Page:Our Hymns.djvu/204

 184 OUE HYMNS :

This is the latter part of his hymn of four verses, beginning, in his Collection,

&quot; How rich Thy gifts, Almighty King.&quot;

It is headed there, &quot;National Thanksgiving.&quot; It is given without name in the &quot; New Congregational.&quot;

JOHN NEWTON.

17251807.

LONDON was the birth-place of this eminent servant of God, &quot; once :m infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa,&quot; as he wrote of himself in his epitaph. He was an only child, and had the misfortune to lose his mother in his seventh year ; by this similarity being prepared to sympathize with Cowper, the companion of his later years. Newton s mother was a pious dissenter, and trained her son carefully, having it in her heart that he would be one day engaged in the Christian ministry a work to which she had devoted him. Young Newton s father and step-mother did not carry on this good work, but he was &quot; much left to himself, to mingle with idle and wicked boys, and soon learnt their ways.&quot;

As a young man, Newton passed through various religious ex periences, but at length became an infidel in his notions, and a profligate in his conduct. Having been accustomed to take voyages with his father, he at last devoted himself entirely to a seafaring life. Before he was of age, he deserted his ship, and was brought back to Plymouth as a felon, kept in irons, degraded from his office as midshipman, and publicly whipped. But sin and severe punishment only hardened him more and more. While on a voyage, he obtained leave to exchange into a vessel bound for the African coast. His purpose was to be free to sin. Having reached the coast of Africa, he left the ship and lived on the Island of Plantains, where he was treated with severity by his master, a slave-trader, and by his master s wife, and suffered great hardships and afflictions. There, too, he sinned with the

�� �