As I See It

by Fr. Vin

Blindness and Seeing

Do you ever look in the hymnal’s small print?  Somewhere at the bottom, in little tiny type, you’ll find the sources of what we sing.  Usually it’s in the order “text / tune / copyright” – that is, who wrote the words (or where in the Scriptures or the texts of our Mass we find them); then what the tune is – either who it’s by, or what its name is (yes, tunes sometimes have names, and different texts can be sung to them.)  There are also occasional private jokes to be found there.  For example, if you look up the tune for “Go to the World” (also used for “For All the Saints”), you’ll see the name of the tune is “Sine Nomine”: the Latin for “without a name”! 

If you look at the little type under the old, familiar “Amazing Grace” you’ll see the name John Newton, and he’s the point of this column.  When he quoted in his song text the words that recur through today’s Gospel, the story of “the man born blind,” he knew what “I once was blind, but now I see” was all about.  This is John Newton’s story.

Mr. (or, more properly, Captain) Newton was born on July 24, 1725, to a merchant ship captain and his wife.  After his mother’s early death, he grew up at sea and without much religious education.  He apprenticed with his father, and after his father’s death, he continued with the life of a seaman.  He was forced by the British government to serve on a man-of-war in 1744, but hated it and deserted.  He was caught, flogged, and demoted, and eventually found a way out by volunteering to serve on a ship that carried slaves.  After several years he became captain of a slave transport, on which he was at sea in a violent storm in 1748.

Sure that the ship was lost, he exclaimed (as he later recorded in his journal) “Lord, have mercy on us all!”  And he and the ship survived.  For the rest of his life he celebrated that day, May 10, as the day of his conversion.  He soon retired from the sea and the slave trade and began to educate himself in religion.  He mastered Latin, Hebrew, and Greek and was accepted for ordination in the Church of England.  During his studies he had met George Whitfield, a deacon in that church who, on one of his visits to America, was among the first to preach to slaves.  Newton became, in effect, Whitfield’s disciple and also a traveling preacher in addition to his parish duties.  (He had also been influenced by John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement.)

With his poet-friend, William Cowper, Newton began to write hymns for the services he held on the road.  What we know as “Amazing Grace” (he did not title it that) is, in effect, his autobiography; some scholars think the tune might have been adapted from something he heard sung by the slaves he once transported.  In 1780 he moved to St. Mary’s Church in London, where he influenced William Wilberforce, who later became the leader of the movement to abolish slavery in Britain. 

“I once was blind, but now I see.”  Although our own stories might not be as dramatic as Captain Newton’s, most of us probably have memories of past blindness – we’ve done things we’d never do again.  But the real lesson of Amazing Grace isn’t just that God sometimes opens our eyes: after all, we could begin to see, and then feel guilty or ashamed for the rest of our lives.  Newton used his own experience of “amazing grace” to change his life for the better – to serve the people he had previously exploited, helping to secure their eventual freedom and along the way encouraging countless thousands with his story set to song.  That’s the real power of God’s grace: to use even our sins as a lever to bring us and others to freedom and a fuller life.  Seeing our past is only a first step: seeing a possible future is more important.  Until next week, peace.

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