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On the 8th of July, 1777, the portly Reverend John Newton, retired to his rectory study to put quill to parchment. In his diary, in the entry, he confessed to binge reading the latest bestseller. His book that it so engrossed him was a publishing sensation. Captain James Cook's three volume, a voyage towards the South Pole and round the world published in that same year.

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It caught Newton's imagination, but clearly it also caught his evangelical heart, my leisure time, and rather more than I can well spare, he wrote, taken up with reading the accounts of the late voyage of Captain Cook in the Southern Ocean and around the globe. But then he has moved to prayer in his diary entry. Teach me to see thy hands and read thy name in these relations. Thy providence and goodness are displayed in every climb.

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May I be suitably affected with the case of the countless thousands of my fellow creatures who know they not nor have opportunities of knowing he continued. Alas, those that are called Christians who venture through the greatest dangers to explore unknown regions should only impart to the inhabitants examples of sin and occasions of mischief and communicate nothing of thy gospel to them. Lord has thou not a time for these poor benighted souls when thou wills arise and shine upon them. I wondered if he, as he penned those words, whether he thought about himself as a former slave trader and the impact he'd had on some of the places and people that he'd visited.

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Well, Newton didn't know it then, but his law did have a time and a plan for those souls. And within the short space of seven years, Newton would be at the center of that plan. And we've heard a little bit of that from Mark in the previous paper. Newton would be crucial to launching the first Christian mission and Anglican Church in Australia.

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Well, the focus of my paper is on the part that Newton played in that audacious endeavor, and I'll argue that he played two key roles. First, he was a mastermind of the Australian mission in his strategic networking with well-placed evangelicals to recruit, prepare, and fund clergy. And second, and this is where the weights of my paper is gonna be, he was mentor of the missionary. Through letters to Richard Johnson that reveal a pastor's heart, a judicious combination of pragmatism, professional supervision, and pastoral care, and plays a key role in sustaining Johnson and sustaining the mission.

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In terms of sources, I'm drawing on Newton's diaries on the Eclectic Society notes that Mark mentioned earlier and his voluminous correspondence. But a particular focus is on the letters to Richard Johnson in the crucial pioneering years between 1787 and 1795. I don't have space today to detail Newton's biography, obviously in 20 minutes. For that, I refer you to d Bruce Hein, Marsh's, seminal John Newton, and the English Evangelical tradition.

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If there's one book to read on Newton, it would be that the more popular version is on the right there called Amazing Grace, and the book in the middle there is. A reprint of the very famous autobiography that Newton wrote about his life, an authentic narrative, but it also talks about his spirituality, and particularly his gift for letter writing and friendship. Lemme begin with a to Newton's life. If anyone can play claim to a storied life, it's Newton.

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Before his conversion in a storm at sea in 1748, he'd experienced years on slave trade ships being pressed ganged into the navy. He'd been whipped and he experienced servitude on a Caribbean slave plantation. After his conversion came, marriage and settling down, and a later call to the ministry. With 16 years as the curate of Olney, a small market town in Buckinghams shear from this base in parish ministry, Newton soon gained a reputation as a down to earth preacher, a hymn writer and poet, and

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above all, a writer of spiritual letters, many collections of which were published in his lifetime. Fast forward to 1783, and Newton was now in charge of St. Mary Woolworth, a fashionable English Baroque city Church in the heart of the city of London's financial district. It was from this London based as Mark noted before, and through Newton's genius for deep friendship, for spiritual direction, and for forming associations of evangelicals that Newton masterminded the mission to Australia. Crucial to this was the founding of the Eclectic Society in 1783.

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A tea drinking Georgian theological think tank perhaps. And these kinds of associations reflected a thriving associational culture that was developing in 18th century Georgian Britain. Well, we've heard already that two years later, William Wilberforce was knocking on Newton's door as he wrestled through to an evangelical conversion and a political vocation. That revolving door included Clapham sect members and their associates, such as Charles Simeon, Hannah Moore, Richard Cecil.

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One of those co-founders of the Eclectic Society we've already been introduced to briefly today was the Reverend Henry Foster, and we saw how he introduced Johnston to Newton Johnson was the curate of Foster around this time by the mid 1780s, and I can't help thinking he looks a little bit like an 18th century Justin. Put Mr. Johnson in my pul gives earnest of.

