Life of John Newton

Well, let me say it's been a privilege and a pleasure to have been with you this weekend and this morning to have talked about the life of William Wilberforce and the way that God used his individual life to bring about the end of the slave trade in the British Empire. And during the course of that talk, I mentioned on a number of occasions, John Newton, And John Newton plays a critical role in Wilberforce's life. In fact, that meeting that took place between Newton and Wilberforce in the December of 1785 was a turning point in the history of evangelicalism, a turning point in the history of the British Empire, because Wilberforce, after his conversion, was convinced that he should leave politics and possibly become a minister of the gospel. And how different history would have been in the British Empire if Wilberforce had left politics and had not stayed in that political realm and God used him in that context. And the critical figure who gave him the advice in that regard was John Newton. And Newton is something of a household name to us primarily because of his hymn Amazing Grace. And if you saw the movie on the life of Wilberforce, that song certainly was the title of the movie, Amazing Grace, and it played a role at a number of places in the movie. Actually, on historical links, they sang the hymn at a couple points in the movie. One time, William Wilberforce actually gets up on a table, sings the hymn to the tune that we sing it to, which only started, the hymn only started to be sung to that tune in the 1830s. And this is obviously the 1780s, so there's a bit of a historical discrepancy, but be that as it may. And tonight what I would like to do is just go through the life of Newton and end up, I'm going to do a sketch of his early life, his conversion, a little bit about his ministry, and then I want to focus on looking at his hymn Amazing Grace and see how there are great riches in these hymns of the past. I think great challenges before evangelicals today is to retain some of these riches that have come down to us. And one of the main contacts, in fact, sometimes the only contact that evangelicals have with their evangelical heritage are the hymns. And a lot of evangelicals are not reading about our history and the history of the church. But when you open a hymnal or you sing one of these hymns from the past, you are now in contact with an author who lived in Newton's case 200 years ago or sometimes 300 years ago or even longer, and which has been a hymn that has been sung for generations. And there are congregations, evangelical congregations, and I have great concern for these congregations because they have basically, to use a colloquial term, junked the hymns and they won't sing anything that hasn't been written in the past prior to the last 25, 30 years. And I think there's a great danger in that, a real danger. And so part of really what I'm wanting to do tonight is not only think about John Newton, but also a plea to recognize that while God is creating or raising up men and women today to write a good hymnody and songs for the people of God, we cannot neglect these hymns of a bygone era. Now, Newton was born in 1725. He died 200 years ago this year, 1807. He died in December of that particular year. And his context in which he was born, he was born in London, born in a little place actually outside the city of London has actual walls that the medieval city had. And he was born just outside those walls on the River Thames, a place called Wapping is where he was born. And his mother was a congregationalist. And she took her son as a young boy to a congregationalist church where he would have heard Isaac Watts preach. Watts was not the preacher of the pastor of the church, but Watts frequently came to this church where the minister's name was a man named David Jennings. And he would have heard Isaac Watts preach as a young boy, and he would have heard and sung some of these new tunes that were being sung, or new hymns that were being sung that Isaac Watts had written. Up until the time of Isaac Watts, and Isaac Watts was born in 1678, 1674 and would die in 1748. Up until Watts's day, Christians basically sang, when they sang, they sang the Psalms and Psalms only. And it was Isaac Watts who on one occasion, when he was in his late teens, asked his father why it was that they could not in their songs worship by name the Lord Jesus. And his father reputedly said to him, well, if you think you can do better than the Psalms, why don't you try? And that was the beginning of Isaac Watts' great hymnody. And some of those hymns, as they were just being sung by congregations, John Newton as a young boy would have heard. And his mother's name was Elizabeth Newton. Regrettably for his life, she died when he was six years old, died in 1731 of consumption. and went in her final months of her life. Consumption was a very horrific disease. Went in the final months of her life to stay with some friends in the countryside, hoping to recover, but died there. In fact, her young son, John, was not there at the time. He was still in their family home in London, and it was two weeks after her death and after a burial that he found out that she had died at the home of these friends called the Catlets, and they'll come into our story. Where was his father? Well, his father was in the Merchant Marine. He was a captain of a naval ship and he was away. And in fact, his father did not find out about the death of his wife until a year later when he returned to England and found