Easter 2025: 250th anniversary of a famous hymn

The River Ouse meanders peacefully behind the church of St Peter and St Paul in Olney, Buckinghamshire. It bids a pleasant walk along its river banks as swans glide gracefully by while a watchful heron keeps an eye on a troop of Canada geese on the opposite side of the bank. This tranquil scene was the refuge of the local minister, newly ordained, who fled there in a state of panic.

Before coming to Olney the Reverend John Newton had published six sermons. He had just preached from the last one! A friend explained many years later, "he thought he had told them his whole stock, and was considerably depressed."

Newton himself recalled: "I was walking one afternoon by the side of the River Ouse. I asked myself, How long has this river run? Many hundred years before I was born, and will certainly run many years after I am gone. Who supplies the fountain from whence this river comes? God. Is not the fund for my sermons equally inexhaustible?—the word of God. Yes, surely. I have never been afraid of running out since that time."