Samuel Johnson, in his life of Alexander Pope, refers to "the most painful of all reflections, the remembrance of a crime perpetrated in vain."



It's been in my mind as true of all our crimes, all our sins. All are ultimately in vain, not just at odds with, but mortal weapons aimed at, what we're called to be, and to think on them is to be consumed with shame and remorse. What a great gift and treasure it is to be reborn, to speak from Lamentations 3 in our own life and in our own experience of salvation: It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness.



Out of his own dramatic experience of that rebirth, John Newton wrote the great and influential Amazing Grace, with its allusion to John 9:25: I was blind but now I see. Tomorrow is the memorial of Newton's death in London in 1807 and here is the epitaph he wrote and which remains on a marble plaque at St. Mary Woolnoth:



JOHN NEWTON, Clerk

Once an infidel and libertine

A servant of slaves in Africa,

Was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour

JESUS CHRIST,

restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach

the Gospel which he had long laboured to destroy.

He ministered,

Near sixteen years in Olney, in Bucks,

And twenty-eight years in this Church.



Newton died almost precisely 100 years after the birth of Charles Wesley. Here is another of Newton's hymns which, set to the music of Franz Josef Haydn, takes its place with the greatest of those of Wesley. On the text of Psalm 87:3: Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God.



Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken



Glorious things of thee are spoken,

Zion, city of our God!

He, Whose Word cannot be broken,

Formed thee for His own abode.

On the Rock of Ages founded,

What can shake thy sure repose?

With salvation’s walls surrounded,

Thou may’st smile at all thy foes.



See! the streams of living waters,

Springing from eternal love;

Well supply thy sons and daughters,

And all fear of want remove:

Who can faint while such a river

Ever flows their thirst t’assuage?

Grace, which like the Lord, the Giver,

Never fails from age to age.



Round each habitation hovering,

See the cloud and fire appear!

For a glory and a cov’ring

Showing that the Lord is near.

Thus deriving from our banner

Light by night and shade by day;

Safe they feed upon the manna

Which He gives them when they pray.



Blest inhabitants of Zion,

Washed in the Redeemer’s blood!

Jesus, Whom their souls rely on,

Makes them kings and priests to God.

’Tis His love His people raises,

Over self to reign as kings,

And as priests, His solemn praises

Each for a thank offering brings.



Savior, if of Zion’s city,

I through grace a member am,

Let the world deride or pity,

I will glory in Thy Name.

Fading is the worldling’s pleasure,

All his boasted pomp and show;

Solid joys and lasting treasure

None but Zion’s children know.