It is just before 4 o’clock in the morning, 24 February 1807. There is great excitement in the House of Commons. Most of the members of the House are on their feet cheering. But one man is sat, head bowed, with tears streaming down his cheeks. He is a small man, not much to look at. But he is one of the most significant men in the history of our nation. His name is William Wilberforce. The reason that the tears are pouring down his face is because his long and difficult struggle to end the slave trade is about to end in victory. It had begun twenty years earlier when Wilberforce first brought the matter before the house. Now, at long last, by a majority of 283 to 16 the House voted for its abolition. But though that battle had been won, the war was not yet over.

Birth and background

By the time of that vote Wilberforce was 47 years old, having been born in Hull on 24 August 1759. He was born into a wealthy, middle class family. But his father died when he was only eight and he was sent to live with his childless Uncle and Aunt, William and Hannah Wilberforce, in London. There he came under their evangelical influence and as a youngster admired Whitefield, Wesley and Newton. His mother, who was High Church, was concerned about her son becoming ‘a Methodist’ and took him away from that influence. Soon he lost interest in spiritual things and throughout his education, including studying at St John’s College at Cambridge, he was lazy and loved to socialise. There was little indication of the determination, hard work and careful study that would characterise his part in the battle against slavery.

That change would come through his conversion. He had already become a Member of Parliament for Hull at the age of 21 before God brought him to saving faith. When he was 25, during one of the long recesses he was due to travel to the French Riviera with his mother and sister. Almost on a whim he invited his former school master, Isaac Milner, now a tutor at Cambridge, to travel with him. Little did Wilberforce know that Milner had been truly converted since they had last known each other. As they travelled they talked together about the Christian faith. Then in the house where they were staying Wilberforce happened to pick up a copy of Doddridge’s book ‘The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul’. Milner told him it was one of the best books he had ever read and suggested they read it together on the long journey back to England. Wilberforce attributes a major part in his conversion to that book. However he was not yet a believer. The next summer he travelled again with Milner and this time they read and discussed the New Testament and Wilberforce came to an understanding that unless he repented and trusted in Christ he would perish everlastingly.

Yet there was a battle going on inside because William felt that if he became a Christian it would mean he would have to give up politics. In the midst of his spiritual dilemma he decided to search out his boyhood hero, John Newton, now 60 years old. Newton was a great help to him, and urged him not to give up politics. Two years later he wrote to him, ‘It is hoped and believed that the Lord has raised you up for the good of his church and for the good of the nation’. How important that counsel of Newton’s was in the history of our nation. It would have been easy for him to tell Wilberforce to leave political life with all its temptations, but Newton realised the importance of having Christians at the heart of the nation. It was around Easter 1786 that Wilberforce came through to a full assurance of faith. His Christian life was serious and spiritual. He was a man of prayer, and his diaries reveal a close walk with the Lord and a determination to do battle with sin in his life. He had to battle with his own ambitions for higher office, as well as the sins that were common in the social circles that he was in. But God gave him the grace to stand firm as a godly man in an ungodly environment.

It was a letter from another evangelical MP, Captain Sir Charles Middleton, that encouraged Wilberforce to take up the issue of the Atlantic Slave Trade. As Wilberforce began to look into the subject he was appalled by what he discovered - the numbers of slaves taken; the cruelty with which they were treated; the numbers that died on the voyage. He would tell the House: ‘I confess to you, so enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did its wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition…Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.’

The consequences would indeed be great for Wilberforce. The slave trade was big business. The majority of people considered that the slave trade was an economic necessity for England, that ending it would ruin the West Indies, and that if Britain stopped, the other countries involved would benefit and take the trade themselves. Wilberforce faced a great deal of opposition, and the strain of preparing his case for parliament nearly killed him. He was so ill that his opponents began to prepare for a by-election for his seat. But he recovered and on 11 May 1789 he addressed parliament for three and a half hours on the need for abolition.

It is interesting to note that, whilst not covering up the evils of the trade, he spoke graciously and included himself in the crime: ‘I mean not to accuse anyone but to take the shame upon myself, in common indeed with the whole parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty – we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others’.

However, sympathetic though many in the House were, they did not vote with Wilberforce, worried about the consequences of such a decision, and so for the next eighteen years the battle would continue. Wilberforce showed great determination. He would not give up the cause, believing that God had called him to this task and would give him the grace to continue. So it was that tears of joy and relief rolled down Wilberforce’s face when the vote was eventually won all those years later.

Yet, as mentioned earlier, though the battle was won, the war was not over. Not only did the implementation of the abolition law prove difficult and controversial, it did not end slavery. That was a battle that would take Wilberforce the rest of his life. Parliament would vote for emancipation 26 years later, on 26July 1833, only three days before Wilberforce died. When the vote was taken his friends hurried to his bedside to give him the news.

It would be wrong to think of Wilberforce as a one-issue man, he worked and campaigned for the improvement of manners (morals) in the country, leading the way by his own example. He was involved in the opening and support of a school in a deprived area of the country, encouraged others in the battle for prison reform, and gave away large amounts of his income to help the needy.

The concern of the church is the preaching of the gospel. But as we remember Wilberforce, we should pray for individual Christian men and women to be raised up in our day to lead the way in public life. We have big issues still today that Christians ought to be taking the lead in speaking about and acting on: world poverty, abortion, marriage and the family.

Another William, William Jay of Bath, a pastor and friend to Wilberforce wrote of him: ‘His disinterested, self denying, laborious, undeclining efforts in this cause of justice and humanity…will call down the blessings of millions; and ages yet to come will glory in his memory’. We do that today.