Whilst returning home he spent his whole time in the greatest wickedness. Even the captain, who was not at all circumspect in behaviour, often reproved his profanity. But this voyage was the turning-point of his life. Several occurrences combined brought him to a sense of his folly and sin; but two were of particular effect—and before he had again reached England he had fully made up his mind to give up his evil habits. In the first place, he happened to pick up a copy of that remarkable book, "The Imitation of Christ," by Thomas à Kempis, and the thought darted through him, "What if these things should be true?" For a time he put aside his serious reflections and joined in the idle talk of his companions; but another effective occurrence was at hand. The next day he was awakened from sleep by the force of a violent sea which broke on board. The water filled his cabin, and a cry was heard that the ship was sinking. In the awfulness of this storm he began to reflect on all his past life, and for the first time in many years made earnest supplications to God. 'About this time," says Newton, "I began to know that there is a God who hears and answers prayer." He had no Christian friend with whom to take counsel, and consequently it was only very gradually that the truth in its fulness dawned upon his mind. Upon his arrival in Liverpool a kind friend named Mr. Manesty offered him the command of a ship, but this he declined for the present, and accepted the station of mate. The voyage, which was to the Guinea coast, commenced in August 1748. His duty was to sail in the long-boat from place to place, in order to purchase slaves. It may seem strange to us that a man who had just given up what he called his evil ways, and whose religiousness was certainly sincere, should, without scruple, engage in such business. In after years he himself unsparingly denounced the slave-trade, and confessed with shame that he had formerly been an accessory to so much misery and mischief. At the same time he observed, "Perhaps what I have said of myself may be applicable to the nation at large. The slave-trade was always unjustifiable, but inattention and self-interest prevented for a time the evil from being perceived."

His leisure hours were employed in picking up Latin, which by this time he had almost forgotten.

On his return to Liverpool he repaired to Kent, and was married to Miss Catlett in February 1750. He sailed for his first voyage to Guinea, as commander of a ship, in the following June, and returned to England in November 1751. During the interval between the preceding voyage and the next he was led, he tells us, into further views of Christian doctrine and experience by Scougal's "Life of God in the Soul of Man," "Hervey's Meditations," and the "Life of Colonel Gardiner" (killed at the battle of Prestonpans in 1745, fighting against the rebels). Some passages in the last affected him even unto tears, which he hoped proceeded from sincere repentance and shame.

His second voyage to Guinea as commander lasted from July 1752 to August 1753, his third from September 1753 to the following August.

Although Newton had no scruples as to the rightfulness of the slave-trade, he could not help thinking himself a sort of jailer, and was sometimes "shocked with an employment so conversant with chains, bolts, and shackles." On this account he had often prayed that he might be fixed in a more humane profession. His prayers were answered, but in an unexpected way. When about to set out once more, he was taken with a violent fit, which, although he recovered from it in about an hour, incapacitated him from taking the command of his vessel.

In August 1755 he obtained an appointment of tide surveyor of the port of Liverpool, and "his circumstances became as smooth and uniform as they had before been stormy and various."

The leisure now at his command he spent in study, and before he had been long at Liverpool began to turn his attention towards the work of the ministry. Whether to go into the Established Church or to join with the Dissenters he was undecided. At first he inclined towards the latter, and preached for six weeks on probation to the Independents of Warwick, but it is said that the disputes which he knew to be common in so many Dissenting congregations at that time caused him to decide for the Establishment. During his resi

dence at Liverpool he enjoyed the privilege of an intimate acquaintance with Whitefield and Wesley, both which remarkable men continued to correspond with him after his arrival in Olney; and Whitefield in one letter entertains the hope of coming, when bodily strength should allow, to join his testimony in Olney pulpit with that of Newton that "God is love."