that he was widowed. He soon remarried and his second wife did not have any interest in the gospel. And so young John's formal religious education and hearing the gospel preached and being taught it ended at that point. But there will be some things that his mother had placed deep into his heart that he could not shake, despite the fact that he would live a deeply godless life in his teen years. He couldn't escape the fact that there was a God. That was something he knew in the depths of his heart that was there because of his mother's instruction. Moreover, that one day he must give an account to this God, that there would be a judgment. And those two things, young John at six years old knew those things and they were there and they would stay there despite some of the dark days that he would experience in the years to come. His father was in the Merchant Navy, and after a number of years, he decided that he wanted his son to go to sea. And it was not uncommon for a young boy of that age to go to sea. And John was 10 years old when he went to sea in one of his father's ships. And in time, his father hoped he would rise up through the ranks of ordinary seaman, become a midshipman, and possibly even a captain. And during the course of his early teens, any religious influence, at least it appeared on the surface, any religious influence that his mother had had seemed to disappear. And sailors, at least sailors in the British Empire, were a pretty godless bunch. And soon Newton found himself running with their moral life or immoral life. And in fact, he became a blasphemer. A man who was known among fellow sailors as having a filthy, filthy mouth and could not speak without cursing and swearing. By the time he was 17, he had decided he didn't want any more of the sea. And so he spoke to his father and his father made arrangements for him to go to Jamaica to learn to be involved in one of the plantations there. and how different history would have been if that had taken place. Before he went on that ship, and Newton's father had made detailed arrangements with his friend, a man named Manistee, for him to transport Newton to Jamaica. Before he made that trip, though, he went to see the friends of his mother in whose home his mother had died, the Catholics. And he met a young woman there, well, young girl, she was 13, Mary Catholic. And he fell in love immediately upon seeing her. He would later say that despite all the darkness that came into his life, I was impressed with an affection for her which never lost its hold over me. None of the scenes of wickedness I afterwards experienced ever banished her an hour together from my waking thoughts for the seven following years. And humanly speaking, one of the things that kept Newton from maybe grosser sins was the thought of Mary Catlett. She was 13 at the time and he would eventually marry her a few years later, but we'll get to that. Newton had gone to see Mary and he got so entranced with her that he didn't make it back to London on time and he missed the ship. His father was furious with him. And so instead of going to Jamaica, his father put him on a ship that went to Venice for a year. And so he went to Venice. He was in the Mediterranean region sailing on this merchant marine ship and came back in the year 1744. And his father had made further arrangements now to get him out to Jamaica. He went again to see Mary Catholic, overstayed his welcome, and missed that ship. And his father now is losing his patience with him. But before his father could make new arrangements, he was press ganged. And what that means is that when England was at war, and England was at war during the 18th century, probably far more years than she was at peace. If you look at the 18th century, the 18th century is one long war for the British against their great enemy, the French. And there was the war of the Austrian succession, the war of the Spanish succession. There was the Seven Years' War, that's an important war for America because of the enormous amount of money that Britain spent fighting the French here in North America. And because of that, they raised the taxes to recoup the losses, and that led to the, as you know, the American War of Independence. That also was a war against France. You may not know that France came in on the side of America during that war. Anything to get back at Britain, and Britain found herself fighting France as well as America. And then there were the Revolutionary Wars, and then the Napoleonic Wars that lasted a whole generation, 22 years before Napoleon was beaten. The war that took place, though, when Newton was press ganged was the War of Jenkins' Ear. There was a British sailor named Jenkins. He was a captain of a ship. And his ship was taken over by a French privateer. And during the struggle to take the ship, one of the Frenchmen sliced off the captain's ear, Jenkins. And Jenkins was so upset by this incident. England wasn't at war. This was an act of war. But England wasn't formally at war. apparently was able to keep his ear, he couldn't put it back on, but he took his ear to Parliament and apparently turned up in the House of Parliament with his ear and said to the MPs, what are you going to do about this? And, well, they said that's absolutely dreadful, there's no way we can allow the French going around chopping off the ears of our captains and so they declared war on France and it became known as the War of Jenkins' Ear. And when England was at war, the Navy had the liberty, if they needed men, to go into the