OR,

THE UTTERANCE OF THE HEART,

IN THE COURSE OF

A REAL CORRESPONDENCE.

BY THE

REV. JOHN NEWTON,

RECTOR OF ST. MARY WOOLNOTH, LONDON.

WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY DAVID RUSSELL, D.D., DUNDEE.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

THE LETTERS of JOHN NEWTON have been long and justly esteemed. His chief excellence as a writer, seems to lie in the easy and natural style of his epistolary correspondence. His Cardiphonia he esteemed the most useful of his writings. It consists of letters which were actually written to his friends, and returned to him that they might be printed. They were confidential letters, and are indeed "the utterance of the heart." They breathe a tone of seriousness, affection and tenderness, which commends itself to the conscience, while it gains the confidence of the reader. You cannot fail to perceive that he speaks the language of firm persuasion, and of deep personal experience. There is nothing of cold theoretical speculation. You feel that you are listening to a man who is telling you what he has himself seen, and felt, and tasted, of the goodness of that God, whose word and service he commends. His heart goes along with all his instructions, for "he speaks because he believes;" it is seen in all his exhortations, for he evidently takes them home to himself; and it breaks forth in all his consolatory addresses, for he is but telling what God has done for his own soul; and, happy himself in fellowship with God, and sympathising with others in their sorrows and their wants, he is commending to them those springs of consolation which have calmed and purified his conscience, and which continue to cheer and gladden his heart. His social affections were remarkably warm; and when hallowed by the grace of God, the result was a tenderness of feeling, an expansion of heart, and an outflow of affection, admirably calculated to exhibit the amiableness of genuine religion, to overcome prejudice, and to win over men to the truth. He spoke