II. CURATE OF OLNEY, 1764-1780 (SIXTEEN YEARS).

In 1764 Newton, at the request of his friend Mr. Haweis, was presented by Lord Dartmouth with the curacy of Olney. On April 29 he was admitted to deacon's orders by the Bishop of Lincoln, and the next day came to Olney to take a glance at the place and the people. His first sermon in Olney Church was preached on May 27 from Ps. lxxx. I; he was ordained priest at Buckden on June 17 of the same year, and on the next day returned to Olney. The well-known work of Bishop Ryle, "The Christian Leaders of the Last Century," and other books of the same class that have been issued during the last few years, have made almost every reading person aware of the religious, or rather the irreligious state of England a hundred or a hundred and twenty years ago. "The Church of England," says the Bishop, "existed in those days, with her admirable articles, her time-honoured liturgy, her parochial system, her Sunday services, and her ten thousand clergy. The Nonconformist body existed, with its hardly won liberty and its free pulpit. But one account unhappily may be given of both parties. They existed, but they could hardly be said to have lived. They did nothing; they were sound asleep. The curse of the Uniformity Act seemed to rest on the Church of England. The blight of ease and freedom from persecution seemed to rest upon Dissenters. Natural theology, without a single distinctive doctrine of Christianity, cold morality, or a barren orthodoxy formed the staple teaching in church and chapel. Sermons everywhere were little better than miserable moral essays, utterly devoid of anything likely to awaken, convert, or save souls. Both parties seemed at last agreed on one point, and that was to let the devil alone, and to do nothing

for hearts and souls. And as for the weighty truths for which Hooper and Latimer had gone to the stake, and Baxter and scores of Puritans had gone to jail, they seemed clean forgotten and laid on the shelf."

Many of the so-called teachers of religion were disinclined either to do good themselves or to let others do it for them; and in 1768 the vice-chancellor of Oxford actually expelled six students from the university because they "held Methodistic tenets, and took on them to pray, read, and expound Scripture in private houses." Two of the six, Mr. Jones and Mr. Middleton, afterwards came into this neighbourhood. The Rev. Erasmus Middleton, in his old age, was presented with the living of Turvey; and the Rev. Thomas Jones, who married Lady Austen's sister, and of whom we shall have more to say by and by, became curate of Clifton Reynes. A few years previous another clergyman connected with this neighbourhood, the Rev. Matthew Powley, got into trouble at Oxford because he entertained Methodistical tenets. Mr. Powley, who had been excluded from the foundation of his college and threatened with expulsion, subsequently married Miss Unwin, became the friend and correspondent both of Cowper and Newton, often visited at Olney and Weston, and frequently preached at Olney for Newton.

Enough has now been said or quoted to show the low state to which religion had got in England in the middle of the last century. Then came a revival, and the country was stirred to the core by the labours of noble men whose names are now loved and honoured. Whitefield and Wesley led the way, preaching at all times and in all places. The labours of others of this noble brotherhood were more confined, but their earnestness was the same. Grimshaw and Venn raised the standard of Evangelicalism in Yorkshire, Rowlands in Wales, Walker in Cornwall, Toplady in Devon, Fletcher in Shropshire, Romaine and Haweis in London; whilst nearer to us James Hervey of Weston Favell, John Berridge of Everton, in Beds., and at a somewhat later date Simeon of Cambridge, preached in the same earnest manner. They were called Methodists, but it should be borne in mind that the term was then

applied only to evangelical clergymen of the Church of England.

Thus in 1764, at a time when all England was aroused and all classes were led to inquiry, John Newton came to Olney, full of desire to promote the same work that had been commenced by these eminent men, with most of whom he had become personally acquainted, and in a few years he rose to be one of the most distinguished ornaments of the Evangelical party. It will be interesting at this point to look round and make some inquiry concerning his most celebrated clerical contemporaries. Newton's own age was thirty-nine. John Wesley was sixty-one, in full vigour, and twenty-seven more years of industry lay before him. Grimshaw was fifty-six, and had only two years more to live; Whitefield, Romaine, Rowlands, and Berridge were each about fifty. Whitefield had only six more years to live, but Romaine had thirty-one, Rowlands twenty-six, and Berridge twenty-nine. Henry Venn was forty, and for thirty-three more years continued a life of usefulness. To Toplady yet remained fourteen years, and to Fletcher twenty-one. Walker had been dead three years, James Hervey six.

No sooner was Newton in Olney than he threw himself with his whole heart into the work, filling up his time with his schools, cottage lectures, public services, and prayer meetings. One of his most frequent resorts was the cottage of Molly Mole, or, as he called it, "the Mole Hill," and when the favoured Molly removed to another cottage, called by Newton "the new Mole Hill," the prayer meetings followed her.

To Mrs. Newton, who did not come to Olney until several weeks after her husband's arrival here, Newton on the 28th of July wrote the following letter, which reveals the way in which his life was spent during part, at any rate, of his stay in Olney. It will be seen that his forenoons were occupied chiefly in reading and writing, his afternoons in visiting :

"My housekeeper suits me well. In many respects she supplies your place: she calls me out of the garden when it is cold, puts me on my great-coat, watches my countenance, and asks me if I am well several times a day, tells me if she is