"If the foundations are destroyed," says David in the eleventh Psalm, "what can the righteous do?" (Psalm 11:3).  It's a question well worth pondering.

But suppose the foundations are not destroyed.  Suppose that on the contrary, they are laid deep in the hidden bedrock of the unchanging grace of God.  Suppose that they are so well established and so painstakingly constructed that they stand unshaken despite the ravages of time and tide and chance.  What then?

In that case, the righteous can hope to do all things (Philippians 4:13).  In that case, we can expect the blind to see, the lame to walk, and the dead to live again.  Best of all, we can look forward to the happy spectacle of prodigals coming home to the house built firm upon the Rock.

The story of the Reverend John Newton is the story of a beloved son, errant blasphemer, slave of slaves, and preacher of the everlasting gospel.  It's a story that ends well because it begins well – in spite of a bleak and disastrous "middle passage."

We don't want to miss that good beginning.  It's absolutely essential to everything that follows.  Because for all its subsequent sordidness and sorrow, our narrative starts with a tender, touching scene:  a child on his mother's knee, singing hymns and reciting verses from the Bible.  An unlikely point of departure, perhaps, for a foul-mouthed sailor and a dealer in human flesh.

Elizabeth Newton, by her son's own account, was a "pious, experienced Christian"¹ – a woman whose life was built around a solid vertical core.  She was a genuine believer whose knowledge of God went deeper than mere doctrinal orthodoxy and whose experience of the Savior's love was warm and immediate and inextricably interwoven with the details of everyday existence. 

That in itself simply had to rub off on young John.  No doubt it would have even if his mother had never said a word to him about it.  There is, after all, a great deal of truth in the old maxim that faith is more effectively caught than taught.  But Mrs. Newton wasn't the kind to be content with such assurances.  No; she personally directed every aspect of her son's education.  She saw to it that the seeds of God's righteousness, truth, and mercy were planted deep in the soil of his soul from the earliest moments of childhood.

And so, almost from the time her son could speak, Mrs. Newton began to teach him.  She took his training firmly in hand with enthusiasm, devotion, and fervent prayer.  The results were impressive.  At three her boy was already learning to read.  By four he had practically mastered the skill.  At five he was memorizing Scripture, enduring the rigors of the Catechism, and filling his mind with the words and melodies of the hymns of Isaac Watts.  By six he was ready to embark on the study of Latin.  And all because of the industry and care of a loving mother whose heart's desire was that her son might someday serve the Lord as a minister of the Word. 

But then tragedy struck.  Elizabeth died before John turned seven, the victim of her own weak constitution and the ravages of consumption (or tuberculosis), one of the deadliest and most feared maladies of the day.  As a result, by the time John was twenty-one, his closest companions would have been hard pressed to detect even the slightest traces of his mother's influences upon him.  Among other things, anger at God over her death drove him to abandon the path she had taught him to tread.  But that, as we shall see, wasn't to be the end of the story.