1. Here at Bethesda’s pool, the poor,
The withered, lame, and blind,
With waiting hearts expect a cure,
And free admittance find.
2. Here streams of wondrous virtue flow
To heal a sin-sick soul;
To wash the filthy bright as snow,
And make the wounded whole.
3. Restrained to no one case or time,
These waters always move;
Sinners, in every age and clime,
Their vital influence prove.
4. Yet numbers daily near them lie,
Who meet with no relief;
With life in view they pine and die
In hopeless unbelief.
5. Do now, dear Savior, interpose,
Their stubborn will constrain,
Or else to the them the water flows
And grace is preached in vain.
Source: Hymns and Devotions for Daily Worship #163
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 >
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