William Wilberforce on Faith

Sign of Grace

This sign is epitomized in the life of John Newton, an Eighteenth Century Englishman Seaman involved in the slave trade.  Newton gradually experienced spiritual conversion which lead him to become an Anglican clergyman and hymnist.  But 34 years after leaving the slave trade, Newton became a prominent abolitionist, who renounced the wrongs of the the slave trade and buttress the case for passage of MP William Wilberforce Slave Trade Act of 1807.

Newton's resonating legacy is that he composed the hymn "Amazing Grace", a song which was made popular as part of the Second Great Awakening in America during the Nineteenth Century.  The lyrics were a  humble response to the   magnanimity of God's grace despite our sinfulness fused to the tune of a Negro spiritual, which Newton may have heard from the bowels of the slave ship.