ports and press gang anybody they found. Normally, they looked for sailors, but if you happened to be down near the, taking a walk, a stroll along the docks to view the ships, and there was a British naval party came along to press gang, and you got caught, there was no way out, and you were now in the Navy. But they normally look for sailors and sailors have a distinctive walk and so it was John Newton who was in a pub in London and he's press gained. And he's on a ship called the HMS Harwich and she is going to see war and in fact Newton does see one engagement, horrific experience where these great battleships, usually 75 to 150 guns, will draw alongside each other and basically pound away at each other. If you've ever seen any of the movies like the Horatio Holmblower series or any of the movies of this period, it would be a horrific experience. Newton lived, came through it on escape, but he was determined to get out of that ship. It was when the ship docked in Plymouth, in the summer of 1744. She was due to sail for the East Indies for five years. Newton thought, I'm out of here. Not exactly those words, but he decided to desert and he walked out of Plymouth. He walked a whole day and a whole night. His father didn't live that far away and he decided he'd walk to his father, see if his father could help him get out of the Navy. and maybe get another post or something. But before he got to his father's, a military detachment of police caught him. And he was taken back to the ship, flogged for desertion, and put in chains for a while. And his rank, he had gotten to the rank of midshipman, and his rank was reduced to an ordinary seaman. This embittered him deeply and only increased his desire to get off this ship. And so it was, as they were sailing to the East Indies, they docked at a place called Madeira off the Spanish coast. And the captain decided, because he started to realize that Newton was, first of all, he's an ungodly man. And he had started to make up songs about the officers that the sailors were singing. He thought, this guy's a troublemaker. And so he traded Newton to a slave ship. And so Newton found himself then involved on that horrific experience that the British Empire was involved in, namely the slave trade, which we talked about a little this morning. And the ship sailed down to the west coast of Africa. Newton didn't like this captain on this ship either, and he began to make up songs about this guy. Also, Newton would later recall a deep shame, as well, the way in which anybody on the ship who was anywhere near being a Christian, Newton would take special pride in trying to destroy their faith. The captain on this ship took a real dislike to Newton, and so he traded him to a man who was involved in the slave trade on the coast of West Africa, a man named Clough. And over the course of the next number of months, 1745, 1746, Newton actually found himself for about a year and a half actually reduced to the level of a slave himself. Clow had an African mistress who enslaved Newton, and Newton found himself as a slave. All this time, his father has no idea where he is. And he's asked his friend, Manasvi, if you hear any news of my son, please tell me so I can bring him back to England. And so it was that one of Manasvi's ships, the Greyhound, was sailing along the west coast of Africa, heard about Newton, and Newton was rescued. And this ship was not a slave ship. It had gone down there to trade in goods and was filled with the cargo of beeswax. and was on its way back to England in the month of March. In the book of Psalms, in Psalm 147, there is a very important statement regarding God's control of the elements. Psalm 148 and verses 7 to 8. Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures in all deeps, fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind fulfilling his word. It's that last verse there, verse 8, fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind fulfilling his word. One of the areas in which we often find ourselves, I think, adopting the attitude of our society is that when we experience bad weather, Think in terms of the way our culture has taught us to think about it. You have a storm that rolls through into your area. What you think about is, well, there have been clouds that have come in from a certain part of the country or come in off of the Atlantic. They've picked up moisture. They've been moved by wind to above you, and then they drop that moisture down. The Bible sees it a bit differently. It doesn't deny that scientific explanation, but the Bible sees every drop of rain that descends upon our heads from the heavens comes because God speaks. God speaks and it rains. God speaks and it snows. God speaks and the sun shines and so on. And so it was in March of 1748, as the Greyhound is sailing back to England, God spoke and a storm arose on the Atlantic. such a storm that Newton during the height of it will feel the shift is going down. The storm raged for about a day and a night. And storms of that period of time can be horrific experiences. I had a friend who served for a number of years in the Royal Canadian Navy, and he said that to be caught on a storm in the Atlantic in those winter months was a situation in which sometimes from the crest of the wave, that's the top of the wave, down to the trough of the wave, can be 60 to 70 feet. And you can imagine what it would be like to try to negotiate or navigate that today in one of our modern ships, let alone a ship of the 18th century. It's not surprising then, the ship