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At the same time as Mark recounted, British government was making plans for the penal settlement in New Holland, and it's in these years, 1785 and 86, that the plans coalesce. And we've heard from Mark the story of. William Pitts, good friend of Wilberforce organizing for a chaplain, and it's Newton who provides the name. It's philanthropist.

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John Thornton, we've already heard too, who took Johnson to a Hulk to meet his new parishioners, and it's two days after that that the Royal warrant for the chaplain is signed. But I wanna just point to Newton's networking efforts that continue over the next decade. It begins with Johnson. He introduces Johnson to Moravian missionaries who've had much more experience than most Protestants in missionary endeavor.

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Going back about two centuries with help from Thornton, he also enrolls Evangelical banker Ambrose Martin for fundraising for about the equivalent of an annual salary for Johnson to keep him in with expenses. Before he goes, there's a decent waiting time of several months. He also gets in touch with the evangelical comptroller of the Navy. So Charles Middleton, we've heard a little bit about him earlier from Stewart, and raises the equivalent of this annual salary, and that covers the expenses of Johnson.

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And then they need to find extra expenses for his new wife, Mary, whom we've heard about. Well, in the early years of the mission, we also find Newton seeking political advice from evangelicals such as Ambrose, so who was in the Board of Trade. We also find him asking for help recruiting a second clergyman with letters to another influential evangelical Charles Grants, a director of the powerful East India company. And of course, success would come after several false starts in the form of Samuel Marsden in 1794.

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Final practical role that we see Newton in in these years is the editing, production, and distribution of that first fruit of Australian Publishing Johnson's address to the inhabitants. A track that he'd written to reach the population he couldn't get to. Newton helped edit the tract and we find in his letters he is tactfully redacting sections that seem too qua politically. But Newton also transcribed it for the press.

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He organized its printing. He also undertook responsibility to cover the cost shortfall reckoning. It would not sell enough copies to cover the printing costs. So we've seen something of Newton's networking and friendship genius and his role as mastermind, um, beginning in prayer and then talent scouting and funding the fledgling Australian mission or organizing for that.

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But a second role that emerges from Newton's writings is that of mentor, and it's here that we see Newton practicing what he would become most famous and beloved for his postal epistolary ministry. Numerous letters to Johnson reveal him as a pragmatist, as a professional supervisor, and as a pastoral carer for the, these letters are pervaded by a spirit of warmth, but frankness and practical wisdom. One thing to note with this correspondence is that it took eight months for a letter to get to Sydney and then another eight months for it to get back to London. So it's about one and a half years before you get a reply to your question or your comments, and there's not a neat tennis match of letters.

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They don't always overlap. Sometimes the letters didn't get to Johnson or to Newton, so it's a little bit patchy with the Royal Mail in these early years. In the first place. Much of the advice in these letters is intensely practical.

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Newton knew better than anyone else, the terrors of ocean travel and the rigors of that travel in these days, and he added in one of his first letters that Paul's sea travels in. The Book of Acts would quote, have peculiar awaits, and you will feel comfort from them, which you have never felt before. He also talked about a change of climate and a diet that will try your constitution. Nothing can hurt you while the Lord is with you.

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He reminded him, but yet to be pragmatic, it'll be madness in you to risk your health by going down into the hold of a ship where the air must always be putrid from the breath of a crowd of passengers in chains. I couldn't help but wonder if as he penned this, the former slave trader was picturing in his mind's eye the wretched human cargo in the holds of slave ships he'd commanded. Newton added if they're sick and want you, let them be brought up on the deck. It'll be equal folly to eventually your life among the Savage Nass on shore before their confidence is obtained by the mutual good officers of others.

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In other words, the military, remember, your business is religion. Mind that and that only be careful of your health. Well, Johnson, for his part, would completely ignore both bits of those advice, particularly going down into the holds of the second fleet and ministering to those wretched sick and dying. Well, having been in the Navy, having lived on several isolated British colonies, Newton could also advise on how to manage upwards and downwards.

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He wrote in May, 1788. Your success and influence will not depend much upon the manner in which you express yourself as upon the general impression which your character makes upon the people you're with. If Captain Philip, the officers semen and convicts conceive of you as devoted to God, firm in his cause, meek, humble and compliant in all cases where conscience is not concerned. And at the same time as standing upon higher ground than to be influenced by the fear of man or of any danger or hardship to which duty may expose you.

