mental illness within a larger faith perspective. It was like he held on for him. In 1780, Newton wrote from London to his friend, “How strange that your judgement should be so clouded in one point only, and that a point so obvious and strikingly clear to everybody who knows you!” He wasn’t about to share in Cowper’s spiritual despair. No, he added, “Though your comforts have been so long suspended, I know not that I ever saw you for a single day since your calamity came upon you, in which I could not perceive a s clear and satisfactory evidence, that the grace of God was with you, as I could in your brighter and happier times.”

Just over 250 years have passed since John Newton wrote “Amazing Grace” and introduced it for his congregation for New Year’s Day 1773. He had been a pastor in the quiet market town of Olney for almost a decade, but his earlier life had been anything but quiet.
He had passed through many dangers, toils, and snares: reckless decisions and a reckless love affair; trauma and kidnapping; near shipwreck, near starvation, and near-death illness; enslaved and then a slave trader. But by the end, he was a transformed man. He became a wise spiritual counselor, a powerful preacher, a popular hymn-writer, and in due course a courageous abolitionist. When his autobiography was published, shortly after he was ordained, the people of the town used to stare at him when they saw him in the street. Amazing grace, indeed.
Of the many surprising stories behind the song, one of the most poignant concerns Newton’s friendship with the troubled poet William Cowper. The day the congregation sang “Amazing Grace” was Cowper’s last day in church.
Golden Years of Friendship
William Cowper had suffered great mental anguish and had even been suicidal ten years earlier. At an asylum just outside London, he recovered, by the grace of God, right around the time when Newton arrived at Olney as a pastor. The two met three years later and became fast friends.
Indeed, Newton invited Cowper to move to Olney, and for about twelve years they were pretty much neighbors, with just a small orchard between the vicarage and Cowper’s home on the market square. Cowper had been living in Cambridgeshire with the widow Mary Unwin and her household, and they all moved together into the home they called “Orchardside,” pleased to think they would be in a place where the gospel was preached and loved.
Cowper and Newton had much in common. Both men had lost their mothers when only six years old, both had suffered abuse at boarding school, and both were “men of letters” with literary interests. But most of all, they were both serious about their faith in Christ.
For six years, their friendship grew. Newton, about six years older, encouraged the bashful Cowper to share in the work of pastoral care, prayer meetings, and hymn-writing. These were the golden years of their friendship. Newton admired his friend’s poetic gifts, and one or the other wrote hymns each week for the parish services. Olney knew something of a local revival. When a new building was opened for prayer meetings, Cowper wrote with a real sense of God’s presence,
Jesus, where’er thy people meet,There they behold thy mercy-seat;Where’er they seek thee thou art found,And ev’ry place is hallow’d ground.
There were hints, though, that Cowper still struggled with soul distress from time to time. When Mrs. Unwin, like a mother to him, was seriously ill, he wrote with some melancholy of an “aching void” in his spirit, compared to just after his conversion:
What peaceful hours I then enjoy’d,How sweet their Mem’ry still!But they have left an Aching VoidThe World can never fill.
Still, remarkably, he could turn this spiritual melancholy into an exemplary hymn of prayer for a closer walk with God. This was a prayer for all of us.
A Chasm Opens
Writing this way would become more difficult later. In 1771, he felt a profound disquiet and told Newton, “My Soul is among Lions.” A year later, Newton observed, “Cowper is in the depths as much as ever.” But truth be told, none of these troubles predicted what would happen on the second day of January 1773. This was altogether unexpected.
The day after “Amazing Grace” was sung in church, Newton was called urgently to Orchardside. Cowper had collapsed back into a dark depression and was suicidal. It was a complete breakdown.
Read More
Related Posts:

Neither the gates of hell nor the borders of the most God-hating regimes on earth can prevail against Jesus. No countries are closed to Christ. They may be closed to us — either because we can’t get a visa or because our passport is the “kiss-of-death” for gaining entry — but Jesus has never been dependent on our access or resources to accomplish his mission.