is descending down in these troughs up and it goes on like this for about 24 hours. The ship is filled with water, they're pumping the water out. The only thing that kept them afloat was beeswax. The hold was filled with this massive quantity of beeswax and that kept them afloat. After a day and a night of it, the storm abated. And Newton said to one of his fellow seamen, I think we've come through. The man shook his head, said, no way. There's too much water in the hold of the ship. We're going to go down. And Newton at that point said something that God would use. If this will not do, they're pumping the water. The Lord have mercy on us. And he stopped and thought, I've prayed. The only time he had ever used God's name for the previous six or seven years was a swear word. And suddenly now he had used the Lord's name as a prayer. Let me read Newton's own account. If this will not do, the Lord have mercy on us. This, though spoken with little reflection, was the first desire I had breathed for mercy for many years. I was instantly struck with my own words. What mercy can there be for me? I was obligated to return to the pump and there I continued till noon. Almost every passing wave, because the storm resumed again, every passing wave broke over my head. But we made ourselves fast with ropes. They lashed themselves to the mast so they might not be washed away. Indeed, I expected at every time the vessel descended in the sea, she would rise no more. I dreaded death now. And my heart expected the worst if the scriptures which I had long opposed were true. But I was only half convinced and remained for a space of time in a sullen frame. I thought if the Christian religion were true, I could not be forgiven and was therefore expecting to know the worst. When I saw beyond all probability there was still hope of our survival, and heard about six o'clock in the evening the ship was free from water, there arose a gleam of hope. I thought I saw the hand of God displayed in our favor, and I began to pray. I couldn't utter the prayer of faith. I couldn't draw near to a reconciled God and call him Father. My prayer was like the cry of the ravens, which yet the Lord does not disdain to hear. I now began to think of that Jesus who I had so often mocked. I reflected on the details of his life and his death, a death for sins not his own, but for those who in their distress should put their trust in him. The great question now was how to obtain faith. I speak not of an appropriating faith, of which I then knew neither the nature of the necessity, but how should I gain an assurance of the scripture of divine inspiration and a sufficient warrant for the exercise of trust and hope in God. One of the first helps I received in consequence of a determination to examine the New Testament more carefully was from Luke 11, 13. I'd been sensible to profess faith in Jesus Christ when in reality I did not believe his history was no better than a mockery of the heart-searching God. But here I found a spirit spoken of. That's the passage that talks about praying to God for his spirit, which was to be communicated to those who asked for it. I reasoned thus, if this book is true, the promises in the passage is true as well. I have need of that spirit by which the whole was given. He has promised here to give that spirit to those who ask, and I must therefore pray. And if it is of God, he'll make good his word. And so it was he asked God to give him a spirit to change his heart, to give him knowledge of Christ. I continued much in prayer. The Lord had interposed so far to save me, and I hoped he would do more. I saw that God might not only declare his mercy, but also his justice in the pardon of my sins on account of the obedience and suffering of Jesus Christ. And so it was God brought into himself. And in 1748, the ship is able to make it back to, initially to Ireland, where it's refitted, and then back to Liverpool from where it sails. And for the next three years, Newton was involved in Sailing, and this would be another story. He was actually involved in sailing slave ships. He would later regret that deeply and see that he had been involved in deep crimes. And that ends in the early 1750s when he's only in his late 20s, he actually has a stroke. and cannot go to sea anymore and becomes a tide surveyor in Liverpool. And by this time, he's moving in evangelical circles and he's beginning to hear men like George Whitfield preach and beginning to sense that God is calling him to ministry. The only problem is he doesn't have a university education. He's an Anglican. You have to have a university education to be a minister. But eventually in time, in 1765, he is called to a little church in a village called Olney. And Olney is a very important village in many respects. The town had about 3,000 people. 1,000 people or so went to the Anglican Church. It was an evangelical church. 