By Faith in Christ I Walk with God

Author: John Newton

John Newton (b. London, England, 1725; d. London, 1807) was born into a Christian home, but his godly mother died when he was seven, and he joined his father at sea when he was eleven. His licentious and tumul­tuous sailing life included a flogging for attempted desertion from the Royal Navy and captivity by a slave trader in West Africa. After his escape he himself became the captain of a slave ship. Several factors contributed to Newton's conversion: a near-drowning in 1748, the piety of his friend Mary Catlett, (whom he married in 1750), and his reading of Thomas à Kempis' Imitation of Christ. In 1754 he gave up the slave trade and, in association with William Wilberforce, eventually became an ardent abolitionist. After becoming a tide… Go to person page >

By faith in Christ I walk with God. J. Newton. [Faith.] A second hymn on "Walking with God," Gen. v. 24 (the first being Cowper's "O for a closer walk with God"), given in the Olney Hymns, 1779, No. 4, in 7 stanzas of 6 lines. It is found in a few collections both in Great Britain and America, including the Westminster Abbey Hymn Book, 1883; the American Baptist Service of Song, 1871, &c.

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)