This year we’re reading selections from the discussions and the spiritual insights of the evangelical ministers who regularly met in London as “The Eclectic Society.” I hope you will find the time to read further around the section, so I have found the original volume for you in Google Books/Google Play. You can find the text by clicking this link.
The Eclectic Society met during the long years of war with France, from the Reign of Terror to the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. There are times when the meeting turns to discuss God’s Providence in these events, how to conduct services on days of national repentance and fasting ordered by Parliament and the Crown, and services of national thanksgiving after military victories like the Battle of Nile and Trafalgar. On these national days the ministers agreed there was an opportunity to preach the gospel at their services, so they strategized the best way to accomplish it.
The meeting of May 21, 1804 was not so specifically tied to a specific military success or failure, but to the length of the struggle with no end in sight. Napoleon had crowned himself Emperor in the presence of the Pope while various European nations sued for peace. They discussed the most effective way to express in their extemporaneous intercession their pleading to God for deliverance from the French. As the discussion moved to and fro, two views arose. The first that the war with France was a war against atheism and godlessness, therefore the ministers should take a confident position. The second underlined how the many blessing God had bestowed upon the nation had led to presumption, so ministers should set a tone of lament and repentance in their prayers.
One of the ministers who held to the second view was John Newton. He asserted that Britain was more like the most wicked nation on earth in the squandering of its advantages and its presumption of God’s blessing. There is no note as to how his comments were received by the meeting, but being the elder statesman of the group, we can imagine that the younger men there refrained either from respect of his age or from his influence.
There is a note that this was the last meeting he attended. He lived a further 3 years, dying in 1807. He was buried on the last day of that year. His memoir was written by another member of the group who related a story that highlighted the character of the man in the wonderful way he continually proclaimed the grace of God. He was in the habit of referring back with shame and contrition on his younger years, and magnifying God’s grace, of the tremendous change in his life. After his eightieth birthday, some of his friends urged him to retire, to “consider his work done, and that he should stop before he should evidently discover that he could speak no more.” “I cannot stop,” he said, raising his voice, “What! Shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak?” Writing his own epitaph, he left strict instruction that it should be placed on the side of the monument nearest the churchyard wall, so that it would take no little effort to read it. Being so concerned that God should have all the glory. The epitaph reads like a summary of the gospel:
