SELECTIONS FROM WISE COUNSEL
John Newton’s Letters to John Ryland Jr.
Edited by Grant Gordon. Banner of Truth. 110 pages. £3.25
ISBN 978-1-84871-089-4
John Newton is well known as the converted slave-trader who wrote the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’.
Less well known are his letters and yet, by his own reckoning, nothing else he did was as much used by the Lord as they were.
One remarkable example was his correspondence over a period of 32 years with a certain John Ryland Jr., which began when Newton was 43 and Ryland just a boy of 15. In Wise Counsel, some 82 of Newton’s letters to him are published. In Selections from Wise Counsel, Gordon Grant gives us a taster in a beautifully presented, great-value, pocket-sized book.
Grant provides an introduction to Newton and Ryland and their friendship, and reproduces three of the letters with editorial comments. The first is a gentle, loving rebuke to the precocious young Ryland for the vain and proud spirit Newton detected in a recently published book. The second deals with how God uses our weaknesses for his purposes. The third provides marriage counsel for Ryland as a newly wed. All are full of spiritual wisdom and practical insight which transcend the particular context and age in which they were written.
In publishing the letters Newton hoped ‘to comfort the afflicted, to quicken the careless, to confirm the wavering’. This they do and more. In an age of email, texts and Facebook, written communication tends to be brief and shallow. These deep, thoughtful letters may well inspire some to rediscover the lost art of letter-writing and to see it as a powerful and enduring way of providing spiritual help and counsel. In addition, that Newton should have taken up this correspondence when he was a busy middle-aged minister and Ryland just a teenager, may be a particular encouragement to those dealing with young people to invest time and thought in giving spiritual direction to the next generation. Be warned: there may be a hidden cost in purchasing this book. You may find, as I did, that the taster gives you an appetite for more and you go on to buy the unabridged collection.
Marcus Nodder,
senior pastor, St. Peter’s Barge, London’s Floating Church
http://www.stpetersbarge.org
