William Wilberforce lived at a time when Great Britain had fallen to its lowest debauchery. With his resolve to make morality fashionable, he so radically transformed this nation that the period after him is known for its high morality—the Victorian Age.
We might all be aware of William Wilberforce’s role in bringing an end to slavery in British Empire and changing the social fabric of the nation, but maybe we’ve not taken the time to examine the beliefs and motivations that inspired him. Among these were faith, prayer, and waiting on God. In the beginning of his religious career he records:
My chief reasons for a day of secret prayer are, (1) That the state of public affairs is very critical and calls for earnest depreciation of the divine displeasure. (2) My station in life is a very difficult one, wherein I am at a loss to know how to act. Direction, therefore, should be specially sought from time to time. (3) I have been gracious supported in difficult situations and of public nature. I have gone out and returned home in safety, and found a kind reception has attended me. I would humbly hope, too, that what I am now doing is a proof that God has not withdrawn His Holy Spirit from me. I am covered with mercies.
E.M. Bounds made the following remarks in regards to the prayer life of Wilberforce:
High in social position, a Member of Parliament, the friend of Pitt the famous statesman, he was not called of God to forsake his high social position nor quit Parliament, but he was called to order his life according to the pattern set by Jesus Christ and to give himself to prayer. To read the story of his life is to be impressed with its holiness and its devotion to the claims of the quiet hours alone with God. His conversion was announced to his friends—to Pitt and others—by letter.
All were to be surrendered for spiritual advance. “I fear,” we find him saying,
That I have not studied the Scriptures enough. Surely in the summer recess I ought to read the Scriptures an hour or two every day, besides prayer, devotional reading, and meditation. God will prosper me better if I wait on him. The experience of all good men shows that without constant prayer and watchfulness the life of God in the soul stagnates. Doddridge’s morning and evening devotions were serious matters. Colonel Gardiner always spent hours in prayer in the morning before he went forth. Bonnell practiced private devotions largely morning and evening, and repeated Psalms dressing and undressing to raise his mind to heavenly things. I would look up to God to make the means effectual. I fear that my devotions are too much hurried, that I do not read Scripture enough. I must grow in grace; I must love God more; I must feel the power of divine things more. Whether I am more or less learned signifies not. Whether even I execute the work which I deem useful is comparatively unimportant. But beware my soul of lukewarmness.
The recurrence of his birthday led him again to review his situation and employment. “I find,” he wrote:
That books alienate my heart from God as much as anything. I have been framing a plan of study for myself, but let me remember but one thing is needful that if my heart cannot be kept in a spiritual state without so much prayer, meditation, Scripture reading, etc, as are incompatible with study, I must seek first the righteousness of God….
The New Year began with Holy Communion and new vows. “I will press forward,” he wrote,
And labor to know God better and love him more. Assuredly I may, because God will give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him, and the Holy Spirit will shed abroad the love of God in the heart. O, then, pray, pray; be earnest, press forward and follow on how to know the Lord. Without watchfulness, humiliation and prayer, the sense of divine things must languish.
At another time he put on record:
I must try what I long ago heard was the rule of Mr. E—, the great upholsterer, who, when he came from Bond Street to his little villa, always first retired to his closet. I have been keeping too late hours, and hence have had but a hurried half hour to myself. Surely the experience of all good men confirms the proposition that without due measure of private devotions, the soul will grow lean.
A Father’s Pain
W. Tozer said, “It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.”Far more painful and unbearable than any of these criticisms were the burdens of his family life.
William Wilberforce and his wife Barbara were very different from each other. “While he was cheerful, Barbara was often depressed and pessimistic. She finally worried herself into very bad health which lasted the rest of her life and other women who knew her said she whined when William was not right beside her.”
When their oldest son William was at Trinity College, Cambridge, he fell away from the Christian faith and gave no evidence of the precious experience his father called “the great change.” Wilberforce wrote on January 10, 1819, “O that my poor dear William might be led by Thy grace, O God.”On March 11, he poured out his grief again:
Oh my poor William. How strange he can make so miserable those who love him best and whom really he loves. His soft nature makes him the sport of his companions, and the wicked and idle naturally attach themselves like dust and cleave like burrs. I go to pray for him. Alas, could I love my Saviour more and serve Him, God would hear my prayer and turn his heart.
He received a word from Henry Venn that young William was not reading for his classes at Cambridge but was spending his father’s allowance foolishly. Wilberforce agonized and decided to cut off his allowance, have him suspended from school, put him with another family, and did not allow him to come home.“Alas my poor William! How sad to be compelled to banish my eldest son,” Wilberforce lamented.
Even when William finally came to faith, it grieved Wilberforce that three of his sons became Anglicans with little respect for the dissenting church that Wilberforce, even as an Anglican, loved so much for its evangelical truth and life. Worse still, his daughter Barbara died of consumption tuberculosis in the autumn of 1882 at the tender age of twenty-two. Wilberforce wrote to a friend on this occasion:
Oh my dear Friend, it is in such seasons as these that the value of the promises of the Word of God are ascertained both by the dying and attendant relatives…the assured persuasion of Barbara’s happiness has taken away the sting of death.
To his son William he wrote:
Let me conjure you not be seduced into neglecting, curtailing, or hurrying over morning prayers. Of all things, guard against neglecting God in the closet. There is nothing more fatal to the life and power of religion. More solitude and earlier hours—prayer three times a day at least. How much better might I serve had I cultivated a closer communion with God?
Most of us are so busy and immersed even in serving the Lord and carrying out His work like Martha that we neglect the quiet seasons of prayer and communion with the Lord. Before we know it our souls are lean and impoverished. The secret of Wilberforce’s determination and success was his close communion with the Lord.
We all can never expect to grow in the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ unless we follow His example and give more time to communion with the Father. A revival of real praying would produce a spiritual revolution as Christianity is not a religion, but a revolution against the kingdom of darkness.
But could this revolution happen again in the West where most countries have fallen to their lowest level of debauchery, corruption, and immorality of all time? We have hope because “where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ or Lord” (Romans 5:20). And as Wilberforce added:
I must confess equally boldly that my own solid hopes for the well being of my country depend, not so much on her navies and armies, nor on the wisdom of her rulers, nor on the spirit of her people, as on the persuasion that she still contains many who love and obey the Gospel of Christ. I believe that their prayers may yet prevail.
