Newton's Dying Thoughts

    In the last few months of his life, John Newton, author of the famous old hymn “Amazing Grace,” became so weak that he had to stop preaching and eventually was confined to his bed. His friends said that he never feared age nor death. To a close friend he wrote, “Through God's grace I am perfectly well, yet laboring under a growing disorder for which there is no cure--old age. But I am glad for this disease, for who would live always in such a world as this?”

    One day, with a feeble smile, he told a friend, “I am like a person going on a journey on a stagecoach, who expects its arrival every hour and is frequently looking out the window for it.” Later he said, “I am packed and sealed and waiting for the post.” One day he said, “What a thing it is to live under the shadow of the wings of the Almighty!”

    Shortly before he died, he told visiting friends, “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Saviour.” John Newton died on a Monday evening, Dec. 21, 1807, at the age of eighty-two.