The Triumph of Grace by Kay Marshall Strom Read Free Book Online

London.

    There had been a time when Joseph Winslow's name had brought grudging respect from those around him. When he owned the slave fortress Zulina off Africa's Gold Coast, when he and his wife Lingongo controlled the slave traffic in the entire area, Joseph could walk the dusty streets outside his compound and white people would doff their hats and bow at the waist. In those days, even when he came to London, people allowed him to call himself a gentleman. He would go into a bookshop and lay down a gold piece to pay for a leatherbound volume, and the proprietor would call him "Sir." Out on the street, with a new book clutched under one arm and a recently purchased London frock for his daughter, Grace, bundled under the other arm, ladies curtsied and men bowed deeply as he passed by.
    But that was then. That was before his disgrace at Zulina . . . before he lost everything and everyone . . . before he was forced out of Africa . . . before gambling and drink engulfed his life.
    Further up Lombard Street, bells chimed from high atop the steeple of a most impressive church. Back when he was a young lad, Joseph Winslow had learned his catechism. All English children with any semblance of a decent upbringing did as much. But that was a lifetime ago. He had long since ceased to think of himself in religious terms. For all his talk of raising his daughter to be a proper English lass, he had been so spiritually remiss that she knew nothing of even the most basic catechism. Now, however, with the church doors flung open before him, with the church bells calling out and people streaming in, Joseph was overcome with a sudden longing to once again sit in a church pew.
    Joseph moved hesitantly toward the church steps. The men and women of the downtown parish were well-dressed in silk and taffeta frocks, and lavishly turned-out silk topcoats.Joseph Winslow tugged at his own disheveled coat and did his best to mingle unobtrusively as he followed the aristocratic worshippers inside.
    What astonished Joseph was the crowd of people that managed to pack into the small church. Nor were all the worshippers well-to-do. Oh, the ones who paraded on up to the front pews most certainly were. But many others—the ones who sat in the back of the sanctuary and those who stood in the aisles—looked to be more the working-class sort of folk.
    Joseph eased himself into a corner with others who looked to be more like him.
    "Ye likes the sea captain preacher, does ye?" whispered a man with a sun-leathered face.
    Joseph stared at the stranger. Because some answer seemed expected of him, he shrugged his shoulders and shook his head evasively. But as it turned out, Joseph did like the sea captain preacher. He liked him very much, indeed. John Newton, that was the preacher's name. And what a story he had to tell: a story of wretchedness, of redemption, of amazing grace.
    "I was the worst of the worst," the Reverend John Newton proclaimed from his pulpit. "The Lord God sent a storm from on high and He delivered me out of the deep waters. And though my sins be too numerous to count, the Lord God saved my soul. Today, even the most wretched and hopeless of souls can look at me and say, 'If God can save John Newton, He can save anyone!' That He can, too. For God's grace is greater than all our sins—mine and yours."
    It was a shaken Joseph Winslow who walked out of St.Mary Woolnoth Church. It was a changed Joseph Winslow.

    Stealth and cunning were not words commonly applied to Joseph Winslow. Even so, he did manage to approach Heath Patterson's barn unnoticed, even by the vigilant young man who stood guard with a musket over his shoulder. Joseph folded himself into the shadows until he was thoroughly concealed beside a window with the cover slid open a crack. The crack was just wide enough to allow him to take in the entire discussion of slavery in America, and its emerging position as a serious social issue.
    "Theirs is not a call for immediate abolition," Sir