Consider the central religious crisis in the life
of each of three individuals. First, on 21 March 1748, in
the belly of a ship in the
dead of night, awakened by a raging North Atlantic storm which
threatened to sweep all on board to a watery death, John
Newton cries out to God for mercy. Second, at an insane
asylum on 26 July 1764,
William Cowper emerges from nearly a year of psychological
derangement and repeated attempts at self-destruction, and,
flinging himself
into a window-seat in the parlour, he opens a Bible,
reads, and falls into
a spiritual reverie as a kind of divine light floods into
his soul. And then
third, after months of anxiety over his ineffectual pastoral
ministry, and remorse over the levity with which he entered
holy orders, Thomas Scott
shuts himself up in his study with his Bible, the works of
Richard Hooker and other Anglican divines, and by Christmas
1777 argues himself into evangelical conviction.