WILLIAM WILBERFORCE:
His Unpublished Spiritual Journals.
By Michael McMullen
Christian Focus. 464 pages. £22.99
ISBN 978 1 527 106 932
‘It is the view of this writer, that it was Wilberforce’s spirituality which drove him to pursue all he did.’ For Wilberforce’s life, one can read William Hague’s excellent biography, but for his inner life, MacMullen is unsurpassed, with much on his spiritual disciplines and the influences thereon.
For example, ‘Much affected by Doddridge’s directions for spending time, and hope to conform to them to some degree’, or ‘I walked out with Owen on spiritual mindedness and Newton on Communion with God.’ In the midst of endless public business, he would set aside days for ‘secret Prayer and Exercises.’
Wilberforce famously wrote: ‘God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.’ In May 1789 he gave his maiden speech. After three and a half hours he concluded by saying ‘Having heard all of this, you may choose to look the other way, but you may never again say that you did not know.’
A burden for Pitt’s salvation
He found the necessary company of non-Christians often difficult. ‘What dost thou here Elijah? Vanity is excited, or one’s Pride is mortified, a Sort of hollow cheerfulness in every Countenance.’ He continued, ever burdened for Prime Minister William Pitt’s salvation: ‘Poor Pitt!! Alas! Alas! O! if he knew the way of life.’
He assiduously kept Sundays (‘I was much affected by [Thomas] Scott’s Sermon this morning’, is one of many such entries), and a concern for foreign missions. ‘I sadly fear that we have been too negligent about the grand question of communicating Christianity to our Indian fellow-subjects. We have heard of excellent [Henry] Martyn’s death in Persia.’
He was his own harshest critic. Hannah More ‘asked me how I did to preserve a heavenly spiritual frame. Alas, I don’t preserve it, yet I would humbly aspire after it, all else is folly and Vanity and Vexation of Spirit.’ He lists ‘My chief sins’ including: ‘Not enough careful for souls of others. Not 1,000th part desirous enough of growth in grace … Prayers often cold & formal … A sort of contempt for persons inferior in knowledge of Christianity. How inconsistent with true Christian Humility.’
A book to inform, but mostly to chasten, challenge and inspire.
