Weekday Devotion With Pastor Chris

     William Wilberforce was born on August 24, 1759, the only son of a wealthy merchant in Yorkshire, England.  He didn't have an easy childhood.  He was small, and prone to sickness.  He lost his father when he was nine, and was sent off to live with an aunt and uncle in London.  He came to adore his aunt and uncle, but his mother and grandfather brought him back three years later when he began to show interest in evangelical (or "nonconformist") Christianity as a result of his aunt's influence.

     By the time he entered Cambridge, Wilberforce was already independently wealthy -- the result of the loss of both his grandfather and uncle.  With no need to make a living Wilberforce proved an indifferent student, but he had a very active social life and made quite a few friends.  One of them, a future Prime Minister, was William Pitt, and it was Pitt who convinced him to enter into politics.  In what we would call his senior year, Wilberforce ran for and was elected to the House.

     Wilberforce proved to be a gifted speaker.  James Boswell, the famous biographer, would later say of his eloquence, "I saw what seemed a mere shrimp mount upon the table; but as I listened, he grew, and grew, until the shrimp became a whale."  Those gifts would prove crucial in the great task that lay before him.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay 

     The turning point in Wilberforce’s life came over the course of some fourteen or fifteen months between 1884 and 1885.  It began when he invited a brilliant Cambridge professor, Isaac Milner, to join him and some members of his family on a tour of Europe.  To his surprise, Milner proved to be a devout Christian.  Their conversations, along with Wilberforce's exploration of the New Testament and works by Philip Doddridge and Blaise Pascal, finally resulted in (as Wilberforce put it)  “a settled conviction in my mind… of the truth of Christianity.”  This was no sudden conversion.  This was a deep, exhaustive study that resulted in what Wilberforce would come to call the “Great Change”.  Years later he wrote to a friend:

It is scarce too strong to say, that I seem to myself to have awakened about nine or ten years ago from a dream, to have recovered, as it were, the use of my reason after a delirium.  In fact till then I wanted first principles; those principles at least which alone deserve the character of wisdom, or bear the impress of truth.

Emulation, and a desire of distinction, were my governing motives; and ardent after the applause of my fellow-creatures, I quite forgot that I was an accountable being; that I was hereafter to appear at the bar of God; that if Christianity were not a fable, it was infinitely important to study its precepts, and when known to obey them; that there was at least such a probably of its not being a fable, as to render it in the highest degree incumbent on me to examine into its authenticity diligently, anxiously, and without prejudice…

I am not now what I ought to be; yet I trust… through the help of that gracious Being who has promised to assist our weak endeavors, to become more worthy of the name of Christian.

     Two years after the “Great Change,” Wilberforce became the driving force in Parliament for the abolition of slavery.  This wasn’t about popularity.  This was about being faithful, and using his position to serve God.  Over the next two decades, undaunted by repeated setbacks, Wilberforce fought the good fight.  In 1807, with tears streaming down his face, he saw Parliament take its first major step by abolishing the slave trade.  Twenty six years later, and some forty-six years after Wilberforce had first agreed to lead the charge, Parliament finally abolished slavery altogether.

     Christianity, as Wilberforce discovered, has a way of being "self-authenticating" -- that is, if you take it seriously and put its precepts into practice, experience bears out its truth.  The issue isn't that people try it and then find it wanting.  The issue, rather, is that what they try isn't really Christianity at all, but rather some sociably acceptable, watered-down version that has been drained of all its power.

"I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."   (John 6:35)