More than thirty years ago, in the early years of my ministry, I walked from a Berlin train station down a wide chasm that snaked through the city. Until recently, it had been “No Man’s Land.” But now the mines and barbed wire were cleared, and the Berlin Wall lay in heaps. The Iron Curtain was collapsing, mapmakers were busy redrawing borders, and new flags were being stitched.
During these first forays into Eastern Europe, I often laughed in disbelief at the freedom and ironic opportunities for the church. I recall how we published gospel tracts in Moscow using the now-idle presses of the Communist newspaper Pravda (Russian for “Truth”). Pravda had published lies and smeared Soviet Christians for years — but now the presses were turning out the truth of the gospel!
I remember standing in Berlin at what had been the epicenter of the Iron Curtain. Tens of thousands of Christians on both sides of the East-West divide had tried every kind of way to get the gospel over and around and under this wall, but God saw fit to simply tear it down. I fished out a large chunk from the rubble and tucked it into my backpack.
Today, as I pen these lines, the old souvenir sits on a shelf before me. It is a constant reminder of Samuel Zwemer’s words — words that have shaped my thinking, my prayer life, and my expectations in all the years since I stood in the debris of the Wall. Zwemer, a pioneer missionary to Arabia, wrote, “The kingdoms and governments of this world have frontiers, which must not be crossed, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ knows no frontier. It never has been kept within bounds.”
In a few lines, Zwemer captures the power and progress of the gospel and the unmatched authority of our risen King.
No Lines
Most world maps are covered with lines and colors that define country borders — about two hundred countries in the world. The number of nations has quadrupled in the last century. Our maps and our world are filled with lines. But if we could see a map of Christ’s kingdom, there would be no lines, for the citizens of this country are ransomed from every tribe and language and people and nation.
Zwemer captures this power and progress of the gospel to cross every kind of barrier — geographic, ethnic, political, religious. The gospel cannot be contained because it is not a man-made work. It is a Christ-made work. He builds his church in every place to the ends of the world.
Neither the gates of hell nor the borders of the most God-hating regimes on earth can prevail against Jesus. No countries are closed to Christ. They may be closed to us — either because we can’t get a visa or because our passport is the “kiss-of-death” for gaining entry — but Jesus has never been dependent on our access or resources to accomplish his mission.
Read More

In the writings of his prophets and apostles, God has granted the church a wholesome word and a precious deposit (2 Timothy 1:13-14): which explains our past, opens up a future, and guides us on the path whereby we might inherit it.
One generation shall commend your works to another (Ps 145:4).
I’ve just finished two recent but very different books (here and here) on the nature of “tradition,” the church’s process of transmitting the faith once for all delivered to the saints from one generation to the next (1 Cor 15:3; 2 Tim 1:13-14; 2:2; Jude 3). The following are some thoughts sparked and/or provoked by these books.
(1) Central to the task of transmitting the faith from one generation to the next is the requirement of transmitting it as a whole, without addition or subtraction. In my judgment, the modern project of “mediating theology” often failed precisely in this regard. In an effort to gain a wider and more receptive hearing for the faith among a modern audience, mediating theology distinguished between the kernel or essence of the faith, which was to be preserved, and the husk of the faith, which could be set aside. The problem with such a strategy is not simply that it threatens to compromise the integrity of the faith–Scripture calls us to proclaim all God’s wonderful works (Ps 105:2), not just the works that might be palatable in a given age. The problem is also that it robs a particular generation of the full resources of the faith for addressing humanity’s greatest problems and God-given potential. As Cyril of Jerusalem long ago observed, the Christian faith, by virtue of its “wholeness” or “catholicity” “teaches universally and completely one and all the doctrines which ought to come to men’s knowledge, concerning things both visible and invisible, heavenly and earthly” and “universally treats and heals the whole class of sins, which are committed by soul or body, and possesses in itself every form of virtue which is named, both in deeds and words, and in every kind of spiritual gifts.” Each generation thus requires “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:17).