Two or three years before the death of Mr. John Newton, a devoted Christian preacher, his sight became so dim that he was no longer able to read. An aged friend and brother in the ministry visited him at breakfast one morning. Family prayers followed and the portion of Scripture was read to him: "By the grace of God I am what I am." 1 Cor. 15:1010But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. (1 Corinthians 15:10).
It was the preacher's custom on these occasions to make a short exposition on the passage read. After the reading of this text he paused for some moments and then uttered an affecting soliloquy.
"I am not what I ought to be. Ah, how imperfect and deficient! I am not what I wish to be. I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good. I am not what I hope to be; soon, soon, I shall put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection. Though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say I am not, what I once was a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the Apostle, and acknowledge, 'By the grace of God I am what I am.”