Messiah: Fifty Expository Discourses on the Oratorio of Handel

John Newton, the former slave ship captain who became the clergyman behind "Amazing Grace," spent two years delivering fifty sermons at St. Mary Woolnoth in London, each unpacking the biblical passages that Charles Jennens had assembled for Handel's Messiah. Preached from 1785 to 1787 to mark the centenary of Handel's birth, these discourses follow the oratorio's arc from prophecy to resurrection to ultimate triumph, offering theological exposition informed by Newton's extraordinary life journey. Here is a man who once captained a vessel in the slave trade now standing before his congregation, explicating the very scriptures that would become Handel's masterwork. Newton brings a convert's urgency and a scholar's precision to these meditations, making this collection a remarkable intersection of musical history, religious reflection, and one man's spiritual reckoning.