author
Newton Smart
d. 1879
A 19th-century Anglican clergyman and religious writer, he is best remembered for a forceful 1832 sermon-book written in response to a time of public fear and disease. His surviving work gives a clear sense of a preacher trying to connect national crisis with personal faith and moral responsibility.
1 Audiobook
The Duty of a Christian People under Divine Visitations
by Newton Smart
About the author
Newton Smart (1798–1879) was an English religious writer and Anglican clergyman. Surviving catalog records identify him as a religious writer, and his best-known published work, The Duty of a Christian People under Divine Visitations (1832), names him as "The Rev. Newton Smart, M.A. of University College, Oxford."
That book, issued during the cholera era, reflects the urgent, public-facing style of early 19th-century preaching. Rather than writing abstract theology, Smart addressed fear, judgment, repentance, and the duties of a Christian society in a moment of national anxiety.
Some archival traces suggest he later served as Rector of Wittersham in Kent and was connected with Salisbury, but the most clearly confirmed picture is of a university-educated clergyman whose published sermons placed him among the serious religious voices of his day. No suitable verified portrait could be confirmed from the sources reviewed.