I just got back from the movie and am motivated to revisit Eric Metaxas’ biography of William Wilberforce, “Amazing Grace.” I try not to weep at crowded movies, but today was tough. I held it in for the most part–pushing back hard on the seat to stop the occasional slight tremble in the shoulders.
As you may know, William Wilberforce, a devout Christian and a member of the British Parliament, began in 1787 to do what then seemed impossible — lead the British Empire to abolish the slave trade, what supporters called the lifeblood of the economy.
Having experienced what he called his “great change,” he became an committed Christ-follower. In one of my favorite scenes in the movie, Wilber (as his friends called him) is trying to explain why he was suddenly so amazed at the spider’s web, the grassy dew, the budding flower. “Did you find God, sir?” asks his servant. Wilber laments back. “I think God found me. Do you have any idea how bloody inconvenient that is?”
He would write in his diary soon after his conversion:
To endeavour from this moment to amend my plan for time. I hope to live more than heretofore to God’s glory and my fellow-creatures’ good.
Later, he’d record in that same diary, these words:
God almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the Slave Trade and the reformation of manners.
Both proved tough nuts to crack. In the former, he would fail year after year before, finally, in 1807 — 200 years ago today (February 23rd)– his bill became law, abolishing an evil that had resulted in the enslavement and death of millions of Africans. Shortly before his death in 1833, he learned that another bill — to abolish the practice of slavery itself in the empire — would soon become law. In a multitude of ways, he sought to reform the manners of England–in today’s language to help make society a better place.
One of favorite stories in Metaxas’ book concerns Wilberforce’s visit to the Lake District in England where he had funded several schools for the poor run by his friend Hannah More–fellow abolitionist and according to Samuel Johnson “the most skilled versificatrix in the English Language.” (I’m not sure what that is, but it was a complement from one of the cleverest wordsmiths in history.) Anyway, Wilber would often visit Hannah More and her schools for the poor in Cowslip Green as a tonic to any worldly mind-set and selfish ambitions. Metaxas records that Wilberforce took his new young bride, the former Barbara Spooner, to Cowslip Green because “he wanted to begin his married life on the right foot, with a visit to the poor.”
This story shouldn’t hint that Wilber was in any way addicted to the narcotic of noblesse oblige — an addiction soothing the soul and conscience of some within the privileged classes. He actually believed that all men were created equal–a value he discussed with other shining lights of his generation including his friend Wiliam Pitt (at 24, the youngest Prime Minister in English history), Edmund Burke and even Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
I could go on and on. Metaxas’ book is beautifully written and powerfully told. The movie is wonderful. I would like to end with some of the “lovely lines” from Metaxas book. Let them whet your appetite.
The line between courageous faith and foolish idealism is, almost by definition, one angstrom wide.
It was as if Dolben’s bill (to regulate the number of slaves a ship could carry) had suddenly shone a light into a damp, never-before-disturbed snake pit to reveal a writhing mass of surprised serpents therein.
If you will be at the trouble, I will be at the expense. (Wilber’s promise to help Hannah More and her sisters build schools for the poor in Cheddar Gorge)
Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.–in a letter from John Welsey to Wilberforce written only a few days before Wesley died at age 87.
Gradually. It was as though these three syllables, soporific and falsely irenic, had bubbled up through Dundas’s mouth from the dead belly of hell itself. Everyone seized on it.
For a man with such a mind, getting his thoughts on the Christian faith between the covers of a book was inescapably a task on the order of herding cats and shoveling smoke.
I thank God that I live in the age of Wilberforce and that I know one man at least who is both moral and entertaining.
____________
I think I’ll stop there. I could go on, but I’d hate for lovely lines to bore.
By the way, I’ve commented in several places about Wilberforce’s leadership in the abolition movement at my onmovements.com site: here and here and here and here and here.
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