by Jerry Senn
William Wilberforce was born into a rich merchant family in 1759. When his father died, young William spent two years with his aunt and uncle in London. His aunt embraced the emerging Methodist movement, which emphasized social reform, including the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. A frequent visitor of the London home was John Newton, a former slave-ship captain who became a Christian and the writer of the hymn “Amazing Grace.”
When William went back home to Hull, his interest in Christianity faded. While at Cambridge University, he was elected to Parliament and began a lifelong friendship with William Pitt (the Younger), who became Prime Minister.
A year after winning his first election to Parliament he became a Christian. He reconnected with Newton, who encouraged him to serve God in public life. Wilberforce began to use his position in Parliament to attack vices, such as drinking and gambling, that afflicted the poor. When Thomas Clarkson showed him the appalling conditions under which the slaves were transported from Africa to the West Indies, Wilberforce became an abolitionist.
In 1791, Wilberforce introduced a bill to abolish the slave trade, but it was defeated because port cities depended on income generated by the slave trade. Year after year, Wilberforce reintroduced the bill, only to watch it be defeated. After tabling his bill for a decade during Britain’s war with France, Wilberforce won approval for a clever anti-French law that gutted the revenues of many in the slave trade.
By 1807, with the pro-slavery lobby low on funds and with public sentiment against slavery, both houses of Parliment passed Wilberforce’s bill, the Slave Trade Act, by large margins, ending nearly four hundred years of the slave trade in the British Empire. A year later, the United States passed its own law banning the slave trade. (Chris Bolinger, 365-Day Devotional).
“He has shown you, O moral, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.”
Micah 6:8 (NIV)