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This will give a weight to what you say, but I believe you will have sharp trials and be at times like the sailors in a storm almost at your wits end. And that prophecy was correct. Those sharp trials certainly came, and we've heard something of those in Mark's paper in the first eight years. Johnson protested more than once to Newton that his treatment did not befit a gentleman, a chaplain, or a clergyman.

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The hostility and exclusion must have stung harder because Johnson had come from a genteel provincial background. And this is a period in which manners were marked by a strong emphasis on that key criterion of social worth. And standing for the 18th century Britain and clergyman. Gentility, being a gentleman implied certain moral qualities, honor, courage, consideration for others, embodied in a fairly strict code of what was done and not done.

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As well as voluntary public service, and in return, the gentleman expected immense respect and the authority and privileges that were due to them. Well, Newton's responses reflect a social shift that Stewart alluded to earlier in which evangelicals were transposing gentility into a distinctly Christian Key. These gentle rebukes and exhortations in Newton's letters, particularly to dignified silence, reflect recognition that the gospel itself would bring a fence as well. In one letter, Newton wrote that I think you likewise laid too much stress upon your officer's chaplain and the right you had from Dent to be considered and treated as a gentleman on another.

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He reiterated, I believe what you've heard of your name being treated with ridicule here, but be it true or false, more or less, I thought it would be acting below yourself to take notice of it. Your character is too well established to be in the least affected by such trifles, and as a minister and a Christian, you'll do well to pass by them with silence. Another letter, he even writes a fable to drive the point home in a more poetic way. The fable says that on a fine night, a parcel of dogs thought proper to bark and how violently at the moon, but the moon well satisfied that they could not hurt her.

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Replied with great composure. You may make what noise you please, but I am determined that I will shine on I think the moral is obvious and good. Newton concluded. Well, in letter after letter, Newton reminds Johnson of his high missionary vocation and the nobility of that vocation seeking to fan back into flame.

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The missionary spirit that he discerned in Johnson back in England, and you see him trying to strengthen a bruised read that is at risk of breaking. A familiar refrain is the stubborn providential optimism That was such an impetus to missionary endeavor in this period. What design government may have in forming your settlement. I know not I approve the extension of our commerce, but I trust the Lord designs to make this place subservient to his gracious design of spreading the lights of his glorious gospel.

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In 1791, having news of the near starvation of the colony and Johnson's discouragement, Newton urges the long view, as well as the importance of seeking to be faithful rather than successful. I've not been disheartened by your apparent wants of success. I've been told that skillful gardeners will undertake to sow and raise a salad for dinner in the short time while the meat is roasting. But no gardener can raise oaks with such expedition you are sent to New Holland, not to sow salad seeds, but to plant acorn.

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And your labor will not be lost. Though the first appearances may be very small and the progress very slow. You are I trust planting for the next century. I have a good hope that your oaks will one day spring up and flourish and produce other acorns, which in due time will take roots and spread among the islands and nations in the southern ocean.

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That theme of faithfulness over success is a constant refrain in the letters. Will other letters capture Newton's practical and professional wisdom about ministry priorities in a pioneer colony? Newton began by reminding Johnson of God's care for him in one of his letters. As a friend, I'll offer you two or three thoughts, which occurred to me while I was reading your journal.

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I do not wonder, nor can I blame you, that you often felt cares and anxieties respecting your temporal concerns. If we're in the path of duty and in the use of proper means, such cares are indeed needless 'cause the Lord cares for us. But when you speak of time spent in your necessary employment as so much lost time because it kept you from your books and studies, I think you distressed yourself without just cause. I wish you to consider your mission as a whole composed of various parts, each of which INS has its importance, preaching, reading, and study.

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Newton then pivots to advice on sanctified secularist pursuits. But I believe the apostle was employed no less lawfully and properly when gathering sticks for the fire. Acts 28 3 than when preaching the gospel. You understand the gospel too well to confine religion, to devotional exercises.

