author

Newton Smart

d. 1879

An Anglican clergyman and Oxford-educated writer, he is known for a forceful 1832 religious work that reflects on public crisis, national responsibility, and Christian repentance. His surviving book gives a clear sense of a preacher writing for a troubled moment in British history.

1 Audiobook

The Duty of a Christian People under Divine Visitations

The Duty of a Christian People under Divine Visitations

by Newton Smart

About the author

Newton Smart was a 19th-century religious writer identified in the 1832 edition of The Duty of a Christian People under Divine Visitations as the Rev. Newton Smart, M.A., of University College, Oxford. That book is the main readily confirmed source for his career and shows him writing as an Anglican minister with a strong interest in public morality, national life, and the spiritual meaning of times of upheaval.

Published in 1832, The Duty of a Christian People under Divine Visitations is a sermon-like theological work shaped by anxiety about disorder, suffering, and epidemic disease in Europe. Its tone is serious but direct: it urges repentance, moral reform, and a thoughtful religious response to national danger rather than mere fear.

Reliable biographical detail beyond that is scarce in the sources I could confirm here. Even so, the work that survives suggests a writer whose voice belongs to the tradition of early-19th-century English preaching—earnest, scriptural, and deeply concerned with how private faith should meet public crisis.