1,000 people or so went to the Baptist Church, where the pastor was a man named John Sutcliffe, and where a young man named William Carey was going in these very days when Newton was there. And then there was a Congregationalist church, and about a thousand people went there. The entire town was virtually an evangelical center. And so Whitfield, Newton goes there, and he's there from 1765 to 1780. One of his close friends there is a man named William Cooper, or William Cowper, the hymn writer. And William Cowper and Newton were very, very different individuals. Newton came from a very rough background because of the sea. Calper came from almost an aristocratic background, a man of significant wealth. Newton was a man of, he was an extrovert, feared very little. Cooper was an introvert who was dominated by many fears. And in fact, Cooper will eventually believe, wrongly so, that he had committed the unforgivable sin by doubting God at one point. And that he was the only one among the elect whom God would ever not allow to go into heaven. And how you wonder how could a man he knew he knew scripture so well, you read his hymns, his hymns are rich. And he believed, yes, that he believed he was a Calvinist. He believed in election, but he believed that there was one of the elect who wouldn't make it and it was going to be him. And he wrestled with great fears. And his last years were spent in deep depression. And when he died in 1800, it was said that those who went into his room and found him in his bed dead, that there was a smile on his face. And Newton said, when he heard of his friend's death, that at that moment when he was passing from death into life, he realized how wrong he'd been and how his fears were a fantasy and not real. Anyway, while they were together in Olney, Newton was there from 1765 to 1780, they began to write hymns. And they began to write hymns for small prayer meetings. And so it was that the hymn that we know as Amazing Grace was written originally probably for a small prayer meeting and then was sung for the first time on January the 2nd, 1773. We know that because, and I'll mention this in a minute, of a sermon that Newton preached at the same time to which the hymn was tied. Every New Year's Day, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, and the day after New Year's Day, what the churches used to do, the three evangelical churches, the ministers would trade pulpits. And sometimes, in fact, they'd have a joint meeting where the people would all go to the Anglican church, and you can imagine the crowd of people that would be there. And so it was that this hymn was written, was sung probably for the first time in a large public setting in January 2, 1773. Newton was preaching that Lord's Day on 1 Chronicles 17, 16-17. I don't have, all I've got I realize with me is a New Testament and a book of Psalms. So let me read the passage because it's important for it to read it. First Chronicles 17, 16 to 17. And this is where David is remembering what God has done for him. First Chronicles 17 verse 16, that King David went in and sat before the Lord and he said, Who am I, O Lord God? And what is my house that you have brought me this this far? And yet this was a small thing in your sight, O God. And you have also spoken of your servant's house for a great while to come and have regarded me according to the rank of a man of high degree, O Lord God. There are two things there that Newton focused on in his sermon. First of all, the past and the second, the future. And the sermon was called Faith's Review and Expectation. And that's what he originally called Amazing Grace. He didn't call it Amazing Grace. It was called Faith's Review and Expectation. And in the sermon, he looked at what is it that God has done for David and what attitude should David have? Well, the attitude that David had is admiration, wonder and humility. Me, a shepherd. has been brought from keeping sheep to shepherding the kingdom of Israel and the wonder that grips David in that regard. And then Newton pressed it home and said, what should be the attitude that we have as Christians? Well, that God would save us, wretched sinners. Now, obviously, not everybody in his congregation had lived the sort of godless life that Newton had, but there is a great application to all of us. Why? Why us? And why not others? Why would God choose us and draw us? And so Newton looked then at the attitude that the believer should have. And then he looked at the second part of the sermon was what has God done for us before conversion, at conversion, and then since conversion? That was the second part. And then the third part is what is God going to do for us in the time to come? And the hymn, Amazing Grace, fits that very well. If you turn in your Baptist hymnal, it's hymn number 330. And first of all, the first stanza, and there is a bit of changes between the hymn as we have it here and as Newton originally wrote it. And I'll mention those when we get to them. The first stanza, amazing grace, so sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. The humility that should grip the heart of every believer. What do we have that God hasn't given us? What do we have that we can boast of? Even faith itself is a gift of God. It was He who drew us and gave us faith to believe, opened our eyes when He could have left us to our own devices. And amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see. And that's what the believer was like before conversion. I once was a wretch. I was lost and I was blind. Just then, at conversion, "'Twas grace," this is stanza two, "'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed." And what Newton is talking about there, what took place at conversion? God gave us grace to fear. And he's obviously thinking of his own experience. He had not. It's interesting. He had not been afraid of death until that moment when he breathed a prayer. May the Lord have mercy on us. Then he realized what he was and what he faced. He was a godless wretch under the wrath of God. He was about to go into eternity, into the watery drink of the Atlantic. And now he feared. It was grace that taught our hearts to fear. But grace also, our fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed. And then since conversion, what has God done for us since conversion? Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come. It is grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home. And Newton is thinking there of the work of grace in the believer's life since he or she was converted. And the way that God, it is by grace that God brings us to this present point in his own life when he wrote the hymn, when they were singing the hymn, or we could apply it to our own lives. It's not by our own strength, ultimately. It's by grace. It's grace that has brought us and kept us. As you think back of the toils and snares, the way in which some have fallen away, others have gone into theological error. Or some of, yes, they come week by week, but they become bitter for a variety of reasons. But it's grace that has kept us and grace will keep us. In the third part of the sermon, the two first parts were, the first part was, what attitude should the Christian have? It should be humility, like David. Blown away by what God has done for him. And then secondly, looking to the past. When we look back, what David, as he looks back, what God had done for him, brought him from being a shepherd to shepherding Israel. And that's grace that brought us from being wretches, sinless, rather sinful, godless individuals. And godless, even if we did believe in God, we were without God if we were not in Christ. and godless individuals, and God brings us the faith in Christ, and then he keeps us. But what about the future? And that's the third part of the sermon. Faith, expectation. And here is actually where the hymn is a bit different from the one that you have before us. Stanza four is exactly it. The Lord has promised good to me. His word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures. Now, Newton is thinking ahead to his life between then and the time when the Lord comes or takes him home. What will that life be like? Well, it will be one in which the Lord has promised good to me. He will keep me. And one of the great truths of Holy Scripture is that all those in whom the Lord Jesus comes to dwell by his Spirit, he will keep them. Then, though, the following two stanzas, stanza five, It's a great stanza, but Newton didn't write it. If you look down at the bottom, it says it was written anonymously in 1790. It's not written by Newton. The last two stanzas are like this. Yes, now Newton thinks of his death. Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail and mortal life shall cease, I shall possess within the veil a life of joy and peace. And he's thinking of that passage in Hebrews, that we have an anchor, sure and fast, that penetrates within the veil, and the veil being, as it were, the veil in the temple, that behind the veil was the Holy of Holies, where God met with the high priest. behind from a New Testament point of view, that's like the heavenly tabernacle. And the Lord Jesus Christ has gone within the veil, gone into the presence of God. And because we're in Christ, we have an anchor. Sure and fast. The Lord is prominent. Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail, mortal life shall cease. I shall possess within the veil a life of joy and peace. The final stanza is this, and I think actually this is a better conclusion than when we've been there 10,000 years. The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, the sun forbear to shine, but God who called me here below will be forever mine. As Newton thinks, not only about his own death, but he's thinking about the universe. What's going to happen to the universe? Well, there's coming a day when the whole of this universe is going to be rolled up like a scroll, is one way the scriptures put it. Or, as Newton puts it, it'll all dissolve. This earth is just going to dissolve like snow. You know what snow dissolves like on a warm day, when those transition days between winter and spring, and it can snow overnight, and you wake up and there's this layer of snow, but when the sun comes up and it's heat, it just dissolves. There's coming a day when All that we see around us is going to dissolve. God will speak. And that which man think is so solid will disappear. The sun one day will cease to shine. We won't need the sun for light because we will have the Lamb. There will be a new heavens and a new earth and the Lamb will be the light of His people. And then Newton, it's very good because Newton's thinking about the whole universe. He's got this cosmic view and then he brings it right home personally. But God who called me here below will be forever mine. Despite the prospect of this universe, it's all going to disappear. All of it. But not the people of God. And not the person who's put his faith in Christ. God is his or her God. And that God will hold that believer to the point of that great day when we enter into the new heavens and the new earth. It's a great hymn. Speaks to us of the fact that the Christian life is a life of grace. Begins in grace. It's continued in grace. It'll end in grace. It's all of grace. And in the new new heavens and earth, it'll be the lamb who is the center of the praise and honor and glory. And his glory will be seen in his people. Amen. We want to sing this hymn and our brother will come and lead us in the singing of it. Amazing grace. And because you don't have the words of those final two stanzas, we'll sing the one that's there. It's a good one. But as long as you remember, it's not what Newton originally wrote.