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The secret of the Lord teaches us whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do to do all to his glory. I judge that when you dig in your garden or plant potatoes or cabbages, you serve the Lord as truly as when you are upon your knees or in the pulpit provided you do these things in a right spirit independence upon him and in submission to his will. Such employments are across to our inclinations, but if we take them up as a cross and can cheerfully deny our own will they become when necessary, part of the obedience we owe him. Well, Johnson was after all deemed the best farmer in the colony, had success with fruit, orchards and vegetables, wheats, and barley and flocks, and it's still a delicious irony of Australian history that our wine and tobacco industries were begun by a clergyman with Methodist associations.

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Perhaps when you have a glass of wine with lunch, you can raise that and thank Newton for encouraging those industries. Practical ministry advice extended to preaching across several letters. Newton hoped in an early letter that Johnson wouldn't confine himself to moral subjects. We heard Mark's quote on that a little bit earlier.

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Years later, he reminded Johnson that only the Holy Spirit could touch the hearts such as those of many convicts, and he shouldn't be discouraged about the lack of results. Yet the old preacher also wondered if an emphasis on preaching grace and mercy rather than law and judgment, might better suit the majority of Johnson's literally captive audience. You often speak of preaching awfully, undoubtedly, a declaration of the law and the penalty due to transgresses is a part of our message to persons in this state. Denunciations of Roth too frequently repeated instead of working savingly upon them, rather tends to increase the enmity of their minds against God.

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Well, before I finish, just a brief comment on style we've already seen in some of these quotes, the different kinds of metaphors that he uses. These are sowing salad seeds, planting acorn trees for oaks, gesture towards his style. These use of home spun pungent images with biblical nautical and nature oriented themes. Johnson, for example, was carrying a spark from which to enlighten the whole southern hemisphere.

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Port Jackson was the spot from once the gospel light may hereafter spread in all directions. Multitudes may rejoice in it, who had present covered with a thick darkness. And Johnson was a sailor, as we heard in that poem on tempest toed seas and Savage shores. He writes to him in as well.

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To conclude, we've seen how Newton's letters and particularly his letters to Johnson cast fresh new light on Newton's role in the Australian mission. We've also seen how he acted as a mission mastermind in prayer study and in fostering evangelical associational culture in his Clapham like use of evangelical networks in the banks, in the colonial office, the Board of Trade, the Navy, and the East India company. He epitomizes what my friend, Gareth Atkins has so brilliantly described, and which Stewart alluded to this morning in his book, converting Britannia, how Evangelicals use networks of family, of friendship, patronage, and place in every sphere of British public life to forward missional aims. We've also seen how Newton mentored the missionary.

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It's impossible to assess the full impact on Johnson of these friendly epistles of practical wisdom, professional advice, and pastoral care that will await conversations with Johnson in heaven. But something of the letter's impact can be gauged by the fact that the correspondence with Newton Peters out after 1795, and that coincides with the arrival of Governor Hunter with the full backing of a sympathetic Christian governor. After 1795, life becomes immensely easier for Johnson, for Newton, it was perhaps like the euthanasia of a mission. The next letter is not till 1800.

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Well, Newton's Australian Epistolary mentoring resonates with other assessments of his work. J IPAC has observed. Whitfield was flamboyant. Wesley was masterful.

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Newton was unobtrusive, yet Newton was indubitably one of the three greatest 18th century evangelical leaders as a warm-hearted pastoral counselor in groups, and by letter he had no peer. His best biographer notes that Newton's published letters are classics of evangelical spirituality. Hein Marsh adds that Newton's life story. His parish ministry and practice of spiritual direction and the integrity of his personal relationships make him a trustworthy guard to the spiritual life today.

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So today we mark the 300th anniversary of Newton's birth and we ponder his and his friend's legacy for the Australian Church, and it seems fitting to end with Newton's last extort words to Johnston. They're warm and personal like his letters, but they have the poignant tone of an allergy. They were farewell, and yet they're imbued with a stubborn prophetic hope. Newton did not see the fruit of the seed he was sowing.

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But we stand here as grateful beneficiaries of that and no one more than I who encountered the living God in an Anglican church, a Newtonian oak branch in 1993. Newton writes, you have dropped me of late years, and therefore I make the less apology for dropping you at the age of 75 and with increasing engagements, I cannot write much. Give our love to Mr. Johnson Ambrose and the rest, if the Lord has given you more. May the Lord bless you or you and your children and may the good seed you are sowing spring up to flourish for ages.

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Notwithstanding the discouragements you've met with, I'm persuaded the Lord has not sent you so far to labor in vain. Thank you.

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