Sermon Central
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The Man Who Couldn't Kill Himself
Contributed by Dr. Larry Petton on Aug 21, 2023 (message contributor)
Centuries after Esther lived, there lived a man named William Cowper. At the young age of thirty-two, wracked by deep depression and despair, Cowper decided finally to take matters into his own hands and kill himself. He hired a carriage to take him to the Thames River.
The carriage driver, a total stranger, seeing what the desperate young man intended, grabbed him and kept him from jumping into the swift current of the broad tidal river.
Back alone in his own home, Cowper took poison. Someone found him in time to provide the necessary antidote. That night he took a knife and fell on it, and would you believe . . . the blade broke.
Early the next morning he hung himself. But a neighbor, concerned about Cowper, found him and cut him down before he died.
Because of the unfathomable, unsearchable, inscrutable power of God, invisible though it was, William Cowper was unable to take matters in his own hands . . . he couldn’t even take his own life! Suffering from acute depression and mental distress, verging on insanity, he turned increasingly to Christ and Christ alone for consolation.
Later, he struck up a friendship with the great John Newton. Eventually, the two of them collaborated on a publication called the Olney Hymns, in which Newton released his best-loved hymn, “Amazing Grace.” Thirteen years after his attempts at suicide, Cowper himself began writing hymns. Ultimately, he wrote sixty-seven of the hymns in that work, including this familiar one:
God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
- Precept Austin
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