William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce

Nearly everyone has heard of William Wilberforce, who opposed the slave trade and was able to have it banned by the English Parliament.

William was born in 1759. He was a bright student and studied at Cambridge University. When he was only twenty-four years old, he was elected as the local Parliamentary member for the town where he lived. Soon after, he attended the county election for York. All the people cried out, “We will have that little man for our member”, so he was elected to the wider Parliament.

William was full of life and happiness. He loved society and pleasure and was said to be ‘the life of the Doncaster horse races.’ However he was not a Christian.

He decided to travel to Nice, France, to visit one of his relatives. He invited a minister friend, Rev. Isaac Milner, to travel with him. As they were talking, the name of a Christian man was mentioned. William said that he thought this man ‘carried religion too far.’ Rev. Milner replied that if William read the New Testament he would probably think differently. William replied that he would like to do so and suggested that they read the New Testament in Greek, seeing they were both Greek Scholars. Since travel was very slow, they had the opportunity to read the whole New Testament together.

William’s life was now completely changed. He became an earnest Christian. He was now twenty-five years old. Soon he joined a Christian group that sought to reach the higher classes of people with the gospel. He also sought to improve the condition of those who were poor and of those who were in prison. He helped to found the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804.

Later, William fought to have the slave trade abolished. After a long struggle in which his bill to abolish slavery was often rejected, he at last managed to have it made law in 1807.

William sought to uphold the Bible and Christian principles in the British Parliament. He wrote a famous Christian book and he was described as ‘the conscience of the nation’.