Tori > Books: christian-biography‎ (53)

John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by

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, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long laboured to destroy.

The simple annals of a country pastor's daily life are uniform and uneventful, and afford little scope for the biographer's pencil. Interesting and precious as any work done on earth in Heaven's eyes, it is the obscurest possible in the world's regard. Angels look down upon it; busy, eager, bustling men heed it not. A calm routine of lowly, though sacred duties, a constant unvaried ministry of love, it flows on in a still and quiet stream, arresting no attention by its noise, and known alone to the lowly homes it visits on its way, and the flowers and the fields it waters. The young pastor of Dun was no exception to this. He preached the word; dispensed the sacred supper; warned the careless; comforted the sorrowing; baptized little children; blessed the union of the young and loving hearts; visited the sick, the dying; buried the dead; pressed the hand, and whispered words of peace into the ear of mourners; carried to the poor widow and friendless orphan the charity of the Church and his own; slipt in softly into some happy home and gently broke the sad news of the sudden disaster far away; lifted up the fallen one from the ground, and pointed to Him who receiveth the publicans and the sinners,—these things and such as these, he did in that little home-walk for twenty successive years day by day; but that was all. There is much here for the records of the sky, but nothing, or next to nothing, for the noisy annals of time. Such as the work was, however, he did it, as all who knew him witnessed, faithfully and well, with a calm, serious, conscientious, cheerful, loving diligence that was the fruit of faith and prayer; always at his work, and always happy in it, and desiring nothing better or higher on earth.